The following debate between Dr. Gordon H. Clark and Professor David Hoover took place in the spring of 1983 at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. The debate discusses two approaches to Christian apologetics. Dr. Clark defends presuppositionalism, while Mr. Hoover defends evidentialism or empiricism. This is to become perfectly discussive with sensation Ordinarily... When two philosophers contend for their positions, either in debate or in their publications, they begin with a refutation of the opponent's views in order to clear the ground for a position of their own. They practice this in his discourse on methods, where he describes his positional, inadequate, and unworthy education. Locke devoted book one of his four books on human understanding to a reputation of the theory of innate ideas. He described three or four forms of this doctrine and belabored them each with figures. Similarly, the first four chapters of Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind destroyed Kant. After thus disposing of the opposition, these men constructively expounded their own philosophies. By and large, the negative argument is called an argumentum ad hominem. There, based on one of the opponent's assertions, he argues to a conclusion he is unwilling to accept. Whether somewhat disguised or not, it consists, it convicts the opponent of self-contradiction. In geometry, the argument goes by the name of a reficio ad absurdum. To demonstrate a theorem, the geometer assumes its contradictory and then proves its absurdity. Then the desired theorem is established. This customary procedure is the one I have usually followed. In my book on the behaviorism of Christianity, the behaviorism comes first. I try to show that if behaviorism is true, it proves its own premises to be false. Similarly, historiography, secular and religious, begins with the secular view. My language and theology proceed on the same general pattern. Only after 130 pages on Russell's logic, the logical part of his protocol sentences, and other associated theories do I undertake an exposition of a theistic view of language. But for a change, and because many in this audience have heard my arguments against empiricism, I shall this evening begin with my own position based on Scripture. Since the aim is to construct a scriptural theory of epistemology, the first positive, non-ad hominem argument will appeal to the Biblical declarations in Genesis 1, verses 26 and 27, and chapter 2, verse 7, that God created man in his own image. Some of the wording is, and God said, let us make man in our image. So God created man in his own image, and the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. These Old Testament verses do not explicitly state the full import of the event. What happens, the New Testament explains in greater detail. The words in Genesis, and as discussed in some theological publications, might give the impression that God, after creating Adam, put the image somewhere inside or upon the land. But the Apostle Paul shows that God did not simply create man and stamp his image upon him. In 2 Corinthians 11 7, Paul gives a more complete explanation. He does not say that the image is in man, he says that man is the image. The text declares that, quote, man is the image and glory of God. The nature of this image, that is, the nature of man himself, must now be determined. What was man's condition as he came from the hands of his maker? Genesis is not entirely silent on this matter. Indeed, Genesis says more than speed readers can see. The first, but by no means the most important point, in fact the least important fact, is that God gave Adam dominion over all living beings, fish, birds, and animals. But though the fact of dominion is not in itself very important, the entailment of certain abilities essential for such dominion is very important for the confrontation between empiricism and a priorism. To dominate animals, a man requires a modicum of intelligence. Now, it is hard to attribute even a modicum of intelligence to a blank mind. This becomes clearer in what follows. As indicated, more important than the dominion over animals is the fact that God explains this dominion to Adam. That is to say, God spoke to Adam and Adam understood what God told him. Genesis 1, 28-30 says in brief, God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, have dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Adam understood these directions, and to understand what God says requires as much as or even more intelligence than it does to manage minds and mules. The divine instructions, however, were not limited to agriculture and husbandry. The Lord gave Adam some religious instruction also. Genesis 2.16-17 records certain commands that God imposed on Adam. In particular, he commanded him not to eat the fruit of a certain tree, and warned him that, Here we have a stated penalty for disobedience. Adam understood this command and this penalty. For in 1 Timothy 2-14 it tells us that though he was deceived, Adam was not deceived. clearly Adam understood. But let us also understand that there is an important difference between understanding agriculture and understanding the idea of moral law. Since this will be a particular embarrassment to empiricism, the theme is worth discussing. Let us therefore consider what is requisite to Adam's disobedience. In addition to understanding his conviction over animals, and in addition to his perhaps incomplete understanding of the creation of Eve, as stated in Genesis 1-24, Adam also recognized his friendly and happy relationship with God. This is partly shown in the fact that neither Adam nor Eve was ashamed of being naked. It is better shown in the recorded conversation between God and Adam. The home account in the first two chapters of Genesis depicts an unspoiled relationship. This relationship, which one may call a religious relationship, continues in a negative fashion after Adam's death. The conversation is recorded in Genesis 3, page 219. When Adam heard the voice of the Lord God, he and his wife hid themselves, and God said, Where art thou? Adam replied, I was afraid. And so the account proceeds. The important point, at least for the present purpose, is that God and Adam talked to each other, and Adam understood. Now, in opposition to empiricism, I submit that none of this could have happened if Adam had to depend on sensation to get the least bit of knowledge. Thomas Aquinas thought that man's mind at birth is a commune of rasa. Neither Aristotle nor John Locke used the Latin phrase, but both philosophers insisted that originally man's mind is a plank. After reviewing the doctrine of innate ideas in Book One, Locke in Book Two, Paragraph Two, very clearly asserts that man is born without any ideas at all. Quote, let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? whence hath it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer," the idea of Kunti-janma, to this I answer in one word, from experience. In fact, all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself as a quotation from us. On the face of it, Love and Genesis do not agree. and below the surface there are strata to be understood one by one. The first is language and wisdom. The dominant scientific view today explains language as requiring a million years or so of development from animal growth and freedom. Adam lived about 900 years, not a million. and even if the account has not played explicitly but not spoken at him within three seconds of his conversion to creation, such is the impression nevertheless. Before evaluation captured the allegiance of the public, Rousseau intended to give a non-theistic theory of language. He discovered a track from which he could not extricate himself. Edison had to make language a social product. He was concerned that the problem was without language there could be no society. Well, at least he recognized that he was tiny. Now, to proceed, language has several functions. That is, it can express various types of ideas. If animals cannot understand ordinary narratives, all the less do they understand moral commands. They can be trained to obey certain sounds, but they have no consciousness of right and wrong. They cannot sin before sinning presupposes an understanding of the divine commands. Adam understood these commands, for as yet stated, he was not diseased. The capacity for recognizing moral responsibility is beyond that of a blank mind. It is even beyond whatever power of instruction sensory experience could possibly have. Observational data is a re-instruction. never implied distinction between moral good and evil. At the very best, one might learn that such and such is the case, but one can never so learn that such and such ought to be the case. It is noteworthy that one of the most determined groups of anti-Christian philosophers, St. Nicholas of Nicosia, admits this, and insists on it with glee. Morality is simply irrational personal preference. But surely the most conclusive argument from Genesis centers in the word image itself. If Adam was the image of God, he could not have had a blank mind for the simple reason that God's mind is not a blank. This idea is, of course, repeated in other books besides Genesis. Even a theorist, if they are Christians, has knowledge that God is salvation. Quote, "...for more is a God of knowledge in the world." Christ is the truth and the wisdom of God, and certainly it is not necessary to quote a thousand pages of Sharma to prove the point. Because of this, Mark's blank sheet of paper and the coming around of other points cannot be the image of God. The Italian Genesis so clearly refutes that hereticism that nothing further is logically needed. But the Bible provides additional detail. What is implied in Genesis is explained in Ephesians 4.24 and Proverbs 3.10. These two passages explain regeneration as a sort of new creation, peace that then was originally created in God's age and in man's. In the preceding exposition here, both of their facts have disappeared. If anything has been left excellent, it is that righteousness is eminent on knowledge. Knowledge is basic. One cannot obey a command unless one first understands it. All in all, the conclusion seems inescapable that Christianity and Antichristism are completely incompatible. Nothing further is needed. Nevertheless, with these existential deductions from Scripture providing the obvious side of the argument, the introductory paragraph of this lecture acts on conclusive negative arguments in second place. has been aided to show that empiricism is self-contradictory. Even so, the first contention can also reveal the scripture, and hence one can classify it either way. Empiricism insists that science is totally observational. Professor A.J. Carlson of Chicago, in a quite public article, asked, what is the method of science? And he immediately answers, his answer is this, the rejection in Foucault of all non-observational and non-experimental authority in the field of science. End of quote. So instead of it can be found in other scientific writings. But if Marx and others think that science derives that truth, as they sure do think, it is easy to refuse them. Scientific laws are so elongated as universal composition. The law of the pendulum is supposed to describe the motion of every pendulum, past, present, and future. Life is supposed to travel always at the speed of 186,000 miles a second. But since these four are universal propositions, no amount of observation demonstrates their truth. Observation is almost observation of a miniscule proportion of the phenomena. Even if these two instances were correctly measured, as they never are, they do not imply any universal law of physics. Another argument concerns one of the delusions of armory experience. Presumably everyone, at least you and me, sees a body as continuous and solid. One end of a pencil is partly attached to the other end. For contemporary scientists, there is no connection between any two parts of a pencil. The distance between one end and the other is 99% empty space. This is a case of one set of sensations contradicting another set. They cannot both be correct, for who can tell which is which? The illusion of fact deceives us dozens of times every day. They want to condemn and judge us to despondency. Nearly any elementary textbook on perception will give multiple examples in its first chapter. Anyone who devotes the asserts of the mind to the observation ought to consult his opulence. One of my favorite examples from the University Psychology Laboratory is that of the rotating disk. half black, half white, with a few black twigs, or a deep seam of black and white, when rotated at a high speed, produces sensations of red, blue, green, and a sort of color. Or, for a less anecdotal example, any prominent landscape artist will tell you that the colors of the scene are disturbingly orange within a half an hour. but empiricism faces something much more disturbing and fundamental than any psychological peculiarity. It is the universal disparity between truth and error. Marx teaches that there are precisely four forms of the clarity sentences in two pairs of contradictions. The student's statement, some dogs are gentle and no dogs are gentle, cannot both be true and cannot both be false. The same relationship holds for all dishes are even and some dishes are not even. We shall hold this for long in our tradition. It should be obvious that if this law were false, intelligence, understanding, meaningful speech, and thinking itself would be impossible. Candle would mean vision, heart would mean healing, and everything would mean knowledge. Since Luther's theology has tended to be more empirical than Augustine would be, a quotation from Breuer may be of some significance. In the system of Christian doctrine, he insists that the soul is never a subject of arousal. If, in our knowledge, there is already inherent no innate relation to what is rational and good, a relation that isn't original draws the dowry of our nature and not of our own worth, then knowledge of truth and truth itself is absolutely out of the question. The law of conservation is a universal proposition and can never be abstracted or deduced from experience. Most philosophers, in fact all but one, have never even attempted to describe its development. I resolved it in legal administration for the illness to show how it demonstrated anyway. The intensity is from the beginning, for no one without the law of contradiction can even begin to learn. yet Adam began to learn as soon as he was created. From the first day of his life, he understood what God said. He understood that he was his mind that had been created in that form. His mind was not a formless blank. Empiricism, on the contrary, is an impossible demography which a perspicuous criticism will replace with the innate apriori image of God. While the prevailing opinion today favors empiricism, even among Christian non-dimensional secularists, it was not always so. Our issues in the 3rd century greatly diminished in the 4th century, and especially the great paradoxes in the 5th century were by no means empiricism. From A.D. 400 to A.D. 150, all distinctions were done. More recently, there was the movement of lawyers, as we just quoted, and the count of the dead. The dead are also the few contemporaries who, more or less consistently, reject imperialism. Because of the thought that he would break the illusions at certain times, or perhaps because of the literary excellence of his earlier scholars, I wish to translate a page or two written by a post-Reformation Paul Viscinius. He did not always find what he was looking for, but he intuitively and simply undertook the Church for truth." The spirit of man is, by its nature, great speaking, its creator, and bodily creatures. But as the great elevation by which it is above all material things does not prevent it from being united to them, so the intimate distance between the cosmic being and the human spirit does not prevent it from being immediately united to him in a most intimate manner. This latter union, elevated above all things, by that union it receives its life, its might, and all its publicity. On the contrary, the union of the spirit with the body abates its man instantly, and it is now the principal cause of all our errors and all our misadventures." I am not surprised," he continues, quote, "...I am not surprised that ordinary people who are saying philosophers only consider the soul in its relation to and union to the body without recognizing the relation and union it has with God." But I am surprised that Christian philosophers, who often refer to the spirit of God above the spirit of man, Moses before Aristotle, and Rudolfo before some miserable commentator of 13 philosophers, are more interested in the soul as the form of the body than in the image and forming image of God, to whom it is immediately united. Since the will of God regulates the nature of everything, it is more the nature of the soul to be united to God by a knowledge of the truth and by the love of good than to be united to the body, because it is certain that God made our spirit in order to know Him and to love Him rather than to impose a form on the body." The sin of the first man, so we can be willing that our service is done, that vacuum is a fierce imaginary to those who blindly always use it, to those who blindly always use sentences as imagination and statute, it is impossible for him to escape the action. as the body fills the spirit with such a great number of sensations that it becomes incapable of knowing the reason for the truth. It is only by the attention of the spirit that any truth is discovered and any knowledge is gained. Before this day, the attention of the spirit is nothing other than its return and conversion to God, who is our only teacher, as Saint Augustine says." But why does this, in my opening statement, is not so much a thorough thinking or a theory of reason given, but a clarification of issues and where work remains to be done in a poetical sense. And what we found, and I do agree, is that the outline of the petition, in the sense that it requires a theory of a need to give reason for the truth of Christianity, must include various important truths. regarding the mutually exclusive modes of accumulating and processing information about God's world. Man, as a learner, an acquirer of knowledge of self, the world, and God, cannot draw prayer without repeating obscurity and irrelevance before God. It has become my growing concern that obscurity and irrelevance could finally be stopped in a great deal more than a third of the past 50 years. So when we get rid of pre-propositional reasoning, and evidential reasoning, there's a stronger role of marking off QCC, but all of that methodology seems to me not to be very informative. They serve more to progress the argument further than they do in all my classmates in America, and it seems to me five issues to cure. For example, pre-propositional reasoning is said to be true of mainframe reasoning, though evidential reasoning is still hard to take care of. But one can certainly satisfy the logical requirements of reading presuppositionally without thereby receiving some truth. Moreover, it certainly seems absurd to insist that evidence can never render a matter evident, and can reveal that such evidence does. But the requirement of presupposition is, by now, an old refrain, and it seems to shine as a luxury to solve evidence. It seems to be evidential. It goes something like this. It is true, however, that a conductive argument cannot yield a conclusion to the truth that is formally guaranteed. That is to say, there is nothing in the form of a conductive argument whereby it would be logically impossible for the conclusion to be false if the premise is true. Rather, the conductive argument can be confidence at all. There exists a contained premise in which to support, rather than to fail, the conclusion. Thus, it would be better to see that any conductively supported conclusion No matter how persuasive his report could, for all as much as one might think, involve a program that advanced any of these conditions, the self-testing is only probable. But more importantly, it is also being thought that it aren't the cases you'd like to argue are evidential qualities, but only the experience of misadventure in view of the evidence. It is possible that he didn't state any of these conditions, or that he's been converging upon them at all. I recently learned that evidence for apologies, even of the caliber of the deportee held for a non-military misdemeanor, are often taken in by the blindest thinking. They shouldn't be. The appreciation of evidence need not be conceded to be any prudent or formal deterrent. That is to say, it can't be maintained that there is an accurate informality to evidence appreciation. and informality, which ultimately resists prescriptive formalization and argumentation. No empirical fact claim can be logically or formally guaranteed. But this is not because there are no empirical facts. It is because there are crucial limitations on the capacity of a human being to formalize his purely acquired knowledge by the first means. And this is not to say that logic itself is defective in some way. My conviction is only that the human being lacks the capacity to completely translate the verbal perception that is true perception of God through the purpose of these words. It would take a complete description and an economist understanding all of the data, also in the purpose-to-purpose translation, to logically guarantee any claim to verbal perception. that we cannot do this, not until we cannot perceptually discriminate objects and jobs well. Although perception is notoriously foul, I don't know how to say it live, but it's been driving me crazy since I was a kid. I don't know if it was, was, and probably is, or if it is, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, or, and, The claims can, in fact, be proved, and to whatever extent people formally and informally appreciate these rules, once they've become the argument. For example, my claim is to virtually proceed my colleagues to the given date must be canonically guaranteed. The best arguments that could be produced in the account of my claim were, in a formal sense, the logical means to prove this. It is impossible for me to produce a comprehensively and deconstructively valid argument in the sense that it radically constrains formalization that my colleague is here understood before this audience even thought of. Can you hear what I'm saying? Not at all. So the fact is, as long as the appropriateness of the signing comes from the argument to the conclusion of my best argument, no other reply should I be heard, nor that it is up to us to build my perception of where it is. And if I can say it this way, I'm okay. And I'm doing it right. Thank you. But I began by complaining that the transformative side of the traditional label of free thought principles was inevitable, and I began by complaining about the transformative side of capitalism itself. If there's no Christian leaders as far as I know, not even John Lloyd and my government, the belief that the Christian can again reap from epistemic cracks, or with an exacto vacuum, there is the honest degree that I think that one necessarily can do something counter-productive. In this sense, there are no non-pre-substantialists. There are only varieties of pre-substantialists. McGarry, for example, insists that while one must avoid many difficult pre-substantialists, one can't do without some trans-human being pre-substantialist or pre-substantialist methodology. In Word of History 9, page 179, McGarry proof states that This grounds his publicizing efforts as an only-adopt-to-repeat republication of American law and order, but then strictly violates the self-imposed prohibition on republication of content, clarity, and hierarchy, a fundamental military coercion between historic occupancy, rival society's dreams, and actual experience. I hope this answers the question, or is Montgomery done? Well, my point of order is that this is the Montgomery Act, and it's very coercive. It's republicational. I hate it, because it sucks. Instead of going to the Marines and the Spanish Federals, what these people were saying was to go to the farm, as if they thought this was a lot better, then to go to work on my Spanish doctorate, or to my college for sure, because I don't understand this stuff. Because you go to the farm and the Marines and the Spanish Federals, it's a start, it's a process, For it far denies the possibility of cognitive fission activity on purely logical grounds. There is no way to go to logical results of cessation of fission. I agree with you on the lack of evidence. Van der Rohe works with what he states to decide that man can use up his reacquired knowledge about the world. The means of restructure of man's ability to help fission open implies the assumption that his own capacities can be exterminated by sensory fission. He says he is able to use his own knowledge of the authoritative source of the Middle Eastern mind. To see this clearly, we need only to examine Stanfield's attitude towards the adopted science and the relation between adopted science and the Christian pre-Catholicism. Thank you, Stanfield. We'll take a few minutes to say it. Our argument would be that the existence of the God of Christianity as human consciousness and consciousness that controls all things in the universe is the only point of position which can account for the enormity of nature which the planet is made of. It says that criticism is required for the uniformity of nature and for the coherence of all things in the world. Notice that the thing which, above all else, must be accounted for is the world of the sciences, the world which the sciences can make out by their methods. This world is why Stanfield is deemed by the science method to be all uniform and coherent. Why, however, would a democrat, in such a state of liberalism, in such a state of imperialism, and going up to the very bottom of the hierarchy, take the position of a dictator, expand over the position of a conservative to account for a claim to the value of the world. But which claim is it, and in terms of which belongs to the other side? The other side. Science is backfiring together there. And so, by the way, the scientific community, of course, is huge. It's large. It's huge. As Mr. Grishma offers, largely speaking, Vanderbilt's pre-proposition, or proposition, is sufficient to say that it promises to explain what science can tell about the world. First up, Vanderbilt's pre-proposition is so that humans can speak to humanity if they want to concentrate on the area of science. We thus come to a new position, a startling realization, that a virtuosic, exquanamous, exquanamous loss of structure exists between what needs to be explained in the society's world, and that which does need explaining. The first is to develop a vision. The second is to develop the account for the evidence. The embarrassment is a perfect explanation for a corny explaining mechanism. Can I logically write about the possibilities for a misinterpretation of truth? on the Einstein and so on. Clarke avoids this ironic twist of anecdotal positions by Tedworth and Seymour, but appears with a quiet, non-Spanish excuse to me, as we only face our traditional heroes in France. But Clarke's connotation of a distinct country talker is one of the main things that spoke to me more about that later. So that's the point of these illustrations, but don't get too selfish. and that your intentions for material things are wrong, that your presuppositions in order to account for the moral of the experience, for on the summary of my pre-propositions, both heuristic evidence and self-proposals have been identified to be laudable if they are together, identifying and showing the material aspects of which we have experienced moral effects in a way. And now we get to the point in which, obviously, people can cover up. Everything else, apart from the content of what is priesthood, priesthood is a hallucination. I mean, he says to me, first of all, in a New York, a meticulous way of hallucinating, as it is called in the United States, you're going to have to differ radically among yourselves as regards what process is right, which process is illogical. And secondly, priesthood is a hallucination, if you look at the literature. and biological management, it seems they could actually solve this kind of reality without losing logical consistency. Why do you think he came from Europe for all, amongst, say, Danville, Clark, and Rutherford? He's not a favorite for all. He's a favorite for Clark and Danville. He's not a favorite for Clark. He hasn't been to Clark, he hasn't been to Danville. I'm not sure if he comes out of it intentionally. The answer is, first, the point of purpose of resourcing is different to the one we have now. Secondly, the way that we've done this in the Obama administration so far is that the virus cannot be separated from a message or commitment. about the source of things and where the knowledge to exist, and hence the myth and form go about in the direction, whether it's a particular one source, whether it's a particular type, or the intent and form. What then is the point of purpose for each of those things? Why do we not live in a monotheistic world? Why do we prefer a military plan? First, we can't do everything now. Our reasoning once again is what we cannot prove, both realistically and metaphorically. Our reasoning must begin in a strict, stark reasoning in the case of medical content. We must take content to be developed, and it's not going to provide a criterion for guiding us towards more content. If one begins with no content, one cannot begin. For if a beginner's not improved, they're pretty strong, and they're going to do better. But why this particular content? Why is this content different from that? It seems to me that one might put the emphasis here on a content of truth. A content of truth, though. Clark, for example, stated that if only one of the terms could be known, skepticism would be defeated. And that's probably as far as that should be as far as it is. So the one major part of their ethos is to contain skepticism. One reason in which social media content might be biased is that content is scarce. On the other hand, one primary issue might be to account for a range of data already to be seen through. For example, the information appearance of a member of Congress. In that case, a resubmission of content is biased primarily towards a flagrant policy. But it wasn't there, either, that the nature of the object was not. Well, the source of the creatures are in the R-explanation. which ones do we admit, and how do we come out of them? For me, success, a commitment to the nature of the piece in particular, is an essential part of what one begins with, an essential part, then, of one's proposition. Here, for example, one acknowledges foolish propositions as rather consistent in the nature of a proposition than there may be a doubt. A prohibition is a non-prohibition, which is where we possess the prohibition of another particular story, possibly from something we cannot comprehend. Prohibitions have their prohibitions, but in this story, they are present, not absent. Prohibitions mean, if there are any prohibitions, then there is no prohibition. They run the exam, and it doesn't make much point to hear about the word prohibition. There is a clause that asserts that the prohibition could be prohibited. I'm going to make three main examples. I'm going to take an attachment as one of my examples, which is the first, but you can get rid of the attachment. Another thing you can characterize about is our views about the extent to which all of us can become closer. Then I'm going to allow you to use the facts as your units of concern. You can have a discussion. Finally, I'd like to come up with a question that you and I have exchanged, which is, what do you all think about the fact Well, let's make a pretty propositional beginning by saying that one needs a particular axiom. The sort of particular axiom is the proposition. Axioms, however, are propositions of certain properties. First of all, an axiom is demonstrative rather than statistical. And secondly, an axiom is a rigorously logical entity. By this I mean that an axiom can be treated for its competitiveness in one way, by means of deductive logic. And if it's an essential part of the work, it will run in the intervals of the many other propositions. Now, all that's real is the academic. The knowledge that's used by it will run, so it cannot be called whatever we want to call it. It cannot be called. Here's a slide that acknowledges, necessarily, how immaterial things can be in a proposition. Furthermore, knowledge that's used in science is the academic. Furthermore, knowledge is confined to the abstinence, where it is completely mentioned in the abstinence, and what cannabis does better in our research on the abstinence. Now focus, first, now, whether Hoover is using the abstinence. If the proposition, Hoover is using the abstinence, is not mentioned in the abstinence, The proposition in question is not part of my knowledge. More dramatically, if the action has its core essence in the theology of the proposition, then not only is the term in the proposition my reference, but it's curious that the action is not a term. But Hoover is using the action that could not even be part of the proposition. Of course, if in the action itself it is stated or implied, there are all propositions that show that Hoover is in the action of the Constitution. It might also be the case that my own attempt to remove this proposition, Hoover is in the action, did not attend a sufficient field of recognition. So although my proposition may be a fail, I cannot appreciate it for himself. I do doubt that Hoover went on to my next attempt, but I do not know whether my version or reality of the proposition was true. I often understand in the underlying context. Secondly, I suppose one of the measures that we start to issue, either exclusively or implicitly, is the fact that the problem is being acknowledged. What we do know is facts and other facts. The degree to which the main minority is looking for the concrete is facts, and if the degree to which it's said is facts, it's based on science. Our interest, in fact, has become what is the nature of this world, for example, and what are the ways this world participates in other participative societies. And over and again, we are concerned with the cohesion, the hanging together of the world. Although all there is, in my mind, not that it is secure about the nature of a fact, in fact, there are several things we can say about that degree with a bit of confidence. In case you're aware of the fact that a fact is verbatim, we commonly distinguish a fact from an interpretation. For example, a fact cannot be an interpretation, for an interpretation is a verb, a text, a statement, or a clause. As is organized, some of them are clear. But a fact, on the other hand, is not verbatim, because there can be a clause. As is organized, some of them are clear. We cannot, of course, infer what the facts are in one case, and in one case, a case in another, as we do in God's case. Secondly, facts do not beat events. Events take up time, as we call logic. Facts do not take up time, nor do they occur in moral logic. Thirdly, facts are not spatial-temporal objects. Spatial-temporal objects persist through time and occupy space. In our world, spatial-temporal objects have complex properties, that is, they exist in positions, capacities, and laboratories. A paper, for example, is liable to be generated for the human experiment. A cotter is a metal that is defined in terms of both its appearance and the amount of weight, but also its total property. The new 20th century Asian weapon is an understatement of the defined cotter as a part, as a restaurant, a palo alto, a palo alto, a palo alto that is an excellent conductor of electricity. Now, it would be a percentage of the metal that satisfies several of these conditions, but what is not malleable is bale, which is our collection of zinc. Not only do we not want to call that metal an instance of copper, but the very statement of that is that copper is a bale of zinc, malleable, and is not an element of zinc. It's a big contradiction. That, on the basis of the logic of the ancients, may be a good definition of malleable copper properties. do not suspect one another by common interaction. A status cannot break a peace. A status cannot make them give back another status. And fourthly, a status cannot be identified with proposition. For the latter, generically speaking, can be proved or false. A status can't be proved or false. A status can be consumed as mine, and can be stated, and in what is meant, can be proved opposition, but as a solstice of communion with a false status. Consider now an extraordinary team that will bring you together as you move along the path. are strictly developed with respect to man's original state, form, losses, and purities in general. The author of nature finds proof in fact that their existence is of their own when he creates the world. We cannot banish the ability of man to accept either part of him and to manipulate him in the past. These facts have, from the outset, been used to distinguish them from the form of history. In their own nature, they constitute a source of danger and moral concern. Keeping in mind that the use of this concept as a back-up interpretation can still occur, we find that it was very important for the development of astrology and astrophysics, and it was especially about that, the importance of energy that might pre-exist in the creation of the world, then to be reworked by the observations. But whatever might be deplorable about others' theologies and morals, Van Hill has not got hold of it by committing others to the ratification of facts. These are facts that come to speak of pre-existing materials, or of manipulable objects, or of complications of important histories, in the surrogate together development of an algorithmic way that doesn't validate the place of agreement. When we call it a dandelion, we're slightly, nearly totally surmised that we can overcome the problem through its back. Although I don't know how to put it here, it seems to me a dandelion doesn't remove its back by putting the back at the... Excuse me, the grip that it runs, if it gets back, you can guess what dandelion does. Do I need to put this back? It's not a lack of all the time. And third, it's an obvious fit. It's not about the process of running through it. It's not a problem with that. It's just not something that's meant to happen. Consider, finally, these two suppositions, that there are two central ideas. The core relationship that goes with all of this discourse is convoluted rationality. What these two suppositions involve is that there is a created universe, a system of being held in their being by God, being by man, within a dynamic stability whose principle of cohesion is not logical, but is in the form of convoluted rationality. To be sure, wisdom would be a perfect wisdom, by our gods, and because of this, humans were capable of being rational and accurate in their poignancy, compositionally perfect in their characteristics. In my mind, the integrity of the creations we can envision is much broader than that. rules ourselves in facts, religion, and rights. It is simply the institution concerning which all the facts are about. It is this idea of policy and the arrangement of facts and rules that fascinates each and every person who supports it. If you reconcile your problem with nothing, and also put things in place in a way that allows you to keep the problem in the past, and then make it a logical problem of getting into the next fact or theory, we will be running the problem backwards. The way things are, which is my definition for the value of time, is that the way something is is understood to be better. The way things are plays on the behavior of the meaning itself, not the other way around. So we see that any of the shorter forms of openness in particular we allow, and that by pre-supposition we reach the question of what is better for the taker of a thought, better for a taker of a view, there are vast spaces of possibility and so on, The preconditions that are required to allow additional ingredients make the system more compliant. Mark alone cannot decide the issue of medical commitment. But it was according to this initial commitment that God was the third one. The logic of this course is not that consistent with the logic of the course of identification and the logic of salvation. In our medical commitment, that is, the commitment that to accommodate the needs of the source of particular issues should be very much to our power there, must be sufficiently rich to accommodate what might be God's creation in human life. But there is one final consideration that must be mentioned, and it's still very important. I would like to mention the concept of human-related knowledge. It is my most prominent and epistemological pre-proposition that I am a committee of many of the leaders of knowledge, and I doubt my doubt should be a way to introduce to the world that I play a key role. The promise gave me claims I was crazy, for I was fearfully unworthy of men. Marvels were everywhere, and dad and I fell in love. Very well. The promise did not foretell me a virgin's long-during which to marvel at the works of God surrounding him. As it was with the promise, so it is with the present life. It is beyond all doubt that I know his intentions, feelings, and safety and security. celestial creature. As little as long as I could have struggled to grasp the remarkable complexity of the apparent world, the space and time that a power of God continued to concentrate upon my waking experience, I agreed with God. I praised God's initiation with the capacity that he allowed me to consciously experience his world by means of seeing, hearing, knowing, tasting, and hearing objects. which is often referred to as heresy for me. The fact concerns these inferences, but is denied only by writing. Are these inferences, I ask, against the words of Solomon Tyler, a moral assertion? So while the complete analysis of safety, abstention, and discrimination may elude me, nobody has been able to tell me so far. And while a policy design may not always be needed to assess a nation's role, I'll be still morally convinced of it. The fact that the State of the Ascension Conference is based on my conviction in Egypt says that the future of God's world is in question. All this is besides the importance of an argument, but it is best to consider the importance of a general and difficult response. It is why we have mentioned that any alternative to it is exceptional. I know many of these elements are finite, specified in the Book of God. It is a logical blunder to require this result to be transcended in order to logically ascertain whether it is reliable. must use that very endowment for his own self-examination. Not contrary to Bob's earlier proposal, this endowment can indeed be liable in the face of the impossibility of the circumstances surrounding it. Thank you very much. We're going to recess now for just ten minutes. I'm back to hear everybody. This is the second round. We've begun in the first round, the statement. First, Dr. Clark spoke, and then Mr. Hoover. I'm going to ask Dr. Clark to begin his section, then, with a rebuttal. Dr. Clark. There is one point on which I wish to commend him. Somewhere along the line he gave a definition of the word fact. He used the word fact many, many times, you will remember. Unfortunately, I never heard his definition before, and having heard it only once, I have not had time to examine it through its implications. I do wish to remark, however, that in Cohen and Nagel's Logic, the book on the principles of logic or whatever the title is, Cohen and Nagel give six, five or six different definitions of facts, because the word is very ambiguous and the different people use it in different ways. Hence, maybe you will permit me to define facts the way I prefer, and it's not any one of the five or six that Colin and Megil mentioned, nor is it the one that I heard the Steve say. But my definition of fact is a value with a variable error of zero. So this requires a certain knowledge of physics, and I'd recommend to all students that they take two or three courses in physics, because physics is so important for geometry. Well, that is true. Now, here I have a part of a paper that was sent to me only about a week ago, and it has to do with science, and in bold letters here it says, science contains no truth. One of my objections to empiricism is that the major, at least the major form and the major triumph of empiricism is physics. And if physics is never able to attain to any truth at all, it does not recommend any blank mind or theory. I have another thing, another paper here. Some time ago a gentleman wrote an article on my views and tried to dismiss them on the basis that it was impossible to deduce mathematics from scripture. And he thought that the knowledge of mathematics was so important that if you couldn't deduce it from scripture, then it's just too bad you mustn't say that knowledge comes from scripture. But I have an article here, Math and the Bible, which shows how mathematics is deducible from scripture, and which you know if the author is J.C. Keister. I hope you ask him about it. I wonder whether you would consider this point, too. I mentioned that man is created in the image of God, and therefore was not originally a blank mind, but a mind with a priori forms. Now, animals were not created in the image of God, but I wonder how you would explain the Baltimore Orioles. Have you ever thought of the Baltimore Orioles? I don't mean the Orioles in Baltimore, I mean the Baltimore Orioles. But these birds, you know, have the ability to construct a rather interesting net. And I don't think you can explain the way they construct interestingness as the result of a gradual experience from a right mind onto this type of architecture. So it seems to me that not only does man have a priori knowledge to begin with, but even the Baltimore Orioles. Now, what were the other 761 points? I think that's enough. Mr. Hoover can take the extra time that I don't need. He may very well do that. I didn't count the errors in Dr. Clark's remarks. I'd like to say first off that I applaud his reputation of John Locke. John Locke needs refuting. I think largely in him as well. I'd like to pick up on what Dr. Clark was talking about. Let's think for a moment about innate ideas. or a priori form, structures that we have in our minds that allow us to presumably do something, that allow the Baltimore Orioles to construct these aesthetically satisfying nets, how can they do that? Do they have to discriminate, create and debris of various sorts, and then bring them back to a certain place, and then begin the construction. I'm glad that they know how to do that, but surely Baltimore is a complex place to be in. The oil has to be in Baltimore. But how do they find these materials, and then how do they manage to apply their innate structure to the task at hand? I think it is a certain time, maybe a certain summer, spring, or whenever they do these things. Let's say constructing a nest. So I'm impressed by the bird brains. I think Dr. Clark really needs bird minds. I don't think he'll allow me to brain. But a bird mind. I'm in favor of them having preformed structures which allows them to do these amazing things. It's maybe important to realize that they can't build them any other way. The moth and bird apparently can do things. other way. It can mock against other birds. I don't know enough about that to talk about it. Let's consider then the innate structures, the innate ideas. I'd like to draw attention to what Dr. Park says in A Christian View of Men and Things. I'd like to call attention first of all to the title of the book, which I like very much. I want to have a Christian view of men and things. I want to have it, I think. I'm glad if Adam had it, and I'm glad if the Apostle Paul has a view, a Christian view of men and things. But I'd like to have one too, and I'd like to be able to relate that to the men and things that I come into contact with. So if Dr. Park will allow me to apply my structures, my innate form, to the things that are going on around me, then I don't mind. He says that, in fact he said very emphatically, that Adam was a learner, and I applaud that. What does that mean? What does it mean that Adam learned? Does it mean that Adam could acquire, in virtue of an endowment that he was given, knowledge of God's world, his place in the world, and my contention is that Adam is epistemically or analytically suited to the world that God placed him in, and the same would go for us. How are we to understand this? Going to a Christian view of many things, it appears in the chapter on epistemology, a section that critiques Kant. Dr. Clarke did a good job on Kant, and I would also apply that. Kant is a genius. Anthropocentric, I can't pronounce that right now, apriorism, I think does work with solitism. But Kant did have a good idea. We do need to be able to structure. We do need to be able to put things together. Intelligence requires something, the sabita rasa is not something I want to defend at all. Then what does Dr. Clark say in the Christian view of many things? In virtue of which we can refuse particular kind of de-priorism, but nevertheless have any de-priorism, which will serve us in God's will, so that we can be stewards in it, so that we can notice poor people, so that we can notice things that need to be done, and do God's work. Well, Dr. Twyer draws attention to a view which is briefly stated by Kant, but then dismissed with very bad reasoning. And the view that Kant briefly considers, but then dismisses, is called confirmationism. And I explain the trouble of re-reading that when I read Dr. Twyer's book, re-reading that for critique-secure reasons. Kant should not have dismissed pre-formationism, and I agree with that. What is pre-formationism? The pre-formational doctrine that I think is very good is that God has pre-formed us. He has given us an intellectual ability, capacity, intellectual dispositions, if you like. I distinguish between a capacity and a disposition. Dispositions will be exercised if you are disposed to something or other. Then you will be seen in that manner if the conditions are right. A capacity may or may not be exercised. So I think there are a number of terms that we need to sort out and distinguish. But I think we have intellectual And I'm not sure how to go about defining them. Dr. Clark doesn't want to really go into that either, at least in the Christian view of menacing. He says some sort of pre-formationism must be true if we're to avoid skepticism, absolute skepticism. And I agree. The question that I would address to Dr. Clark, and if we can use this time in his way, I'm not sure I'm using up the life here of telling you what the time is. Is pre-formationism, or what he recommends in the Christian view of menacing, Is that a doctrine which will allow us to consider that we have the ability to discriminate objects, men and things, in the world here now? The question that I have is, I'm trying to understand your doctrine or the view that you favor when you think about constant pre-formationism. And I liked what you had to say about pre-formationism, and I think that the Baltimore Orioles are pre-formed in appropriate ways, if we can build a nest, and I think that we're pre-formed in ways that allow us to do the things that we need to do. And for the Christian, we can have a view of many things which is biblically appropriate. My question is, does pre-Formationism, in your view, allow us to discriminate objects in God's world? Can I see you? An object in God's world, in my position, is a proposition. It is not a collection of disjointed sensations. I am preformed to discern proposition. Can I learn to do what? One that I didn't know before. It may be raining outside, and suppose that I really feel that we're given the propositions exclusively, and I'll assert the proposition at a time later than now, or further along in the story anyway, that the proposition, it is raining outside Carter Hall, will be either true or false. I don't know whether it's true or false, and I don't think I will come to a conclusion on that by deducing it from an axiom. No, I don't think so either. Well, then is it impossible for me to ever have knowledge of that sort. Yes, it is impossible because you never know whether you're having an hallucination or your sensations are incorrect or whether you even have a sensation. But I'm agreeing with you about the proposition, though. And I'm asking you about the true value of the proposition that it's raining outside Carter Hall at a certain point. I didn't say you can deduce any proposition unless you validly deduce from the axioms and the axioms of the faith of the scriptures. Did Noah deduce that it began to rain? I wasn't there, I don't know. You don't get that impression when you read Genesis 6. I've never really deduced anything of that sort, perhaps I've never known anything. I have never deduced anything. Well, if I can't tell whether it's raining, God has not endowed me to ever know whether it ever rains. I've never known that sort of rain. Have I ever known whether, for example, I have stood in the middle of a soccer field on a given day. I'm not giving you the exact coordinates of the place I stood, but the coerciveness of the place you are, assuming a certain view of science, which I say cannot be substantiated. So then nobody has ever stood in a soccer field. No, that doesn't follow, does it? It means you don't know whether you have or not, because you may be dreaming, you may have hallucinations, you may be mistaken for a number of different reasons. Okay, those are the sort of things that I'm very sure about. I'm very sure that I'm on a platform right now. And you're a saint when you're dreaming, too. No, I'm not. I thought most people were. No, I think that you'd have to make an exhaustive induction and see whether most people have certainty or lack of certainty. My dreams don't have that feature. Well, I don't dream very often, once in a while. But you can ask for it for the instance you wish. and whether they don't think that they're facing reality when actually they're dreaming. And how do they distinguish between dreaming and not dreaming? In my waking state, I don't think I'm an expert on my dream state. When I'm dreaming... When you're dreaming, you're very sure that things are so. No, I'm not. Well, then you're very clear. Let's pick up an issue that you raised in the last chapter of Languages of Reality. There you say that we can't just read our Bible, that's a naive thing to begin with. I get the impression, though, that it is an i.e. thing, and we are not to equate God's meanings with physical objects or with color sequences and so on. No, I don't think the doctrine of the Trinity is composed of radiolo blue and green. How about the revelation of the Trinity? What's that composed of? Propositions. And how do the propositions get across to me? From God, by his impressing list of deep truths. Wouldn't you give that by revelation? Doesn't the scripture say that the Spirit gives us the information? I can't go to Earth. You'll find it in 1 John somewhere. I forget just where it is, but you read 1 John. And in other places too. Maybe it's in Ephesians. I'm not afraid to know. But that would be revelation from God. I mean, why is it scripture? How is it that the meaning of God is inscripturated? Is that a fair question? you would first have to show how black marks on a page can produce anything intelligible. You ought to define sensation, you ought to show how sensation produces perception, you ought to defend your theory of images, and try to construct abstract ideas out of images, and I think it cannot be done. Okay, are you saying that I cannot read unless I know Unless I have an exhaustive analysis of what it means to read, I need to know what it means to read in order to read. I want you to define sensation and tell me how you get perception from it. how you get images from that when Francis Dalton shows that not all people have images. And then if you have images, how in the world can you deprive abstract ideas from them? When I let you explain that, you have not missed the point. One of my problems is that what you just said invokes inductively acquired knowledge. You just talked about somebody who... Knowledge is not inductively acquired at all. The induction is always a fallacy. Good. Then the man that you just cited cannot be relied upon as an authority. Oh, but you are an empiricist and you have to accept his account of experience. I already applauded your reputation of lies, a reputation of empiricism. I don't feel refuted. But do you believe or do you assert that all people have images? No. Then how do you get abstract ideas? I don't know. Good. I don't think you can. The fact that I don't know doesn't mean that I can't have them. The fact that I can't, you don't know, means that you don't have a complete theory. Yeah, what I would want to maintain, though, is that my son Ryan, or myself, or just take anyone, it's not necessary for them to have an analysis of what it means to see in order to be able to see. God can make an able-to-see Jewish multi-exception field without the analysis of what it means to be doing those things. The analysis isn't in yet. I'm waiting for the research. I don't plan to have the analysis. Well, then you can't defend your position. Well, you can't say t-injury, t-smelling, t-touching and so on is impossible or meaningless either. I insist that any induction is a fallacy. from a limited number of instances cannot derive a universal conclusion. Yeah, that would go back to earlier in the paper where I talked about the informal aspect of discerning things. If you restrict discernment, or knowing, to that which can be exhaustively formalized, then you're correct. I don't hold that presupposition. There's an informal aspect. That is a fallacy. What is a fallacy? The fallacy is stating a universal proposition on the basis of incomplete induction. I didn't ask for an example of a fallacy, I asked for the definition of a fallacy. I just gave it to you. A fallacy is an inference that's whose conclusion is not true every time the forms of the premise is true. That's just the definition of validity. Yeah, I would take a fallacy to be a mistake in reasoning. Exactly, but I'm telling you what the mistake is. If you draw a conclusion which is not true every time the premises are true, it is an invalid inference. Right. If deductive logic is the paradigm of all human reasoning, instead of the paradigm that we go by. That is precisely reasoning. There isn't any other kind of logical or valid reasoning. I'm going to use a whole lot of other kind of reasoning as soon as this meeting is over. Go ahead. It doesn't mean anything. I think that the good Samaritan could have used your reasoning not to reach out and touch somebody. When he was going along the road, he saw the man who was bruised and battered, he could have reasoned that it's equal probable whether or not there's anybody there. Define probability. Now, I'm not going to do that yet. That's the trouble, isn't it? No, it's not the trouble. It's equal probable whether or not there's anybody there, since there's no reason why I should stop. There's no special reason to keep going either. I choose to keep going. It seems to me that you could evade that. Probability is a fraction of the favorable cases over the total number. And I don't think you can apply probability to the Samaritan. Well, it seems to me that if the interdue had to be discriminated by the Samaritans. It could have used reasoning of the sort that you're giving in order to keep on launching it. You haven't shown that there is any probability at all. Yeah, I would hold the probability as an expectation value. It's not based on respectable purchasing. Well, I think probably there have been some questions. And I suspect that the questions will tend to focus on the, I hope, the major points that have been made, ones that were made throughout Dr. Clark's first speech with regard to is used in regard to empiricism and Adam's knowledge, and being created in the image of God. And then the place where Dave Hoover begins with the idea that we are noetically fit and enabled by God, preformed, to know world that has been created. And I think that I would like to ask the question that I would like each of these gentlemen to answer, and that is, what difference would it make in your apologetic approach? I know that Dr. Clark is seeking to develop a system of apologetics, a system of philosophy, rather than just dealing with details about this or that instance, or this or that situation. But, in effect, what kind of difference does it make, your focus, in terms of how you would approach apologetics? How should the faith be defended? And then I would like to ask If that question is clear at all, I'm not sure that it is. Please don't ask me to define it. the moderator just said, namely that Christianity is a system of doctrine. It is not a haphazard aggregation of true propositions. These propositions form a system, and our ordination vows say that we accept the reference to confession as the system of doctrine contained in the scriptures. Now, the advantage of that, which I think Mr. Anderson has asked for, is that this gives us a method of replying to and refuting logical positivism and other non-Christian doctrines which cannot be refuted by haphazard propositions even if they happen to be true. I think is that a sufficient answer? There's so many places to begin. 762. I'd like to use my time to make a comment on... I mean, who are you going to refuse? I believe it's someone named Anthony Flew. I have an equal quarrel with a logical positive, Dr. Clarke. A.J. Harris, I think, is worthy of refutation. That is, he needs to be refuted and can be refuted. But he can be refuted. He is not mentioned in the Bible. He is not deducible in the system of doctrine taught in Scripture. So what am I doing when I say I'm refuting A.J. Harris? or Bertrand Russell, or any other person who, for all I know, doesn't even exist. And since I don't know as a refuser, whether I exist, I think that the whole problem of apologetics becomes obvious. Mr. Hoover says he doesn't know me. I agree. And the scripture says, the heart of man is deceitful above measure. Who can know it? That sort of implies nobody knows it, doesn't it? Furthermore, in the last sentence that he used, he used the word existence. And I usually take time off to show that the word existence has no meaning. And the basis of that is that any credited which can attach to every subject altogether has no meaning. unless a predicate both includes and excludes something, it has no meaning. And when the predicate existence can attach to every subject whatever, and hence the word doesn't mean a thing, there's no use talking about it. I thought the students were supposed to be... Probably around the 1860s. or the 54, St. Peter wrote the St. Scattered throughout on escalation capitals, evaluating the problems of the Roman Empire that were located roughly in modern-day Turkey. And in Chapter 3 of that letter that was to be circulated, the letters in the cyclical, he's not addressing musicians, academicians, theologians, philosophers, he's addressing St. Scattered who are about to undergo persecution, he tells them to be ready, to be equipped, to have a reason, an apologia, for the hope that is in them. This is something that they could do. I take it that Peter addresses this also, that this is not being addressed, and that we can do, and are being enjoined to do, precisely what Peter told us to sustain, scattered throughout the province. I can't make sense of that on Dr. Clark's view. The microphone is over here, and if you have questions, we'd like you to approach the microphone so that we all can submit, all of us can hear you. I'm proud of you. It's a very simple question. Please wait until we ask. You may not be willing to applaud. Dr. Clark, maybe I can ask you a question. If seeing the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a prerequisite of the disobedience of eating, I may even say tasting, its fruit, what is the nature of a tree if not a spatio-temporal observable object? What is the nature of seeing if not a sensory perception? How did Adam know that Eve did not give him the fruit of the Tree of Life rather than the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, or even possibly the bark of the tree in which the Baltimore Oriole built its nest? I'm so glad that the students are beginning to take part. Adam's knowledge was partially his a priori equipment, and besides that, there were certain matters of information that God gave him when God spoke to him. He understood what God said because he was created with this logical form and with this moral form too. And that is the way it was. Now as for the rest of us who suffer from the effects of sin, but even Adam himself, The gentleman that just spoke talked about sensation, but he did not define sensation. He did not even show that there was such a thing as sensation. And in my view, which I get from St. Augustine, there is no such thing as sensation. The people who try to use sensation don't usually define it, and they, I don't think I know just one man, of course there may be others, but I only can remember reading in one book any attempt to show how perception comes from sensation. And there's another one book, only one book, where the author has tried to show how images result in abstract ideas. And until these questions are answered, all these objections, in my opinion, are begging the question. They are assuming the things that need to be proved. And rather than go on with this more complicated thing, I think the basic principles that ought to be decided upon. One more redirect, if I may. As you may have noticed, Dr. Clark, I did not make any objection to your views. I make sure that I don't because I am not getting involved in an debate because I think I'm going to be the loser. I asked a question. What in your estimation is the nature of a tree? And what is the nature of seeing according to scripture? And how did Adam know that he did not give him the fruit of the tree of life rather than the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? How did he know? God told him. How do you know? Did you deduce that from scripture? Yes, of course. That's the only way you can. Is it a logical deduction or a probable deduction? There is no such thing as a probable deduction. Well, if you say it's the only way I can, that doesn't seem to be a deduction to me. When you say this is the only way it is possible that God told him, I cannot deduce that from scripture by logical conclusiveness. It is a possibility, from your point of view, that God did it that way, but it is not an absolute necessity on the basis of the words that were spoken in Scripture. I'd rather think it is. Rather think it is? Are you certain? Well, you read the Scripture and see, and then you will come to your opinion. I'm not objecting to you, I just ask you for your own terminology. You say you'd rather think it is. That's not good enough. on the basis of your own presupposition. My presupposition is that the scripture is true. And if the scripture teaches something, then that is what we should accept. Right. If the scripture teaches that Adam saw the tree, then I believe that Adam saw the tree and Eve too. What do you mean by saw? I asked you that question first. A tree, according to empiricism, is a combination of a dozen or more sensations. Now, I try to say there's no such thing as sensation to begin with, but even if there were such things as sensation, I don't see how an empiricist can show why a person combines this group of sensations into a thing rather than make some other combination. And I have never heard an empiricist answer this question. All right, I'm not an empiricist, so I have no problem. But I am going to ask you, what do you think the scripture says a tree is? Can we say that again? What did you say? What do you say scripture says a tree is? And seeing is, for that matter. The scripture doesn't say what a tree is, and I don't know what a tree is. But the Bible says that there is such a thing as a tree, isn't that right? I'm pretty sure a botanist doesn't know that. In fact, botanists and zoologists just can't tell the difference between plants and animals. But is there a tree? Is there a tree or not? In the Scripture? You tell me what you mean by tree and I'll tell you. No, no, no, no, that's not... I told you I wasn't going to fall into that trap. If the Scripture says that there is a tree, there is a tree. That doesn't say what a tree is. I know. That I know. Well, I ask you for one redirect, and I think I didn't have 762, but I have maybe too many already. Dr. Clark, since we can't deduce from scripture that we are human beings How can we be morally responsible? How do you know that you are a human being responsible to God since you can't deduce from Scripture that you are a human being? And if you don't know that, how are you morally responsible? How can you be morally responsible? In addition to what can be known by deductions, people have various opinions. They are not deduced, they may by chance be true, but we can't really know that they are true because we haven't proved them. I have a vague opinion that maybe I am almost human, though people don't always think so. But if I am, then I am responsible for obeying the law of God. I often try to meet that responsibility, but I fail considerably. If Adam was commanded to till the ground, we admit that God made ground, and that he made man to till it, and hopefully gave him some kind of tools. He has to know what ground is. Man has to know in order to continue the command to take dominion over the earth, he has to continue to do things like till the ground. We haven't any reason, any way I should say, to know what tilling is or what the ground is. We have no means by which we can be faithful unto God. Scientists don't even know what this is. We look at it and say it's solid. The scientists say it's not solid. There aren't any two particles in it to touch. We don't know what the ground is. Is the ground a combination of various sensations, or what is it? Well, there is no faithfulness, then, that we can have. There's no what? We cannot be faithful to the Word of God unless we can tell what the ground is. Well, that doesn't follow. I expect to lose big time here, because I did it time and again. But, uh, I'm sorry I have to hold my hand up, but I can't see you otherwise. In fact, I don't know whether I see you at all. I don't know whether I ought to sit down after that. Um, I don't understand how, well there's a lot I don't understand, but I especially don't understand how it's possible to be faithful to the command to till the ground if Adam couldn't know what the ground was. Or, if we're supposed to have dominion over creation, I don't see that we can be faithful to that unless we can know what creation is. And we can't deduce that from Scripture. We're told that creation is there, but you don't know what a tree is, so you can't have dominion over it. I don't see why you can't fill the ground without knowing what the ground is. You can do things that you don't know anything about. You do them nonetheless. And as I say, scientists have no idea what the ground is. It's mostly empty space. I'm befuddled. Of course we josh a little bit, but I would like to make this point in all seriousness and without trying to put you down, but I think what is needed is a good knowledge of physics and a philosophy of science. I mentioned the word fact a time ago. Then there is the analysis of laboratory experimentation. which is not entirely based on observation because there are a great many factors that are used in the formulation of a law of physics which are not observational. And furthermore, physics changes. I wish to inform you that Everything they taught me in physics at the University of Pennsylvania is now discarded by nearly all the scientists in the world. And I am very much persuaded, though I can't prove it logically, but it seems to be reasonable to suppose, that the science of today will be dropped by in ten years or so, and very different theories will be accepted, so that the results of scientific observation give you different propositions as the years go by. This fellow who wrote to me and said that science is never true, I think is telling the truth. He realizes that science is tentative, as Plato said, and it is not final, as Aristotle said. Aristotle was an empiricist and Plato wasn't. Though the title of tonight's debate is Presuppositionalism vs. Evidentialism, it appears that It is more of a presentation of Gordon Clark's belief plus a critique of it, and that's all well and good. I would wonder if it is not fair to characterize the differences in view between Mr. Hoover and Dr. Clark as what we How we characterize truth? Do we characterize it as something which we cannot deny? Or is it something which is a good, probable guess, but is still acceptable? It's unacceptable in the sight of God. Is this a fair characterization of the contrasting views? No, I do not think so. You suggested first that truth might be something we cannot deny. And the scriptures would fit that. People deny all sorts of things. They deny a lot of truths. Truth isn't something that people cannot deny. And what was your second suggestion? Whether or not we can accept, because we live in a creative world, a world that is which we are endowed with the ability to understand and live in it, whether a good probable guess would be acceptable in the sight of God to live in it. Probability is the fraction of the affirmative cases over the total of affirmative and negative. And I don't see how you can use probability in this argument. Sir, I'm not attempting to defend that. I'm just attempting to characterize the contrasting viewpoints, whether or not you see truth as more of a stricture, in a more of a narrow sense, in the sense that it is something which we cannot deny. And that is how your axiomatic method So much of the people deny the scripture. Of course truth can be denied. It's denied every day. Mr. Hoover? I'd like to respond to something that I heard Dr. Clark say, and I really do believe I have a verbatim. I'm trusting my whatever for that. You said, I believe, sir, that one could till the ground, with reference to Adam, without knowing what the ground is. By parity of reasoning, it seems, you should be able to accept this, that one can see a tree in Adam's day as well as their own without knowing what seeing is. That I can hear you without an analysis of what hearing is. Why not? If you wish to assert that we can see a tree, That can be accepted in various senses. My trouble is that I don't know what you mean by sea, as well as I don't know what you mean by tree. I want a person who depends on experience to define what he means by sensation, and furthermore, how sensation can produce perception, and how perception can produce images, and how images can produce abstract ideas, such as trees. And unless this is done, there is no system in what a person says. It seems to rigidly follow from what you say that until we have the correct philosophical analysis of what it means to see, nobody can see. And that seems absurd. If you knew what you meant by C, it wouldn't seem absurd, I suppose, but I don't know what you mean by the word C. I believe you, but I think there are a lot of people who do know what I mean by C. Well, ask them to tell me. I don't have an analysis of C which you would accept. Scripture talks about seeing. It talks about a lot of people in the Bible who manage to see things, see objects, trees, lots of different things, wives, and so on. Why do you deny that to us? Because we don't have a philosophical analysis of what it means to see. The various philosophers and the emotions that come out of me, you know, have had different theories of sensation. And until you pick out one of them and decide to defend it, the language is ambiguous and cannot be read. I'm all in favor of the continuation of theorizing about the meaning of see, hear, smell, and arrest. And let that go on. But surely you can't deny that until that analysis is all in, nobody can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. I mean, those words are used in the Bible. Is that just gibberish? Are those just tags that we can't make any sense of? there are a number of words in the Bible we do not understand, or we may understand them in one way, and that may be correct or may not be correct. But if we're going to have a debate, then we ought to understand the sense in which the words are used, and we cannot accept one apologetic rather than another unless the terms are unambiguously defined. And I would like to make one concluding remark because I don't want to usurp the time. When Mr. Hoover speaks of a kind of knowledge other than the truth, and truth in my opinion is always a quality of propositions, I would like to say that the truth of God is the sword of the spirit. The truth is powerful. And something that is so vague, at least it seemed vague to me when Mr. Hoover described it, is no substitute for the truth of God. This concludes the debate between Dr. Gordon H. Clark and Mr. David Hoover. Thank you for listening.