Z Man said:
It's called inductive reasoning, and it's the best we can do with what we have in the Scriptures Clete. I would believe that as Christians, it would be best to base our conclusions upon Scripture alone, correct? Otherwise, anything can be truth.
The Scriptures tell us numerous times of God causing calamity. You can't argue against that. God caused the flood in Genesis; He caused several plagues that killed several people; He caused famine; He caused death and destruction; and He caused these events in several places and upon several peoples (Sodom, Gomorrah, Egypt, Amorites, Israelites, etc). Whether these cases are God casting judgement upon the people or not, the point is Scripture declares God caused the events.
Now, through inductive reasoning, every sane and reasonable person can only conclude one thing from this:
Major catastrophes and tragedies in the Bible were caused by God
THEREFORE
God is behind ALL catastrophes and tragedies in life
It's the ONLY reasonable conclusion Clete. If a person was to research the color of crows, and after years of studying find that all observable crows were black, I'm confident their conclusion would be that all crows are black. In our case as Christians, our studies of Scripture lead to an inevitable conclusion that God is the cause of ALL catastrophes.
To say God only caused what is said in the Bible leads to the questions I have been asking you and Knight;
What other sources do you have that lead to the conclusion that God is only limited to causing the events we read about in the Bible, and not all of them?
You just stated that whether I used verses in context or not, they wouldn't prove anything. Well, again, what 'outside' source do you suggest Clete? Is there a more important book out there that the rest of us Christians don't know about? Please, enlighten us...
This post is an excellent example of the reason why I always say that theology must be BOTH Biblical AND of sound reason. If you leave either one at the table you're in real trouble. You happen to be in double trouble because you've managed to leave both at the table and gone completely off the deep end into total lunacy!
Knight has done a fine job of dealing with the Biblical problems with this argument so I will focus on the fallacious reasoning process.
Your reasoning basically goes like this...
We know that God did cause some catastrophes therefore God has caused all catastrophes.
That is known in formal logic as a "faulty (or hasty) generalization" and may also be an example of "Dicto Simpliciter", (although I haven't confirmed that latter one yet - I'm working on it).
You did get one thing right. It is a form of inductive reasoning but it is an inductive fallacy, a very well documented one at that. Here's part of what an article at Wikipedia.com says about the fallacy...
A faulty generalization, also known as an inductive fallacy, is any of several errors of inductive inference:
Hasty generalization is the fallacy of examining just one or very few examples or studying a single case, and generalizing that to be representative of the whole class of objects or phenomena.
And the Arkansas State University website has this to say about the fallacy...
Faulty (or hasty) generalization: One engages in a faulty generalization when the scope of the evidence is too small or the quality of it is too poor to support the conclusion. In his only trip by car through St. Louis, Joe witnesses the aftermath of the worst car wreck (involving several vehicles and injuries) he's seen in his life. If, upon arriving home, Joe concludes that St. Louis is the most dangerous city in the U.S. in which to drive, he has committed a hasty generalization. In order to justify such a claim, one would probably need to consult reliable, recent data on automobile accident rates in U.S. metropolitan areas.
And one more from the Nizkor Project website Nizkor.org...
Description of Hasty Generalization
This fallacy is committed when a person draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample that is not large enough. It has the following form:
- Sample S, which is too small, is taken from population P.
- Conclusion C is drawn about Population P based on S.
The person committing the fallacy is misusing the following type of reasoning, which is known variously as Inductive Generalization, Generalization, and Statistical Generalization:
- X% of all observed A's are B''s.
- Therefore X% of all A's are Bs.
The fallacy is committed when not enough A's are observed to warrant the conclusion. If enough A's are observed then the reasoning is not fallacious.
Small samples will tend to be unrepresentative. As a blatant case, asking one person what she thinks about gun control would clearly not provide an adequate sized sample for determining what Canadians in general think about the issue. The general idea is that small samples are less likely to contain numbers proportional to the whole population. For example, if a bucket contains blue, red, green and orange marbles, then a sample of three marbles cannot possible be representative of the whole population of marbles. As the sample size of marbles increases the more likely it becomes that marbles of each color will be selected in proportion to their numbers in the whole population. The same holds true for things others than marbles, such as people and their political views.
Since Hasty Generalization is committed when the sample (the observed instances) is too small, it is important to have samples that are large enough when making a generalization. The most reliable way to do this is to take as large a sample as is practical. There are no fixed numbers as to what counts as being large enough. If the population in question is not very diverse (a population of cloned mice, for example) then a very small sample would suffice. If the population is very diverse (people, for example) then a fairly large sample would be needed. The size of the sample also depends on the size of the population. Obviously, a very small population will not support a huge sample. Finally, the required size will depend on the purpose of the sample. If Bill wants to know what Joe and Jane think about gun control, then a sample consisting of Bill and Jane would (obviously) be large enough. If Bill wants to know what most Australians think about gun control, then a sample consisting of Bill and Jane would be far too small.
People often commit Hasty Generalizations because of bias or prejudice. For example, someone who is a sexist might conclude that all women are unfit to fly jet fighters because one woman crashed one. People also commonly commit Hasty Generalizations because of laziness or sloppiness. It is very easy to simply leap to a conclusion and much harder to gather an adequate sample and draw a justified conclusion. Thus, avoiding this fallacy requires minimizing the influence of bias and taking care to select a sample that is large enough.
One final point: a Hasty Generalization, like any fallacy, might have a true conclusion. However, as long as the reasoning is fallacious there is no reason to accept the conclusion based on that reasoning.
Examples of Hasty Generalization
- Smith, who is from England, decides to attend graduate school at Ohio State University. He has never been to the US before. The day after he arrives, he is walking back from an orientation session and sees two white (albino) squirrels chasing each other around a tree. In his next letter home, he tells his family that American squirrels are white.
- Sam is riding her bike in her home town in Maine, minding her own business. A station wagon comes up behind her and the driver starts beeping his horn and then tries to force her off the road. As he goes by, the driver yells "get on the sidewalk where you belong!" Sam sees that the car has Ohio plates and concludes that all Ohio drivers are jerks.
- Bill: "You know, those feminists all hate men."
Joe: "Really?"
Bill: "Yeah. I was in my philosophy class the other day and that Rachel chick gave a presentation."
Joe: "Which Rachel?"
Bill: "You know her. She's the one that runs that feminist group over at the Women's Center. She said that men are all sexist pigs. I asked her why she believed this and she said that her last few boyfriends were real sexist pigs. "
Joe: "That doesn't sound like a good reason to believe that all of us are pigs."
Bill: "That was what I said."
Joe: "What did she say?"
Bill: "She said that she had seen enough of men to know we are all pigs. She obviously hates all men."
Joe: "So you think all feminists are like her?"
Bill: "Sure. They all hate men."
The Biblical material (or lack thereof) is all irrelevant because the form of your argument is fallacious. Does that prove your conclusion wrong? No, as indicated in the above article, it doesn't. But we aren't the one's saying that God causes all cases of cancer and every hurricane and tornado that happens, you are; and based on your line of reasoning there is no reason at all to think you're even close to being right.
Resting in Him,
Clete
