Atheism feels shunned...

[Edwardo Piet]

I never said it was the same. I'm saying there's no reason to believe that there's anything extra (to mechanics) - if there's no evidence for it. As I said.

I know of no evidence for anything other than the mechanical, so I - at least currently - believe that to believe otherwise is superfluous.

EvF

If you really want to stay close to evidence it is more correct to state that the 'I' exists not that 'I' IS mechanical. In the end there is no hard evidence of the material nature of our world because everything (also in the materialistic view) is experienced indirectly. Experience of 'I' comes first to everything. So if you assert that 'I' is a product of of the mechanical and that all follows from there, then in fact you are reversing claim and evidence. The mechanical does not follow from the experience of 'I'. The purest thing to say is that there'no reason to believe that there's anything extra to 'I'. So what hard reasons do you have that the mechanical exists at all. You have none.

It's mechanical by the process of elimination. There's no evidence for the opposite, for anything not mechanical.

What I experience as myself I no longer believe to be the starting point once the rest of existence hits me in the face with its overwhelming logic and evidence!

IOW: I'm not a solipsist.

Whatever we mean when we say "mechanical" I believe there is plenty of evidence of! Regardless of if anyhting other than 'I' exists. The evidence of the physics, the mechanics of the universe, whatever we mean when we say that by that definiton, there is evidence of.

Because: There is evidence for the workings of things, the mechanics of it. And not anything extra to that, right?

So what do you mean that we have no evidence for the mechanical?

On the contrary...that's all[ we have evidence of! Where's the evidence for the non-mechanical? If there's evidence for me, there's mechanical evidence for me...but where's the evidence for non mechanical evidence of me? There's evidence for my mechanics "I'm thinking" what else??? Where's the evidence that I, or anything else, is separate to that ultimately...and non mechanical?

If it's ever fair to say there's evidence of anything - any of this evidence that we have - there is evidence for the workings of, the mechanics of; so there's the evidence. Evidence for anything further? No. Right?

And indeed if you claim the mechanical world you are therefore implicitly claiming that 'I' somehow is a product of the mechanical.

There's no evidence that I am not mechanical. There is evidence for the mechanics of the universe. Why would 'I' be some sort of bizarre exception to this?

So the burden of proof is already on your shoulders, because mechanics is not the same as the experience of 'I' and the mechanics therefore is the superfluous part.

I'm not saying it has to be the same (as I have said at least twice now) - I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that there's no reason to believe that it isn't the same way. IOW: No reason to make an exception!

Finally...even if we go to solipsism and we said that "I" am all that exists (be it me or you or whoever)...if external reality is me, whether it's me or not - that doesn't stop the fact that there's only evidence for the mechanics of it/me! Be it that case then: As far as I know, if I'm all that exists...there's evidence for my own mechanics then....and nothing more!

EvF