Reddit reviews Irenaeus and Orthodox Apologetic Methodology: A Neopatristic Presuppositionalism

> However, it is a fundamental fallacy to assume that this worldview is fully developed, static and at least seemingly consistent, as OP's argument implies.
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>Our view of the world is subject to constant changes and expansions or reductions throughout our lives. Moreover, many aspects of our worldview are not rationally reflected at all, either because they are not noticed or because there is no need for any reflexion (silent assumptions are just working so far).

No where have I implied that one needs to have everything worked out, only that one must be aware of what ultimate context they are working in. If the ground floor of your belief system is your own ignorance, then you're going to fall into objection 1. It's logically entailed, it doesn't matter if people are aware of that entailment or not. If the ground floor of your belief system is an infinite regress, then we are into objection 2. I am not a classical foundationalist, so I don't begin my thinking with unjustified assumptions, because no assertion that either of us makes is devoid of context. To say these silent assumptions are working imposes a value system on to your reality to make sense of the notion of working and not working towards some end. This implies that values exists in reality and that you have access to them. If you want to believe stuff like this, then I will argue that it requires rational justification so that we are warranted in making these assertions.

> Professional philosophers, i.e. people who dedicate their entire lives to the concept of a world view, change this concept again and again in the course of their work, some philosophers deal with only one aspect and leave everything else unnoticed.

I have no issue with people changing world-views, nor do I think I imply that in the OP, but that requires a real paradigm shift in the persons thought process. My point is that we can only assert propositions or make sense of propositions in relation to a larger context. In other words they are theory-laden, or yet again another way, we must reason holistically about world-views and compare them based on coherence. I have just in the last two years shifted from a Protestant paradigm to an Orthodox paradigm. I am not sure why you think I am arguing that world-views in their entirety are static. What is ultimate in a paradigm is static though. For example, you cannot coherently claim to adhere to Hinduism and reject the belief that Brahman is ultimate. You cannot coherently claim to be a Christian and reject that the Triune God is ultimate. You cannot coherently claim to be a materialist and reject the idea that physicality is ultimate. These systems of thought are understood in relation to that which they claim to be ultimate.

> Worldviews are never finished and are constantly subject to change.

Changing something in your world-view is a recognition of it's incoherence, but incoherence at a fundamental level is much more devastating than simply being wrong about some belief on the periphery of the system.

> The idea of Presuppositional Apologetics, that all human beings have an elaborated fixed - ultimate - world view, comes from the reformed US-American professional philosopher Cornelius van Til, who thus based it on something like a professional deformation: "all human beings are professional philosophers like me".

Incorrect. The methodology is found all the way back to the Apostles as well as their disciples like Irenaeus . Irenaeus and Orthodox Apologetic Methodology: A Neo-Patristic Presuppositionalism is a book you can checkout on that if that kind of reading interest you. I don't argue exactly along the lines of Van Til and Bahnsen, but their contributions in formally layingout this method of argumentation cannot be ignored. Though I am not sure I would agree that Van Til believes as Thomas Khun concludes in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions that we are stuck in two different towers yelling at each other with no common ground. I know Bahnsen did not believe that.

> This, of course, also presupposes the assumption that Christianity is above all a philosophical worldview, which possesses a consistent epistemology, etc. Presuppositional apologetics argues - with the philosopher van Til as a model - above all philosophically, as if Jesus of Nazareth had been a wandering philosopher who proclaims to men a certain epistemology.

Well, I don't agree that the discussion is only about epistemology. The reductio is typically epistemological in that Van Til and Bahnsen are concluding that the absurd notion is that you cannot access knowledge under the paradigm put forth by their opponent. However, to understand why their opponents position does lead one to that absurd notion, you have to reason holistically. Someones epistemology is not totally isolated and disconnected from their metaphysics and axiology. Christianity had it's birth along side Greek philosophy, and in people like Thomas Aquinas the influence of Artistotle is undeniable. St. John of Damascene in The Fount of Knowledge spends great lengths redefining these Greek terms and applying a Christian understanding to them .

https://www.amazon.com/Irenaeus-Orthodox-Apologetic-Methodology-Presuppositionalism/dp/1545576564