Debate: Billy Carson vs. Christian Wes Huff on Jesus, the Bible, and Christianity

The difference between you and I is I don’t claim to base my foundational beliefs on science. I am not the least bit ashamed to admit that, and I 100% disagree with you that this somehow represents a major flaw in a worldview. If you were being honest and self-reflecting hard enough you would admit that you also have a boatload of beliefs that are not based on science either.

The worldview with foundational beliefs rooted in the Bible, as a divine revelation from God, is by far the most coherent worldview that lays down a working and consistent framework by which we can reason in the disciplines of science, reason, morality, and ethics. The truth is we have no way of knowing anything outside of the physical world without revelation from a being who is outside of this physical world. So, you can't know fundamental things you use every single day such as the laws of logic and the laws of morality without some kind of revelation from outside of this world.

The entire scientific enterprise, which you champion as a superior way of thinking in comparison to the biblical worldview, also depends on other knowledge claims one can only know by revelation. One of those knowledge claims is the belief that our sense perceptions actually give us a representation of reality. That is why revelation about the nature of the world outside of our own bodies and consciousness is essential to the soundness of any scientific argumentation. The other knowledge claim scientific reasoning, moral reasoning, and even logical reasoning depend upon, is the immutability of physical laws, moral laws, and logical laws. An evolutionary worldview maintains that the world is in a constant state of change. Some of these evolutionary worldviews are deistic/theistic in nature and even posit that God evolves like they believe animals do. Many of these evolutionary worldviews rely on argumentation that assumes the immutability of natural law over time horizons of millions and billions of years. Do they know that by the scientific method? No. They don't. That is a non-scientific knowledge claim without any kind of rigorous credentials to back up if you deny revelation. Those beliefs are especially suspect for the person who posits any kind of theism that involves an evolving God.

In the Biblical worldview God does not change. Therefore, since God does not change, the governance and the laws of His universe do not change. That is the Christian worldview. The Biblical worldview has a basis for belief in immutable logical laws, moral laws, and physical laws, which establishes a proper worldview for reasoning, science, and ethics. And God's governance of His universe is not an arbitrary governance, but a governance that flows from His immutable character and attributes.

The problem when revelation is denied as a fairy tales is you end up adopting a worldview that is incoherent in accounting for the tools that are necessary to engage in the disciplines of science, reason, and ethics. On the one hand you reject belief in a supernatural being who is not part of the natural world because logic and science do not support belief in such a being. However, in the very same breathe you presuppose logical categories (true and false) that are not part of the natural world and cannot be proven by logic or science. Your own ability to even mount an argument is destroyed by the very objections you make against the God of the Christian worldview. This is the absurdity one is left to if they reject God's revelation as a valid form of knowledge.

My worldview is science is not the only way we can know things. I know things like the laws of logic and moral laws, and science has nothing to do with how I know them. Revelation is how we know the most important fundamental building blocks that allow us to do scientific, logical, and moral reasoning. Your belief in the immutability of the uniformity of nature, your belief in the laws of logic, your belief in moral absolutes, all of these things would need to be rejected because they are not beliefs rooted in science or logic. This is the absurdity and the incoherence you are forced to defend if you reject all knowledge claims outside of the scope of science and reason.

And even when it comes to your non-belief in Santa Claus I think you would not be completely honest if you did not recognize the absolute strongest evidence that exists against Santa Claus is revelation by people who ate the cookies, drank the milk, and wrapped the presents when you were sleeping. But...the absurdity of the worldview that rejects revelation as a valid form of knowledge would poopoo that evidence because all knowledge claims are only valid if we know them by science or logic. You would not poo poo revelation in that instance, which proves IMO that your issue is not with revelation as a form of knowledge itself. It only becomes an issue when that revelation comes from God, which shows the true nature of your objections to this issue.