Ojuice5001

Fair enough. But some naturalists/atheists certainly claim to know that they are false, and my first post was a response to them.

xian

a naturalist has ruled out the supernatural before science even begins, therefore no amount of proof could satisfy. To state "assume naturalism until proven otherwise" is to rule out supernatural explanations, since the assumption a priori is natural explanations. the statement holds.

however, your ad-infinitum irrelevance following me wherever I go has grown tedious. Its nice to have a fan, though.


if you do not agree, then discuss. if you do not want to discuss, then ignore. but if all you have to say is "strawman" after everything I post, yet fully ignoring everything I post, while bumping up your post count and adding nothing at all to the thread, then don't bother posting and wasting server bandwidth and hard disk space on the server. As crazyfingers has already made clear, the more spam on the disk, the greater the "server busy" messages will appear during searches. (and i was already asked by the mods not to do this.)

Biff the unclean

Except that the problem isn't that no amount of proof will satisfy. It's that there is NO proof at all. Not just a tiny amount. Not a little less than scientists would consider. NONE, Zero, Zip, Zilch, Nothing at all.
"If God appears"... there's no way for you to know how a naturalist would react because God has never appeared.
Get over it. There is no real magic, it's only tricks that fool you.:banghead:

Infidelettante

Christian, I wanted to ask what your intent is for your OP. Let me give my thoughts and please tell me if I am wrong [it doesn't bother me in the least.] Are you looking for a way to justify religious thought? It seems to me that you're asking about the legitimasy of the supernatural in hopes that you can feel comfortable using it as coping stratagem for dealing with life. Do you already use it that way?

If the people on this forum can't convince you of the validity of naturalism will you then be more likely to appeal to the supernatural in a effort to give your life meaning and direction? If this debate leads you to doubt supernaturalism will you feel that you have lost one of the foundations of your worldview? How important is it that there be a definite conclusion to this question?

Have you ever considered that there are religious systems which use mythology and symbolism and may serve your ends effectively without resorting to the supernatural? Is it important to you that your beliefs are shared and widely accepted by others? Do you think it is important that they have a historical basis? If these conditions were not met would you reject any belief for that reason? Is it necessary that you feel your beliefs meet some logical and rational standards? Is important to you that others think your beliefs meet these standards?

Just wanted to ask.

JT

Autonemesis

That's not it at all. Let's me give an example: consider ESP.

What if studies of ESP phenomena lead to an explanation that is scientifically sound? Who knows what it might be, a new sub-atomic particle, or a channel through the curled-up dimensions inside superstrings. Whatever. The closer you would get to obtaining that kind of evidence, the less and less supernatural ESP would become, until it's existence and general properties would be as accepted a fact as the force of gravity or special relativity or any other natural phenomena, law or theory. Predictions about the behavior of ESP phenomena could be made, if only in principle, or just crudely, like the weather. At this point, ESP is simply no longer a supernatural phenomena at all. The same would become true of prayer, or miracles, if the evidence and theories for them were as strong as in my ESP example.

And besides all that, eyewitness testimony alone isn't generally acceptable as scientific evidence anyway. I think people sometimes confuse evidence and truth in the legal sense with evidence and truth in the scientific sense. There are crucial differences that lead to faulty inferences about science (and law!) if not observed.

Christian

CA,

Of course. Assertions don't necessarily explain anything, although they are more useful when they do.

I'm afraid that's too broad a question for me to understand what you are getting at.

I use the Bible as a "known protocol" for dealing with the supernatural. You don't have to agree with my choice. But the Bible does exist, and it is such a protocol.

I'm no scientist, but this claim is counter-intuitive to me. On the subjects I do know something about I find that the greater the number of things that get explained, the more additional things are discovered which then have to be explained, and for which the current explanations are unsatisfactory. On the surface this seems to be the case in every field I know anything at all about.

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian

Rhea,

If even one supernatural event has ever occurred then the universe is not a closed system, and it is in need of a supernatural explanation.

The unprovable premise here is that no supernatural event has ever occurred. Unless you have personally witnessed every event in the history of the universe that is not a statement of fact. It is rather an ideological assertion.

What I don’t understand is what basis anyone has for making an ideological assertion that RULES OUT the supernatural. Since that is the stated purpose of this web site maybe someone here can explain it to me.

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian

Jay,

I defined what I mean by the term on the first page of posts, if you are interested.

This doesn’t help with my question, though. I don’t think that the home page of this web site asserts there is no supernatural because it does not exist by definition. I could be wrong.

Even with your definitions you would have to explain those “natural” events which contradict a known natural law.

Your story assumes that no instance of an actual supernatural event exists. Why do you make such an assumption?

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian

Rhea,

Who claimed that it should be the first guess at the solution of a problem? That would be a ridiculous approach to life. Who actually does that?

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian

Rhea,

So claiming that "the natural world is all there is" does not rule out the supernatural?

The assertion is not expressly conditioned by anything. It is an unprovable premise. A positive ideological assertion that the only thing which exists is the natural.

Why make this particular unprovable ideological assertion? Why?

Respectfully,

Christian