Just Predictable

I took a quick look at Townhall this mornin'. Sometimes they have something I'm interested in, sometimes they don't.

This morning they had a column by one fellow pretty thoroughly trashing the Tea Partiers.

Bear in mind that Townhall is a conservative website.

Well, I read the column, and I thought to m'se'f, "He makes a few good points vis-a-vis what was practiced in previous Republican administrations, but that's not the same thing as making the case that those practices were sound." And I seemed to detect something of an echo...

I've read this guy's material before, and he's always challenging in an if-you-only-look-at-the-surface kind of way. And there's always that echo...

So I googled him, asking da Google directly, "Is so-and-so an atheist?" And sure enough, he was.

The presuppositionalist in me was not surprised. Don't be taken in by somewhat biased renderings of what presuppositionalism is, by the way. It is nothing more than the idea that certain things inevitably follow--if you are logically consistent, anyway--from certain presuppositions. If you presuppose, for example, that you can start with what Schaeffer called "autonomous man," without presupposing the divine, you will inevitably reach certain conclusions. Likewise, if you start with the presupposition that there is such a thing as the Divine, you must necessarily reach certain conclusions. If you don't, there is an error in your thinking somewhere. There is more to it, of course, but my point here is, "Don't be taken in by people who paint presuppositionalism as some sort of hobgoblin. It is nothing more than the idea that bedrock ideas have inevitable logical consequences, which shouldn't offend anybody."

At any rate, the guy's an atheist, and certain elements in his thinking are inevitable consequences thereof. I could tell by what he said on a variety of subjects, even though he never mentioned his atheism.

Don't kid yourself. People can tell what you believe, quite often without you saying a word about it directly.