[Vision2020] Wayne Fox, God, and The Induction of Man

[Art Deco]

Michael you write:

Wayne Writes:

 

"I doubt that this statement is true [philosophers have abandoned the deductive form of the problem of evil argument].  Perhaps you can produce a survey of philosophical and theological literature for the last 20 years to demonstrate it."  

 

Me:

Plantinga writes, 

"Now until twenty of twenty-five years ago, the favored sort of a theological argument from evil was for the conclusion that there is a logical inconsistency in what Christians believe.At present however, it is widely conceded that there is nothing like straightforward contradiction or necessary falsehood in the join affirmation of God and evil; the existence of evil is not logically incompatible (even in the broadly logical sense) with the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good God."

 

His footnote to this claim is half a page long on page 461, Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford University Press, 2000.  

 

I did a search and only looked at one site, in which I quickly found support for this claim.  On Stanford.edu:

"If a premise such as (1) cannot, at least at present, be established deductively, then the only possibility, it would seem, is to offer some sort of inductive argument in support of the relevant premise. But if this is right, then it is surely best to get that crucial inductive step out into the open, and thus to formulate the argument from evil not as a deductive argument for the very strong claim that it is logically impossible for both God and evil to exist, (or for God and certain types, or instances, of evil to exist), but as an evidential (inductive/probabilistic) argument for the more modest claim that there are evils that actually exist in the world that make it unlikely that God exists."

  

[1]    Just because Plantinga asserts something about trends in philosophical/theological discussions, does not mean you should ovinely accept it and bandy it about with evidence.  How does he know this?  Did he make a valid, reliable, and methodologically correct survey of all the philosophical and theological articles from all the different publications were such articles are likely to occur?  If not, it would be foolish to believe this knowledge claim based purely on his personal experience.  

[2]    The cite you quote from Stanford.edu does not support your claims but are counter to them in two ways:  

    [A]     The cite appears to use the word "induction" in the sense in which I previously described, not in the unorthodox way you use in the cite below.

     [B]    The point of the cite is that some of the premises used in various statements of the problem of evil rest upon observations.  To the extent they rest upon observations, they are not absolutely true.  That is not in dispute.  The theory of gravity also rests on observations as does the statement "Evil exists."  Though either statement may not be absolutely true, the probability of the statement that evil exists is about the same as that of the statement when an apple falls from a tree, barring a strong wind, it will fall earthward.

[3]    The problem of evil is quite simple despite centuries of Christian Apologists trying to obscure it.  In debating this matter with others including you, I don't give a rat's ass what Plantinga says.  An appeal to authority is unnecessary/irrelevant in this matter.  Arguments are made.  You can dispute the validity of the structure of the arguments and/or the truth of their premises.  It is not rocket science.  Neither is any reference to some obscure/mysterious "basic epistemic analysis" is needed.



You write:

By inductive, I was referring merely to the most basic epistemic analysis, the most general. It is how I think Brian Skyrms (sp?) explains it, and how the introductory textbook material I'm familiar with sets it out. I'm not speaking about something more specific such as collecting data, scientific hypothesis, and the like.  Rather, induction is most properly considered, when considered only generally, an evidential weighing of premises.  Deduction is a simple, certain, syllogistic relation between premises and conclusion; a deductive argument is either valid or invalid. Induction, on the other hand, is just the only other kind of relationship there is between 'premises' and conclusion: the evidential kind. Induction is not an On/Off sort of thing; rather, an inductive conclusion is always more or less 'strong' or 'weak.' There is no certainty in an inductive argument, in virtue of the way evidence works; a very strong inductive argument can become very weak with the addition of only one piece of evidence, as was the case with the man who was locked up for 18 years (recent Vision post); we had strong enough evidence to lock this man up and then with just one piece of DNA evidence 18 years later, we set him free with our apologies.  Induction is pretty potent stuff. This understanding of induction is necessary for understanding my original post on the Problem of Evil.

The above is a most instructive paragraph.  You are using the word "induction" in a quite mysterious, unorthodox way.  In ordinary language induction the word is used by logicians, scientists, lay people, etc thusly:  Observations are made, hypotheses are constructed, expected observations are deduced from the hypotheses, tests are made to determine if the expected observations occur.  How is the induction you speak of different?  Is there some mysterious element that is missing from the above?  Is there something involved more than creative thinking, reason, and observation in the ordinary usage of these words?  Are you and a small number of people in on some secret denied to the rest of us which allows you to know some other reality in some other way?  

What I really suspect here and the reason I said that your statement was instructive, is that Christ Church pundits sometimes use words apparently in their ordinary meaning but, when called on their results, demonstrate that they are using them otherwise than in their ordinary way.  This is fraudulent linguistic chicanery.  An example:

In ordinary language when referring to philosophers, etc, the term "rationalist" is used to refer to those that believe that reason is the primary source of knowledge -- Descartes, Leibnitz, Spinoza, Kant, etc.  The term "rationalist" distinguishes these and similar thinkers from the empiricists -- Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, etc -- those who consider the source of knowledge to be observation used in conjunction with reason.

When Christ Church pundits use the term "rationalist", it apparently means anyone, who like these pundits, uses observation and reason but who in doing so reaches conclusions incompatible with Christ Church dogma.

I suspect that your disingenuous use of "induction" is more of the same.  If you mean "intuition", just say so.  Them we can explore the fruitfulness of using such a method to prove knowledge claims.  If your meaning of induction includes "more" than what was described in my simple model earlier or the simpler yet summary above, tells what this "more" is, and give evidence that the statements asserting the existence of this "more" are true.  Anyone can spin conjectures and fantasies.  Anyone can make up fancy sounding but obscuring/unfathomably vague words.  Supporting these efforts as knowledge claims with reasoning AND evidence is another matter.



Slight change of subject:  Two questions (one is multi-part) for you:

[Q1]    In practice when Christ Church pundits (and other Christian Apologists/Advocates) make knowledge claims about their alleged god, they support these claims with quotations from the bible.  What words in the bible assert that your alleged god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent?

[Q2]    Suppose you were presented with a statement of the problem of evil whose premises were as highly probable as any premises based on observation could be.  Suppose further, that the arguments in this statement of the problem of evil were all demonstratively valid.

Would you then admit that the assertion of the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being leads to a contradiction, and thus any alleged instantiation of same is logically improbable/impossible?  In other words would you accept the results of true premises/valid arguments which demonstrated the improbability/impossibility of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being?

Given the knowledge claim that an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being exists, what kind possible evidence, if any, could provide disconfirmation of this claim?



You may answer these questions in separate emails if you like (although the answer to [Q1] should be a piece of cake for one of your background).  Both questions are straight forward and simple.  Please do not rephrase them, ignore them, or answer some other questions other than what was asked.  Please answer Both questions are open-ended, not "Yes" or "No";  please try not to avoid the issues, but answer them as asked.  Please, for the sake of my slow-wittedness, answer each separately and indicate which question you are addressing by using [Q1] and [Q2].  Thank you.

{As an aside:  Perhaps you do not realize this, but when you use beginning and ending quotation marks instead ordinary ones, you make your emails difficult to impossible to read for some users.  Some systems do not contain those characters in their character set and thus generate unpredictable results (sometimes deleting parts of your messages).}


Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
deco at moscow.com

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