Your position on naturalism

[Whateverist]

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Thank you for what I take to be a genuinely held position on your part.  We've been suffering a barrage of Poes and trolls so not something to be taken for granted.  I'd love to explore this with you if you're game.  


I probably need you to unpack that for me.  Whether or not things have sufficient reasons, I would never assume we are equipped to understand them all.  So something which seemingly lacked a sufficient my well have one like that, which we just can't comprehend.



Why should that be?  Aren't you begging the question of whether any such thing as the supernatural exists, smuggling it in without arguing for it?



This seems to just repeat your last paragraph.

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Yes. I'm game.

Great.  Lets go.

Let's see.

I used here a valid conditional syllogism:
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If A, then B.
But, not B.
Therefore not A.

So, the only remaining thing to check now is whether my premises are all true in order to show that my argument is not only valid, but only sound, and therefore, my conclusion must be necessarily be true.

And that is fantastically being asked by some of your inquires:

Your first query demands a request for me to explain more the Major Premise of my argument which has a firm of "if A, then B".

I hope we can move past the form of the argument.  I'm willing to grant you're competent to recognize a valid argument.  Whether or not I am as competent remains to be seen.  But frankly I'm more interested in having a conversation than a performance of set pieces.

Well, I think, using our intuition, we can understand that from nothing, only nothing comes.

That there has ever been a universal state of nothing is far from established.  I sincerely doubt it.  I also doubt that either of us is or ever will be in any position to be sure of that.  Like you I assume that events follow upon sufficient cause.  I therefore assume that the universe is eternal but not in its current form of course.  The necessary and sufficient conditions therefore stretch back forever.  To my mind, that seems a less burdened assumption than that those prior conditions are to be explained by an alternative to the universe itself for which we have no evidence whatsoever.  Perhaps evidence for the 'supernatural' is in principle impossible since we are restricted to our side of the natural/super divide .. if we grant such a thing exists.  I specifically do not grant that.  In fact, I strongly doubt it.

Thus, every effect must have a cause.

I'm willing to concede this much but I strongly doubt that the natural world is capable of receiving a cause from what is not natural.  

Now, nature is the essence of a thing. Since, it is defined, and every defined things must be defined, there may be a definer that is not defined.

Don't mistake definitions for causes.  We should hope to be working from common definitions.  Any of us is free to define words as we will, but only if we can agree on their use can we communicate.  Defined things are the stuff of language, nothing more or less.  They certainly do not require an undefined definer .. whatever that may be.  You seem to be making a great deal of the significance of language here.  Why?

That can only be the sufficient reason, right? So, if not, which is tantamount to affirming that all things are natural, then we are denying sufficient reason.

Not right.  First I have no idea what you mean by an undefined definer and, since definitions are aspects of language I have asked why are emphasizing this here.  Sufficient reason where physical things are concerned is about physics, not definitions.  

As I hope you recall I came into this discussion affirming that all things are natural.  That is hardly a problem from my point of view.  I certainly do not see how that is any impediment to there being a principle of sufficient cause.

Next, sufficient reason is not about comprehension. Principle of Sufficient Reason is just the truth that something can only come from something and not from nothing. Just as there is a crime scene, we know that there must be a reason for that, even though we don't comprehend or know the whole info regarding the crime scene.

There doesn't seem to be any need to comment on the very same points as you circle them yet again.

I fail to understand what you are pointing at when you say that I seem to beg question. What is that question? Remember that I don't claim that I know supernatural right away, but I knew it by demonstration.

I mean when you assert that intuition shows that there must have been a first cause therefore the supernatural, you are jumping to your conclusion without any support other than to say it seems obvious to you.  Well we don't see it the same way.