Hume’s Fork

It’s been a few months in passing since I’ve wanted to post a blog such as this one. That said, these kind of things are always ‘in the making’, so to speak…  *disclaimer.

A couple of months back, a conversation regarding the Origins Book came up at the dinner table. I’m not quite sure why, I just happened to be there and was involuntarily ‘roped’ into the conversation. It happens quite frequently, and I suppose I should not be surprised - it tends to happen when you actually take a stance in matters of controversial topics – as you make a stance, you inevitably gather an audience, and that audience is a mix of friend and foe – and you never quite know what is around the corner…

GENESIS chapter 1, verse 29 states:

“Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

Verse 30 continues:

And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.”

Now, is it absolutely certain (100% without a doubt) that ‘in the beginning’, everything with ‘the breath of life in it’ ate only ‘green plant for food’? Or is it a mere 99% certainty? Is it wise for us to allow at least a 1% uncertainty that maybe ‘everything that has the breath of life in it’ also ate meat (of dead animals) like we do today?

David Hume in “Treatise of Human Nature” says: “Matters of fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing.” (The first object of reason being Inductive Logic.)

In the modern world we call this the synthetic proposition - fancy name - for defining statements about the world “…which are synthetic, contingent, and knowable a posteriori.” Examples include: "the sun rises in the morning", "the Earth has precisely one moon", and "water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit".

This is contrasted with a priori ‘knowledge’, IE: "2 + 2 = 4", "all bachelors are unmarried", and truths of mathematics and logic. The latter we can know for certain, and the former, we cannot know for certain, or so states Hume.

“I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.”

Now I don’t know about you, but the above statement appears to me to be explicitly elucidating that ‘everything that has the breath of life’ ate green plants for food; or, if you like, that “…the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground” were ‘vegetarians’.

…It was ‘argued’ over dinner that the text does not exclude these beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground as vegetarians per se; they could have been carnivorous too, the text in Genesis 1:28 simply does not shed any light on the matter – thus we cannot know for certain.

On first impressions that may appear to be a clever argument; however, having come across such treatises before, something did not sit correctly that night - and rightly so. Upon closer inspection, verse 29 - “I give every green plant for food” – is unambiguous and unequivocal; one cannot be more precise and plain in language. But apparently I was misguided; Hume’s Fork was blocking (what I had thought was) my straight and narrow path.

...Those who employ Hume’s dictum should know that Hume ‘essentially “proved” that no certainty can exist in science’ because statements such as: "the sun rises in the morning", "the Earth has precisely one moon", and "water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit" – are cause-and-effect relationship of events that people judge out of habit, and so it is impossible to state definite truths about the world or make definite predictions.”

IE: Suppose one states this as a "truth" of the world: "When a rock is dropped while on Earth, it goes down." While we can predict with probability that when you drop a rock it will go down, since in every instance thus far when a rock was dropped on Earth it went down, we technically cannot prove that it always will. The next time we drop a rock, it might miraculously go up.

If I may translate our previous example: “The sun rises in the morning” - It should rather be said (according to those who follow Hume):
“The sun rises in the morning, {except for those times when the sun does not rise in the morning}”.

Run that in parallel with:

“I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.”

Genesis 1:29, 30 according to Hume philosophy rather should state:

“I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.” {And if any animal happens to die, you are also allowed to either eat it raw or cooked over an open-stove or camp-fire. Green food is good, but meat is better. My command is not a restrictive command.}

I’m sorry, but that is not only bad exposition of text (Biblical text or otherwise), but it is philosophically flawed. An argument employing Hume’s dictum only confuses and builds unnecessary fence-sitters; fence-sitters whom consciously or unconsciously believe wholeheartedly that, “The next time we drop a rock, it might miraculously go up.”…

...Hume’s Fork?; ...or misleading metaphysics?

The Saints would do well to tread lightly in such matters.