Naturalism is Philosophically Unsound

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Greetings

There is at this time another discussion taking place in the 'Politics, Philosophy and Religion' group about the existence/non-existence of God that is getting a bit bogged down, with people not really taking into consideration what is actually being said by those they disagree with (or maybe that's just my perception of the situation).

In any case, one of the reasons for this impasse, in my not-so-humble view, is due to the stubborn presumption of the truth of the materialistic paradigm that seems to infest the sciences these days, and which atheists generally accept without question. Going by many names, among them 'naturalism', the philosophical position that is adhered to by so many that we should accept as the default postition the belief that nature is all there is because of an apparent 'lack of evidence' for anything that could be called supernatural, is one that is not even logically coherent. It is not logically coherent because it a) refuses to acknowledge the philosophical basis of the claim itself, instead treating it as something that has been scientifically demonstrated to be true, b) proclaims the non-existence of something simply because the tool it uses (i.e. the scientific method) is inadequate as a method in this respect, c) fails to acknowledge the fact that evidence can, and does, take many forms, and finally d) the scientistic assertion that 'all true knowledge can only come to be via the practice of the scientific method' is itself a claim that has not, because it cannot, be scientifically tested. It is an example of a self-defeating assertion, like the claims made by many Post-Modernists that 'reality isn't real' or that 'there are no absolute truths'.

Now perhaps the terminology I use here (ex. scientism, naturalism, materialism) will be, because it can be, criticised for being imprecise, but apart from this rather minor objection to the central claims I make here, is there anyone who can seriously suggest that all we know of via other means of knowing about the world we experience (ex. subjective personal experience, the study of history, philosophy, art et cetera), has no value precisely because it came about by means other than the ones that scientistic scientists are themselves willing to accept as being reliable? Stephen Hawking seems to believe that 'philosophy is dead' (The Grand Design), but that claim itself is a philosophical one, not a scientific one. Science itself rests upon philosophical beliefs - for example, the belief that objective reality exists, the past is real, and that the tests we perform to uncover how nature works reveals to us what phenomenologists refer to as noumena (i.e. things as they actually are), and not just phenomena (i.e. things as they merely appear to us).

Atheists always ask for 'proof of this', 'proof of that', but can they even prove to me, here and now, that they even exist in the first place? No. All I see here is text that, for all I know, could have been produced by some elaborate computer programme, and not a real person. Proof, outside of mathematics and logic, is irrelevant because it is non-existent. There is no such thing as 'scientific proof', so they should all stop asking theists for it.

God may or may not actually exist, but there is one thing I certainly do know, and that is that this question will never be settled by studying nature with the intent of showing from the very beginning that belief in God is irrational. There are many philosophical arguments that can be made that lend credence to the notion of God (ex. the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument) but there are NO atheistic arguments that work that I currently know of. 'God does not exist', YouTube athiests like to say, whilst at the same time asserting that 'one cannot demonstrate that something does'nt exist' and that because of this the burden of evidence lies with the theist! I mean - really now. Talk about being inconsistent and incoherent. Need I state the obvious here? Do I really need to spell it out?

tl:dr

Philosophy is largely irrelevant to the study of the natural world, since it neither predicts events nor produces physical principles, but merely speculates on the 'ethics' and 'meaning' of it all.

Last edited by Fnord on 21 Mar 2015, 9:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

All of this mix of art and science sounds

like common sense to me.

But unfortunately,

the scientific method does


not measure what all folks have in common,

particularly science leaning folks as opposed to artistic leaning folks

in divided ways of mind and body balance.

To join both is two have two metaphorical happy hemispheres of UNI

verse of life unto itself. Yes, strangely enough


this head between our shoulders is remarkably like the
earth with neuron-like humans attempting to make so
many more connections with each other to fire a

planet alive in dual hemispheric flow

as ONE mighty force of human being life
and EARTH in letting go of

dividing ways
of mind
and
body
imbalance

FOR LIGHT IN NEW IDEAS..

WHEre AuTIST BECOMES ArTIST

WITH only u r separating
dark from
light..

wHeRe only rR
separates
Ee and H,
in masculine
and feminine balance

as

WELL
FOR NOW
AS
IS
IS.

Hmm.. perhaps philosophy is largely irrelevant, unless science is used in regard of being human being, in the most base of all human existence, which is human emotions and senses that science has no tools to adequately measure to replicate the human experience and experiment that is ALWAYS UNIQUE TO EACH HUMAN UNIVERSE OF PERCEPTION of what reality even is, in a personal Universe of emotions and senses felt and lived in ALWAYS UNIQUE flesh and blood action.

IN the case of human being, only philosophy can fully address THE FULL CONDITION THAT IS human being.

I'm not sure what else REALLY counts, EXCEPT FOR A PHILOSOPHY OF THE HUMAM CONDITION, AS IS, considering 'we' are human being, ARE WE NOT...

PERHAPS SOMEONE will develop a test for that.

Wait, I think someone already has.

I'll check back later to let one know of the results, when
THAT EXPERIMENT IS

DONE.

So ethics and meaning are irrelevant because they cannot be accounted for when one study's nature. I think that's what you mean here, but I'm hoping I'm wrong about this. Philosophy itself isn't some monolithic belief-system, the way that Catholicism for example is. The number topics that one can study under the umbrella designation of 'philosophy' is vast, and so one has to be very careful when making the (purely philosophical, by the way) assertion that it is 'largely irrelevant to the study of the natural world'. I myself don't believe it is 'irrelevant', especially when ultimate questions of existence are raised.

I mean't 'studies nature'. My grammar seems to be deteriorating for some reason

Science cannot prove nor disprove any construct that is not falsifiable. So in this context it can never falsify god. Science can however falsify religious claims about the natural wotld, this it has done with great efficacy since the birh of he scientific method and the abandonment of.natural philosophy eg aristoleanism and scholasticism. As to the method itself not being verifiable and therefore invalid, meh, been there argued that and essentially the method is a tool broken into a series of steps , it does not predict anything, it makes no assumptions, therefore it is not empirical in he sense you are trying to claim. It is shown to be of use simply by it's efficacy regarding ethics and meaning of life, show me that either are objective.

And as for prove.to.me that you exist prove to me that you are not a tree.

To be clear, I am being as serious as 'Aghogday' can get here, first, before I go on.

This proof of if I exist is an interesting question.

Honestly, I lived decades of my life as a being more in the existence of external requirements rather than innate instinctual, intuitive experience of life.

In fact, my psychiatrist suggests that I never actually developed an ego until the last year and a half, and I have to agree as there was no integrated me for decades. I was the sum of all the parts of my environment.

Truly, finding center in self, or as some folks pejoratively describe it as self-centered is a goal to attain, not one to avoid, IN ZEN like practice of generating one's ego through the core of what we can be as creative human beings, per what some describe as the inner self.

My entire life, for decades, even with an exceptional IQ of above 130, I never really created anything new, except for a few isolated incidences.

I played the piano wonderfully by sheet music but could not create my own music in creative flow until age 47, when I was losing my emotions from chronic stress, and the battle within me was to stay alive, as truly a living feeling human being.

In my opinion, although for decades It did not really seem like I fully existed as an integrated human being, I can for sure now say that when a person does a search on just the name 'Katie Mia' that I created as an acronym of sorts in tandem with a form of my wife's name, they will find a human entity that they've never seen before.

So yes, in this way, I exist, and I can prove it in videos; photos; yes, living color; and creative expressions in both photos and words in forms that no one has created before.

It appears that technology allows humans now, finally, to

PROVE THEY EXIST.


Anyway, perhaps a topic for another time.

Of course it is logically coherent.


I think it's more that logical positivism and related philosophies have had a level of success completely unprecedented. It's no longer seen as necessary to explain logical positivism every time you point out that there is no evidence for something, and therefore one shouldn't believe in it.

No, this is wrong.

If something is real, it can be verified or falsified by examining reality. If something cannot be detected by examining reality (assuming you had perfect instruments), then it does not exist.

Could you give some examples?


This is a straw man. Generally, the assertion is something like "knowledge can either be derived logically or from observation". That can be derived logically. HTH.


Let me stop you there. Subjective personal experience and history are both empirical. Art is empirical. Philosophy, again, is only worth anything when it is based on logic or empiricism.

At least the last of those is routinely tested by psychologists.



God doesn't exist. Make that G small and I'll give you "overwhelmingly probably doesn't exist"

No, but studying nature with an open mind would lead you to that conclusion, because you wouldn't find any evidence for God's existence.


This is wrong. Leibniz's Cosmological Argument is full of holes, and rather glaring ones at that.

a) It assumes that an infinite regress of causes is impossible
b) It assumes that a causeless event must be something resembling a deity

These are both huge assumptions. For Leibniz's argument to stand up, they must BOTH be supported by evidence and logic. They are not. There is some evidence that the universe has not always existed, but even that could be interpreted in other ways. There is some evidence that there are causeless events which are not deities, and although that is questionable, there is no evidence of the existence of deities, so postulating a causeless deity is a leap.


The big one, which tips the balance overwhelmingly against any proposed deity, is "there is no evidence for the existence of a god and it is not rational to believe in something there is no evidence for".

Others, some concerning specific deities: "there is no evidence for a deity; therefore, at best, the deity doesn't act in the world"; "omnibenevolence and omnipotence is inconsistent with the suffering in the world", and an idea that is widely known as the Euthyphro dilemma: "do the gods love something because it is pious, or is something pious because the gods love it?"

These are all ideas familiar to anyone who has studied philosophy, generally they're taught right after the Cosmological, Ontological and Teleological Arguments which can all be easily dismissed.

So you did start a new thread, Lintar. I've only just found it.

I see the hecklers are already busy trying to head off any suggestion that there might be some metaphysical things or "stuffs" like truth, virtue, intellect, reason, logic, art, life, knowledge, understanding, will... etc. that are worthy of examination or contemplation (more metaphysical stuffs).

Anyhow, I've used up my available time for now. I'll be back later to challenge the OP.

I'm very pleased to meet you, I must say.

I know this might take some ire but I really think that the kind of empiricism that views the subjective as an imbecile cousin of the objective or even an outright hallucination will be at an end in most of our lifetimes. The double-slit and quantum eraser experiments are temporarily off-limits because their results, for the peer review level, are stand alone and the immediately suggested ramifications are not shown in any other experiments of that level. I only think it's a matter of time before something like the Global Consciousness Project gets enough peer review to where guesswork on its experimental integrity won't be prone to faith-based attacks. One or two more equally vetted experiments on top of that and you'll see an emerging paradigm of the sort that would suggest the same kind of line between objective and subjective that QM divided from Newtonian thought - that the world in general, in the macro, works consistently enough to keep engineers and scientists fully employed regardless of the outcome but that ultimately the world as we know it is undergirded by consciousness, really made of it in entirety, and we are the product of that universe looking back at itself.

[quote="The_Walrus"]If something is real, it can be verified or falsified by examining reality. If something cannot be detected by examining reality (assuming you had perfect instruments), then it does not exist.
[quote]

This does not follow. You're basically saying that if we, with our rather limited abilities as human beings, cannot detect something it therefore can be dismissed as being unreal. Whilst we have the ability to enhance our capacities (ex. design equipment that allows us to see in the infrared and ultraviolet bands of the EM spectrum), no one can honestly conclude that an incapacity to experience something renders that 'something' purely imaginary.

To a man who has been blind his entire life, colour is a concept he cannot fully appreciate even if he can understand the theoretical principles that allow for it to be detected by those who can see. For someone who is, and always has been, deaf, the concept of sound is foreign. There are those who say they can see things that the majority of us cannot; who are we to dismiss what they claim simply because we don't have their ability(ies)?

What is reality anyway (objectively speaking, that is)? It is, of course, a purely philosophical concept, not a scientific one, and the practice of science is predicated on the belief that what we experience really is much more than just a collective illusion that humans have been conned into accepting. No one can actually prove that reality really is what most of us believe it to be, but that, in and of itself, is usually not a problem for us most of the time. Since this is clearly the case, to say that something (ex. God) does not exist, would require that the one claiming this demonstrate that the idea itself is logically incoherent/self-contradictory. It isn't the one making a positive claim (ex. God exists) that has the burden of evidence placed upon him, but the one who makes a claim full-stop (God exists, God does not exist). Atheism is not the default option, for it has to be justified, because it is a belief about the nature of the objective reality we all believe in.

Yes, I agree. It will take what has come to be called a 'paradigm shift' to dislodge the stogy old mechanistic view of nature, a view of nature that had its origin in the 17th century, when simplistic billiard-ball physics was basically all that there was to the subject. The fields of biology and psychology like to treat people as though if we just knew the precise location of all our constituent 'parts' at a given moment in time, we would then have a complete understanding of what it is that makes an individual who he/she is. This view is absurd, naive and, quite frankly, preposterous. I guess some people just prefer the comforting delusion of equating what we can clearly see with what is actually there. The thought that reality may not necessarily be so simple and straightforward is frightening for them.

Aghogday writes:

No, this is patently false.

For example, some people experience nuanced emotions that empower a person to action including belief, which science already provides evidence of for, per the positive placebo and negative nocebo effect.

However, close to 66% percent of people in the general population cannot effect real life results from the power of the real emotion of belief that underlies whatever metaphor of words generates the emotion of belief, per human effect of change, which is just a synonym for the placebo effect, generally speaking.

And honestly, in a world where the majority of people are stuck in a mechanical cognition way of thinking THAT is not surprising at all, as even science now shows THAT way of thinking suppresses the emotional/empathic/social cognition intelligence of mind.

So in other words, if the placebo effect does not work for you, or you do not experience the empowering emotion of belief that emotes action for positive or negative human change, per placebo or nocebo effect, this part of the human condition may not exist for you, and may not be proven to exist in your life but never the less that does not negate the reality of this empowering emotion of belief in other folks lives to make real human miracles happen.

I know, as I have access to this empowering emotion of belief and can do amazing things, where before, where I fell Ill, and lost that empowering emotion of belief, my life was basically crap pie, with the inability to even heal myself, of 19 medical disorders.

With the FULL POWER OF BELIEF, TOTALLY ESCAPED FROM A MECHANICAL COGNITION WORLD, I DO move metaphorical real physical mountains, as evidenced time and time again, already, here on this site.

What you may fail to understand, with the condition of Autism, as it is a clinical trait, is that people experience life much differently than you do in the way of sensory and emotional connections WITH other humans along with the emoting power of emotions, you may or may not more fully experience.

And it is clear to me, as relatively speaking, a natural 'empath' of a human being THAT the so-called most famous Atheist folks like Mr. Dawkins, and Mr. Hitchens have LITTLE TO no affect of emotion in their speech, and that is an objective way to determine if someone can even experience the emotion of belief, as it is a much more advanced emotion than just laughter, or joy.

Both Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens speech is robotic in affect, AND CONVERSELY emotions are expressed in human language, flowery like you suggest I communicate, and other folks, UNLIKE Mr. Dawkins and Mr. Hitchens, who do NOT speak with the empowering emotive metaphor in AFFECT OF HUMAN LANGUAGE in FULLER nuanced PRO-SOCIAL human emotions.

So truly it stands to 'reason' but really 'emotion' that I as an empath will have flowery language, as truly that is an empirical measure of both my emotional intelligence that not all share, particularly here, as well as the general potential that I would have as a human being to use the emoting power of the emotion of human belief to emote real life PHYSICAL ACTIONS, LIKE LEG PRESSING about HALF-A-TON OF WEIGHT, 14 TIMES SLOWLY, WITH MY ARMS RAISED UP.

YOU SEE, EVEN THOUGH science does not have the tool to measure the actual emotion of belief that I experience when I lift that 930LBS, 14 times; never the less, the empirical results are there for others to observe.

And truly any athlete who experiences strong positive pro-social emotions is more likely to produce miracle-like physical results through the power of the emotion of belief.

Perhaps, I have control with my mind down to the atomic energy at the core of all my cells, per a 'Quantum Observer Affect, per effect that not all humans achieve in life. And perhaps science will one day provide a tool that can measure the empirical process of how this works, if it does work in a way like this.

But never the less, I have always been super strong, even as a frail looking skin and bones boy who DID BEAT THE BIGGEST MOST MUSCULAR FOOTBALL PLAYER BOYS IN ARM wrestling by generating a 'quantum' power of mind over matter, per my body, where muscle mass in bulk, was not needed.

When I was 120 LBS, I was beating 160 LB muscular boys.


When I was 170 LBS, I was beating 260 LB muscular law enforcement dudes.

And now at 233 LBS, I am lifting hundreds of more LBS, at age 54, verses elite physical specimens of military males in their twenties that is empirically evidenced, as I'm sure you've already seen here.

But the thing is, I was born with extreme emotions and obviously more gifted with the emotion of belief than most people are.

Some folks do not even realize emotion is a belief, and if not that emotion obviously does not likely exist fuller in their life, as the effect of that emotion in terms of physical abilities, is simply amazing, AND HARD TO MISS, EVEN FOR THE MOST CASUAL OF OBSERVERS, IN REAL flesh and blood life.

But anyway, your statement here that if the tools of the scientific method cannot measure a human phenomenon per the emotion of belief, it does not exist, IS PATENTLY FALSE.

930 LBS does not lie, and neither do my hips, or eyes of the emoting power of BELIEF.

AND TRULY, NOT ONLY THAT it's sad that modern religions have changed the word belief into a symbol for something that does NOT EMPIRICALLY EXIST, PER A only HUMAN BEING GOD, WHERE this real human emoting power in the emotion of belief, CAN MOVE METAPHORICAL MOUNTAINS, IF properly sought, found, utilized, developed, AND practiced in the internal human being life that science currently CANNOT adequately MEASURE WITH THE LIMITED TOOLS THAT EXIST, AND DOES NOT NECESSARILY EXIST IN MR. DAWKINS, MR. HITCHENS, MR. HAWKING, MR. DENT, MR. FNORD, MR. TheWalrus, or MR. A Different Name's life BUT NEVER THE LESS AND MUCH MUCH MORE, the emoting power of the emotion of belief DEFINITELY DOES exist in my life, and I provide the miraculous results of that emoting power of the emotion of belief by the LB, and more precisely 930LBS.

AS another historical example of someone who has strong emotions of hope, faith, and belief that can be measured in affect of speech, is the Football Player Tim TEBOW, who speaks with a great amount of flowery emotional affect as well as non-verbal emotional expression, with homophobes around the world accusing him of being gay 'cause he shows so much freedom in expressing emotion. But the deal is, he is so frigging powerful looking in person, they will not do that to his face, just like me in real life doing a ballet exhibition in Dick's sporting Goods today, where there is no one, powerful looking enough, to come up and make fun of me to my face, although one can bet they are doing it behind my back, just as they do with Tim Tebow.

Tim Tebow actually finished a high school football game, with a broken femur, which is a miracle all by itself.

But 'little' Timmy is obviously another 'empath' of a human being, where PRO-SOCIAL emotion FULLER EXPRESSED is STRENGTH, INSTEAD OF WEAKNESS, PER THE POWER OF BELIEF IN MAKING THESE REAL LIFE MIRACLES HAPPEN.

BUT SERIOUSLY, if you do not run in 'our league' all of this may sound like gibberish to you in YOUR Universe but our UNIVERSES are in actual DEED MUCH DIFFERENT THAN ANY OF THE FOLKS I listed above, simply as there is no evidence of emotional affect in language, written or spoken, except for some that you have recently manifested here that is encouraging, at least in your case, as truly it is the most important type of human intelligence for basic survival, IN THE FLESH AND BLOOD WORLD, still.

But here's the deal, although I do not have a scientific method, per the official one, to measure this, never the less. I am using basic human common sense per my high levels of cognitive and affective empathy, and my exceptional IQ in ways of logic, as standard IQ and grade school/college measured, to systemize it per general science methodology of logic in systemization, as best as that can currently be done.

This is philosophy and logic mixed.

I am not just telling you miracles happen with belief, without actually describing, explaining, and providing evidence of how MIRACLES DO HAPPEN WITH THE EMOTING POWER of THE HUMAN EMOTIONS of relative free will, faith, hope and belief that do not have to be attached to any religion, at all, to be just as pertinent as they always have in the human condition.

What modern humans have forgotten truly is losing many of the empowering emoting emotions that our ancestors or even people currently separated from modern cultures with overbearing mechanical cognition requirements of thinking, still have as part of their human experience to do more amazing real life physical feats of achievement.

Emotions are internal feelings and senses that motivate human action.

Emotion equals emoting or generating action in human being.

It is a metaphor, yes, PER WORDS LIKE BELIEF, and can be an empty shell of a word, without the experience in the human condition of these emoting emotions that again, ARE DEFINITELY REAL IN HOW THEY AFFECT THE EFFECTS OF REAL LIFE HUMAN ACTION IN RESULTS THAT COUNT.

AND AGAIN, while there is not a tool that currently exists or not a tool that will ever exist to measure these empowering emotions of human relative free will, faith, hope and belief, if you currently do not have full use of these emotions to make real life miracles happen in your life that DOES NOT MEAN THIS IS NOT PART OF, OR EXISTS, AS A REAL INTERNAL PHENOMENON in someone else's life, AND CERTAINLY NOT ME, BABY, as I've got enough belief to BLOW MOST PEOPLE AWAY in almost anything I attempt to do in real life, and do have those empirical results in tow, with a simple click of smartphone to prove REAL LIFE human miracles DO come true.

YES, I know this is long winded; however, there may never be enough words to explain HOW REAL THE EMOTION OF BELIEF IS, FOR FOLKS, INCLUDING MANY religious folks with repressed emotions who NEVER EXPERIENCE THE EMOTION OF BELIEF to make real life human miracles a potential real life flesh and blood reality, too, coMe TRUTH..

Last edited by aghogday on 22 Mar 2015, 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.

OP has many good points everyone else is describing why I'm a Pastafarian most days. I revert to hardline Rastafari when necessary, kind of like a server/client timeout failover for my brain.

AND true that so many folks water the garden of culture but never truly cultivate the internal human being Universe that can be a HUMAN mind and body in total and POWERFUL GRACE AND STRENGTH, BALANCE.

HONESTLY and sadly, in true effect and affect, some folks have no idea that reality even exists, neither in words or feelings.