Where are we headed? Today I want to show a brief outline of the philosophic system I advocate, which I call Inductionism.
My philosophy has three main normative principles:
1) Seek your own life by gaining knowledge.
2) Gain knowledge by inductive reason.
3) Base your faith on facts.
Always have a ready defense for the hope within you, says 1 Peter 3:15. What is that defense?
Some Christians will tell you they believe God’s Word, and he is God, and that settles it. But this kind of argument is no defense. It isn’t even logical. It presupposes the very thing it sets out to defend.
Growing up in a variety of churches, I had the chance to hear diverse perspectives. What is faith? Why should we have faith? Some people told me it was wrong to ask too many questions or to have doubts. Others said questions and doubts were part of the process of taking an idea seriously. It’s not bad to doubt, if you work through that doubt and find the truth.
“Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Was he right to say this? Thomas didn’t tell us his epistemology. We don’t even know his attitude as he said those words. I suspect he was trembling, not indignant.
Was Thomas being reasonable? It seems ambiguous.
When disputing or discussing, it’s common to grant an opponent’s premise for the sake of argument. But we don’t always need to, and it’s not always desirable.
Take this example:
One who supports “Planned Parenthood” and the harvesting of infant body parts argues as follows:
“I thought that according to Christianity all babies go to heaven anyway. So why do you care?”
See what the person is doing? He’s not advocating for his own position, but seeking merely to reduce the Christian view to absurdity.
One of the most important questions for the Christian thinker is:
How does the truth of Scripture relate to the truth of philosophy, or science, or history?
If we put it in terms of “revelation,” it becomes: How does special revelation relate to general revelation?
