Confessor
Puritan Board Senior
You're not, as long as when you said, "the full set of presuppositions of the unbeliever include 'there is no god' and he will reject any argument that contradicts that presupposition," you meant of course that the unbeliever is behaving perfectly consistently with his presupposition. (And I'm pretty sure you do mean that.)
Changed the color to red in the part I have a question about. I would think that the reprobate live inconsistently with their presupposition that there is no God ... they borrow from the Christian world-view any time they even mention right and wrong, good and bad, or complain about someone giving them a raw deal. Yes?
Yes, I agree with that. I meant that regarding the specific situation where they "weigh the evidence" for God's existence, if they were consistent in their unbelief in that pinpointed instance, then they would reject the conclusion that God exists.
-----Added 6/26/2009 at 12:26:03 EST-----
[Regarding Jesus' existence]
No. For the simple reason that they are not absolute systems. Islam, Judaism, etc leave an out. Judaism, as practiced today, no longer claims exclusivity in any form whatsoever. As for Islam, they end up claiming to know nothing. They both fail to pass my litmus test for an absolute system.
I'm not quite understanding your criteria for what an "absolute system" is, and why something has to actually make a claim to exclusivity in order to be one.
It seems as if you're defining a category that only Christianity can fit into, and then you impose a superfluous criterion (if one part is true, then the whole is true) in order to make your case. But if Christianity is the only worldview in that category, then there's no point in having such a criterion.