(August 4, 2014 at 1:35 pm)Cthulhu Dreaming Wrote: Here's the problem with this whole line of thinking. You don't have 500 witnesses - you don't have a *single* witness.
An even more basic problem is that we don't know if the bible is best used as a literal account of anything. Allegory might be a better use. In that case worry about the number of witnesses is misplaced.
(August 4, 2014 at 5:31 pm)frasierc Wrote: I don't think its quite analogous to your 500 unknown witness to monkeys flying up your butt .
Nice lighthearted use of vulgarity for humorous effect. (Kudos to you I say.)
(August 4, 2014 at 5:31 pm)frasierc Wrote: I can accept the argument that atheism isn't making a case (just lack of belief in theist claims). But naturalism is making a case that the world is explained exclusively by natural phenomenon. If you're going to make a claim - I would think you would want to provide evidence for that claim rather than just presume it and expect others to disprove you.
Atheists are all over the map on this one. Some atheists do believe in supernatural phenomena, just not gods. Some may want to quibble over whether there is anything at all in the supernatural category while allowing that the category is coherent. But many of us, myself included, think it is actually a definitional matter.
To 'explain' anything by classifying it as supernatural, is essentially the same as saying you have no idea how it works. So it fails as an explanation. To identify how the natural world gives rise to or at least is compatible with a phenomenon is what we mean by explaining a thing. That everything is explainable exclusively by natural phenomenon then isn't a claim so much as it is what we mean by "explainable".
Now do atheists agree that everything is in fact explainable? I don't think so. I hope most of us would agree that an adequate explanation of everything does not yet exist. Of course some atheists seem to believe science will inevitably achieve such a thing. I don't. But I don't think science will fall short because some things are correctly classified as supernatural. Rather, I just note that the more we understand about what we already know, the more it seems we discover stuff that we didn't know. I'm not at all sure that any amount of information about the world will ever be complete.