Re: Van Til's Challenge. Two Challenges for Christians!

I reply to the "Van Til's Challenge" by issuing presuppositionalists, and all Christians, two challenges against their worldview: the Induction Challenge and the Free Will Challenge. I have no money to offer, but since my challenges (unlike the silly challenge I am replying to) are Christian paradoxes and therefore unwinnable, I am not in risk of losing anything anyway.

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[RoelGeurtsen]

u assume we saw the sun raise millions times when there is no way saying for sure ,No i do not have a free will,nor do i strive for a free will in fact souls are indeed sealed or marked already, God choses Himself in who he installs devotion Its our most holy task to life up to this assesment,about the first challenge i see no problem too,at least ure quoting a passage that indicates God knew his geo and astro physics ,Maybe Gallileo read it too!

[Franc28]

"i do not have a free will"

Well there you go! ;)

[Franc28]

The uniformity of nature does not mean that we can understand it fully. That's like saying that determinism implies predictability in practice. One is a position about reality, the other is a position about our capacity to understand it. The fact that we may be mistaken about the application of a given law of nature does not mean that nature has gone rogue. Nature has no appreciation of our understanding of it.

[NeoConvert]

Hi Franc,

I share your interest in the matter, but I think you are perhaps misunderstanding the point of the question/problem. And it is inaccurate to say that Christians are the one's who have made a big deal of the induction problem. It is actually a problem discovered by a skeptic, too which remedies have been frequently attempted throughout the past 200 years.

[WarrantedFaith]

But is the phrase, "There is no reason to believe the sun will not rise tomorrow" not BASED on the assumption that past experiences are a good indicator of future events?

[kingmike40]

The sun won't rise tomorrow. It has never rinsen. The earth rotates on its north and south poles thus exposing different sides of the planet to the sun. The earth also revolves around the sun. The bible is a bad comic book full of stupid remarks by a bunch of barbaric nomans. Surely humans can find something better to worship.

[RoelGeurtsen]

i admit, but dont feel sorry for me!

i am not aware of this control,i may even convert and life to tell!there is no difference between u and me!

[mohio07]

"Because we have no reason to believe that it won't" is just verbal tap-dancing to avoid saying "because it always has." Same thing. Sometimes it would be nice if non-theists would just say "that's definitely a problem and i don't have a good answer yet."

[bitbutter]

Ok I think I understand. I'll agree then that causality is a given.

Even with causality though, nature may well be 'uniform' in ways we don't yet understand (eg. even in a uniform universe, laws that we mistakenly take to be fundamental may operate differently tomorrow). Isn't it so that causality, while necessary for induction, still can't help to provide a rational grounding for it? or maybe I'm missing something.