Trouble is brewing.
Yes, which is why I mention it: if these debates are to be meaningful, naturalists need to explain exactly what they think nature is, otherwise denying the possibility or likelihood of the supernatural is meaningless.
These sorts of remarks demonstrate the reality of Science as a social activity that makes use of our God-given intellect in the service of fame, politics, economics and whatever pleasures it can bring. The beauty and awe that it inspires as it pierces into the nature of our universe, revealing the glory of its Creator, the essence of science as a gift to humanity is lost to such clownish individuals. The sad fact is that if he were true to his beliefs, he would be pursuing physics and not venturing into the realm of philosophy with such simplistic and provocative comments. Give me a break!
I would say that it is we who define what is nature. Is this activity in which we are participating, natural? Is it solely the neurophysiological events and the physical dimension in which they participate that we are to call natural? Are the realms of mathematics and philosophy natural? How do we get past the analogies and images to the truth? A person talking about multiverses might argue with another who sees an endless column of turtles, one on top of the other, not realizing they are saying the exact same thing. It is all one miracle. And who is this “we”, but none other than you and me?
Not sure we can determine his beliefs from one quote, any more than Tony (post #190) is justified in claiming Penn Jillette is unbalanced on the basis on one attribution.
Empiricists don’t make such a claim. They claim that “sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge”. No one can prove the Sun will still exist tomorrow. All our experience says it will, but it cannot be proved 100% because no one knows the future. Sense experience and therefore empiricism is about likelihood, not proof.
It’s a dogma believed on faith alone, C3.
I have higher expectations of someone who has been blessed with a certain level of intelligence and has used them to earn a privileged level of education, especially if they have a responsibility in the education of the young and society in general.
Did you just stab Hume’s Fork with Hume’s Fork?
Christi pax.
Richard Feynman was an excellent educator, and he also criticized philosophers who lose touch with the real world: youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo
It’s not FEAR that makes me reject the idea of astral projection, clairvoyance, ectoplasm, elves, ESP, fairies, Father Christmas, ghosts, poltergeists, precognition, psychokinesis, reincarnation, remote viewing, telepathy and UFOs.
God gave us brains for many reasons: one reason is to distinguish evidence from fiction.
There is no evidence for absolute empiricism; ergo, it is likely an attractive fiction for those who cannot stand OR FEAR the idea of the supernatural.
A regular supernatural event. Something obvious. Not a one off that could be a trick or a mental abberation on the part of the observer.
How about a beloved heirloom, silent for decades, playing a tune at a significant moment, and then ne’er ever again. Silence returns, inexplicably.
If the empiricists do not fear the supernatural, why do they so fiercely fight it?
In the past 100 years, say, what new knowledge has philosophy given us? Has philosophy made any progress?
Philosophy is the love of wisdom, not the love of “new knowledge.”
He did?
E=mc^2 is not used in designing a bomb. Any radioactive matter has a critical mass in which it explodes if the amount of the radio active matter is equal or larger than it, lets call the critical mass as m_c. m_c depends on many factors which I don’t recall well. What they do is that they put two radio active matters with each a mass smaller than m_c but the sum larger than m_c. Then they hit them together with another explosion and they have the nuclear explosion.
