Your comment is completely valid and points out that we can’t say everything at once and usually what we want to say is intended for a somewhat broader audience than you would probably find yourself in. You may have heard an emphasis or element in this episode that seemed to communicate that even an academic program like the PhD at a seminary has to be at least somewhat “practical.” It depends on what one means by that, but I would say that we have plenty of students who do not feel a call to pulpit ministry but academics and use that degree accordingly. But the degree itself is flexible enough that it can be practically or academically applied based on one’s career field.

Funding-wise, WTS has PhD scholarships that are determined by the faculty based on the committee’s decision on who the best candidates are for each respective field. Some students are a TA, but you’re right, those are very hard to get. Worth pursuing, though! (With fully understanding that I had my Admissions hat on in this final paragraph.)

I remember Dr.C.Davis emphasizing the fact that Luther’s confrontation with Rome began, and was motivated, by his – notice – pastoral concerns, his deep and heart-felt concerns for his ‘flock’, as they say. He was really gutted to think that the Rome not only denied the church goer assurance of salvation, but capitalized on their desperation and helplessness.

The other side of the coin: I heard some one say – it may have been Dr.Tipton during the course on Barth, during Modern Theology – something about the danger of a theologian losing touch with the church. He said something about keeping a careful eye on those ivory tower types who have neglected the church or ministry or whatever (I’m paraphrasing). This is a keen observation, one which resonates with your concern about the relationship of academics to ministry.

I doubt, honestly, that you really could do a PhD at Westminster and not come out of it better prepared to serve the church (and I sort of hope you couldn’t): I see no distinction between the kind of scholarship (rigorous, let me tell you) which WTS expects of its students, and practicality. Not all scholarship is esoteric – no such fence at WTS, I submit.

Anyway, I don’t plan to go into ministry. I hope to teach, God willing. So – how do I envision the Reformed role in scholarship/academia? First, the same way I envision the Christian role in lawn care or scuba diving: to the glory and enjoyment of God. But more specifically, every subject matter offers a different set of challenges and opportunities. In any field – the sciences, the humanities, the arts – you’ll find people dead set on using and abusing God’s truth; and in every field, there will be an abundance of opportunities to bring glory to God, to answer those challenges, and to edify the church by the enjoyment and exploration of your particular corner of God’s massive truth. In that sense, being an academic I think is rightly thought of as ministry.

I likely missed the whole point of your comments, Patrick. If so, my apologies.

Thanks

All of you, therefore, are pastor-academics, and it does show with how often each of you digresses into the “practical” value of your PhD. You can write lay-people presuppositional philosophy works, and reduce reformed epistemology and a critique of foundationalism to a Bible-study or youth group level. In a sense, then, pastor-academics are academic-popularizers, not purely academics. Even Oliphint repeatedly says he is not a philosopher, not interacting with academic philosophers at their level.

Of course, I think there is a much needed place for such pastor-academics, but this episode, as I heard it, did not seem to leave a place for pure academics. Maybe you can reduce reformed epistemology, in its bare-bones, to a popular level, but most of what goes on in academic philosophy (say) cannot be simplified, nor should it be. What place, then, does a Reformed believer have in pure academics? (Incidentally, I find lay-people in Reformed churches are generally far more skeptical or dismissive of pure academics than they are of pastor-academics, say. The attitude often is, if it cannot be explained at my current level of knowledge, it is probably not worth pursuing.)

Finally, I’m wondering what the funding options are at WTS for PhD studies. Presumably they don’t have TAships, and few, if any, fellowships. Are all of you working or taking out loans, or supported by a church? That would be another significant difference between doing PhD work at WTS as opposed to work in academic philosophy, or even a not-so-pastoral theology program like Notre Dame’s, where most of the PhD students are TAs if I’m correct.

Mike: I think a central point is being missed here. This discussion is about worldviews. You are arguing from within your worldview critiquing mine. I am arguing from within my worldview critiquing yours. And from within my worldview, I have every right to make the claim above. Why? Because that’s my starting point! That’s what my worldview asserts – that GOD has revealed himself to us, his creation of the world, who we are and our relationship to him and so forth. Get it? That’s my worldview and if my worldview is correct those claims are valid claims to make.

No, I don’t get it. I don’t get the concept that one can merely assert that the totality of one’s metaphysical beliefs constitute a “worldview” and thus are immune to critique and without need for justification. It’s stupid and sophomoric, and if I’d thought that you were eventually going to resort to it I wouldn’t have spent so much time typing arguments and trying to understand yours.

You seem to be perfectly willing to assert that the metaphysical Truth about the universe is exactly what you believe, no more and no less. Your justification for thinking that things are the way that you think they are is that you think they are – that’s it. Can you explain to me why I would continue talking to someone who takes that position? I can’t think of a reason.

Two more things:

First, the first part of your post totally misses my point. Re-read my post and watch for the word “if”, then see if you can get your head around the difference between the problem of induction and the uniformity of nature, and the issues that creates for your justification of your use of induction. I’m not going to try a third time to explain the dichotomy there, because I suspect you don’t actually care whether your argument is coherent. I’m not going to post any more comments until you demonstrate an understanding of this issue.

Second, since you didn’t notice my first or second responses to your question about evidence and rationality, here’s another (final) attempt.

Throughout this conversation I have tried my best to stick to epistemology. So, for the last time, in terms of epistemology: my experiences and observations seem to be evidence for themselves. In the language of Reformed epistemology, they would be properly basic, if that helps you understand at all. I don’t have anything else that could constitute evidence that my experiences are reliably connected to reality. Likewise, I don’t have anything else that could constitute evidence for the general reliability of induction. So, I have two options.

1) Decide that the fact that I can’t be certain my experiences represent reality and that they don’t provide evidence for the reliability of induction implies that experiences do not constitute evidence of anything at all, or
2) Decide that my experiences do constitute evidence for what they seem to constitute evidence for.

If I take option one, my epistemology becomes hyperbolic skepticism, I can have no ontological beliefs, and I can make no further claims. Rationality is over. If I take option two, I can have an epistemology that includes the caveat that I can’t make metaphysical claims about absolute truth, nor can I talk someone out of hyperbolic skepticism. I can define a set of rules for drawing conclusions from evidence which includes meaningful concepts of rationality and irrationality. So I choose option two. Maybe “irrational” isn’t a good word for choosing option one – maybe “arrational” would be better, but that’s not a word. In any case, only under option two does the concept of rationality exist in a meaningful way. Get it?

Mike: It appears from the above paragraph that you don’t understand what the problem of induction is. Take a look at the following quote from the Stanford Encyclodedia of Philosophy – Hume’s view is that the experience of constant conjunction fosters a “habit of the mind” that leads us to anticipate the conclusion on the occasion of a new instance of the second premise. The force of induction, the force that drives the inference, is thus not an objective feature of the world, but a subjective power; the mind’s capacity to form inductive habits. The objectivity of causality, the objective support of inductive inference, is thus an illusion, an instance of what Hume calls the mind’s “great propensity to spread itself on external objects” (Hume THN, 167).

Note that he refers to the driving force behind induction as a subjective power, not an objective feature of the world. The problem of induction is not that our inductions are only correct 60% or 80% of the time! The problem is that there is no justification for assuming any relationship whatever between past, current and future observation!

Steve: I think that past experience counts as evidence that future experiences will be similar, for the kind of claims made above – and that’s the only kind of claim I care about making. Of course there’s a chance that all my inductions are nonsense. What chance? I have no idea, so I leave it out of my consideration.

Mike: Amazing! You don’t have an answer so you simply ignore the problem! Your justification is completely non-rational!

Steve: That is why your assumption that God ensures that nature is uniform is not only unjustified, but irrelevant. So what if nature is uniform? Does that suddenly make your inductions correct?

Mike: How many times do I have to say this? I am not claiming that the Christian worldview somehow provides a justification for perfection! We do our best. Sometime we make mistakes. Sometimes the data is incomplete or incorrect. But at least the Christian worldview provides a justification for induction. It provides a starting point for making sense of the world! You worldview does not!

Steve: That’s not an argument. I would be exactly as justified in saying that nature is uniform because it’s in the nature of nature to be uniform. But that is what is the claim that this whole argument is about! Why do you think it’s acceptable for you to make arbitrary uniformity claims which are utterly unverifiable, without providing any justification? Or, more precisely, why do you think it’s OK for you, Mike, to make such claims, but not OK for anyone else? Is it because you think it’s God making those claims, not you? And you’re just accepting what God says about himself? That can’t provide a justification, because it would still be you making the claim that those claims were made by God. So what makes you such an authority on which claims God has made?

Mike : I think a central point is being missed here. This discussion is about worldviews. You are arguing from within your worldview critiquing mine. I am arguing from within my worldview critiquing yours. And from within my worldview, I have every right to make the claim above. Why? Because that’s my starting point! That’s what my worldview asserts – that GOD has revealed himself to us, his creation of the world, who we are and our relationship to him and so forth. Get it? That’s my worldview and if my worldview is correct those claims are valid claims to make.

You, on the other hand, have a completely different starting point. You assume the autonomy of the human mind – that you can look at the world and make sense of it without any help from GOD.

I understand that based upon your worldview, presupposing GOD is a nonstarter. You think that unless we present evidence that makes sense according to your rules it’s not legitimate. But remember, I am not trying to defend you worldview, I am defending mine. And my assumptions are valid within my worldview. And look where your worldview leaves you – saying things like ”I think you can make statistical estimates in the absence of the uniformity of nature”. Yes you could but there would be no justification for assuming the estimates would tell you anything about the world (see my comments earlier in this posting). So if we are searching for a cure for cancer, why even bother to look at scientific research? Why not just take a wild guess? Is that really the way you think we should do medical research? According to your worldview it is.

Think of this as a test of worldviews. The test is: Does a worldview allow us to make sense of the world? Seems like a good test since we both agree we can make sense of the world. And my worldview passes the test, yours flunks the test. And so my worldview should be accepted.

I know at this point you are going to assert: “That’s not good enough. What about all those other worldviews? You have to disprove all those other worldviews. All those other worldviews count as evidence against your worldview.” No they don’t. Your claim is that my worldview and those other non-naturalistic worldviews do essentially the same thing – someone claiming to speak for GOD and no justification to back it up. You think we are all in the same boat. But can you prove we are all in the same boat? Have you done a thorough investigation of every aspect of my worldview and those other worldviews, compared them and proved we are all in the same boat? No, you just assumed that to be the case. Until you have something to back up that claim it’s just an unsupported assertion. Each worldview stands on its own merits.

In other words, I don’t have to show that my worldview should be accepted over out all those other worldviews (although that is the case) in order to show that it should be accepted over yours.

One more thing. A few posting back we discussed why you chose your worldview over the Hindu mystic’s worldview. I claimed that your choice was completely subjective. You denied that and asserted that you chose your worldview because to reject the empirical evidence would be irrational. You talked about “evidence isn’t evidence”- something like that. I couldn’t understand what you were trying to say and asked for a clarification. There was no response. Could you tell me what you meant when you said that to reject the empirical evidence would be irrational?

What is the current consensus on propitiation vs. expiation? Did Roger Nicole in fact soundly refute Dodd’s position? I note that the New Revised Standard Version goes with “sacrifice of atonement” at Romans 3:25,

Mike, I know what the problem of induction is. I also understand what you mean by the uniformity of nature. But those two concepts have a more complicated relationship than you’re acknowledging. If there were a solution to the problem of induction, it would not require nature to be uniform – if nature were totally chaotic in 20% of cases, we could still make valid inductions by adding the caveat that our inductions are only correct 80% of the time. Similarly, nature could be totally uniform and totally determined by a set of unbreakable laws, but that uniformity could include imperceptible fairies who are dedicated to ensuring that a random fraction of our inductions are incorrect – in that case, induction would be unreliable.

That is why your assumption that God ensures that nature is uniform is not only unjustified, but irrelevant. So what if nature is uniform? Does that suddenly make your inductions correct? No, it doesn’t:

P1. All swans I’ve seen are white.
P2. Swans will never turn into goats, or violate any other aspects of the uniformity of nature.
—————————————————–
C1. All swans are white.

That is not a valid argument, whether or not you grant P2. So you are without a solution to the problem of induction (or, if you have one, you haven’t presented it yet). Nevertheless, you probably will continue to use induction even in the absence of a solution.

You wrote that “making a statistical estimate in the first place presupposes the uniformity of nature.” I don’t agree, but I think we have different understandings of the epistemology of statistics. I think you can make statistical estimates in the absence of the uniformity of nature – actually, you can make them in the absence of a lot of information. It just depends on the kind of claim you are making. If I make the claim, “There is a 50% chance of getting heads in a coin toss”, I’m not including the chance that the sun will explode before the coin hits the ground, or the chance that a bird will grab it out of the air, or the chance that nature will turn out not to be uniform and my coin will turn into a bowl of petunias. I’m implicitly saying, “(given that nothing unexpected happens)”. In other words, I’m leaving out of my statistical estimate events for which I have no way of knowing the probabilities. I have to do this, whether or not I believe in the uniformity of nature, because there are always things I do not know. I have to base my predictions on the evidence I do have, not the evidence I don’t have.

I think that past experience counts as evidence that future experiences will be similar, for the kind of claims made above – and that’s the only kind of claim I care about making. Of course there’s a chance that all my inductions are nonsense. What chance? I have no idea, so I leave it out of my consideration.

If you want to claim that past experience doesn’t count as evidence in favor of similar future experience, you can do that – you’re free to make your epistemology as strict as you want. But I have to ask, what are you going to do next? Saying that God ensures the uniformity of nature won’t turn your experiences back into evidence – in fact, excluding experience from your standard of evidence removes your experience of God as a piece of evidence as well. So, again, if you think the problem of induction is such a big deal, and should have some impact on how we go about making claims, what’s your solution?

Steve</b…you are begging the question by now assuming that God is uniform in time – an assumption that you again cannot justify by rational argument.

Mike: </bActually, I am not assuming GOD is uniform in time. GOD is not in time.

Uniform in your time, Mike. You assume that your God will be the same God to you tomorrow as he is today.

Mike: </bHe is, and this is a very sloppy way of putting it, he is outside or beyond time. He created the time and space (Gen 1:1, 2 Tim 1:9).

It does seem like a pretty sloppy way of saying whatever you’re trying to say. If you’re so sure of that claim, and you think you understand what it means, could you perhaps tell me when and where God perpetrated this creation?

Mike: </bGOD does not change by his very nature (Num 23:19). Similarly, because of his nature, it is impossible for GOD to lie (Heb 6:18).

That’s not an argument. I would be exactly as justified in saying that nature is uniform because it’s in the nature of nature to be uniform. But that is what is the claim that this whole argument is about! Why do you think it’s acceptable for you to make arbitrary uniformity claims which are utterly unverifiable, without providing any justification? Or, more precisely, why do you think it’s OK for you, Mike, to make such claims, but not OK for anyone else? Is it because you think it’s God making those claims, not you? And you’re just accepting what God says about himself? That can’t provide a justification, because it would still be you making the claim that those claims were made by God. So what makes you such an authority on which claims God has made?

In fact, today its a matter of course to scoff at Van Til, even if one has not actually read or understood Van Til’s critique. Its almost to the point of being: “everyone knows that Van Til blew it on Barth.” That kind of claim is unfortunate, but its universal.

Mike: Actually, I am not assuming GOD is uniform in time. GOD is not in time. He is, and this is a very sloppy way of putting it, he is outside or beyond time. He created the time and space (Gen 1:1, 2 Tim 1:9). GOD does not change by his very nature (Num 23:19). Similarly, because of his nature, it is impossible for GOD to lie (Heb 6:18).

Steve: Luckily, we don’t need absolute certainty. It’s perfectly normal to believe things because you think that the belief is rational based on the evidence you posses, without any need to be absolutely certain. You can’t be absolutely certain about whether it will rain today, but I don’t think that precludes making a rational choice about whether or not to go on a picnic. You can check the weather report, look at the sky yourself, etc., then make your decision. If you see that there the forecast predicts a 95% chance of rain and you can’t see the sun for thunderheads, the rational choice is to cancel your picnic (assuming you want to stay dry). Conversely, if there is a 0% forecast for rain and not a cloud in the sky, it would be rational to go on a picnic.

Mike: I am not trying to claim that we need absolute certainty. I understand the point you were trying to make about the weather. And a similar point can be made about many other things in this world that are statistical in nature. Another example would be the laws of thermodynamics. But I am raising another point. Even talking about 85% chance of this or 95% chance of that presuppose an assumption of an underlying order to nature. For example, suppose you toss a coin over and over. Each time the exact location where it lands will vary because the forces your hand applies to the coin will be a little different. But the equations of dynamics and gravity that describe the path the coin will follow for each toss (once we provide inputs to the equation such as the forces we apply to the coin, aerodynamic drag and such) will be identical. See the difference? It’s the law like nature of the universe I am talking about, not the fact that we can’t precisely predict where the coin will land. The law like nature of the universe was what I was referring to in my earlier posting where I talked about the “uniformity of nature”. To put it another way, making a statistical estimate in the first place presupposes the uniformity of nature.

Repeating a paragraph from my earlier posting where I talked about the problem of induction:

For example, thru repeated observation we develop the laws of gravity. But what is the justification for assuming that the next time you release a rock it will fall to the ground? You may say “every other time I have released a rock it fell to the ground”. But note that this is a subtle form of begging the question because this presupposes that future events will follow the same laws that past events have followed – which is the very question being asked. Or to put it another way, granting that in the past the future has been like the past, how do we know that in the future the future will continue to be like the past?

Notice that in the example I talked about the law of gravity. That to presuppose the law of gravity would hold sway in the future because it had done so in the past was begging the question (circular reasoning). And justifying something based upon circular reasoning is no justification at all. The problem of induction is not that we can’t be 100% certain about gravity in the future – it’s that there is no justification for any assumption at all.