Problem of Induction

Revealed Apologetics

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Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. If my mic doesn't turn off, we're going to be diving into the topic of the philosophical problem of induction.

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And we're going to talk about this topic within the context of its usefulness in apologetics and how the

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Christian worldview offers an explanation for this philosophical problem. But before we get into that,

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I want to give folks a heads up on some interesting upcoming topics that I will be covering in future episodes.

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So let me just get my little list here. And hopefully folks will find this interesting.

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I try to choose topics that I think people will find somewhat fascinating and related to the topic of presuppositionalism and things like that.

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And so let's see here. So next week, I believe on Tuesday, I will be tackling 50 presupp questions.

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So I'm going to I have collected 50 questions related to presuppositional apologetics and the presuppositional methodology.

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And I'm just going to plow through them. So I have no idea how long that's going to take.

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Hopefully it won't take terribly long. But within those 50 questions, hopefully I will be able to answer something that is something that has been on your mind if you were wondering about relating to presuppositional methodology.

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Then apparently my last video on the death of Tag apparently triggered a bunch of atheists.

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There's a lot of comments on that video and a lot of criticisms and so forth. And that's perfectly fine.

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I expect that when I put a video out, especially being a presuppositionalist.

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Not many people are big fans of presuppositionalism, and that's okay too. But there are a lot.

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You guys can kind of take a look through the comments. There are a lot of bad objections to presuppositionalism, to misunderstandings of what a transcendental argument is and what it seeks to demonstrate.

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So many bad arguments that it's tempting. I don't typically interact too much in the comments section because it can become a black hole.

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Number one, I'm only one person and I can't respond to everybody. Number two, when you respond to one person, that can often drag you into a long back and forth, which given my own busy life,

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I don't have time to go back and forth too much. But there are so many deliciously bad objections that you could find in the comments.

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Actually, folks who've listened to this channel and you're familiar with presuppositionalism, transcendental arguments, go to my last video and look through the comments.

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And you can see many of the atheists offering arguments and counterpoints. And just see if you could identify, based upon your understanding of transcendental arguments, presuppositionalism, see if you could identify the bad arguments.

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There is really one particularly interesting that I want to spend the whole video on, and that is the issue of replacing

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God in the transcendental argument with a unicorn, okay? So we'll talk about unicorns, the transcendental argument for unicorns, and how unicorns provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility.

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I mean, this is the sort of stuff that we're dealing with, right? So we'll talk about that in a future episode.

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Another episode that's going to be coming soon is concerning a topic known as universals.

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So we're going to be talking about divine conceptualism, universals, particulars, abstract objects, those sorts of things.

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I'm looking forward to covering that topic as well. I'm also going to be dedicating a video explaining

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Cornelius Van Til's view of the rational -irrational dialectic, okay?

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Now, if you don't know what those words mean, that's okay, but Cornelius Van Til held to the position that given unbelieving worldviews, unbelievers are reduced to vacillating between a rationalistic perspective and an irrationalistic perspective, showing attention in their worldview.

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We'll unpack that in a future video. And we'll also be covering the theistic preconditions for knowledge, okay, which is an interesting topic.

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And we'll talk a little bit about Francis Schaeffer. I know there are some people who associate presuppositionalism or forms of presuppositionalism with Francis Schaeffer.

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We're going to be talking about Schaeffer's line of despair. And if you don't know what that phraseology is referring to, that's okay.

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We'll talk about it when we cover Francis Schaeffer. And I may or may not,

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I'm not sure, I might be doing a short response video to Lawrence Krauss.

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There is a video out there where he is interviewed, and he kind of interacts with presuppositionalism a bit.

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I might do a response video to that. We will see, okay? So a lot of interesting topics that will be coming up in the near future.

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And so hopefully you guys could stay tuned for that. I'm a teacher, and today was my last day.

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So I'm technically on vacation, except I have to go back tomorrow because we have to clean out our classrooms and things like that.

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But I'm not teaching or anything like that. And then I'm going away for the weekend, and then I come back, and then

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I will be able to put some content out on a more regular basis for the summer.

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So super excited about doing that, and I appreciate folks who have been tuning in and showing their support by viewing, subscribing, all that good stuff.

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So there you go. So all of that out of the way, let's talk about the topic of this video, and that is the topic of the problem of induction, okay?

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Now, if you were to study, for example, the history of philosophy, you will find that there are many puzzles and problems that philosophers have had difficulty engaging with.

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But we want to make an important distinction here because a lot of people will accuse presuppositionalists of focusing in on problems in philosophy and exploiting those problems, saying, see, look, you can't answer this philosophical problem.

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And so we're going to paste God in that equation and say, look, God solves it, and that's it, okay? And, of course, that's going to be unacceptable to most people.

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That's, of course, not what we're doing. What I'm arguing is that if we take many of the problems in philosophy, they are problems for certain worldviews, but not all worldviews share the same problems as other worldviews.

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So I'm going to argue that from a Christian perspective, the problem of induction, as we'll explore in this video, is not a problem when seen within the context of a

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Christian theistic world and life view, okay? And so that's not avoiding philosophical problems, it's just showing that while this has been a philosophical problem for many perspectives, it is not a problem for the

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Christian perspective. And so Christianity provides what we would call the preconditions for understanding induction and the uniformity of nature and these sorts of things, okay?

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So we're going to unpack that, well, we're going to unpack it right now, okay? So let's jump right in.

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If you are in the comments and you have a question, I do have a list of questions that I'm going to try to get through here at the end of this video.

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But if you have a specific question and it's not interrupting the flow of me getting into some of the details of this topic,

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I'll try my best to stop and kind of address the question as best I can, okay? All right, so let's jump right in, okay?

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Let me just adjust my screen here, all right? So I think it's important to begin by defining what do we mean by the problem of induction, okay?

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And so in simple terms, the problem of induction concerns the issue of whether inductive reasoning is reliable or rationally justified.

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So inductive reasoning involves basically drawing general conclusions from specific observations.

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So for example, and this is kind of the classic example of this, right? If you observe a thousand white swans, okay, you might infer from that observation that all swans are white and then predict that the future swans that you're going to see are going to be white, okay?

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Does that make sense? So I observe a thousand white swans, and so based upon the regularity of my observation,

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I infer that the next swan I'm going to see is most likely a white swan, okay?

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That is kind of utilizing inductive reasoning, okay? And notice how this is very much related to the scientific enterprise because the formulation of scientific laws are often based upon observing regularities and then projecting into the future what is most likely the case based upon our past regular experience, okay?

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So that is kind of like inductive reasoning, induction there in kind of a nutshell. Now, we want to make the distinction then between induction and deduction.

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And so when we're talking about something like deductive reasoning, okay, what we're talking about with respect to deductive reasoning, this is where the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises, right?

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Inductive reasoning doesn't offer absolute certainty, but deductive reasoning, you do have a conclusion that logically and necessarily follows if the premises are true, okay?

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So you have, for example, all men are mortal, premise one. Socrates is a man, premise two.

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What follows from that? Well, it follows logically and necessarily that Socrates is mortal. Now, of course, the truth of that conclusion is going to be based upon the soundness of the premises.

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Are the premises true, okay? And of course the validity of that argument comes from the fact that in that deductive example, the conclusion does in fact follow from the premises, okay?

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So that's another important distinction to keep in mind when you are examining different forms of argumentation.

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For example, when we speak of the soundness of an argument, we're speaking about the truth of the premises.

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Are the premises true? When we're talking about the validity of an argument, is the structure of the argument correct?

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Does the conclusion logically follow from the premises, okay? So that's kind of an important distinction, kind of a side note here, between the validity of an argument and the soundness of an argument.

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But you see there that there is an important difference between induction and deduction, okay?

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So deduction, you have the conclusion of an argument following logically and necessarily from the prior premises, okay?

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Inductive reasoning doesn't offer that kind of certainty, okay?

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There's always the possibility in inductive reasoning that the next swan you see could be black, okay?

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No matter how many white swans you've seen before, when you are using induction, you do not have a certain conclusion in the sense that because I've observed a million white swans, that therefore all swans are white, okay?

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And so hopefully you see kind of, you know, the distinction there between induction and deduction.

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So now inductive reasoning is, as I said before, is widely used in the scientific enterprise, okay?

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And you could obviously, this makes sense because you have the great emphasis upon observation, regularity, the formulation of various laws and things like that, okay?

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Now, when we talk about observation and inferring based on observation, based upon regularities that we've experienced, we infer about future cases, okay?

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That, again, is something that undergirds the scientific enterprise. Let's take, for example, Newton's universal law of gravitation, for example, right?

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That law was derived inductively from empirical observations of the attractive forces between masses, okay?

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And so we haven't observed every pair of masses in the universe at every point in time, but we've made enough observations to be confident in this universal law.

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And we make reliable predictions, okay? So that's kind of how science sort of works, okay?

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So induction is kind of a very fundamental aspect of that, okay? Now, of course, now when you're talking in terms of the history of philosophy, okay, you take that simple fact of regular observations, you know, we observe regularity.

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And based upon that observed regularity, we infer with respect to future cases, okay?

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Now, when we take a look at the history of philosophy, you have David Hume, right? David Hume enters the room, okay?

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David Hume, famous 18th century philosopher who basically raised what we now call the problem of induction, okay?

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And so Hume pointed out that inductive inferences depend on a key assumption, okay?

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So when we make inductive inferences, regular observations, okay, because I observe this regularity over here,

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I make an inference from that about what most likely will be the case in the future, okay? Hume pointed out that inductive inferences depend on what we call the uniformity of nature.

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And this principle basically assumes that nature is consistent across time and space, okay?

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But here's the question, and David Hume asked this question, how do we justify that assumption?

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Namely, the assumption that nature is uniform, okay? And so Hume argued that we can't justify the uniformity of nature through logic, for example, because it's not logically necessary.

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The universe could, in theory, behave unpredictably, okay? And so we can't appeal to logic alone.

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Some suggest that empirical evidence supports the uniformity of nature, right? Because we see, we see, we observe regularity.

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But again, this leads to a fallacious form of circularity, because we assume the reliability of induction to justify induction, okay?

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So you see the problem there, okay? And so, again, what I love about this observation by David Hume, and of course

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I'm obviously not a huge fan of David Hume, obviously we have very different worldviews, right? But what

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I appreciate about David Hume, and this is something I suppose we can say about a lot of philosophers, is that the beauty of philosophy is that it causes us to challenge certain assumptions and beliefs that we simply take for granted, okay?

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Uniformity in nature is something that we simply take for granted. We assume, without even thinking about it sometimes, right, that nature just works a certain way, and that's because of our experience of how nature worked in the past, then that's how it's going to be in the future, okay?

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I don't fear getting out of bed, when I step out of my bed, that my feet will fall through the floor, because the floor that supported my feet yesterday,

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I'm generally confident that it will support my feet tomorrow, okay? That is the assumption of the uniformity of nature, okay?

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So, again, but David Hume asked the question, how do we justify the uniformity of nature, okay?

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And of course he pointed out that there is a problem, okay, if you use the reliability of induction to justify induction, alright?

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That is a form of vicious circularity. Hume highlighted that it's impossible to justify induction purely on experiential grounds, right?

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Because we're going to always have to extrapolate from what we've observed to what we haven't observed, right?

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And so the problem of induction is and has remained really a very powerful challenge, okay?

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Now, it's been so difficult for people to answer is that a lot of people just ignore the challenge, right?

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They point to the pragmatic aspects of science. If science is undergirded by the assumption of induction and the uniformity of nature, we can't answer how we could justify that, but because on a pragmatic level, it produces so much great results in the scientific enterprise, and we don't really have to deal with it, okay?

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But of course, that's not true. We do have to deal with it. It is a very important issue.

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And of course, contemporary philosophers have tried to address it, and so you do have different explanations as to how people hash that out, okay?

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But, for example, I agree with Hume here, okay? We can't just justify induction purely on like our experience, okay?

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Because as I said before, we're going to have to extrapolate from what we've observed to what we haven't observed. And so the problem of induction is there.

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We can't avoid it, okay? Now, from a Christian perspective, if you were to ask the

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Christian, how does the Christian justify induction? Remember, when we're talking about induction, when we're talking about science, when we're talking about philosophy, when we're talking about any kind of question relating to these issues, it's very important to recognize, and I always say this, and I'll continue to say this because it's important.

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We cannot answer those questions independent of a worldview context in which those questions even make sense, okay?

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So induction, okay, the expectation that the future will most likely be like the past is understood within a particular metaphysical framework, within a particular view of the nature of reality, okay?

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As Christians, we affirm an omniscient, sovereign God who created the universe.

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He sustains the universe, right? According to Scripture, God is a God of order, right? 1 Corinthians 14 .33.

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He controls nature, Genesis 1 .1. Being the creator of nature, he obviously has power over that which he created, okay?

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He knows the uniformity of nature because he authored it. It is God who places or gives things within creation their unique features such that they act in certain ways and they are regulated in accordance to the things that God has put in place, okay?

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And again, if you consider furthermore within the Christian worldview, God created human beings with cognitive faculties designed to understand and interact with his creation.

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And so our inductive inferences as image bearers, right? Our inductive inferences are reliable within the

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Christian worldview because God made them that way, okay? Within the Christian worldview, with our doctrine of creation, providence, and revelation, the problem of induction really isn't a problem at all, okay?

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So now while the problem of induction is a problem in philosophy, I think the problem is answered when we understand it within the context of a worldview in which there is a sovereign

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God who created the world in a certain way such that we can make predictions, reliable predictions about the future based on past regularities, so on and so forth.

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Now again, some people think that the Christian worldview doesn't answer the question because we believe in miracles.

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If God can perform miracles, then can we know that the future will be like the past and God can just perform a miracle and so there you go, it's different.

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Well, not so fast, okay? While it is true that as a Christian I can't know 100 % that the future will be exactly like the past in some instance, when

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God performs miracles, the miracles are not random, okay? That's not part of the Christian worldview, okay?

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The Christian worldview does not posit a God who capriciously and randomly performs miracles such that the world then becomes a random place because God can just do anything at any time and so predictability is out the window.

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No. God does miracles within certain contexts. As a matter of fact, if you look at the

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Gospel of John, for example, in the Gospel of John, miracles aren't called miracles. They're called signs, okay?

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And what do signs do? Signs point to something, okay? Highlighting the fact that when God performs miracles, it is typically done within the context of pointing to something.

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Maybe some divine truth or the truth of the

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Messiah or the fact that God is with a certain prophet or something along those lines. And so from within the

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Christian worldview, while we affirm the reality of miracles, we can still, given the way

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God created the world, we can infer that the future will very likely be like the past.

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We make room for the possibility for miracles to occur. But because we know that God is not random, we can be highly probable, we can be highly probably certain that the future will most likely be like the past unless God chooses to intervene in some way, shape, or form.

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Okay? And so again, so from within the Christian perspective, we have a foundation for uniformity and induction and then hence, of course, what is those two things undergird the very scientific enterprise.

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So science itself fits very well within a Christian theistic framework. Now, we take a look at the atheists, for example.

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I don't think this is the case at all, okay? Now, to understand why the atheistic worldview can't adequately account for the uniformity of nature or solve the problem of induction, we're going to have to kind of dive a little bit deeper into those worldviews, okay?

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But, and just as a side, I know some people caught this. I said atheistic worldviews.

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I know there are some atheists there who say, listen, bro, atheism is not a worldview. It is. But atheism is not a worldview.

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Okay. Any worldview that has an atheistic bent in terms of affirming implicitly or explicitly that God is not necessary for intelligibility, okay?

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Any category of atheism, okay, regardless of the flavor of atheism you identify as,

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I would argue, cannot justify induction and uniformity. Okay.

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Now, why do I say this? Well, inductive reasoning, as we said before, involves making generalizations based on specific observations.

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Okay. So for instance, observing the sunrise every morning leads us to inductively infer that the sun will rise again tomorrow.

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Okay. Now, this reasoning relies on the principle, as what we said before, the uniformity of nature. And so the idea that the future will resemble the past and that the laws of nature are consistent over time and space, that assumption of uniformity, okay, undergirds our inductive inferences.

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Okay. Let's see here. There's Scott here. I wish someone of the level of, say, Dr. Chris Bolt would write a dissertation on induction and scientific laws.

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Well, if you're being sarcastic, then that's funny. If you're not being sarcastic,

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I think Chris is a friend of mine. He did write a book, I think, on this. Let me see if I can look it up and maybe put the link in the comments here.

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If anyone's interested in kind of diving into this, let's take a look here. Chris Bolt.

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Let's see here. Bolt, the Disney movie. It's funny when you type these things in. Let's see here.

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What pops up on Amazon? Let's see. Hollywood heroes. No. Chris, where is your book?

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Maybe Scott, if you know the title, world in his ‑‑ there we go. Let me actually put that in the world in his hands.

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Okay. Let's see. We're going to get that book here somewhere. Holy cow.

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Hold up. Time out. Why isn't that book not popping up? It says world in his hands.

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Let me do this here. World in his hands.

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I got the whole world in his ‑‑ here we go. It's 10 bucks on Kindle, and it's at the ungodly price of $27 paperback.

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Let's get the Kindle link here, because I know if you guys are like me, you too broke to be spending 30 bucks on a book.

24:26

Let's see here. We're going to copy. We're going to put that right here. I'm going to paste that, bad boy.

24:34

Boom. And it is there in the chat if you're interested in that topic here.

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All right. There was an error. So I don't know if it went through.

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My bad if it didn't. Okay. Let's see here. Okay. Sorry about that.

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All right. So from an atheistic perspective, I think atheism, any form, which we can kind of be more specific, which generally entails kind of a naturalistic, materialistic understanding of the universe.

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Let's take that version of it just for example. Okay. I think that position struggles to provide a rational basis for the uniformity of nature.

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Right. Naturalism posits that everything that exists is a product of random, undirected processes.

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Right. And so given that assumption, there is no intrinsic reason why the universe should operate in a consistent and predictable way.

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Okay. The regularities we observe could just as easily be anomalies in a what we could understand as a chaotic system.

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Okay. There wouldn't be a way to know that from within an atheistic perspective. Okay. Atheists might argue that the uniformity of nature is justified empirically, as we said before, by observing consistent patterns in the natural world.

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But again, we argue that this is viciously circular. Right. It assumes the very principle that it seeks to prove.

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Basically, we observe the uniformity of nature and then we use those observations to justify future uniformity.

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Right. This doesn't provide an independent rationale for why nature should be uniform. It simply presupposes it.

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Which, ironically, is exactly what many atheists claim we're doing as presuppositionalists.

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And, of course, I've talked about ad infinitum why that's not the case.

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Okay. So from within an atheistic perspective, there is no justification.

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Okay. Now, there are some contemporary ways in which people have tried to solve this problem, and I haven't touched on that in too much detail.

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But just as a general case here, I'm holding my ground. I don't think that an atheistic worldview can provide a justification for these things.

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But again, from the Christian worldview, right, this isn't a problem at all. Okay. So the Christian worldview, again, asserts that God is sovereign over creation.

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As the creator, God has established the natural order. He maintains it consistently. Okay. Scriptures like Genesis 1 -1 and Hebrews 1 -3 basically affirm that God not only created the universe but also upholds it by his power.

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Okay. Within that framework, this provides a foundation for believing in a consistent and orderly universe because it reflects the nature of its orderly and unchanging creator.

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Okay. Now, as an unbeliever, you don't have to believe that. Okay. But it makes sense within a

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Christian worldview that we can do science and make reliable predictions and have a foundation for those things.

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Okay. An atheist can come along and say, well, you're just saying that, bro. That doesn't prove anything. It's like from within the

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Christian worldview, it makes sense. Science makes sense because there's a foundation that undergirds the method, whereas in the unbelieving perspective, all you have is arbitrariness.

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Right. I would even argue that when unbelievers assume uniformity and they assume the inductive principle, they're actually borrowing from a worldview that can justify those things because their own worldview cannot justify those things.

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All right. So within the Christian worldview, we can answer these. Christianity teaches that God has revealed himself.

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He is a God of order. Right. This orderliness is reflected in the natural world, which governs which

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God governs according to his will. Okay. The uniformity of nature from our perspective, then, is not a random occurrence, but a reflection of God's consistent character.

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Right. And so since God is faithful and unchanging, we have a basis for trusting that the natural order that he established is going to remain consistent.

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Okay. So, again, these are kind of simple Sunday school points. Right. It's simple.

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It's not some complicated philosophical explanation.

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Okay. But in a very profound sense, this is the simple faith of the Christian. Right. Why do

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I expect that the future will be like the past? Why can I make reliable predictions? I don't just appeal to creation to ground those things, but I simply trust that the

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God who's revealed himself created the world in such a way that those things can be the case. Okay. You don't need to believe that.

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But what happens when you reject it? You lack a justificatory principle to ground. Okay. Induction and uniformity.

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Okay. All right. So let's take a look at some attempts to answer this question within a more contemporary context.

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And so from within a contemporary perspective, you have kind of attempts at what we might call pragmatic justification.

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Okay. So from this particular point holds that induction is basically justified pragmatically.

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Right. Because it works effectively in practice. And that's true. Right. It aids in facilitating scientific progress and these sorts of things.

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You know, there's a pragmatic element to it. Okay. But again, sorry about that.

29:58

My mic. When I flail my arms and stuff like that means I'm Puerto Rican. So my hands move all over the place.

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I like disconnect myself. So I'm sorry about that. Whoops. There we go. So from our perspective,

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I think this pragmatic justification is insufficient because it bypasses the question of ultimate truth for utility.

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Right. It assumes a correspondence between the effectiveness and truth without foundational justification.

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And so this approach, I think, fails to address the underlying issue. The assumption that the universe is orderly and predictable, which can only be coherently explained by the existence of a rational

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God who governs the universe by consistent laws. That's what makes sense out of it. But just saying pragmatically, oh, it works.

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Well, yeah. No, duh. It works. No one's denying that it works. Right. The question is, which worldview makes sense out of why it works?

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Okay. You could respond maybe for an atheist and say, well, you know, science is not concerned with why questions.

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Right. We've heard some people say that. Right. Why is such a silly question. I don't think that's the case at all.

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I think it's a very important question. I think that's often in some cases a dodge in terms of avoiding providing a justification for these things we so easily take for granted.

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Okay. And so we have the pragmatic sort of approach in terms of addressing the problem of induction.

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Okay. Now, we also have a more probabilistic approaches. Right. They try to justify these principles by appealing to probability.

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Okay. And so some people try to ground induction in logical probabilities, basically suggesting that while inductive reasoning doesn't guarantee truth, it increases its likelihood.

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Okay. Now, but again, we need to take a look at that.

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Okay. This is probably taking that approach that still rests on the assumption that the future will resemble the past.

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An assumption that cannot be justified within that framework. Okay. Because it's still presupposed to be true.

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Okay. It presupposes the very categories that we're asking about. Okay. It's, again, going to be stuck in some form of fallacious circularity.

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Okay. Or you can take the reliabilist approach. Okay. There's this view known as reliabilism.

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This view basically says that induction is justified because it is a reliable process that tends to lead to true beliefs.

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But again, reliabilism assumes that what has been reliable in the past will also continue to be reliable in the future, which is itself an inductive claim in need of justification.

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So from within our perspective, we would say that such an assumption lacks grounding without acknowledging – when you don't acknowledge

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God's providential control, right, because God will ensure regularity and predictability. When you appeal to, like, reliabilism and probability, you fall into circularity or arbitrariness or things like that.

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Okay. All right. So there are many different kinds of approaches to addressing this. Again, I'm not a scholar in inductive principles and stuff like that.

33:16

This is kind of my layperson who is familiar with some of the philosophical landscape trying to share my views from a presuppositional perspective.

33:28

But again, you want to look into these things. I think one of the more interesting attempts to solve the problem of induction is folks who appeal to what we might call the

33:41

Bayesian framework. Bayesianism appeals to various probabilities and mathematical frameworks to draw various conclusions.

33:52

So, for example, if we were to take Bayesianism, we would say that this method appealing to background knowledge and probabilities and these sorts of things, this still presupposes regularity and predictability in nature and still runs into a form of circularity as well.

34:14

Because even probability presupposes certain certainties, okay, which need to be justified within a particular worldview as well.

34:23

Okay. But there are some creative ways that people have tried to address this issue that I think are worthy of exploration.

34:30

For example, there's a Christian philosopher, Tim, and his wife,

34:35

Lydia McGrew. They are Christian, and I think Tim's focus is on epistemology.

34:40

He's utilized, I think to my knowledge, he's utilized a Bayesian kind of framework in terms of one of the ways that you could address the problem of induction.

34:49

So if you're interested in that, you can look up – I think it's Tim McGrew – type in induction or something along those lines.

34:58

Now, McGrew is an evidentialist, and of course, as a presuppositionalist, we're not going to share the same epistemological framework and the same assumptions and things like that.

35:06

But if you want to expose yourself to a robust explanation and attempted answering to this philosophical issue,

35:17

I think Tim McGrew would be a good resource for folks to check out. All right.

35:23

All right. Whew! Okay. So I made it through that. Okay. So now I'm going to go through some questions.

35:29

Now, if there are some questions in the comments, I will try my best to take those. If there aren't, I have a whole list of questions that I would like to go through that I hope will be useful for those who are listening.

35:43

Okay? All right. So let's take a look here. Let me see these questions here.

35:52

Let's see here. All right. Question number one, why can't atheists simply assume the uniformity of nature as a practical necessity without appealing to a deity?

36:10

Okay. That's a good question. All right. Let's take a look here. Yeah. So atheists can assume the uniformity of nature as a practical necessity.

36:19

Indeed, we all – I think everyone will have some element of that, right? We do think that there are practical elements to assuming this, generally speaking.

36:27

But again, this assumption lacks a rational foundation. Okay? Without – and I would argue that without a transcendent source guaranteeing the consistency of natural laws, this assumption becomes arbitrary and unjustifiable.

36:40

Okay? So in an atheistic worldview, the uniformity of nature is not grounded in anything beyond human expectation or past experience, which is circular reasoning.

36:48

Now, only a worldview that puts forth a sovereign, consistent, and rational creator I would argue provides a solid basis for expecting uniformity.

36:57

Okay? So from within our worldview framework, that would work.

37:02

There's reason for me to see it as pragmatic, and there's a foundation as to why we should expect that the future will very likely be like the past.

37:09

But why is this the case in an atheistic perspective? Why should we expect it?

37:15

Why? Because it's always been regular in the past? Well, again, that's not the question. We're saying, how do you know it's going to be that way in the future?

37:22

It does not logically follow that because the past has given us patterns of regularity that the future must also give us those very same patterns.

37:31

Okay? Let's see here. So Scott Terry says, it's practically necessary that I assume

37:38

God exists, otherwise my Christianity would collapse. There you go. All right.

37:45

How does the Christian worldview specifically solve the problem of induction? So we kind of went over that, but I'll be happy to repeat it here.

37:51

The Christian worldview solves the problem of induction by grounding uniformity, the uniformity of nature, in the character of God.

37:59

Okay? So according to Christian theology, God is sovereign. He's unchanging. He upholds the universe by his power. This means that the laws of nature are consistent because they reflect

38:08

God's consistent nature. Okay? And so God's revelation in scripture assures us of this orderliness, and it provides, our worldview provides, okay, rational foundation for expecting the future to be like the past.

38:22

Okay? So from within a Christian perspective, right, there you go. It's not an issue for us.

38:28

Okay. Let's see here. A question over here.

38:35

Question. Eli, in your last stream, you mentioned Michael Martin's Tang, the transcendental argument for the nonexistence of God.

38:41

That's what Tang is. Is it Tang like a drink? Is it Tang like a fruit drink or something, like one of the, like, sugar things you put in the?

38:49

Anyway. All right. Martin says, if God can randomly do miracles, we Christians cannot rely on the uniformity of nature.

38:55

Yeah, so I addressed that earlier in this stream. Okay? It is true that God can perform miracles, but notice what you said here in your question.

39:06

Martin says, if God can randomly do miracles. Now, let's think about this, friends, right?

39:13

Does God ever, the God of Christianity, does he ever do anything randomly? Hmm. Think about that.

39:21

The answer to that is no. God does not do anything randomly. Miracles are not performed just willy nilly, making the world a kind of haunted house that, like, who knows what's going to happen?

39:32

Anything could just randomly. No. God performs miracles for specific purposes, and he also governs the world in a regular fashion, generally speaking.

39:42

So according to the general principles, the general principles, okay, that God has established, we could expect the future will very likely be like the past.

39:51

And we leave room for miracle. But because miracle is not random, we don't think that miracles just, that's it.

39:57

It could happen at any time, and then our predictions are, we have no basis for predicting, you know, the future based on past regularities and things like that.

40:07

Okay? All right. Oh, boy. Can anyone justify the first premise of Tag?

40:13

Go back and watch a bunch of my other videos. I feel like I've repeated myself like a bajillion times, and then people say, you haven't addressed this, you haven't addressed that.

40:20

I've addressed, as best I can, almost every main objection in the comments in some video somewhere.

40:26

Okay? So you can check that out. Not going to repeat that here. It's not the topic of this stream.

40:32

Okay? But I do appreciate Mighty Zarlak. I love the Star Wars reference.

40:38

I'm a huge Star Wars fan, by the way. This is really bad, but I even love episode one.

40:44

That might put me in a different category for some people. Okay? All right. Let's see here.

40:51

Let's continue here. Okay. So here's a question here. Can other theistic worldviews like Islam and Judaism also account for the uniformity of nature?

41:02

All right. So other theistic, I would say that other theistic worldviews like Islam and Judaism, they do have a concept of a

41:11

God who is sovereign, right? And he orders the universe. But I would say that – let me see.

41:20

I'm getting thrown off by the comments on this. Let me see here. Yeah, yeah.

41:30

I mean, yeah. I'm just getting here, but speaking of miracles, the atheist worldview is nothing but a miracle.

41:36

The whole thing is a miracle, so where did they get off having a problem? Yeah, that's right. I mean, if we live in a chaotic and purposeless universe,

41:44

I mean, why can't we say anything goes? Well, you can't say anything goes because nature has certain properties.

41:50

Well, how do we know those properties must continually have the properties that they do? We live in a random universe.

41:56

Who's to say that things can't change? That's absolutely right. Okay. So I would agree with that.

42:01

Thank you for that. Now, I got thrown off, and I don't remember the question I was on, so I'm just going to move on to the next one.

42:07

I apologize if it was a really good question. Oh, yes. Here it is. So someone said, can other theistic worldviews account for the uniformity of nature?

42:16

Yeah, so, like, on the surface, a worldview can posit a God who is sovereign and orderly, but the ability to provide the necessary preconditions for uniformity is going to require the worldview to be consistent.

42:30

All right? If a worldview is going to be true, it's going to have to be consistent. And so if I were to take Islam, for example, I think – and I'm not going to refute

42:37

Islam right here and now, but I do think that Islam as a worldview can be refuted, both philosophically reflecting on the concept of Allah and on other grounds as well.

42:49

And so if it is an incoherent worldview, then while on the surface it answers the question of induction, as a worldview system, it's broken and is unable to sufficiently house or ground things like uniformity or anything else for that matter.

43:04

Okay? Judaism – again, Judaism has a part of the puzzle, so to speak, but because they reject the

43:11

Messiah and they reject how God has revealed himself as the triune God, then they also are operating on an incomplete and broken worldview.

43:19

And so Judaism, I don't think, does it when you take Judaism within the context of its rejection of the triune

43:25

God and the need for redemption and sacrifice through Messiah, these sorts of things.

43:31

I think Judaism fails as a coherent worldview in its rejection of how

43:37

God has more fully revealed himself in the person and work of Christ. Okay? Let's see here.

43:45

Okay, let's see here. Is it possible for atheists to use induction effectively without justifying it philosophically?

43:58

Yeah. Atheists can use induction effectively, I think, in practice without having to justify – without justifying it philosophically, right?

44:06

I think anybody can, right? But from a philosophical standpoint, this use, I think, is inconsistent with their worldview, right?

44:12

They rely on the uniformity of nature without having a rational basis for it, making their use of induction pragmatically successful but intellectually unjustifiable.

44:23

There's that arbitrariness or that aspect of they say one thing with their mouth but they borrow things from a worldview that they reject, the

44:29

Christian worldview. That's what we would argue. Okay? Let's see here. What if someone argues that the uniformity of nature is simply a brute fact that needs no further explanation?

44:46

Yeah. So I would challenge the concept of brute factuality. I agree.

44:51

I think Cornelius Van Til is spot on when he says – let's see here – when he says that a brute fact is a mute fact.

45:01

I want someone to tell me how they can make sense out of a fact independent of a worldview, right?

45:08

There's always going to be an interpretation of the fact, and the interpretation of the fact is going to be done within the context of a worldview framework.

45:16

So claiming the uniformity of nature as a brute fact, I think, basically kind of just avoids the need for justification, right?

45:24

It fails to provide a rational basis for belief in what we're talking about here. I think in philosophical terms, a brute fact, which is basically an unexplained given, right?

45:33

It doesn't satisfy the demand for a coherent explanation. It's just that way. Okay. Well, God's a brute fact.

45:40

It's just that way. All right. Conversation's over. And I don't think that's intellectually satisfying at all.

45:45

Okay? Sorry if my attention looks split. I'm kind of paying attention to the chat here.

45:57

Yes, I did address a bunch of stuff.

46:03

I wonder, and I'm going to give the unbelievers and the atheists a pass. When people make comments on some of my videos,

46:11

I wonder if they watch the video and see if I at least tried to answer the question. Some people come in later and ask a question, bro, but what about this?

46:18

And then I'm like, I totally talked about that earlier. So I'm not sure. Okay? That's fine.

46:24

And that's fine. I like the questions and the objections and things like that. I think it's important.

46:29

I think that's how good dialogue happens. Okay? Now, if I don't get to your question, especially if you put something in the comment,

46:35

I don't get to you. Chill out, bro. All right? There's some people like, man, he ran away, bro, like he couldn't answer.

46:42

Dude, I can't chill out in the comments section of my videos. I don't have time. Sometimes I will type and I will respond.

46:49

I just don't have time. So I apologize. I'm not avoiding you. This is why I cover the topics that I do.

46:54

Sometimes the topics that I cover are based upon certain comments. I'm like, hey, you know what? Hey, that's an interesting point.

47:00

Maybe I could address it in a video. So hopefully folks who don't agree with me at least can understand where I'm coming from if I don't respond to them directly.

47:10

So I do apologize here. Okay? Let's see here. Okay. Let's see.

47:23

Let me see. Can science progress? Let me see.

47:30

No. All right. I like this question. So how can

47:35

Christians use this argument in – I guess the whole issue with induction and uniformity.

47:46

How can Christians use this argument in conversations with atheists without coming across as dismissive of scientific achievements?

47:52

I like that question. Okay? So how can Christians use kind of basically what I've been saying in this video in conversations with atheists without coming across as dismissive of scientific achievements?

48:02

Now, I want to say this because I know a lot of Christians who – especially presuppositions. I don't know why. It's my experience.

48:08

So if this is not you, then that's fine. Okay? Christians can sometimes come across as being dismissive towards the accomplishments of science, and I don't think that's a smart thing to do.

48:21

Now, granted, science is understood in a worldview, right? Science and Christianity are not in conflict, but certain interpretations of science and things like that can be in conflict.

48:34

I don't think we should be dismissive because from a practical standpoint, yes, we could agree science has done great things.

48:41

I don't want to be dismissive of that. I think Christians can affirm the value and success of scientific achievements while pointing out the philosophical foundations that make those very achievements possible.

48:53

So it's not that we're rejecting what science has achieved, but we're pointing to the foundation.

49:00

By showing respect, I think, for scientific inquiry, recognizing its successes, I think this is important.

49:06

Christians can then gently challenge the atheist to consider the underlying assumptions that science takes for granted.

49:13

And I think the goal here is to highlight that the Christian worldview provides a coherent foundation for those very assumptions.

49:20

Hopefully, this will invite the unbeliever, the atheist, to examine the basis of their own beliefs.

49:26

Because as a presuppositionalist, basically what I want to do when

49:32

I – and this is weird because sometimes you have the atheist who will say, well, I'm just going to take from the presuppositional playbook and show your argument's whack because I can presuppose this and blah, blah, blah, blah.

49:44

You're helping us when you do that. Because one of the main things that I try to point out is that I'm a presuppositionalist, but so are you.

49:54

The unbeliever is a presuppositionalist, too. I have my Bible. The unbeliever has his or her Bible.

50:00

Isn't that right? Everyone has an ultimate authority. And so the presuppositionalist is laying it out there, and I want my conversation partner to also be aware of their foundations, and then we can talk about those foundations, which foundation makes sense of the things that we're talking about.

50:18

So it's not like a trick or a word game. I want the unbeliever, just as I try to be,

50:25

I want the unbeliever to be what Van Til said, epistemologically self -conscious. I want them to be aware of their theory of knowledge, their metaphysical assumptions, whatever their view of ethics.

50:38

I want them to be aware of those things so that we can talk at that fundamental level because it's at that fundamental level of disagreement as to the reason why we disagree on those surface issues.

50:48

So I think that's helpful. Now, again, the context is going to be different.

50:53

Obviously, doing apologetics and having conversations with people on YouTube in the comments section is very different than having a conversation with someone face -to -face, right?

51:05

I think face -to -face is much easier, but that's just me. So, yeah, I hope that was helpful.

51:13

Let's see here. We'll do this one as the last one here, unless there are some questions in the comments.

51:18

How would you address the concern that invoking God to solve philosophical problems is intellectually lazy or a

51:27

God -of -the -gaps approach? Yeah, so I never was impressed with some of the accusations of God -of -the -gaps, especially even with criticizing some of the classical arguments within natural theology and stuff.

51:42

I never saw it, but nevertheless. I think invoking God to solve philosophical problems, like the problem of induction,

51:51

I don't think it is a God -of -the -gaps approach because it doesn't fill a gap in scientific knowledge.

51:57

We're not filling a gap in scientific knowledge with divine intervention. Rather, we're providing a comprehensive metaphysical foundation for the intelligibility of the entire scientific enterprise itself.

52:08

And so basically, this approach offers a positive explanation, right, which we're offering a positive explanation for the uniformity of nature, which we are rooting in the very character and revelation of God.

52:20

And I think when we take, for example, the Christian worldview, its assumptions about the world and knowledge and all these sorts of things and our place in it,

52:29

I think things like induction, uniformity, and all these other things, they make sense within the

52:35

Christian system. They do not make sense within an atheistic system or any other system that is incoherent or reduces to arbitrariness or inconsistencies or anything along those lines.

52:47

Okay? All right. Whew. All right. That was a lot. I hope this was helpful.

52:53

I know I talk super fast, so I do apologize if my fast talking makes it difficult to follow.

53:01

All right. So I'm going to scan the comments here, see if I can find any questions. If not, we'll wrap up this livestream.

53:08

Don't miss it. Okay? You can put the little notification thing. I'm going to be covering 50 pre -sup questions next

53:15

Tuesday. All right? I'm going to drink some tea. I'm going to put some honey in that bad boy, make sure my throat is good to go.

53:21

And then I'm going to try to tackle — and I'll try to sort the questions from basic to more complex, and hopefully it'll be useful for people.

53:33

Okay? All right. Let's take a look here just really quickly. Do -do -do -do -do. And I look for question in front of the question.

53:42

Let's see. Okay. So let's see.

53:51

Let's see, Scott. In any case, I don't believe Van Til ever intended presuppositionalism to be presented as some direct, deductive, classical style argument for God's existence.

53:59

So why would there be premises? Now, I don't know if you're asking me that. Now, you're right.

54:05

Van Til offered an indirect argument. Okay? Now, by the way, the assertion that Van Til's argument commits the fallacy of the

54:16

Petitio Principi, the begging the question, is actually wrongheaded because the fallacy of the

54:23

Petitio Principi is a fallacy that is committed within the context of direct argumentation.

54:30

But by definition, Van Til's argument essentially is an indirect argument, and so it doesn't make sense to claim that it commits that argument.

54:37

Now, the reason why I put it as a deductive argument is to show that the argument is not fallaciously circular so that when

54:45

I lay out the premises, like, for example, if knowledge is possible, the

54:51

Christian world is true. Knowledge is possible. Therefore, the Christian world is true. And then the first premise being the transcendental premise, and you defend the transcendental premise by offering kind of a transcendental defense of that premise.

55:04

I put it out like that so that it's easier for people to see kind of my line of reasoning and to make a distinction between what

55:12

I'm presupposing when I make the argument versus what is listed as a premise in the argument.

55:18

That's why I make the distinction between a presupposition of an argument and the premise of an argument. I hope that makes sense.

55:24

That's kind of why I put it out in that form. But I know, yes, Van Til didn't originally intend the argument to look that way.

55:33

All right? All right. Let's see here. So No Compromise says, couldn't naturalists just appeal to the process of evolution as preconditions for induction?

55:51

Kind of like Descartes, I think, therefore I am. Maybe it would be we exist, therefore induction exists.

55:59

No, that's a very vague evolution. You mean the random process of change is the precondition for regularity?

56:07

I don't see how that works. Even understanding the process of evolution presupposes uniformity.

56:13

Remember, induction presupposes uniformity. So appealing to evolution, okay, and the principles and processes of evolution, you're still going to have to presuppose categories of uniformity.

56:23

And we're just going to ask that question. It's not the same as I think, therefore I am. Because to deny your own existence, you have to exist in order to deny your own existence.

56:34

Now, you say we exist, therefore induction exists. We didn't have to exist in such a way that we were able to infer certain things.

56:43

We could have evolved as a simple kind of organism that couldn't think in those categories. So it's not necessarily true, right?

56:51

So, yeah, I wouldn't agree there. Thank you for that, though. Okay, I think we can, now we're getting into leprechauns.

57:02

What are you guys talking about? All right, and let me stop there before. Well, I did say we are going to cover in a video unicorns.

57:10

But leprechauns, we might mention leprechauns as well. We'll see. All right, well, that's it for this live stream.

57:16

We're right there at the top of the hour. So please stay tuned for next Tuesday, 50 pre -sub questions answered.

57:24

All right, thank you so much, guys, for listening in. I appreciate you, and I hope you guys have a super awesome evening.