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God Reveals Knowledge So We Can Survive

Posted on February 10, 2021February 10, 2021 by Petros

God hates lies. Lies are an abomination to God. Lies oppose God. Sometimes, ungodly thinkers commit fallacies of prediction to oppose God. This quote explains one level of prediction. Some levels of prediction are helpful. Others are deceptive. Speaking about predictions without pointing out the difference between various levels of prediction is deceptive. It’s an equivocation fallacy and a package deal fallacy. You can look those up in The Encyclopedia of Logical Fallacies free for download from RealReality.org.

Level 1 Predictions:

Level one predictions are predictions we can use to design and build things. With these predictions, we can take actions according to well-tested methods using standardized materials and procedures. These predictions spring from scientific facts and scientific laws rather than scientific theories or scientific hypotheses. All this knowledge came from God even though we may now find it in books and databases. Even now, we can stand in the presence of the One Who knows everything and Who has all wisdom when we apply these predictions.

Examples:

looking up the proportions of chemicals needed to make a known glue
using knowledge of the strength of aluminum to design a light-weight support for an awning that will withstand 60 mph wind force
adding the right amount of lime to a field to bring the soil pH to the correct level for growing a certain crop based on what’s already known

At this level, we can predict the results of actions based on tested and verified data. We can find this data stored in databases and reference texts. This data allows accurate predictions of what will happen if we take a certain action. For instance, we can build the same airplane design hundreds of times and predict each plane will fly. Although much of this science and engineering is brute-beast, tentative pseudo-knowledge, God has given us any true knowledge we have.

We know facts beyond what we store in tables, charts, and databases. We store knowledge in human minds. And we use that knowledge spontaneously. For instance, a water skier predicts a certain combination of body movements will allow her to make a certain difficult maneuver every time she performs in public. In the same way, a carpenter routinely predicts the way he swings his hammer will cause it to hit the nail and drive it into the wood. These predictions come from hours and hours of performing the same movements and learning what works and doesn’t work by experience.

As with all knowledge, people can use this knowledge for good or evil. Ungodly people can know the damage a certain drug will do but lie to the public for the sake of money or control. Ungodly persuaders who control the great-false-prophet media and education can use that system to spread fear or hate with messages they know are false.

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Seven Levels of Predictions

Posted on February 9, 2021February 9, 2021 by Petros

The Prediction Argument Isn’t Simple

The idea of using predictions isn’t as simple as it first appears. Predictions come in several flavors.

In the list below, we use the term “historical science.” However, that term is problematic as we’ve already discovered. A clearer term would be “historical storytelling.” We might have artifacts like letters, photographs, or artwork. We can examine those in the present. When we have existing parts of the cosmos like stars, geology, or living organisms, we can observe those in the present. Nevertheless, we can’t observe historical stories in the present. God can reveal history, but humans can also make up stories about history. When humans make up stories about history, they generally begin with observations. Then, they try to extrapolate from the observations. Sometimes, humans try to extrapolate from what God has revealed. That’s also a problem. The more they extrapolate, the more fanciful their stories become. So, we’re using the term “historical science” to indicate some combination of observation, storytelling, and divine revelation. “Historical science,” is a broad term, but we need a term that includes both godly thinking and ungodly thinking.

Seven Levels of Predictions:

Level 1 Predictions: Designing and building things, or taking actions, according to well-tested methods using standardized materials and procedures

Level 2 Predictions: Educated guesses to set the direction in areas not completely known

Level 3 Predictions: Practical application using a theory to predict

Level 4 Predictions: Historical science predictions later confirmed by observation

Level 5 Predictions: Historical science postdictions made after observations and then falsely called “predictions”

Level 6 Predictions: Historical science phantom predictions based on false representations of observed results or other faulty thinking

Level 7 Predictions: Predictions that pretend to prove theories. These predictions are actually affirming-the-consequent fallacies and Texas-sharpshooter fallacies

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Are Predictions Useful?

Posted on February 8, 2021February 8, 2021 by Petros

Are Predictions useful?

Predictions are useful and important. For example, we predict turning the steering wheel will have an expected effect on the direction the car is going, so we steer the car. As another example, we predict working hard will increase the odds of making progress toward our goals, so we work hard. As another case in point, we predict injuring ourselves will cause pain, so we avoid injuring ourselves. So, from these examples, we can see we take many actions based on predictions. At the same time, some people use predictions to “prove” their speculations. They deceive themselves. They affirm the consequent. Some scientists think predictions “prove” theories. That’s irrational. Without divine revelation, the brute-beast human mind can’t think rationally beyond what it can observe and test. When it tries, it relies on smokescreen fallacies like affirming the consequent.

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Affirming the Consequent Fallacy

Posted on February 8, 2021February 8, 2021 by Petros

Now here’s another example of the affirming the consequent fallacy. This example destroys happiness in many marriages. Either the wife, the husband, or both, may commit this fallacy, but we’ll use an example of the husband’s thinking. In this scenario, the wife wasn’t feeling well and was irritable when her husband came home. Unconsciously, the husband affirmed the consequent by saying, in his mind, if his wife didn’t love him, he would predict that she would act as she’s acting. Carrying his reasoning a step further, he then used his observation of her irritable attitude to prove to himself that she didn’t love him. A few days later, she unknowingly put something into the trash that he wanted to save. Again he used the same prediction fallacy to conclude that she was an uncaring person. And as he continually relived these experiences and others, he developed internal bitterness. Over time, he began to have a worldview in which his wife was evil and nasty, and this worldview began to show itself in his attitude toward her. Of course, she reacted in the way we would expect, and he, in turn, saw her reaction as confirming what he had predicted all along. Now he had “absolute evidence” from many sources that “conclusively showed” that she wasn’t right for him and that he needed to get a divorce. Of course, this husband is living in a fantasy, and his fantasy is causing pain to him, to his wife, to his children, and to those who have to watch.

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Pseudoscience

Posted on February 6, 2021February 6, 2021 by Petros

Of course, our subject is reason, not evolution. We’re just using evolution as an example to illustrate a point about knowing and how we can have knowledge of the truth. At present, evolutionists can’t make predictions work for the stories of evolutionism. So some evolutionists want to dismiss the idea of predictions in science. We need to ask two questions. Can predictability prove something true? Can the lack of predictability prove something false?

Affirming the Consequent

Trying to use predictions as proof brings us to a fallacy known as affirming the consequent. Of course, affirming the consequent is a formal fallacy, a fallacy of form. It’s an error in the way we use the premise to prove the conclusion. While this fallacy might seem complicated at first, it’s simple, so we’ll understand it in the next few paragraphs.

While predictability can’t prove any claim, it can create confirmation bias using the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. But evolutionists imply predictability proves their claims.

First, let’s state the evolutionists’ argument as a syllogism. Their predictions aren’t true predictions, so some of their premises aren’t true. However, we’ll ignore this problem for now. We’re going to ignore the untruths in the premises. We’re only looking at the formal fallacy of affirming the consequent.

Premise 1: If a big bang happened, we would predict finding cosmic microwave background noise, stars moving away from us, and hydrogen, helium, and other trace elements having a certain ratio.

Premise 2: We find cosmic microwave background noise, stars moving away from us, and hydrogen, helium, and other trace elements having the expected ratio.

Conclusion: Therefore, everything started with a big bang.

As stated, some of the premises aren’t true. But we’re ignoring the untrue premises for this example because we’re focusing on understanding the formal fallacy of affirming the consequent. Even if the argument used true premises, this argument doesn’t prove the conclusion. The form isn’t valid. The form isn’t rational. It’s not sound logic. It gives the illusion of being sound, but it’s irrational.

Fallacies that fool us sound good, but they’re irrational. While we may not detect what’s wrong with the logic in a tricky example like Bill Nye gave us, we quickly detect the error if we look at the same logical form with something obvious. For an easy example, imagine a friend of yours commits this same fallacy, and here’s what your friend says about you:

Premise 1: If you were an evil person, then I would predict I would sometimes be mad at you.

Premise 2: I’m sometimes mad at you.

Conclusion: Therefore, you’re an evil person.

Premise one may be true, and premise two may be true, but the form makes the conclusion unreliable. Let’s have another example. This one is a friend talking to you on the phone.

Premise 1: If you don’t exist, then I would predict I wouldn’t be able to see you.

Premise 2: As predicted, I’m not able to see you.

Conclusion: Therefore, you don’t exist.

Here’s a quote on this subject [the affirming the consequent fallacy] from “Inside the Nye-Ham Debate,” page 123:

“Allow me to explain this fallacy further using the Greek myth about Helios. Helios was the Greek ‘god’ that allegedly drove the sun across the sky in a chariot. Let’s say a Greek mythologist said, ‘there was predictive power’ in Greek mythology, then proceeded to explain that in Greek mythology, the sun rising, setting, and going across the sky is good. Since we see the sun rising, setting, and going across the sky, the explanation provided by Greek mythology is proof of a Greek mythology’s predictive power. After all, how else would you explain it? Do you note the absurdity in this similar analogy?”

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Contrastive Reasoning

Posted on February 4, 2021February 4, 2021 by Petros

Dr. Hunter says evolutionists depend on contrastive reasoning.

“Yet contrastive reasoning, evolutionists argue, proves evolution is a fact. This illustrates the tremendous importance of the role of contrastive reasoning.”

What is contrastive reasoning? It’s the Sherlock-Holmes fallacy.

Sherlock-Holmes Fallacy

(a.k.a. Process of Elimination)

A method of reasoning based on the process of elimination

Persuaders who commit Sherlock-Holmes fallacies try to find every possible explanation and disprove all but one. This system of reasoning has two severe problems. (1) We can’t know we’ve found every possible explanation. (2) We can’t know we aren’t biased in choosing which ones to rule out. Unless God reveals it, we would need to be omniscient to know for certain we had considered every possible explanation. Worse, we might eliminate explanations that disagree with our worldviews or favor explanations that agree with our worldviews.

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Evolution’s Predictions

Posted on February 3, 2021February 3, 2021 by Petros

Cornelius G. Hunter in his writing titled “Darwin’s Predictions” wrote the following:

“It is perhaps not surprising that, setting the contrasting reasoning aside and focusing exclusively on the science, evolution’s fundamental predictions fail badly. The above sections reviewed several fundamental predictions of evolutionary theory, once held with great conviction, that have all been found to be false, much to the surprise of practitioners.”

In this writing, Dr. Hunter went into detail to show how each of the predictions fails. He refutes all the objections. In another part of his writing, he states this:

“Evolution’s predictions, and associated explanations, do not make sense of the observations.”

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Illusions of Pseudoscience

Posted on February 2, 2021February 2, 2021 by Petros

While it’s true we can sort fossils by similarities, we can sort any objects by similarities. We can sort nuts and bolts by similarity. We can sort buttons by similarity. We can sort rocks by similarity. Sorting by similarity doesn’t point to ancestry. And we don’t even see continuous similarity when we sort fossils. We see distinct kinds of living organisms, zero undisputed transitional forms between kinds, and much variety within each kind. Fossils don’t help the stories of evolutionism. No evidence supports these stories. Evolutionists skillfully work to create illusions of evidence by using fallacies. However, no real evidence exists. Given the lack of evidence, it’s surprising politicians give our tax money to scientists who try to explain away these observations.

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Stories of Evolutionism

Posted on February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 by Petros

Predictions are always inconclusive since using predictions as proof is the fallacy of affirming the consequent. When evolution misses a prediction, there’s always a way around the problem.

“Being an evolutionist means there is no bad news. If new species appear abruptly in the fossil record, that just means evolution operates in spurts. If species then persist for eons with little modification, that just means evolution takes long breaks. If clever mechanisms are discovered in biology, that just means evolution is smarter than we imagined. If strikingly similar designs are found in distant species, that just means evolution repeats itself. If significant differences are found in allied species, that just means evolution sometimes introduces new designs rapidly. If no likely mechanism can be found for the large-scale change evolution requires, that just means evolution is mysterious. If adaptation responds to environmental signals, that just means evolution has more foresight than was thought. If major predictions of evolution are found to be false, that just means evolution is more complex than we thought.” ~ Cornelius Hunter

For example, the evolutionistic paradigm predicts the tree of life. According to Michael Rose, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, this tree has failed, and evolutionists are quietly burying and forgetting it. No matter how many just-so stories the evolutionists use, they can’t rescue the tree of life. They need to get rid of the tree of life because the tree makes no sense and there’s no evidence for it. What we observe in the fossils doesn’t support the ungodly stories.

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