HRG

Theophilus - who'll stand here as representative for presuppositionalists - has lambasted naturalism for its failure to account for love, morality, logic, the regularities of the universe etc.

But let's analyse how he claims to account for those ideas himself.
He makes two ad hoc hypotheses about the Supreme Being whose existence is claimed by theism.

1) This Supreme Being is omnipotent (this is not a tautology!)

2) This Supreme Being wanted to created a regular universe and wants us to experience love, morality etc.

With ad hoc hypotheses like those, I can account for everything.

Thus I propose Naturalism PLUS (tm): naturalism plus the following hypotheses:

"Because of the absence of intermeddling gods, the universe is regular" and

"Some natural processes are so complex and sophisticated as to account for the experiences we call love, morality, logics etc."

Voila. Naturalism PLUS accounts for everything that theophilus' presuppositionalism does!

Regards,
HRG.

Hopeful Monsters

Good point - this notion alone is one around which you could build a whole Thred.

Love, emotion, morality, ethics, creative endeavour, conceptual thought - are all manifestations of such highly complex interactions that they are difficult to pin down in a concrete sense and from which derive precise empirical data.

But do we require the existence of God to explain them? No.

Two latest ideas are that these manifestations are higher level products of processes within the human mind � specifically interaction between the left side of the brain (rational, logical, analytical) and right side of the brain (emotional, intuitive, imaginative, able to make creative leaps).

Another theory suggests quantum physics as a model/basis for these brain states.

And I suggest it is individual and shared context that afford these meaning - and make them �applicable� (such that one or more other person(s) will respond in a social sense to another�s notions of morality, ethics etc and react to their creative output).

I believe to introduce the existence of God as an explanation is merely infantile drivel.

Bob Stewart

I do not want to support an appeal to God as an explanation, BUT, isn't your claim that we do not require the existence of God to explain them-- in the absence of any actual explanation-- an expression of your faith that these phenomena will some day be explained by 'natural' phenomena, or an expression of your faith that science will someday explain them?

Bob Stewart

T. E. Lords

It ceases to be faith based when we have evidence all around us that the scientific process works and has repeatedly shown natural causes for forces once thought to be mystical. Therefore believing that science will eventually show us the cause of love, honor et al is more of an educated guess than a faith based assumption.

On a side tangent: it drives me crazy that theist love science when it gives them a new SUV or the latest greatest HD Plasma flat screen TV, but when that same process is applied to anything that challenges their preconceived notions of the world and how it works then it is wrong and evil and Satan is controlling the scientists. At least the Amish are consistent.

mbhauser

I myself think we do have much evidence that love, conceptual thought, etc does come from the material world. But let us say that I have no evidence - no studies of the brain, no neurological studies - and I am totally in the dark as to where they come from. It is then faith to say I don't know? Isn't this what is really being discussed. We don't know certain things in total so we make up answers and have faith in that answer. That is we believe with out evidence. I think that is the meaning of faith being used here. Faith also means to trust. I have faith in my son to do the right thing. This is a different meaning. I really can not understand why anyone would believe in anything without evidence. But what is wrong with saying "I don't know or I don't fully know."? I think Bob Stewart that you are using the two above meanings of faith interchangeably and you shouldn't. Won't work.

Koyaanisqatsi

There is also a significant difference between what a typical theist means when using the word "faith" and what a typical non-theist means when applying that word (if they ever do).

The theist has faith in spite of evidence to the contrary that what they believe in is "true."

The non-theist may have faith in something being "true" based upon the evidence and/or similar past experiments that bore out a reliable conclusion.

It is therefore more accurate to use the phrase "religious faith" rather than just using the word "faith" out of its context. Funny how theists seem to always conflate those two polar opposite, contextual meanings into one word and then claim everyone is in the same boat when it comes to "faith."

For a non-theist to say, "I have faith that the sun will rise tommorrow" carries with it the context of "based upon past experience that the sun has 'risen' consistently throughout their entire lives and throughout recorded human history" (setting aside the fact that the sun doesn't actually "rise," of course).

For a theist to say, "I have faith that a god exists and created the universe the way it is," however, is to make a claim that is, at best, inconsistent with the evidence available, particularly when one examines the nature of the theist's "evidence" (i.e., two to five thousand year old cult mythologies).

This is why, I would contend, one rarely hears of any non-theist use the word "faith" and why the use of that word in connection with anything non-theistically oriented is so easily misconstrued by the theist mindset.

Just to clarify (yet again) the fallacy typically employed by theists who stuff this particular straw man.