What makes people irrational thinkers?

[polymath257]

I am curious what you would say and how you would justify your own metaphysical beliefs.

Everybody's a naive realist when he goes to the supermarket.

Beyond that, I try to follow my own advice, which is not to believe metaphysical statements. One holds them tentatively to contemplate possibilities. 

Contingency is just when something isn't necessary.

Yes, I understand that. But I don't understand how either applies to the existence of something.

Science is happy to accept "brute facts" -- "it's that way because it's just that way." This is appropriate, because science doesn't deal in the metaphysics underlying the facts. The necessary conditions required for brute facts to be true are usually metaphysical issues.

It seems to me that all that some metaphysics does is say that God is a 'brute fact' that needs no further explanation.

You have said that asking questions which can't be examined scientifically is a waste of time. Other people find these questions interesting, though unprovable.

And, like I said, I am willing to accept that other means of eliminating error might be available. For example, in math, we use proof in a formal system. But if there is *no* means of doing so in a subject, all that means, as far as I can see, is that the subject is *pure* speculation. Which is fine, as long as it doesn't claim to actually make any factual claims.

I also am not asking for provability in the mathematical sense (which is limited to formal systems); just some way of reliably eliminating false ideas.

Metaphysics is fine to discuss online or over drinks, but the only real answers to any metaphysical question seems to be either "I don't know" or "what does that even mean?". So, after a while, it just seems like intellectual masturbation.

I am *hoping* for more, by the way. It would be wonderful if there could actually be answers and knowledge as opposed to endless speculation and febrile imagination.