Apologetics Sermon Illustration #74: Electric Circuit and Circularity of Worldview

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Point: What do you say when someone say a Christian defense of the faith at a worldview level is circular?  This is brought up often as an objection to Presuppositional Apologetics.

Picture: I find electrical circuits fascinating:

There’s a sense in which a circuit if it works is “circular” in some ways.  Or another way to say it is a closed system.  With a rational worldview one hallmark is that it is a coherent system.  That is, a rational worldview has a theory of knowledge (epistemology) that supports a worldview’s view of reality (metaphysics).  And knowledge needs to be justified by norms so one’s epistemology also needs a view of ethics that supports one’s epistemology if such a worldview is rational.

We can illustrate the elements of a worldview of epistemology, ethics and metaphysics as “switches” in a circuit:

A rational worldview would have mutually reinforcing epistemology, metaphysics and ethics.  For a worldview to to work these three dimensions must not be short-circuited with any of these dimensions that does not follow/connect.

POSSIBLE SCENARIO FOR EMPLOYING THIS ILLUSTRATION DURING APOLOGETIC EVANGELISM

NON-CHRISTIAN: I think your apologetics is circular.

CHRISTIAN: There’s a difference between vicious circularlity and virtuous circularity.

NON-CHRISTIAN: What? What do you mean?

CHRISTIAN: I’m not giving you an argument of a fallacious circularity or even a simplistic circularity.  But at the level of worldviews all worldviews are circular; its the question whether they are cogent and secondly if the worldview account for intelligibility and meaningfulness.  By the way what do you know about electric circuits?

NON-CHRISTIAN: I know something about it.

CHRISTIAN: Perfect! [Insert illustration].  Now do you think someone that point out the lack of connection of a bad worldview’s inability to have epistemology, metaphysics and ethics connect, is a rational endeavor?  That is, do you think it is rational to argue that a worldview is problematic when a worldview’s epistemology provides the self-defeater to its metaphysics, and vice versa, that its ethics undermine its view of knowledge, and its view of metaphysics makes it impossible to have norms for ethics, etc?

NON-CHRISTIAN: Yes.

CHRISTIAN: If so you do believe there is such a thing as a cogent worldview, that is a closed system like a circuit, and that’s one hallmark of rationality at the worldview level.

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