Induction vs. Deduction

But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain.

(Titus 3:9) KJV

In the scientific method there’s a lot philosophy involved in constructing a logical framework which should produce an experimental result which is free from bias.

There’s also extensive instruction on how to massage data to get whatever result you want. The two go hand-in-hand. You can’t break the rules unless you know what they are but if you know what they are, and you’re sufficiently bright, you can find a way to rationalize why you broke the rules. You have to find a way to be the exception, because the exception proves the rule. It’s all very high-brow stuff that elite academic atheists love in-house jokes about. There’s a lot of hearty back-slapping going on whenever someone makes some poor hapless Christian look stupid.

There’s a very simple reason why the popular science narrative of godless existence (SciPop) and Matty’s Paradigm have completely different accounts of the origin of humanity and, by extension, the universe: Induction vs. Deduction.

Inductive Reasoning

SciPop is inductive, which means that the premise of a hypothesis is used as evidence for it’s conclusion. Stellar parallax is an example. If we assume heliocentricity then we can use stellar parallax to confirm heliocentricity. Evolution is another. If we assume an evolutionary origin of humanity then we can interpret evidence in a way which confirms the evolutionary origin of humanity. It’s also called circular reasoning or bootstrapping.

Inductive reasoning (as opposed to deductive reasoning or abductive reasoning) is reasoning in which the premises are viewed as supplying strong evidence for the truth of the conclusion. While the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is probable, based upon the evidence given.

– Inductive Reasoning, definition (Wikipedia)

Newton used inductive reasoning in the development of the law of universal gravitation. This means that it was written from the perspective of him believing that his theory of the cause of gravity was true. It didn’t occur to Newton or his peers that the observations and the experimental results might have a different explanation that wasn’t related to the theory. Oops!

Deductive Reasoning

Matty’s Paradigm is deductive. We start from a simple premise: God can’t lie and the Bible is true. Then we use deduction to ascertain how physical evidence and empirical observations can be accounted for within the Biblical narrative. This also gives us a way to determine which parts of the SciPop narrative are facts (science) and which parts are false (SciPop).

Deductive reasoning, also deductive logic, logical deduction or, informally, “top-down” logic, is the process of reasoning from one or more statements (premises) to reach a logically certain conclusion. It differs from inductive reasoning or abductive reasoning.

– Deductive Reasoning, definition (Wikipedia)

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