Ojuice5001

One reason for the increasing popularity of disbelief in the supernatural is the increasing popularity of disbelief in the supernatural. That is to say, naturalists perceive that new knowledge and a tendency away from, and case against, supernaturalism are increasing together, and infer that the new knowledge is weakening supernaturalism (which it often is).

Now, there are two counterpoints to this argument that are not the subject of this thread, but it's worth pointing them out. First, some disbelievers in the supernatural overestimate the amount of new knowledge that confirms naturalism, rather than being neutral or even favoring supernaturalism (like the fact that causal indeterminism seems to be the way things really are). And second, regarding supernatural events and chance events as synonymous is both true to the spirit of supernaturalism, and compatible with science.

But this thread is about another counterpoint. An decrease in supernaturalism is the way things are going now, but how was it in the past? The following premises are true:

1. Warm-blooded animals are do not believe in the supernatural. Warm-blooded animals, meaning all birds and mammals other than humans, lack a belief in all supernatural entities.

2. Humans evolved from warm-blooded animals From this it follows that at one point in the evolution of humanity, none of our ancestors believed in the supernatural. We don't know how long ago that was, but there is no conceivable evolutionary scenario that doesn't accomodate this.

3. Supernaturalism took root gradually Obviously, the preeminence of supernaturalism didn't take place overnight. Naturalists and supernaturalistic believers in evolution agree on this.

4. Human knowledge is always being added toIf we say that people 50,000 years ago were ignorant, we must be clear about what we mean. We mean that they were ignorant relative to us. But the people of 50,000 years ago were less ignorant than the people 51,000 years ago, and each individual was less ignorant than he was 50,010 years ago. Knowledge was increasing more slowly but just as surely as now, on both the social and the individual level.

This premise is not contradicted by the fact that knowledge is sometimes lost. No matter how much knowledge is being lost, humans are always discovering some amount of new knowledge, on both the individual and the social level. And further, there was probably no prehistoric equivalent of our historic crises of education, and prehistory is what we're interested in.

5. Conclusion: There was a time when new knowledge and supernaturalism increased together, and new knowledge was the foe of naturalism (assuming--I'm still not clear on this--that it is correct to call anyone in prehistoric times a naturalist).

What are the implications of this? Well, it implies that the advance of knowledge does not always hinder supernaturalism, however it may seem if you consider only science's progress against medieval superstition. Now, if there was a time when new knowledge strengthened supernaturalism, then such a thing may happen again. And who's to say that the present trend is real, and the past one was an illusion? After all, early man gained power relative to the warm-blooded animals through many paths: tools, fire, language, reason, and awareness of the supernatural.

Editor's note: The unedited post used what is, apparently, an incorrect definition of "naturalist." And from post 4 on, that's all anyone talked about. Therefore, I made purely terminological corrections to remove this error. The argument, you will see, makes just as much sense if you remove this mistake.

Think of it as being like a Protestant saying that Catholics aren't Christians. By the normal definition of "Christian," this is obviously wrong, but that doesn't mean that the Protestant's case against Catholicism is critically flawed. (Although it probably is. Catholics are head and shoulders above Protestantism. )

[ December 19, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

Clutch

Oh, boy.

Substitute any long-standing false belief in there. Works just the same.

Ojuice5001

The majority of long-standing false beliefs fall into these categories:

Primitive assumptions (The earth is flat)
Misunderstandings of new knowledge (The earth is round, and the stars go around it)
Enforced beliefs (Christianity)
Subcultural, and thus don't really count (UFOs)

Naturalism falls into the first category. Does supernaturalism fall into any? Also, have I omitted any that you can see?

Jamie_L

I think in the early stages of human evolution, additional knowledge was not increasing as fast as the human mind's cognitive abilities. I think this is the source of supernaturalism. We got to the point of being able to question what we knew before we got the ability to learn significantly more about what we knew.

Less intelligent mammals are naturalists in one sense, but not in another. They don't posit naturalist answers to questions, because they really don't conceive of those kind of questions. They don't have any concept of why the sun rises. To them, it is a mystery, completely beyond them - somewhat similar to the supernaturalist position.

It's not as though early man had naturalist explanations for the workings of the world and then moved away from them. They had no explanations for the workings of the world, and so they developed supernatural explanations.

Thus, the situation of early man, in my opinion, is not quite so analogous to the advancement of knowledge and naturalism today.

Jamie

Jayhawker Soule

That is easily one of the dumbest premises I've ever encountered.

Jayhawker Soule

What possible definition of "naturalists" renders the statement meaningful?

Ojuice5001

An entity that believes that natural entities exist, but lacks belief in any supernatural entity whatever. Besides, the point is that first hominids evolved human intelligence, and only then did they become supernaturalists. Therefore, there must have been a stage when all humans were naturalists.

[ December 19, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

Wrong.

Goliath

Ojuice,

I am an atheist. I do not believe that anything supernatural exists. I believe that natural things exist. However, I am not a metaphysical naturalist. Therefore premise 1. is demonstrably false, and your argument crumbles.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Ojuice5001

Goliath and ReasonableDoubt,

It's the definition of "metaphysical naturalist" that I'm using, all right? You don't have to agree with the definition; just translate "metaphysical naturalist" the way that I used the term when writing the argument.

It's not like I'm somehow equivocating; that sense of "metaphysical naturalist" is the one used throughout the argument.