Is God the basis for our ability to know the world?

One Christian argument goes back to the philosopher, David Hume's book, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In it, he concluded that our reliance on inference and induction about our experiences in the world, and that the existence of the world itself, cannot be logically proved, but are known to us only through custom and habit. In the 250 years since he wrote this, philosophers have tried numerous techniques to give induction a legitimate, firm basis, but that goal has not been achieved. It seems to be the case that there is no way to conclusively prove that we can reliably depend on science and nature to behave the way we have come to expect - that tomorrow the sun may decide not to rise or an apple may not fall to the ground when dropped. A Christian argument is that only by belief in god can we make the firm statement that our inferences about the world, about causality, about the uniformity of nature, are justified. God, in his moral perfection and desire for us to live fully, does not hide reality from us, but reveals it through nature, and in fact is the basis for science!

This hopeful, but desperate (and in my opinion naive), assertion seems to overlook a few unpleasant historic facts. Since the beginning of the modern era science 500 years ago, religious institutions (both the Catholic and Protestant branches) have systematically opposed many important scientific advances. Among these are the facts of biological evolution, cosmology and the extreme age of the universe, and heliocentricsm. They resisted the implication of how geological processes work (case in point - the flood), new discoveries addressing the problems of consciousness and neuroscience, the search for the origin of life, etc. Secondly, apologists regularly allow god to revoke the uniformity of nature and the universality of physical laws by permitting him to break those rules whenever and however he likes. So, on the contrary, their god does NOT care about presenting a uniform face of nature to humans, but arbitrarily violates those laws whenever it is convenient. This shows not a promise to reveal nature to us, but a disdain for consistency regarding laws of nature.

Vincent Torley, an apologist, writes,

"...Even if we assume that objects <in the universe> somehow instantiate rules, there remains the epistemic problem of knowing whether we’ve chosen the right model, or identified the right mathematical equation (i.e. laws of Nature) for characterizing the rules that define a certain kind of object – be it a tiny electron or a star, like the sun. But if we <assume> that God wants to make intelligent beings, and that God wants these intelligent beings to reason their way to God’s existence – then we can infer that the rules which are embodied by objects in the natural world must be tailor-made to fit the minds of intelligent beings that are capable of contemplating their Creator. In other words, the universe is designed to be knowable by us. Hence we don’t need to concern ourselves with the theoretical possibility that the rules which characterize things might be too complicated even in principle for us to grasp. God, then, is the ultimate Guarantor that science can work ... Either God exists or scientific knowledge is impossible."

He is invoking Descartes' attempt to prove that god would never deceive us:

"God ... a being having all those perfections that I cannot comprehend ... and a being subject to no defects whatever ... cannot be a deceiver, for it is manifest by the light of nature that all fraud and deception depend on some defect."

Nevermind that god is a known deceiver (e.g., he told Adam and Eve they would die if they ate the fruit and they didn't, he told Abraham to kill Issac, and then stopped him at the last minute, he planted a "deceiving spirit in the mouth of all his prophets", and in the new testament, "sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie"). The truth is that we don't know why or how it is that humans, and humans alone, have figured out how to probe the secrets of the universe. We do have the curiosity, and we seem to be slowly figuring it out. Religionists are talking nonsense when the confidently credit god with giving us this skill. There is absolutely no basis for making and defending such an unprovable claim. Anyone could make a similar claim about their own personal creator entity, whether it is the Christian god or some super-intelligent alien race, or the result of an experiment by an other-worldly cosmic hacker who threw some rules together and hit the "start" button.

Speculation about such untestable ideas is fruitless. Barring evidence to the contrary, it is most reasonable to provisionally conclude that we humans have developed this talent ourselves despite a steady religious headwind blowing us back, discouraging scientific investigation and any stifling questions whose answers don't come from accepted religious dogma. As a species we happen to be gifted with large brains and dexterous hands and the ability to think about abstract models. It is supremely presumptuous for apologists to now start giving god credit for what man has done with no help from them or their god.

It is true that our expectations of the future matters of fact lies in the relation of cause and effect, say both Hume and common sense.

"By means of that relation alone, we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses."

The only way we could obtain knowledge of causality would be to infer it from our past observations of regularities. Our prediction of future events based on the past observations is not a rational activity, but just a matter of habit and an intuitive sense of probability – the odds of the sun not rising are infinitesimal. When we project findings about these relations into the future, we must use an intermediate premise, the uniformity of nature, which is risky, because it can change at any time and be proven false. The chicken thinks that the human will always bring it grain until the day he comes with a hatchet. According to Hume:

"It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning."

For some reason, there is a trend in modern western thought to obsess with obtaining absolute, complete certainty - in particular it drives Christians to find a god who they can have utter confidence in. It seems to the apologists that unless you can deductively prove your theory (in this case, that the inductive method is reliable), you have failed. Employing the fallacious argument from consequences, Torley and others like him posit a god to save us from the uncomfortable position of not really being sure about our knowledge of the world.

But we should consider this need for a rigorous proof that we are not misperceiving the world - is it really essential to be able to produce such a proof? The problem of induction doesn't have to be seen as such a large obstacle. Pragmatists are not worried by it at all. They see the uniformity question as falling out in one of these ways:

1. Nature really is uniform and regular, or
2. Nature is “somewhat” uniform and regular, or
3. Nature really is not uniform at all, and there is no significant pattern or connection between past and future.

For cases (a) and (b), induction would be a wiser rule to follow than not. Only for case (c) is induction of no help. But in cases (a), (b), and (c) abandoning induction is NEVER helpful. So, the pragmatic approach would be to use the method which produces the most success, which is to act as if induction is warranted.

Yet another approach to "disappear" the problem of induction is to approach it through "Coherentism". This model of knowledge asserts that scientific statements can be said to be valid if they fit cleanly into an existing coherent system of other known facts or beliefs. If they form part of a coherent whole (such as the existing body of science), they can be said to be correct. So, whether or not induction is warranted is irrelevant - it is the integrity and coherence of our theories that matter. In this view, there is no requirement that scientific statements always be supported by more fundamental statements (a la infinite regress), or that we make assumptions about the uniformity of nature. Instead our theories and worldviews can be said to be provisionally “true” if they successfully serve their role in a network of mutually supporting scientific disciplines. Similarly, the fundamental statements that support more complex concepts in several disciplines are buttressed by their repeated successful application.

Wittgenstein advises us to stop trying to talk about things that we will never be able to decide. Some things must simply be observed in awe and admiration. The metaphysics of reality falls into that category. In his view, philosophy had nothing to say about it. He demonstrated that when people try to gain certainty or to convey it to others by making controversial, confusing, or debatable propositions they are engaging in confused thinking and semantic nonsense that hinders understanding instead of helping it. Through his work, he attempted to clear the table of philosophical double-talk (such as the nature of causality and reality) by dismissing it and the majority of philosophical questions as simple misuse of language. He saw a human tendency to become trapped in the language we use to describe our ideas to such a degree that the ideas become more important than the reality that they may or may not actually refer to. Our conceptual confusions involving our use of language are the cause of this, and most other problems in philosophy. To Wittgenstein, the search for certainty of our perceptions is a waste of time.

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

In more recent times, probabilistic approaches have been brought to bear on the problem of induction - specifically Bayes Theorem, which bring in the concept of "prior probability". Of course it is "possible" that the laws of nature are not what we think they are, but is it "probable"? This is a key distinction which some Christians tend to overlook both in this context, and in Pascal's Wager (where they worry about the possibility of going to hell, versus the probability of it not happening). If these laws were going to change at some time, and that time has not occurred in the last several billion years, there is not a shred of evidence that indicates that it is going to occur in the next few seconds, years, or centuries. From a purely probabilistic framework, the odds of everything being turned topsy-turvy in the near future are very, very, very slim when measured against all of the opportunities for change that came and went in the past. For this reason it would be rational to assume the present trend is likely to continue, and highly irrational to assume it will not. The chances of something like this which never occurred in the past, and shows no sign of occurring in the future, are infinitesimally small - below any threshold of concern. Although we can't prove that the continuity of past/present/future will persist, a betting man could reliably count on it.

There appears to be no deductive proof of uniformity of nature or for the inferential process which requires it, and as has been said again and again, you can't use induction to prove itself. But for all the reasons given in the 250 years since Hume, the existence of a uniform and predictable universe is very likely to be the case - so likely that any other possibility is vanishingly small. Whether we choose to defend this assertion with foundational axioms, coherent and mutually supportive lines of evidence, acceptance of an infinite series of increasingly more subtle explanations, relaxing of the requirement for a firm deductive proof, probabilistic methods (such as Bayes Theorem), relying on the "Criteria Of Adequacy", or inference to the best explanation, rejecting the basic principle of uniformity and the inductive method which assumes it requires a far greater effort than accepting it. An obsessive need for utter certainty drives Christians like Torley (and his fans) to invent a god who tells us that everything is OK, that we are OK, that we can have absolute certainty.

In any case, the scientists who are moving the intellectual football down the field are probably not concerned too much with any conclusions philosophers and theologians may or may not reach regarding their work. While we are debating, they are at work unraveling the secrets of the universe for us. Hey - Thanks Science!