yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Answering Presuppositionalism: Basic


2m read
·Nov 8, 2024

Theists who subscribe to the presuppositionalist school of thought say that atheists can't account for inductive reasoning. They claim that, in fact, whenever an atheist uses inductive reasoning, she is borrowing from the Christian worldview, because according to them, it's the only worldview that can account for the uniformity of nature, which is needed for inductive reasoning to work.

But even if the Christian is correct in his claim that an atheist can't account for a given facet of nature that she nevertheless depends upon, this is not that urgent deal-breaking problem that the presuppositionalist tends to paint for us.

Imagine a primitive society where most people believe that spirit ancestors reward the ritual act of watering a plant by causing that plant to grow. A person in this society who didn't believe in the existence of spirit ancestors would still go ahead and water his plants, because otherwise they would die.

The skeptics' peers might ask him, "How can you account for the fact that applying water causes the plant to grow in your worldview?" The skeptic, ignorant of plant biology, would have no answer. His peers might then say, "Every time you water your plants, you're borrowing from our worldview, because ours is the only system that can account for the connection between applying water to a plant and that plant's growth."

I hope the points I wanted to illustrate with this analogy are already clear, but I'll spell them out:

One, having an explanation does not make your position superior to that of those who may lack one.

Two, not being able to explain a phenomenon doesn't preclude you from legitimately assuming the reliability of that phenomenon.

Three, assuming the reliability of a phenomenon without being able to account for it does not mean that you implicitly accept the worldview of people claiming that theirs is the only explanation of that phenomenon.

Four, the failure of a person to explain a phenomenon doesn't invalidate their worldview or render it inconsistent.

Five, acknowledging that you don't have an answer is better than making things up.

More Articles

View All
Drew Houston - CEO and Founder of Dropbox | Entrepreneurship | Khan Academy
So, uh, excited to have Drew Hon here. Uh, you know, a very well-known figure amongst kind of our team out here. Um, and for those who are maybe watching this video later, uh, founder of Dropbox. How many, how many billions of people do you have using? I …
We're in DEFLATION for the first time in 22 years.
Well everybody, we are in deflation. This is the first time that Australia has been in deflation in literally 23 years. So check this out, this article reads consumer prices in Australia dropped by 0.3 percent year on year in Q2 2020. This was the first d…
The future of Real Estate: Are Real Estate Agents becoming obsolete?
What’s up you guys? It’s Graham here. So, I want to talk about today the future of being a real estate agent and if this is one day going to become an industry that’s gonna be obsolete, somewhat like the travel agent. Now, I’m mentioning this because a f…
Kinetic energy | Energy | Middle school physics | Khan Academy
Hello everyone! Let’s talk about kinetic energy. Now, “kinetic” might be an unfamiliar word, but it just comes from a Greek word that means “of motion.” So, kinetic energy is energy from motion. Any massive object that is in motion then has kinetic energy…
Substitution and income effects and the Law of Demand | APⓇ Microeconomics | Khan Academy
In other videos, we have already talked about the law of demand, which tells us—and this is probably already somewhat intuitive for you—that if a certain good is currently at a higher price, then the quantity demanded will be quite low. As the price were …
How a Tiny Dog Saved a National Geographic Expedition | Expedition Raw
Meet Scuba. This little gal might not look like a blood hound, but she helped out National Geographic in a huge way. My name is Alan Turchik, and I build cameras for National Geographic. My job takes me all over the world, deploying these camera systems. …