Silent Dave

If Richard Carrier did nothing BUT put his opponent on the defensive, paying only lip service to the position that he was supposed to have defended as you did, then I certainly would vote against him unless he scored an absolute knockout against the other person, which you did not. If you think I'd be reluctant to vote against Richard Carrier just because he's Richard Carrier, look <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_holloway/holloway1.html" target="_blank">here.</a>

Everything else I have to say about the debate I have already said in my judgement, and you have said nothing to cause me to reconsider a word of it (nor, for the record, has Mike Montgomery).


Dave

agapeo

I'm curious. How was the title of the debate [Naturalism Vs. Theism: Where Does the Evidence Point?]chosen?

madmax2976

It started by me saying that I would be willing to defend my view of naturalism, which Andrew then accepted.

We exchanged emails and threw out several possibilities, until we found one we both tentatively liked: Naturalism vs. Theism. (This was also the title of the Lowder-Fernandez debate) After we had exchanged our definitions, I reconsidered and thought Naturalism vs. Supernaturalism might be more appropriate, but Andrew thought the original title was fine and that we should leave it as it was.

Of course this prompted my tactic of having Andrew define his deity as a supernatural being, since without that distinction, our debate might very well be pointless.

Andrew_theist

To turtonm

Nobody "assumes" naturalism. For the thousandth time, Andrew, naturalism is verified by its success in producing reliable and useful evidence of the world. That is why theists developed and refined naturalism. Get it? All early scientists and their advocates, from the Islamic groundbreakers, through Galileo, Copernicus, Agricola, Tycho, Kepler, Bacon and so forth, were theists.

You may state a thousand times that 2+2=5 yet it will be no more true than the first time you uttered it. The problem is that naturalism to you has become a religious truth statement and not a philosophy or method of doing science. Please read the following again only this time try lowering the mental shields you have erected. Pay particularly close attention to the bolded part.

Methodological naturalism is the philosophical tenet that, within scientific enquiry, one can only use naturalistic explanation - i.e. one's explanations must not presuppose the existence of supernatural forces and entities. Note that methodological naturalism does not hold that such entities or forces do not exist, but merely that one cannot use them in scientific explanation. Methodological naturalism is often considered to be an implied working rule of all scientific research and logically entails neither philosophical naturalism nor atheism, though some would argue that it implies such a connection.

The great men of science you noted were theists and continued to be theists. They didn’t see this as a vindication of atheism as you and those of your ilk do. They didn’t view this as a fundamental belief and become apologists for naturalism as a result. They believed the tools of science were inadequate to do such investigation. Period. Yet they continued to believe the world was knowable and logical precisely because it was created. You continue to fall prey to the very thought I so painstakingly laid out in the debate that to employ the success of science as vindication of naturalism as a religious truth is gross circular reasoning.

In order to demonstrate theism, all you have to do is show that some particular theistic belief gives us a more useful and reliable picture of reality than naturalism. Good luck!

The fact that the creation of the universe is the cause of nature we now observe is ample reason to invoke a supernatural explanation. It can just as easily be falsified. Demonstrate the laws of nature that existed prior to their creation. Good luck!

madmax2976

No its not. At best, its only ample reason to entertain the possibility of a supernatural explanation. This propensity of theists to jump to conclusions based on mere possibility is bewildering. Coupled with the continued failure of the supernatural to demonstrate it has any ability to explain the world around us reliably, it borders on the completely illogical.

Andrew again attempts to argue from a popular metaphor regarding natural laws.

Andrew, please define what a natural law is. I'm very curious as to your definition.

Andrew_theist

To Dave and Bede,

I only as of today read your official explanations for the verdict, I didn't realize they were posted in the debate section. I think your arguments make sense. Of course I still think I am right but I also concede I could have argued it much better. As a result I am enthused about debating again in the future. A different subject in about 6 months or so. One note about my website, only one forum is a bible free zone.

lpetrich

But Copernicus and Galileo had been Catholics, Tycho and Kepler had been Lutherans, Bacon and Newton had been Anglicans, etc. So which sect is right?

Furthermore, ancient Greece is IMO the ultimate origin of the tradition of scientific inquiry; the aforementioned gentlemen built on the work of the likes of Thales, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Aristarchus, Aristotle, Archimedes, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, etc. They were all Hellenic pagans; shall we convert to Hellenic paganism because of them?

faded_Glory

Oops! My bad, I hadn't realised that my announcement of the end of the debate was so unclear. I assumed people would find the various judgements by themselves, but I should really have stated explicitly that they had been posted. Sorry.

As I said, we all learn from these things.

fG

faded_Glory

Thank you.

Well, it would get us somewhere if you could provide examples of phenomena that would be unexplainable, even in principle, by natural causes. Of course these examples would have to be so well supported by hard evidence that it would be unreasonable to deny their reality. It is precisely the lack of such universally accepted examples that causes the lack of universal acceptance of the supernatural.

It never seems to leave the realm of the vague, the dubious, the uncertain, the hearsay, the armwaving, the superstitious. If it is as real as you claim, why can't it ever, not even for a single moment, become totally obvious to all of us?

But once more, this is a negative argument - the unavailability of a natural explanation (which is not exactly the same as a 'break down') is so vague, so poor - where is the positive evidence of a supernatural entity?

Show us your gods!

fG

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: faded_Glory ]</p>

agapeo

[Show us your gods!fG]

Nonsence fg. No theist can do that. Nor can any atheist provide postive evidence that one doesn't exist.

Show the theists that there is no god!