Look at the sky! It's white! Paper is also white! The sky must be made of paper!

Lol in the final year of my maths degree I had the same thoughts. I am way passed that stage. The stage for me atm is about religious people being in a different mindset to non-religious people, and analysing truth, reality, knowledge, perception, social behaviour etc. But nothing so far has made me think the idea of religion is sane (apart from some social benefits, but obviously the bad that comes from religion is more than the good that comes from religion).

OK I'm going to give this a shot.

Philisophical naturalism seems to be a good place to start here...

"Philosophical naturalism is the doctrine that the observable world is all there is."

I have a real problem with this and here's why: The observable world cannot explain the origins of the observable world. Since things cannot appear out of thin air (same problem with the big bang - how did the original dot get there), the observable world did not just appear out of thin air. So how can it be all there is?

Now since matter does not appear out of thin air, I would argue that fundemental laws very likely did not appear out of thin air either. Therefore the set of circumstances which allow for evolution and natural selection did not appear out of thin air either.

I can understand "supernatural designer" is yet another ****ty choice of words. WTF is "supernatural" anyway? Eveything that exists in this world is part of this world, therefore it is natural. Designer is also not so great but w/e.

But if things didnt appear out of thin air, then something preceded it (again I will have to be "evasive" again in saying that our whole concept of time could be wrong/incomplete/based on our unique perspective). There is something incomplete to any theory that does not provide an explanation of origin. Like we can forever say - so how did that get there, then how did that which made it there get there, and so on. Since we can forever play this game, there MUST be something we dont understand! Whether that is a "supernatural designer" or a "unfathomable concept" or "something greater"....

I think that's a good start for now....

Argument from ignorance fallacy.

You can't say that something can't come from nothing. We don't have an example of nothing from which to test.

Argument from ignorance fallacy again.

If this 'designer' is natural, then why are you asserting he "can come out of nowhere" but the universe and its laws, can't?

Infinite regress. But yeah, the whole concept of time is useless before the big bang.

No. If we understand that time didn't exist before the big bang, then the above is nonsensical. There is no "before" from something to come from.

Can you please expound on why my argument is from ignorance fallacy? Im not sure I get it...

That was a separate point sort of unrelated to the other points, just was thinking about the word "supernatural", that all. Def not asserting that anything can come out of nowhere.

Sure. You said that with philosophical naturalism we couldn't explain how everything originally got here, so you were positing *something* that was the prime mover (presumably, a God). In doing so you're saying "We don't know how it could work without a designer, therefore there has to be a designer" (argument from ignorance) or "There's no way I could see how it could all happen without a designer" (argument from incredulity)

You are arguing backwards. I am not asking you to refute philosophical naturalism. Heck I don't think anyone has even said they are a philosophical naturalist (I for instance am only a methodological naturalist). I asked you to justify your deism. Arguing for "not philosophical naturalism" is not an argument FOR any meaningful variant of deism and theism.

Nonetheless, your argument against philosophical naturalism holds no water. It is, as asdfasdf pointed out the argument from ignorance which says "i don't know how it happened, thus it must not have happened".


Quantum Mechanics begs to differ.

Btw, nothing you have said is related to evolution in specific. You are trying to argue the cosmological argument. Poorly, I might add. That is different from the teleological argument based on the complexity of evolution.

Nonetheless, if you are going to argue that we don't know how something appeared, you cannot turn around and conclude anything at all from this. You don't get deism. You don't get theism. You don't get "something or other that I can't explain".

I didn't want to go there. I don't know what his definition of "out of thin air" is.

ya it was a jab I know the limitations on that retort but won't do his work for him

I feel like how I felt when I first joined HSMTT . Although I'm not sure that getting better at this will benefit me in any way, so that being said gg, wp, etc.

So I am allowed to call these crazy things I am writing my beliefs right? I just can't say I proved anything...

Wrong again.

Learning to think about the scientific, philosophical and religious world rationally is extremely important...if you care whether or not what you believe is true, and I'm sure you do.

Of course.

Lol I mean it's just pointless to try to "prove" anything because smart people are just gonna tap dance on my face all day. I'll just continue thinking about what could be, and since I believe that I know that I do not know, that can't be not true.

You can do whatever you like. It's a shame you seem to lack curiosity about the nature of reality, but no-one can force you to care about something if you don't.

Even though you cant say you proved anything, there must be a reason why you have these beliefs over other beliefs. Even if that reason is "I cant face the idea of a godless meaningless universe" or "I miss religion in my life" or whatever.
Otherwise, you would have no beliefs at all. Or would just choose random beliefs.
How do you prove these beliefs to yourself? What reasons do you give yourself for holding these beliefs? If those reasons have just been shot down in this thread, why are you still holding those beliefs? there must be other more fundamental beliefs that are supporting them.

I mean it's pretty clear that I have curiosity or else I wouldn't be here.

In any case, I got frustrated last night because I don't want to go back and forth arguing with theology majors about the insufficiency of my arguments. It's not a battle that I am going to win.

None of my beliefs have been shot down ITT at all, just my ability to "prove" them. At the end of the day, that doesn't matter to me. When I look around at the world and see all the profound beauty that is, I just know that I am a part of something greater. And when I look at a snail and a seahorse and a galaxy and the top of my son's hair, I believe that it is almost like a signature on a painting created by the most beautiful artist we could ever know. That makes me feel good, so it's cool to think about. However you want to break that down and talk about all the semantics behind it is fine, but I choose to live my life based on my intuitions about the world, and that has helped to create a great life for myself and made me a really happy person.