Monday, July 04, 2005

Induction and Atheism

Trawling the depths of the blogosphere I found this surprisingly rank nugget of reasoning about induction and the rationality of atheism . I think this would have to be the post that has annoyed me most so far today.
The argument is more or less this:

1.Induction is without justification under atheism.
2.Induction is part of all our reasoning, and is thus true.
Therefore it is non-sensical to be atheist.

I would like to invite contributors those who are intersted in this to please come and give some feedback to this smug and somewhat mistaken individual. I know I will, once I have devised something suitably caustic.

8 comments:

Samuel Douglas said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
MH said...

Since I seem to have missed some major developments in theology - that the existence of God can be assumed (as the original post implicity claims) - and metaphysics - a disproof of Hume's Scepticism - I think that I should sit this one out.

Samuel Douglas said...

You big wuss. By the way, you appeared to have remove the technorati tag I attached to the bottom of the post.

Samuel Douglas said...

You didn't follow the link and actually read what was said did you? Do I have to everything for you?
Yes they do appear to have read Hume. And they are pretty down on inductive reasoning (I think). The problem is that they cannot accept that it is essentially irrational in the sense that it can never be deductivly valid without presuposing certain metaphysical laws,thus begging the question. Theri interpreation seems to be essentially: Stupid Atheists, you have no rationale for expecting regularities throughout space and time, us Believers on the other hand, we KNOW that God will have things be in the future as they were in the past, so being inductive is rationaly justified for us. Take that Stupid Atheists. Hahahahahaha!
Sigh. Please follow the link and read the post, and then tell this person why he is wrong.

Samuel Douglas said...

I would like to apologise to Keith Deven for calling him a 'waste of carbon'. That was uncalled for. I do however maintain that he is still wrong.

Brent Rasmussen said...

http://utiannex.blogspot.com/2005/07/inductive-philosophy-and-strawman.html

MH said...

I did so read the post - it was the other afternoon - I was employing sarcasim [as I am presently].

I personally didn't feel that it feel outside my area of knowledge and that to attempt a refutation would lead to me looking like Midas.

MH said...

That last paragraph should read:
I personally felt that it fell outside my area of knowledge and that to attempt a refutation would lead to me looking like Midas.