◉ The Parity Tactic and Presuppositions: Grounding Without Warrant in Christian Apologetics

This paper analyzes a recurrent apologetic tactic in which the success of shared human practices, especially science, induction, cognition, mathematics, and ordinary learning, is claimed as the property of a Christian metaphysical framework. The tactic proceeds by observing that finite inquiry depends on background assumptions, then treating those assumptions as epistemically equivalent to religious presuppositions. Its dialectical motive is to level the epistemic playing field: if science, naturalism, secular philosophy, and Christianity all have presuppositions, then Christianity no longer appears to carry a distinctive evidential burden. The paper argues that this tactic fails intrinsically because it equivocates between unwarranted presupposition and evidence-dense working assumption, between ontological grounding and agent-level warrant, and between error-correcting circularity and self-protective circularity. The conclusion is that theological grounding may offer believers a metaphysical interpretation of rational order, but without public calibration, discriminating explanatory power, and comparative evidential density, it does not provide an epistemic upgrade over fallibilistic inquiry.