Atheism feels shunned...

[Edwardo Piet]

Your dislike of the immaterial seems laden with your disprove of the supernatural, but the existence of the immaterial I am speaking of is a plain fact of life: fantasy, abstract concepts, mathematics it all is there.

Where? Give me one reason to believe, give me any evidence that these concepts don't only exist entirely in our own heads. Give me one reason to believe that any of this exists and isn't made of phyiscal matter, is immaterial. I maintain that it's just undetected. I know of no reason or evidence to believe that any of this has to be immaterial, not made of matter, non-physical in that sense. Like I said if you are simply defining 'mental' as 'non-physical' you get what you wish in a single step.

I'm just arguing that I know of no evidence or reason to believe whatsoever - that thought, that any of the examples you listed above, etc - aren't made up of physical matter, aren't material. I know they aren't detected as physical at least yet. But they'd have to be detected as non-physical somehow to believe they aren't physical. They just aren't detected as physical yet as far as I'm concerned. There is evidence for the physical but not the non-physical so far, and the fact that thought hasn't been found to be physical doesn't in any way mean it isn't or that it's not made of physical matter! How the hell would it prove that?.

But I am not advocating the supernatural. I am not ascribing special powers over the physical to the immaterial, and I am not saying that it is indepent of the physical.

Ok, good.

I am saying that these things exist and that as of yet it is impossible to reduce them to physical properties.

And I'm fine with that too.

I am saying that there is another level of existence that supervenes the physical that for now is unexplained by the physical properties known to man.

How did you make that jump there? What evidence have you God that 'unexplained by physical properties known to man', gives credence to the notion of there being 'another level of existence that supervenes the physical?'

If there's no evidence that it is physical. Does that mean it's not physical? No. How does it? It's just undetected, as I have said. I still need a reason to make it an exception, so that whether it's capable of being detected or not - I need evidence before I'm going to believe that thoughts aren't made of physical matter, are immaterial, etc.

And...I ask: When you are talking about mathematics, and other information being immaterial - what are you talking about?.

Science is not about what is physically detectable but about what exists and enters our reality in some way.

I agree. So just because thought isn't as of yet physically detectable, I see no reason to believe that that means that thought is in any way immaterial/non-physical.

So, talking about existence - I still don't know of one single reason to believe that the immaterial exists at all.

EvF