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Tuesday, March 10, 2020

White Syeclone alert

James White
@DrOakley1689
Let's give Sye some love!

Adherent Apologetics
@AApologetics
 · Mar 8
The 2020 Christian Apologist March Madness Tournament! Round of 128! Josh Rasmussen vs Sye Ten Bruggencate (@SyeTenB)
Show this poll


I'm curious: has James White always been a member of SyeTenB's booster club, or is that another consequence of White hitching his caboose to Durbin's steam engine? 

It's unfortunate that White is plugging him. SyeTenB is such a hack. He brings presuppositionalism into disrepute. It deflects attention away from the best exponents–like James Anderson, Greg Welty, and Vern Poythress. Thanks to SyeTenB, his enablers and groupies, presuppositionalism now suffers from poisonous default association with an empty suit. 

10 comments:

  1. Yeah, he's been into him for a long while iirc, it's an unfortunate discredit to him. Are ppl like Anderson/Welty even in that popularity contest going on now I wonder? Don't have twitter right now to confirm, just wonder how balanced it was in representation. But Sye aside, I get the impression the other side rarely studies presuppositional source material, and gets accused of constant strawmanning. Do you find that the usual case in your experience?

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    1. As things stand now, James Anderson (@proginosko) has 2,732 Twitter followers, while Greg Welty (@gregwelty) has 417 Twitter followers. Sye (@SyeTenB) is at 8,060 Twitter followers. Of course, all that means is that Sye is more popular, but that says nothing about the best/worst presuppositional arguments.

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    2. Right, I agree, and believe @AApologetics has stated it's not about who's best. Which is a bit odd, cause that would appear to be the motivating factor for those who are voting for A > B (I'd imagine).

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    3. I wonder if a lot of the people who are voting are even aware of Anderson, Welty, and Poythress?

      I also think it might be that scholars (like Anderson, Welty, Poythress) don't have a lot of time to tweet, do podcasts, make YouTube videos, etc. like Sye seems to (and even James White seems to). So maybe that's why they're not as well-known as Sye is.

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    4. Yeah, that's what I think too. The popular hits will come up first over those in the academic stream, and well, as you stated they're justifiably busy. The last and most recent time I saw Anderson was on @thinking_bible YT page with Christopher Watkin. Welty seems more reclusive, not very active online (afaik), and I've only just recently heard of Poythress (apparently he has a joint twitter/site with Frame). Anyway, it would be nice if people would dive deeper in these regards.

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    5. Anderson just had a really long conversation on Tom Jump’s YouTube channel about the argument for God from Logic.

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  2. Also, did anyone here see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkcs-31PqFg ?

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    1. I haven't watched it, but I have a strong hunch Josh Rasmussen is going to present far more intelligent argumentation than Sye! :)

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  3. It seemed to me in the discussion of Presuppositionalism that Rasmussen didn’t have a very good grasp of what it was. Bertuzzi was a little better but not great. At the beginning of the podcast Rasmussen was talking about it like it was some sort of fideism.

    I think Sye is more popular than Anderson and Welty because it is easy to say, “the Christian worldview is the only worldview that can make sense of the world.” It’s a whole other ball game to show that.

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    1. I've contacted Josh to bring him up to speed.

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