You are a much better debater than Toneyrey, and don’t make the same sophomoric mistakes, assumptions, and fallacies he does. I’d like to continue with you, instead of having to teach basic science.
:tiphat:
Sooooooo close! Replace “really” with “likely” and you’ve got it.
my bad. I misspoke.
ll it takes is evidence of the supernatural to prove that we are living in a partially supernatural world. Evidence of the supernatural should be forthcoming; supernatural does not necessarily imply that it is immune to investigation of some sort.
I agree that supernatural evidence is not immune to invetigation. But bear in mind two things. First, if he wants to, God, or the pink unicorn, or whatever the source of supernatural causes is, can delibrately hide the evidence of his supernatural causes if he prefers. Second, evidence of the supernatural would not be forthcoming if we had not reached the stage where we would be able to find them. God seems to do most of his work indirectly. He speaks to people mostly through angels or burning bushes. Why would we not suppose that God works as indirectly in nature as well? This would suggest that not only is the supernatural hidden from us, but there is also extremely little of it.
But you’ll find that your argument works in reverse. If your supernatural world cannot be distinguished from a non-supernatural world, then you have no basis on which to claim that you know it is supernatural. You can claim logical possibility of the supernatural, but you cannot demonstrate it to be true or even likely, and if it cannot be demonstrated to be likely then how can one reasonably believe it?
That’s right. I believe that both naturalism and theism can both describe the world around us with the same degree of accuracy, though naturalism is more detailed. Since I think that I can discredit the null hypothesis philosophically, this means that I find theism and naturalism equally likely from a scientific perspective. Sorry, but I don’t think that any of us have any conclusive evidence for design. I spoke up in order to show you that you were leaning toward science of the gaps.
Technology is the application of scientific discoveries. We wouldn’t have transistors without a basic understanding of quantum mechanics, etc.
very true.
That’s a very mature way of looking at it and more reasonable than most presuppositionalists. I just find the evidence to be far too weak to support the conclusion.
I would agree, If I thought that naturalism were the default position to take. If the null hypothesis can be discredited, than both naturalism and theism are equally likely, and other worldy evidence, IMO, makes theism and even catholicism the more probable of the two. I think I mentioned in your “10 misconceptions about being an atheist” thread that I consider myself to be an catholic-leaning agnostic. I am not certain if the catholic church is true, or even if God exists, but I consider it to be probable. If you are familiar with Richard Dawkin’s the God Delusion, I would rank at around a two and a half on his belief scale.
Where have you met those criteria? I don’t understand what you’re saying.
sorry for being unclear. I was merely saying that all of the world around us is consistent with the predictions of naturalism and the few predictions of catholicism.
Again, that’s not the case. There’s a number of things that allow for free will, most basically the Observer Effect. A quantum particle behaves as if it were a superposition of all possible states it could exist in, until we test to see what state it is in, at which point it immediately resolves to one state, probabilistically.
My understanding is that as our observations of quantum particles approach infinity, they we can predict what the quantum states would be. For example, if quantum state A was 50% likely to occur, then fifty percent of the quantum states would be quantum state A.
On a minute scale, though it is impossible to predict what the outcome might be, we do have probabilities for them. But on a grand scale, such as the brain, the process is virtually determined.
In other words, since quantum states are determined by probability, a free will can not actually cause variations in those probablilities on the macroscopic scale.
BTW, I’m wondering if you have considered what I believe to be a necessary consequence of naturalism:
Our minds are purported to come from some physical process. We can immagine that these physical processes are in some of our closer relatives in the animal kingdom, and to a lesser degree in animals more distantly related, etcetra.
There is no place where we can draw a line! eventually, we realize that whenever this process occurs in nature, a small degree of consciousness lasts for a brief instant.
thoughts?
Just sayin…
