Sword,
The thoughts I’ll present here have come out of response to the ‘Cold Case Christianity’ thread, so I’ll be repeating some of what I said there. There may be something here for the believer and non-believer!
Essentially, there are two approaches to trying to establish whether or not something is true: An inductive one and a deductive one. The inductive approach involves reasoning to try and establish a truth in the absence of certainty, the deductive approach uses reasoning where certainty is guaranteed, hence is based on an established truth. To illustrate:
Inductive: I observed an animal with four legs. Cats have four legs. Therefore the animal I saw was a cat
The process can be flawed as it is not guaranteed to arrive at the correct conclusion, therefore it must be falsifiable. Again, because certainty cannot be guaranteed, it has to be believed by faith.
No it doesn’t because it doesn’t “have to be believed” with certainty at all. It might be thought to be
probabilistically true depending on the quality and size of the premises set – for example, if swans are seen to be white a million times then it’s a reasonable conclusion to think, “swans are
probably white” - but that says nothing to the
possibility of another answer – eg a black swan.
Deductive: I observed a cat. A cat has four legs. Therefore the cat I saw had four legs.
A reasonable deduction as a property of a cat is that it has four legs.
Is a cat with a leg missing no longer a cat?
In deductive reasoning the conclusion must be true if the premises on which it relies are true, but even then the phenomenon of unknown unknowns means we cannot be
certain that the premises
are true.
I would suggest that a fundamental problem that occurs in many debates here is that a deductive approach is being used by some of the non-believers here whereas an inductive one is needed. Since a deductive approach is based on what should be certain, it is true by default, therefore anything that contradicts it is false by default! Therefore there is no way for any believer to provide the non-believer with the kind of evidence they are looking for, if a deductive approach is being used. Whether intentional or not, all causes/effects having natural causes/explanations is taken as true, therefore all deductions are based on this.
This is pretty convoluted stuff, but yes – if the “believer” cannot establish that his premises are true, then there’s no way to argue deductively that the conclusion is true. This is though a problem for the believer I’d have thought. If deductive reasoning can’t work, he needs to suggest something else that can.
Instead, what is needed is an inductive approach. It is necessary because one is trying to establish truth in the absence of certainty.
All truths are established in the absence of certainty, but ok…
It is not an unreasonable one because one can use skills/techniques already being used in other situations, e.g .the approach of the detective in the ‘Cold Case Christianity’ thread.
No, the problem there comes from trying to use the naturalistic methods of cold case criminology to investigate non-naturalistic claims and assertions. It’s a basic category error.
It would seem that this approach is not considered because certainty (i.e. lack of guesswork) cannot be guaranteed.
That too – or, to put it another way, the claims of the believer cannot be distinguished from guessing.
If one looks carefully at the philosophical arguments used against religious belief, I would suggest that they are all based on deduction, which is why my first posts on this forum were all challenging the basis for that deduction. A classic is Bertrand Russell’s Parable of the Celestial Teapot, which assumes that there is no reasoning basis behind religious belief. If someone claimed that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit and claimed that it is too small to be observed by telescopes, I would be investigating what their claim is then based on? The reality is that this isn’t going to happen because it is clear that the concept is made up. By then comparing it to religious belief, the implication is that religious belief is also made up. Can you see the deductive process at work here?
You’ve completely misunderstood the point of Russell’s teapot. Whether or not you assume
a priori that “God” and the teapot are just made up is irrelevant. Rather all it concerns itself with is the negative proof fallacy – ie, that not being able to falsify means it's true.
If an individual is really interested in establishing truth for themselves, they need to do their own research, which will (or should) be inductive by nature. Responses from believers here could assist with that.
How? What methods would these believers propose to investigate their claims other than naturalistic ones?
Sadly, what I have seen is a deductive process used by some non-believers, which is why the answers from Christians have all been deemed to be unsatisfactory (summarized in the Are we done here? thread) and why believers who post here regularly find that they are subjected to a never-ending list of questioning which never get anywhere.
That’s not the problem. That thread concerned the use of arguments by believers that are demonstrably false arguments. If you or any other believer has an argument for an objective, true for you too god though that isn't fallacious then it’s for
you – finally – to make it. That is to say, the burden of proof continues to be all yours.
Good luck with it though!
