(May 11, 2018 at 1:04 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(May 11, 2018 at 12:14 pm)SteveII Wrote: Under a naturalistic worldview, there are no inferences you can make from the physical world that explains something causally prior to the existence of the physical world. It is a feature of the worldview.
Now that's just bullshit. Naturalism isn't confined in any such way. You're putting naturalism in a box of your own making. Besides, the alternatives aren't simply God or naturalism, and no atheist is obligated to subscribe to one of those two options.
Really? Naturalism isn't confined to the natural world? If something were the cause of the natural world, it would not by definition be separate from the natural world?
(May 11, 2018 at 12:14 pm)SteveII Wrote: As far as a false dichotomy, what are the candidates for a first cause besides God and brute fact?
Rather than waste time presenting some, I'll simply point out that this is an appeal to ignorance. You don't justify a dichotomy that way. And besides, you already know and have posted against some of the alternatives in prior threads, so you're just being disingenuous.[/quote]
It cannot be an appeal to ignorance when my position is that the any characteristics of a first cause (by definition prior to the natural world) is unknowable under naturalism because the very system that defines where it can get knowledge from. The box is not of my own making--it is a limit of the worldview.
Quote:Metaphysical naturalism, also called "ontological naturalism" and "philosophical naturalism", is a philosophical worldview and belief system that holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences, i.e., those required to understand our physical environment by mathematical modeling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism...naturalism
