Only Inductive Logic?

I really want to ask an open ended question that I really don't have an answer to myself, but here goes. Do you think that there may be some questions that cannot be answered deductively and can only be answered inductively? We briefly touched upon this in class, and what was said is that our knowledge may be limited, and therefore our arguments are only inductive under lack of sufficient evidence.


However, I have another example--the Judeo/Christian god. Some, such as Anselm and Aquinas would argue that the existence of God can be proved deductively. However, what if this isn't the case? If this god exists (and I'm not making the claim one way or the other) wouldn't the role of faith be important, and therefore the use of deductive logic would be moot since God would be unknowable without faith? I'm not sure as to an answer, but I find it interesting indeed.

Arguments for Latin American-US Differences

I'm currently the TA for a class on Latin America and United States relations. Since we're in the introductory stages of the class, we're looking at why the United States and the nations of Latin America have developed differently.

One of the arguments proposed is this: Since the Latin American populations were Catholic as opposed to Protestant like in America, and since Catholicism is authoritarian by nature, and democracy requires egalitarianism, the Latin American countries generally had authoritarian leaders because of their Catholicism while the United States had democratic ones.


Now, that's quite the mouthful of an argument, and I think considering the circumstances at hand, it makes a lot of sense. I chose this argument hoping to diagram it, but I'm not sure if I'm able to do it here. Lets see if I can tease it out.


I think our conclusion is 4)
   the Latin American countries generally had authoritarian leaders because of their Catholicism while      the United States had democratic ones.

But, how do we get there? I think that maybe we need to start with 2) Catholicism is authoritarian by nature and what follows from that is 1) the Latin American populations were Catholic as opposed to Protestant like in America

On the other side we have the statement as a stand alone which is 3) democracy requires egalitarianism.


Overall, we have 1) follows from 2) which, in conjunction with 3) comes to our conclusion 4)

Not sure if I structured this right, but give it a look!