It's probably because I'm not wrong as often as you are in the ways that you are. You may not like to hear it, but in this topic, you're far more ignorant than you realize. You've been given several responses to demonstrate that you're actually letting your thoughts be challenged, but all I see is a strong defense mechanism. I don't see you actually engaged in critical reasoning. And the more I have to repeat myself, the less patient I become with that.

You should probably analyze your definition of natural more carefully. If you've defined it in the way I think you've defined it, you have a useless category.

The example that I've used many times in this forum is the following "floating ball" example. Since we're on a particular area of it, I'll modify it slightly.

Let's say for a moment that we have a ball and that God (or a ghost or whatever) causes the ball to levitate and then fall. He does this in front of the entire world so that everyone can see it. And that this is the only time in history that this happens. Would you say that this is a natural event or a supernatural event? Under your definition, since we detected it, it must be natural. But now try to fit that into your conception of what it means to be supernatural and see what you come up with.

Edit: "Detected, therefore natural" is a pretty useless way of reading into the physical universe.

Ignored, as expected.

Sorry. Missed it in among the other posts. It happens sometimes.

I believe that the universe was created by God (Genesis 1:1). I believe that it is the nature of Jewish writing to be a mixture of historical fact and social commentary (as well as poetic forms), so that literal readings of much of the Old Testament narratives is probably an erroneous approach. I'm also extremely doubtful that the lineages are precise historical data.

However, I believe the resurrection happened. Constructing a cultural/historical narrative of early Christianity without some significant event that would cause a dramatic reinterpretation of long-standing theological ideas would be difficult without a very big event happening to drive that re-interpretation forward. The early church was very insistent on their beliefs on the reality of the resurrection, and this is what drove them forward to do what they did, and to behave as they did. So it seems that this is the most likely causal explanation of the success of early Christianity.

No.

Understand the difference between methodological and ontological. Methodological means "as it applies to method", whereas ontological "as it applies to being".

Conflating the two means you aren't even passing a method 101 course, and if you can't do that - you shouldn't talk with authority about what science is or is not.

I don't care what label you put on phenomena. I'm an empiricist. If it's measurable, I can deal with it. If it it's supernatural, infranatural, ultranatural or just plain natural is irrelevant.

You're treating arbitrary labels as if they are somehow telling us something important. They don't, which is exactly why (in science) schools like materialism, positivism, scientific realism, physicalism and naturalism died off a long time ago... outside thought experiments and blog posts.

And yet it's how main stream science works, how the majority of scientists perform science and it's been the most effective paradigm by which to acquire and understand information that we've ever had.

You didn't address the fact of the majority of scientists agreeing with me, how do you account for that? Are they all simply wrong and don't get it either?

No, you have what I described above.

Natural, physical, material they're all doing the same job, to describe that which can be detected with the senses. I.e. not supernatural. Once we make the assumption that the natural is all that there is, and the criteria/concepts I listed have been met, we have a way to develop useful explanations that help us understand what we observe. Science is undoing centuries of theist misinformation and replacing erroneous 'divine' explanations for a good reason, it's a better strategy/method than supernatural explanations which basically could be anything you can imagine with no way to prove or disprove them. How is that useful?


This is not a problem at all. It would prove that god is not the divine, supernatural, immaterial, non-physical being described in the bible or Qur'an or wherever, that in fact god has a natural explanation. In finally proving his existence, he would simultaneously disprove his divine nature. If there's no such thing as the supernatural, then supernatural isn't the explanation (because supernatural explanations are useless). That's how the paradigm works.

Where in this:

...have I said anything that conflicts with what you're saying? Philosophical Naturalism (Or ontological or metaphysical, whatever you want to call it) is the philosophy, it makes the truth claim, and Methodological Naturalism is the assumption of that philosophy through the scientific method. Perhaps it was confusing that I defined them in a different order to how they were actually used in the sentence and you think I have them back to front or something. But even then, I'm clearly not conflating anything and clearly understand the difference. I've been saying this throughout the thread, you're barking up the wrong tree here TD.


You're an Empiricist? Interesting, do you reject rationalism? Are you aware that the Empirical Ideal cannot actually be achieved in reality? (If you define it as something like "absolutely certain evidence based on the sense data of individual people that will give good reasons for our beliefs").

Happy to have that conversation, I need to revise it. Not certain where I stand on it currently, so might come out of a conversation about it with a better understanding and an actual position. I could try to defend what I just said above, for example?

They're not arbitrary, they're important and deliberate and the differences are crucial and explain why science works. Can you show your evidence for Naturalism having 'died off'? Whenever I research this, and whatever keyword phrase I use, I constantly get pages returned that talk about natural, physical, material, measurable, detectable, perceive.... etc. I.e. no suggestion that mainstream science is anything other than what I've described ITT.

No problem. What about evolution, carbon dating etc that would indicate the earth existed before humans. The rest of the universe? Genesis seems to specifically reference just the earth. Were these seemingly conflicting things created just to test our faith?

I'd like to jump in on this if I may as it was the point of the thread and although I'm happy to defend my understanding of what science is, I'd rather examine religious beliefs in the context of whether or not they're irrational (or 'not rational' if the word 'irrational' is going to cause problems), as per the OP.

So, wrt the bolded, how did you acquire this belief? What evidence is it based on? (Happy to use the definition of 'evidence' I quoted earlier in the thread, or you can offer another definition for us to agree if you like?)

Ok, thanks, but in that form it's hardly a strong argument for the universe having been designed. I was addressing a stronger version that was actually doing something useful for theism, i.e. arguing that the universe 'must' have been designed.

OK, I'll butt in but i see this often enough that apparently my broken record doesn't do the job.

I noted that "things have to be empirical and measurable" to have scientific relevance and this also keeps us out of the "supernatural" .

Yada, yada, yada ; thoughts and thinking are not measurable and yet they are the most, if not only, power which the human being brings forth.

This whole thread is through thoughts and thinking and yet since not measurable does this not make them "supernatural"; at least according to some ?

Are we not, therefore within a supernatural thread, according to some definitatists ?

Going further, do we have the ability to "measure a word " ? Of course we can measure the decibels of a spoken word but is it possible to go backwards from the decibels to the word ? I think not ; just try to reproduce Homer's Iliad if given a sheet displaying the decibels of a spoken Iliad.

Therefore is the word "supernatural"? Believe it or not I think so, but the word "supernatural" has taken such a turn for its use is like jumping into a hornet's nest as any amount of reasoning or creative consideration is explosive, thank you; Hollywood and Stephen King .

Hollywood science, easy, facile and of a destructive decadence.

It doesn't help that you say it when you turn right around and contradict yourself in the next post?

I have no particular interesting in neither "natural", "supernatural" or "reality". The observable is good enough for me, you can call it whatever you want to. I doubt it will care much.

Science works because it can make predictions. Believing you can explain why it works is no different than somebody believing in some invisible God in my book: You're all writing ontological checks you can't cash, assuming some underlying "reality" or "being" that conforms to your beliefs.

I haven't contradicted myself at all, there has simply been a misunderstanding by you. I've been 100% clear since long before I started this thread on the difference between PN and MN, do you imagine that this is the first time I've ever discussed this with anyone? There is zero chance that I would make such a basic error. You are mistaken.

I'm not sure you see the contradictory nature of your criticism. You're telling me that science isn't based on the idea that the natural, physical world (i.e. that which can be detected using the senses) is all that there is, instead it's based on Empiricism, i.e. evidence (sense data) obtained only through perception, using the senses... Can't you see that both are proceeding from the same assumption, that there is only that which can be detected using the senses?

The empirical ideal is not achievable, there are too many problems with it (see Carlo's post, he's right), but we can get as close as reasonably possible by using PN applied through MN and by making sure that all scientific theories satisfy the criteria that I listed. Those criteria are doing the job of ensuring that all scientific evidence is only that which can be detected with the senses, because you can't apply them to anything non-physical.


Interesting that you're quoting back at me the criteria that I listed. First that science is based on the 'observable' (I'm equating that with 'testable') and now that it must be Predictive. Will you eventually realise that it must also be the other things I listed? And then will you understand the job that they are doing to try to is to make sure that the evidence detected by our senses is not some illusion, but accurately reflects the external world so as to be as empirical as possible?

Ditto, if you believe that there is anything non-physical, immaterial and spirit.... i.e. all the things that we class as supernatural and that science rejects as not even existing because by definition, they can never be part of the empirical world.

Yeah I agree and it's biggest problem with empiricism that before we can make sense of and form beliefs about what we are detecting with our senses., we need to have beliefs. I'm in the camp of thinking that the empirical ideal is not realisable.

But, the scientific criteria that I listed, that are getting poo pooed so much, are the way that science makes as certain as possible that the sense data that it deals with is not leading to false beliefs.

Are you quite certain?

We're not talking about "strong." We're talking about "irrational." You seemed quite sure of yourself that accepting an argument of this type was "irrational."

I don't need to. What you think they're agreeing to and what they're actually agreeing to are not the same thing.

Yeah. You're in a definitional pit of despair. It's hard for me to meaningfully convey how worthless your word salad is here. If you were to actually take the time and sift through all of the words you're using, you're going to discover that you've said absolutely nothing of value because you've completely assumed yourself out of the conversation. I'm probably not going to respond point-by-point to this line of conversation moving forward, but here is a partial list of things you're going to need to consider:

* What do you even mean by "divine nature"?
* Can immaterial interact with material?
* What does it mean to have a "natural explanation"?
* Does "useless" imply "not existing"?

Lastly, that's not how the paradigm works. I don't care how many times you repeat it. You're clearly not a scientist and you clearly don't understand science that well.

I think the stronger version is irrational, for the reasons that I gave. I said that I think 'complexity requires design' is an implied premise of the argument if the conclusion is 'therefore the universe is designed and has a designer', you didn't agree and gave me a syllogism to which my criticism does not apply, because it's a less strong version that doesn't have that conclusion.

It's an inductive conclusion. As one takes in the big-ness and complexity of the universe, one might find that hand-waving through the idea of "this was all just chance and randomness" becomes less and less satisfying of an explanation. Not that this leads specifically to the God of the Bible, but it broaches possibilities that are closed off to those who prefer the idea of explaining everything as chance and randomness.

Sure. I think you've done a great job of overstating the opposing position in this case. But that's not really helping you understand anything, and it's more indication that you're still quite prone to overstating arguments and creating strawmen out of them.

As far as I know, nobody (not even the Intelligent Design folks) insist that "complexity requires design."

Do you interpret "the heavens" as the rest of the universe? Either way it's a nitpick to avoid the question. I'm not claiming to be a bible expert.

Why are you evasive about your own beliefs?

Yes, and this is the common interpretation of this passage.

How is it a nitpick? You asked a question and I answered it. The answer is relatively obvious to those who think a little bit before speaking.

In what sense am I evasive? I'm answering your questions in a pretty straightforward manner. Your questions show that your understanding of the Bible is extremely literal (and you've also suggested that you don't know much about it). So I'm going to pace the conversation in a slower manner.

Because that wasn't relevant to the questions I was asking and you ignored the rest of them.

That may be the common interpretation but it feels shoehorned to me. Earth is described as being "under the heavens", and the heavens feel pretty secondary to me in that passage. Feels a bit inaccurate and dismissive of an infinite number of planets and space.

Ahh, the old, "you're not supposed to take it literally". This is what I'm interested in though, I'm intrigued in what you do take literally and what you don't. It appears that the creation and the resurrection are two things you do take as fact, which is why i've asked about those.

So you can try to direct me away from the bits you'd rather avoid discussing?

Why on earth would I, as an empiricist, need to claim that there is only that which can be perceived through the senses? That's a completely useless ad hoc hypothesis which explains absolutely nothing, adds no knowledge and I have no way of falsifying it.

And why on earth do I need to call it "natural"? It resolves absolutely nothing, and if I use that to conclude that there is only the natural... I'm just making a tautology anyway. It's a label without value.

Empiricism is the view that knowledge tends to come from sensory experience, not that we somehow have the answer to the universe and everything.

Here is a task for you: Explain to me what "natural" is, without using any term that points back to "natural" itself.