Question of the Day #3
Francois Tremblay Permalink
5 comments
Taking into account Joshua 10:12-14, should Christians have confidence in the inductive assumption that the Sun will rise tomorrow ? Why or why not ?
Give your answer in the comments.
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5 Comments:
There is no objective basis for induction in the cartoon universe of theism. The theist would not be able to say, for instance, that there are no swans that write Chinese poetry, for how could he know that his god hasn't created a flock of swans that do just this somewhere in "creation"? Certainly the theist wouldn't say that his god needs to come to him for approval before creating such anomalies, would he? So if this god can act independently of the believer's intentions, then induction is out the door. But if the believer thinks that this god's actions require the believer's approval, then he's simply confused himself with the deity he imagines.
That particular passage claims to be a one time deal.
"There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man."
So, an inductive argument that since the sun has always risen (except for that one day) it will continue to rise, seems cogent.
I would ask a different question. Based on this passage is it logical to pray. Since this suggests that this was the one time God was actually going to listen? Even if you narrow the interpretation, based on this passage it seems silly to pray to God to try to change the weather.
"So, an inductive argument that since the sun has always risen (except for that one day) it will continue to rise, seems cogent."
Interesting. But your reasoning is based on the assumption that we can trust God.
According to the Bible, we can trust God. But also according to the Bible, God could backstab anybody, and has!
I would argue that as a Christian you can only trust that the sun will rise tomorrow if you PRAY REALLY HARD the night before.
I recently came up with an idea where I will exhort all Christians to PRAY PRAY PRAY all the time for everything. I want them to out-pray the muslims by a factor of 100 to 1 (no small feat there)!
This is a reverse psychology method to deconverting the Christians. Drive them further and further into their insane religious beliefs and let them taste the non-results of their prayers. Hopefully they will become dissilusioned by their own accord and begin to doubt their faith.
So lets get them to pray! Im telling Christians to pray for my conversion, to pray for this, pray for that, pray for everything all the time!
Lbbp-
I think you make a good point regarding the efficacy of prayer, but even with this distinction, I think we can safely say that the Christian still cannot hold to any certainty about the movement of the sun. Even if the event in Joshua took place as a singlular example of Yahweh obeying the will of a man, it is still within the power of Yahweh to toy with the orbits of the Sun and Earth. Thus, he could just as easily prevent the sun from rising tomorrow on nothing more than a whim.
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