Greg Bahnsen - Problems for Unbelieving Worldviews (part 4)

Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen - Basic Training for Defending the Faith. Problems for Unbelieving Worldviews - part four of nine.

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[canibalcorpse73]

@jaynkay The social problems in our societies only reflect the free will God gave men, He doesn't want to "force" us to be with Him, He wants us to be with Him.

Also, God will remain constant because His very nature is unchanging. You will never know this without Him though,. That is quite a dilemma. Sadly, most have hardened their hearts enough to where their pride gets in the way of coming back to Him.

[jaynkay100]

I just remembered how annoying this guy is...he just goes off and pretends the problems he presents in philosophy somehow don't apply to HIS philosophy.

What a hack.

[jaynkay100]

@havvyweponsman You know there's one more problem with inductive reasoning as it pertains to the "uniformity of nature", and that's the fact that the universe may in fact BE completely uniform, however we may not know the full scope of that 'uniform behavior'. In other words, the universe may 'uniformly behave' in a manner we have yet to even see. Perhaps galaxies have a life span we don't know about yet...who knows. :)

[havvyweponsman]

@jaynkay100 Haha, that's exactly what I was thinking about posting.

[jaynkay100]

Positing a god who controls the universe offers no comfort outside of the inductive assumption that that god will remain consistent in the future. After all the only way we can ascertain knowledge of a being's behavior is by observing past behavior...which is no guarantee of future behavior.

The problem of induction cannot be avoided by saying "magic man controls it."

[Xerxal]

Devout,

To see if I understand you, are you saying that the problem of induction can be avoided by saying that science is not trying to make predictions, and is rather only trying to describe what it has seen in the past? If that's the case, then why do med students go through so much school to learn things that they don't believe will help them cure anybody?

[DevoutAtheist42]

(5) In Deutsch's view, science is in the business, not of making predictions based on observations, but rather of beginning with our best explanatory theories and working to improve and replace them. It is a problem-solving process, wherein a problem may be anything from an explanation which seems inadequate or ad hoc, to an observation which cannot be fit into the present explanatory framework, to a mutual contradiction between two good explanations. It seems to me that this avoids induction.

[DevoutAtheist42]

(4) It must already have had a false explanation in mind, perhaps a "theory of farmer benevolence" in which repeated feedings were construed as proof of the farmer's goodwill. Without this pre-existing theory, the chicken would have had no way to decide on one interpretation (benevolence) over another (preparation for slaughter or infinite other possibilities.) So not only does induction not justify theories, but it also can't yield any explanation for our observations. (continued)

[DevoutAtheist42]

(3) Actually, it was a bit cleverer than that: Since we have observed untold chickens being disappointed in this way, we can induct the knowledge that induction is false!

Anyway, the "Problem of Induction" is well-known. But David Deutsch points out that there's another, deeper problem that is less often noticed. In effect, the chicken must already have had a theory *before* making its observations, or it could have placed no interpretation on them. (continued...)

[DevoutAtheist42]

(2) Induction is based on the notion that the process of finding explanations starts with making observations. Russell posited a chicken, which was fed by the farmer each day and, taking each feeding as an added proof of its theory that the farmer would feed it every day, so concluded that this happy state of affairs would endure. It didn't, of course, and this showcases one of the problems of induction: that repeated observations cannot justify theories. (continued)