Daniel Akande's Blog, page 4

Memes & Arguments for God

Van Til claimed that one can begin with any fact of human experience and a transcendental analysis would show that God needs to be “back of” that fact in order for it to be intelligible. I appreciated this insight when I was lurking on the Internet during the week and came across a certain image. It’s a quite popular image and I had seen it in the past. However, it just recently occurred to me how that image contained a powerful argument for God. 

The above image, and others like it, is commonly ...

Molinism & Divine Aseity

Recent discussions surrounding Molinism and Calvinism, such as the Craig-White discussion that occurred recently on Justin Brierley’s Unbelievable? show, have got me thinking about the issues of God, human freedom, and determinism. I’m not going to comment on the discussion since I haven’t listened to it yet (and probably won’t for a long while). What I am going to do, is give a simple reason why I reject Molinism (and basically any view that rejects theological determinism). 

One of the major re...

The Impossibility of Knowledge Without God

Imagine coming across a strange piece of art—say, a mysterious sculpture. You can either make sense of it on your own, giving it your preferred interpretation, or you could ask the maker of the sculpture. In the absence of information from the maker of the sculpture, the piece of art is subject to a variety of interpretations and one can only speculate as to the purpose, meaning, and proper interpretation of the sculpture. 

This highlights the key difference between the Christian and unbelieving ...

Atheism Is Rationally Indefensible… Here’s Why

In this post I’m going to provide a quick and powerful argument for the claim that atheism is self-defeating. This is so because if atheism is true, then atheism is rationally indefensible. The particular argument I’m going to be presenting can be re-formulated and repurposed to refute a variety of worldviews, but I am going to be deploying it specifically against atheism. It could also be repurposed and used to positively argue for Christian Theism. I will leave that task to the astute Van Tili...

Towards a Truly Van Tilian Use of Skeptical Scenarios

Presuppositionalists often appeal to skeptical scenarios in order to undermine unbelieving epistemological schemes. Typically, brain-in-vat or other similar scenarios are brought up. However, this particular approach is deeply flawed and I aim to show why. I’ll also present a more powerful alternative for Van Tilian thinkers.

Perception-based Skeptical Scenarios

“How do you know you’re not a brain in a vat?”

This is a popular frequently question asked by lay presuppositionalists. The question can b...

Thank You For 10k Reads!

As I write this, this blog has clocked 10,000 all-time reads! This may not sound like much, but I want to celebrate it nonetheless. Even more so because of the amount of growth this blog has experienced over the last six months. 

I published the first article on this blog on the 1st of May, 2018. Not up to two weeks later, the blog was dormant for close to three years! It wasn’t until the 20th of March this year that it was awakened from its slumber. As at April, it was at a total of about 1,700 ...

Catch Me On YouTube

 If you didn’t know, I recently started a YouTube channel! Very soon more videos would roll out so make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss them!

I have two videos up already. You can watch them:

Towards a Christ-Centered Apologetic

Without GOD You Can’t KNOW ANYTHING—here’s why

Why Christians Should Shun Epistemological Autonomy

Something about professing Christians willingly espousing epistemological autonomy has always irked me. I always wonder what the motivation is for adopting such a stance. A few things come to mind. However, I believe such a view is always borne out of a faulty view of God. Professing Christians may say things like “God is necessary for knowledge because without Him we wouldn’t exist; however, we don’t need to know God to know things”. It seems to me that Christians that take such a stance either...

God, Morality, and the Creator/creature Distinction

This is a discussion I had on Twitter on the topic of God’s relation to morality. I’ll paste the relevant parts of the discussions with my commentary afterwards.

Me: ..so, for example, it may be morally good for God to take a human’s life, that does not mean that humans taking other humans’ lives is morally good.

Person: Then God is not the standard of what is right and wrong for us to do.

Me: I don’t see how that follows.

Person: [pasted a link to a YouTube video]

Me: Watched it but still don’t thin...

Transcendental Argument and the Burden of Proof

Opponents of the presuppositional method of apologetics often criticize proponents of the method for not justifying their core claims with argument. It is claimed that presuppositionalists simply make unargued assertions and ask endless questions without ever giving arguments for their assertions. This claim is demonstrably false, as a cursory glance at the posts of this blog would show. However, there is a related idea amongst critics of the method. This is the idea that the burden of proof on ...