(January 16, 2017 at 6:56 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(January 16, 2017 at 6:36 pm)Huggy74 Wrote: Except you guys never lead with "I don't know"...Not knowing means you can't say one way or the other....in the case of naturalists answering the question, it's often implied that what they don't know is a plausible naturalistic explanation.
Not sure about your meaning given the phrasing. If you mean that "I don't know" is not a naturalistic answer, then I agree and it is accurate to say that naturalism supplies no answers to some philosophical questions; but rather, a promissory note that it cannot make good. Someday, maybe we'll have an answer, isn't an answer.
(January 16, 2017 at 6:56 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote: Not knowing doesn't preclude one from ruling out specific answers. Supernatural explanations are unbounded. Unless you've got something better than magic as an explanation, you've got nothing.
I agree. At the same time, magic is only magic until it isn't. It is a common belief on AF that once the proper mechanism or agent of something is identified an explanation moves from supernatural to natural. For example, electricity displaces Thor. If the explanations were simply "God did it" then you would have a point. Which god? How would we know? Etc. Here that is not the case. If the rule of sufficient reason universally applies, i.e. there are no brute facts, then it is reasonable to ponder metaphysical questions such as how beings can both persist and endure change. Since experience confirms that there are degrees of actuality and potential, then Aquina's logical demonstration (1st Way) proves, without special pleading BTW, that there must be something with complete actuality, i.e. a prime mover, on the far end of that scale. If the premises are sound, the conclusion follows. Believers (of various stripes from Muslims to Buddhists) and naturalists could both acknowledge a prime mover without agreeing on what exactly that means. It is an entirely separate question.