“So far as concerns methodology, the general issue of the discussion will be that theory dictates method, and that any particular method is only applicable to theories of one correlate species. An analogous conclusion holds for the technical terms. This close relation of theory to method partly arise from the fact that the relevance of evidence depends on the theory which is dominating the discussion. This fact is the reason why dominate theories are also termed working hypotheses.”
Alfred North Whitehead
1861 – 1947
Adventures of Ideas – published 1933
Evidence is what it is due to the presuppositions which are driving the methodology being used in any particular theory. This means that nobody comes to science, evidence, politics, economics with a reason that isn’t beholden to some a-priori considerations. Reason is only a tool that works within the context of a-priori givens. Reason cannot create the givens. Reason can only be a servant of the givens.
Whitehead is only making the point here that Dr. Cornelius Van Til later stated in his book, “Apologetics,”
“To admit one’s presuppositions and to point out the presuppositions of others is therefore to maintain that all reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning. The starting point, the method, and the conclusion are always involved in one another.”
The truth of this observation was recently clearly seen in the debate between Samuel Sey and Dale Partridge on the issue of the “Curse of Ham.” Sey and Partridge were beginning with different starting points and so the methodology that each used in order to count facts as facts were completely different. This resulted in each coming to different conclusions. Sey reads the Scriptures through an racial egalitarian prism was Partridge presupposed the existence of racial hierarchy. Only when each challenged the given the other was starting with could progress be hoped to be made. Each appealed to Scriptural texts (facts) to support their positions but the texts they appealed to were read in order to fit their beginning given.
The same is true recently with a clip of a sermon from Dr. Lane Tipton where he insisted that women are not the weaker vessel except in an illustrative manner. Many were those who contradicted Tipton. The problem was the beginning point for Tipton who was presupposing a gender egalitarian starting point while his opponents were presupposing a gender hierarchy starting point. Once each began with their respective starting points (their lens wherein they would read all of Scripture) then all of Scripture was going to reinforce their starting point. The only way to break the contest was for each to challenge the starting point of the other and only by the Holy Spirit’s awakening power would either move off their previous position and that even though powerful evidence might (and should) be provided to prove the other errant.
One way of doing this is by making people be consistent with their beginning points. In the Lane Tipton case, Tipton should be forced to admit that, given his starting point of gender egalitarianism, that he would have to admit that if women are not the weaker vessel except for illustrative purposes then it must follow that men are not the stronger vessel except for illustrative purposes. From there several passages could be brought forth to establish and prove that God has made man to be the stronger vessel and therefore if man is the stronger vessel women indeed must be in some tangible sense the “weaker vessel.”
These kind of differences are “Worldview” differences. Depending on Worldviews, one views what are and what are not facts, completely differently. For example, R2K and Stephen Wolfe have a Worldview that hates Worldview thinking. This is because they are presupposing that reason can start from itself and objectively read reality quite apart from any beginning givens. Their Worldview leads them to hate the idea of Worldview because the idea of Worldview pulls the rug out from under their starting point, their method, and their conclusion.
The fact that Satan approached Eve and not Adam in Eden, thereby precipitating the Fall and our separation by sin from the Lord, amply underscores how woman was and is the weaker vessel. The clever attack by Satan on all humanity through the weaker vessel resoundingly underscored that weakness “in a [most] illustrative manner.”
Creation in general, the creation of man (and woman) in particular, the Fall, the First Coming, and the Second Coming, are far and away the most important and weighty and decisive events in all of human history. The role played by woman, in her very weakness as the weaker vessel, was central in the Fall. Sex or gender egalitarians, by their absurd denials of sex differences and inequalities, would render history fundamentally inexplicable.