Rich Lusk > Quotes

“Finally, the verificationist principle, if accepted, proved too much--or perhaps it would be better to say it took away too much. After all, verificationism ruled out all knowledge of history and scientific generalizations, a loss not even logical positivists could live with. Historical propositions rely on authority of those who observed the recorded events. Such statements are not analytic, but they are not, strictly speaking, synthetic either. Since history cannot be verified empirically apart from time travel, logical positivism must deny any meaning whatsoever to historical claims. Ironically, logical positivism ends up regulating 'historical talk' to the same category of meaninglessness as 'God talk' But logical positivism threatens the meaningfulness of scientific statements as well. Scientists hope to formulate laws that describe the world of experience, but if the verificationist principle is applied rigorously, science can never do this because universalizations can never be fully verified. The verificationsit principle will not allow universalizations to be drawn from a finite number of observations; in other words, it cannot supply a foundation for the inductive principle. The verificationist principle appears to grant science special status at first; in reality it merely cuts science loose from the theoretical or metaphysical foundation it must have in order to be a rational enterprise. To lose history and science to meaninglessness is more than most philosophers can stand.”
― Rich Lusk

“Part of our present cultural crisis is our loss of story. People no longer believe they inhabit a 'narratable world,' that is, a world in which the flow of events have meaning and direction. It doesn't seem like history is going somewhere any longer. In rejecting Christ, our culture has rejected its telos.”
― Rich Lusk

“Whereas the analytic-synthetic distinction considers some statements absolutely certain and others merely probable, with a rigid barrier between these two categories, it seems more accurate to say there are degrees of belief and certainty throughout one's worldview. Some beliefs are held more firmly than others; some beliefs are held more passionately than others. But the firmly held beliefs are not necessarily the so-called analytic ones, in that they are not trivial, nor are they necessarily self-evident (though they will at least seem to be self-evident to the one who holds them at the center of his network). What determines the strength of a belief is far more complex than the analytic-synthetic distinction will allow. Such factors as past experience, upbringing, self protection, cultural and social background, intelligence level, educational training, stubbornness, pride, prejudice, religious convictions, and so on, can all influence the way we hold our beliefs and the way we revise them. It may be said that our belief system is regulated and controlled by our most basic beliefs, or presuppositions, which are neither trivial analytic truths nor purely observational synthetic truths. Or, to put it another way, everyone will end up treating some beliefs with the authority and certainty of 'analytic' judgements, but give them the significance of 'synthetic' judgements...In other words, not all beliefs are of equal importance to us. Some beliefs are granted virtual immunity from revision while others are held quite loosely. Some are at the center of the web, others on the periphery. But the strength of any given belief is not determined automictically; it is determined in the overall context of one's beliefs...Of course, this does not drive us to a form of relativism. To construe it as such would be to ignore the fact that not all presuppositional networks are equally valid. Some worldviews, or webs, are philosophically stronger than others. Some clearly destroy the intelligibility of human predication and experience and therefore must be rejected.”
― Rich Lusk

“The Koran claims that Allah is so transcendent and incomprehensible that nothing in human language can be said about him, in which case we have to ask, 'Just
what is the Koran anyway?' If Allah cannot be revealed because of his unchanging
transcendence, because of his incomprehensibility, how can the Koran be a revelation of him?”
― Rich Lusk

“It simply will not do to say that infants here symbolize weak adult human beings, as though the babes and infants in Psalm 8:2 only served as metaphors. Such a reading robs the psalm of its force. Besides, it crashes into the New Testament usage of this passage. Matthew 21:12–17 records Jesus’ temple cleansing, amidst the cheers of children, portraying the event as a prophetic fulfillment of Psalm 8:2 (among other Old Testament prophesies). In this recasting of Psalm 8:2 the chief priests and scribes are the “enemy and the avenger,” whose objections to Jesus are silenced by the praising chorus of children (Mt. 21:15–16). Jesus stops up the mouths of His accusers by pointing to the children who have been crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” These children have identified Jesus as Messiah, the One who brings the Lord’s salvation. The Jewish religious leaders are offended by the cry of the children, but Jesus accepts their praise. The arrogant become indignant over the cries of the children, but Jesus is delighted by them. The children manifest a greater degree of Spiritual perception than the priests and scribes, a typical example of a gospel reversal. We are forced to ask: Is our attitude toward children more like Jesus or His enemies? Do we treat their claims to love God as mere lip service or as the fruit of the Spirit’s work in them? Are we skeptical of the praises, professions, and experiences of small covenant children? Or do we believe that through such humble means, God has “perfected praise” (Mt. 21:16)?”
― Rich Lusk, Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation and a Handbook for Covenant Parents

“The problem for the atheist is only exacerbated when we consider that most atheists say the universe, man, and everything else is the result of chance. If the universe is really what the unbeliever says it is, science would be impossible. You see, atheistic scientists make a blind faith commitment to something that doesn’t fit with the rest of their worldview. They assume nature is uniform, but they have no reason for doing so. A Christian on the other hand, does have a reason for expecting nature to behave orderly and hence the Christian worldview provides a basis for science. The Scriptures teach God ordinarily controls His universe in a stable, law-like fashion; in God’s covenant with Noah, He promised to maintain order until the end. And so in Scripture, science is given a firm basis.”
― Rich Lusk

“The problem for the atheist is only exacerbated when we
consider that most atheist say the universe, man, and everything else is the result of
chance. If the universe is really what the unbeliever say it is, science would be
impossible. You see, atheistic scientist make a blind faith commitment to something that
doesn’t fit with the rest of their worldview. They assume nature is uniform, but they have
no reason for doing so.
A Christian on the other hand, does have a reason for expecting nature to behave orderly
and hence the Christian worldview provides a basis for science. The Scriptures teach
God ordinarily controls His universe in a stable, law-like fashion; in God’s covenant with Noah, He promised to maintain order until the end. And so in Scripture, science is given a firm basis.”
― Rich Lusk

“The Koran claims that Allah is so transcendent and incomprehensible that nothing in human language can be said about him, in which case we have to ask, 'Just what is the Koran anyway?' If Allah cannot be revealed because of his unchanging
transcendence, because of his incomprehensibility, how can the Koran be a revelation of him?”
― Rich Lusk

“Not only does technical terminology defy the analytic-synthetic distinction, but other forms of speech do not seem to fit its rigid categorization either. Poetic language certainly suffers at the hands of the analytic-synthetic distinction. This distinction fails to deal with figures of speech, metaphors, similes, analogies, etc... A poem could express the truth 'All bachelors are unmarried males' in a wide variety of creative ways that may not be immediately obvious in virtue of the meaning of the words, but may be no less certain.”
― Rich Lusk

“...the conceptual commitment account is actually quite psychological. It is far from drawing an airtight distinction. Quite often, whether or not a person considers a subject to be in a predicate will be relative to that person's knowledge, intuitions, personality, etc.. For example, it was common in the ancient world (and is still common in non-scientific cultures) to classify whales with fish. Such a person would consider 'A whale is a fish' to be analytic--the concept of fish includes whale. A Kantian might reply that this mistaken evaluation is due to the person's ignorance. A biologist would even claim that the statement, 'A whale is a fish' is analytically false. But we must not make such hasty judgements. After all, if the person is not working with scientific definitions of 'fish' or 'mammal,' he has not necessarily misclassified the whale. After all, there are obvious analogies between whales and fish. If somone who has not taken a modern biology class defines 'fish' simply to be an aquatic animal, he is perfectly justified in including whales in the category of fish. In other words, for him, according to his vocabulary and definitions, the truth is analytic. Thus, what might be analytic for one person could be synthetic for another and Kant has given no way to resolve such disputes.”
― Rich Lusk

“Their inarticulate babblings are accepted by God as beautiful worship and powerful praise.”
― Rich Lusk, Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation and a Handbook for Covenant Parents

“Covenant children are like olive plants gathered around the table. This makes parents gardeners. Parents are not given weeds for children who must then be converted into wholesome plants. Rather, they are given the best possible plants to work with. They are to care for and nurture these plants in the greenhouses of home and church until the children are mature, fruit-bearing trees. The”
― Rich Lusk, Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation and a Handbook for Covenant Parents

“Only on the presupposition of the Triune character of God can we solve the one and the many problem, which has plagued philosophy since the days of the pre-Socratics. Only a Trinitarian scheme brings together facts (particulars) and laws (universals) in a meaningful way. Only the Trinity gives us a way of preserving unity in the midst of diversity, and vice versa. This is because the nature of things is grounded in the nature of God. The world and the Word of God are perfectly consistent. Because God exists as a Trinity, in which unity and plurality are equally ultimate, the world he has created reflects this. Neither unity nor particularity is more fundamental than the other.”
― Rich Lusk

“Hinduism - says all distinctions are illusions (monistic worldview - all is one) hence, Hinduism is irrational, illogical - no logical distinctions.”
― Rich Lusk

“Furthermore, Kant's use of containment is not entirely clear. How do we know what it means for a predicate to be 'contained in' a subject? Does it mean that the predicate defines the subject? Does it mean that we associate the subject and predicate with one another? Does it mean there has to be some sort of necessary connection? It seems this is once again psychological and may yield different determinations for different people.”
― Rich Lusk

“Secondly, it is hard to see how the denial of many statements which are commonly accepted as analytic involves a contradiction. The statement 'All men are rational' is usually taken to be analytic. But the denial of this statement does not seem to involve any obvious logical contradiction. How is the denial of the statement 'All men are rational' equivalent to a denial of 'A cannot be A and not A at the same time in the same sense'? To assert that some men may not be rational (the senile, the retarded, infants, etc..) may or may not be true, but either way it is difficult to see how it is the same as asserting 'A and not-A.' It is very hard to see how most analytic statements can be reduced to logical truisms. The analytic-synthetic distinction remains obscure. Logic cannot serve as a rescuing device for the distinction.”
― Rich Lusk

“Not even technical terms totally escape this vagueness. For example, theologians and philosophers have debated for centuries over how to define the term 'miracle,' Is a miracle a violation of natural law, an immediate act of God, a surprising and unexpected event, or something else? When a word itself is subject to such widespread understanding, it is hard to imagine it ever functioning in an analytic judgement. The term 'free will' faces similar difficulties. Is freedom ethical (the ability to do good or evil), or is it metaphysical (the absence of deterministic forces on one's will)? Whether the statement 'Man has free will' is analytic or synthetic will depend for many people on the way this free will is defined, and yet there is no universally accepted definition. It should be obvious that definitions are not natural. When disputes arise over definitions, the analytical quality of statements involving the debated terms rapidly dissolves.”
― Rich Lusk

“The godly man does not have children in order to fill Satan’s forces or populate hell, but in order to reclaim the earth for the kingdom of God as warriors in the great cosmic battle of history.”
― Rich Lusk, Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation and a Handbook for Covenant Parents

“What exactly does it mean then for two terms to be synonymous? How related must they be? We might propose 'interchangeability in all contexts without change of truth value' as a way of handling synonymy. Obviously this has to be qualified to focus solely on the meaning of the expressions (and not, for example, the number of letters or sounds of the words). But, as Quine demonstrates, it is impossible to give an account of such cognitive synonymy that does not end up presupposing analyticity, and thus reasoning in a circle. Besides, many expressions may be interchangeable without altering the truth value of the statement, but may not be synonymous. For example, there is extensional agreement between the statements 'All creatures with a heart' and 'All creatures with kidneys' even though they are far from being synonymous. Another common example would be the phrases 'morning star' and 'evening star'. The interchangeability is based on accidental factors, not synonymy. Thus, it is more difficult than it might appear at first glance to determine when two expressions have the same meaning.”
― Rich Lusk

“As Quine points out, when we are told that the judgement 'All bachelors are unmarried males,' is analytically true, we must immediately ask how we came to know this. Somone may appeal to a dictionary, claiming that 'unmarried' and 'male' make up the definition of the word 'bachelor.' However, it is simply not accurate to view a dictionary as a book of analytic truths. First of all, as Quine goes on to show, the work of the lexicographer is largely that of an empirical scientist. The lexicographer bases his definitions on synonymy observed in a natural language. Languages are learned through experience; we are not born with a built-in a priori vocabulary. Children (usually) learn words not by looking them up in a dictionary, but by listening to others communicate. In other words, the lexicographer works on a Wittgensteinian principle, generally determining the meaning of a word from its observed use in a language. But can the fallible, limited observations of dictionary writers serve as the basis of absolutely certain analytic truths? Why should we accept a dictionary as law? Lexicography is far from being a perfect science...Clearly then, definitions cannot serve as the basis for analyticity. Besides, synonymies are the result of observed patterns in a language. Because they are based on empirical factors, on any normal account of the analytic-synthetic distinction, synonyms would qualify as synthetic judgements subject to revision. Thus, trying to root analyticity in synonymy ends up making analytic truths depend on synthetic truths! The observations of a lexicographer are, of course, fallible, and therefore cannot provide the key to certainty that analytic judgements are supposed to provide. Any account of the analytic-synthetic distinction based on word meanings is bound to fail.”
― Rich Lusk

“The enemy and the avenger may appear strong, but the Lord uses the verbal, babbling praise of these young covenant children to silence their accusations. God works through the lowliest of the low to bring in His victorious kingdom. By setting covenant infants in the context of holy war, this psalm also helps us understand the task of Christian parenting. As parents, we must (by faith) view our children as warriors in the Lord’s army. They are on active duty even in their infancy, but we must continue to train them to obey their Commander-in-Chief more fully as they mature. They will learn more and more how to wield their weapons, use their defensive armor, and follow out the Captain’s battle strategy. But this passage indicates they are conscripted by the Lord from their earliest days; the Lord does not need to wait for them to develop intellectually and physically because He is the one who fights through them. Indeed, young children are some of the best soldiers in the Lord’s army precisely because His strength is manifested in their weakness (cf. 2 Cor. 12:9). This does not mean their immaturity remains ideal; they must grow up over time, attaining to maturity in Christ. However, it does mean that even before they grow they are able to fight. God has already stationed them on the battlefield.”
― Rich Lusk, Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation and a Handbook for Covenant Parents

“As Quine has said, 'Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.' Quine has uncovered an important feature of human thought here, one that the analytic-synthetic distinction overlooks. Beliefs are not held or tested atomistically, in a one-by-one fashion. Rather beliefs come in clusters, forming a worldview, which is then used to interpret experience. One's worldview as a whole confronts the data of language and experience. Simple appeals to language (analyticity) or observation (syntheticity) do not reveal whether or not our beliefs will be altered when challenged. People will grant revisionary immunity to certain core beliefs not on the basis of linguistics, but on the basis of an overall worldview. Those beliefs that are held most dearly and form the hearts of one's conceptual scheme will be the hardest to let go and the last we let go. Indeed, all of us have beliefs we will cling to regardless of almost anything! Only a revolution in our conceptual framework will alter these most central beliefs. These beliefs often appear to be almost insulated from testing; indeed, they are the standard by which everything else is tested...This is not to say that all human beings think in consistent systems, or even that most are aware of the nature of their own thought. It is virtually certain that everyone holds to some incompatible or inconsistent beliefs. Most people do not reflect on their own thinking enough to notice these inconsistencies or to notice the 'worldviewesh' character of their thought.”
― Rich Lusk

“Ultimately, the question here is simple: what has God promised to our children? The biblical answer is clear: He has promised them Himself. He has promised to give Himself to them in the covenant to be their God (Gen. 17:7). He has promised them His righteousness (Ps. 103:17). He has promised them His Spirit (Isa. 59:21). He has promised them holiness (1 Cor. 7:14). He promised to make them Christ’s disciples (Mt. 28:18–20). He has promised them forgiveness (Acts 2:38–39). All taken together, it adds up to a promise of salvation (Acts 16:31). Thus,”
― Rich Lusk, Paedofaith: A Primer on the Mystery of Infant Salvation and a Handbook for Covenant Parents

“Why should we accept the verificationist principle? Have logical positivists examined every proposition ever uttered or written so that they are justified in limiting meaningful statement to those which are verified by the senses? No, of course not. In fact, logical positivists cannot consistently make any universal negative statements about the world because no human has universal experience. The statement 'No proposition is meaningful unless it is empirically verified,' is itself meaningless according to logical positivism. The verificationist principle defeats itself because it makes an unverifiable universal statement. But it also fails because it cannot be directly confirmed empirically. No one can ever experience the truth that only empirically verifiable statements are meaningful. It should also be obvious that the verificationsit principle is not true by definition. It is not a tautology and it is not an analytic truth. Thus, we must conclude that the reliance on the verificationist principle is a matter of sheer arbitrary prejudice, of blind faith. If the verificationist principle is meaningless on its own terms and refutes itself, it can hardly be used to undercut metaphysics, religious language, etc.. Logical positivism is internally flawed in another respect as well. The logical positivists promoted the verificationist principle with the hope of weeding metaphysics out of philosophy, but the empirical methods presupposed by the principle cannot stand without metaphysical underpinnings. Metaphysical beliefs about the uniformity of nature and the reliability of human senses must be assumed and defended in order for observation to be considered trustworthy.”
― Rich Lusk

“Even as the skeptic argues against God , he is using logic and language, which exist and have meaning only because of God.”
― Rich Lusk

“The problem for the atheist is only exacerbated when we consider that most atheist say the universe, man, and everything else is the result of chance. If the universe is really what the unbeliever say it is, science would be impossible. You see, atheistic scientist make a blind faith commitment to something that doesn’t fit with the rest of their worldview. They assume nature is uniform, but they have no reason for doing so. A Christian on the other hand, does have a reason for expecting nature to behave orderly and hence the Christian worldview provides a basis for science. The Scriptures teach God ordinarily controls His universe in a stable, law-like fashion; in God’s covenant with Noah, He promised to maintain order until the end. And so in Scripture, science is given a firm basis.”
― Rich Lusk

“If lexicography is indeed an empirical science, there is another problem with rooting analytic truths in meanings of words. If acquiring definitions depends on experience, then no sentence can receive its meaning from language alone, apart from extra-linguistic factors. In fact, the result is that the boundary between language and experience is very tenuous, and therefore the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements is weakened. Language, it seems, is a part of our experience, not something isolated from it. Language itself is not known entirely apart from experience, it is not purely analytic. The proposition, 'A bachelor is an unmarried male' may have seem to have analytic qualities, but how did we come to know the meanings of the words in this sentence? How did we come to know how to put a sentence together grammatically? Learning those tools has at least some experiential component.”
― Rich Lusk

“Making analyticity depend on logic raises some difficult problems. We must ask about the status of the logical laws used to prove analyticity. Are these laws analytic or synthetic? It is unlikely anyone would claim that laws of logic are derived from experience. Even die-hard empiricists like Hume have recognized the a priori character of logical laws. Besides, if these laws are derived from experience, they are contingent and dependent on fact and therefore cannot serve as a basis for making a distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements. On the other hand, if they are analytic, all we have done is explain analyticity in terms of analyticity. In this case, to say that analytic truths are those that are purely logical is merely to say that analytic truths are those that are analytic! This is hardly helpful.”
― Rich Lusk

“Analytic truths also take a blow from the fact that dictionaries need to be updated from time to time. The meaning and usage of words is not static and unchanging; there is nothing 'necessary' about it. Hence, trying to base analytic truths on definitions, which are supposedly immune to revision and absolutely certain, would seem to be risky business. This is true even of scientific terms. For example, at one point the statement 'Atoms are indivisible' would have been widely accepted as analytic, but not so today. At one point in history, Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics appeared to provide analytic truths. However, the rise of Riemannian geometry and Einstein's relativity theory made analytic truths in those areas debatable.”
― Rich Lusk

“...post-Kantian developments in logic have made it possible to deal with sentences that are not subject-predicate form, such as relational expressions. However, Kant's analytic/synthetic distinction assumes that all statements will be in subject-predicate form. Because Kant's distinction can only deal with one class of statements, it is simply inadequate.”
― Rich Lusk