No reason justifies disbelief.

[LadyForCamus]

Yeah, everybody knows this. 

That's why I said, just below the part you quote, that these days many people don't accept the second premise.

I didnt ask you what other people accept or not.
I was asking about your opinion.

You stated: "things change" and "change has a reason". You seem to accept this proposition, right?
I brought forward radioactive decay and asked you if you have any idea for the reason of decay of an individual nucleus. If you accept the premises of the argument you bring forward, then i am sure you have an idea of how and what causes radioactive decay. If you dont, then i am wondering how you accept claims of something fundamental about reality while having examples of something that does not support this claim at all.

Its simple logic, which you seem love so much.

Belaqua doesn’t seem to like to talk about his own positions very specifically. I wonder why that is? 

He positively reeks of RR.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's a common thing.  When a person doesn't know how, or prefers not to elaborate or justify their own positions they tend to waste everyone's time, including their own, bitching about some other position. We've all been there about something or other at some point in time or another, in all likelihood.

Here, let's try this. To Bel or to Benny. Everyone else is wrong wrong wrong about all the things. There we go, that's handled. Now, let's hear why and/or how either of you are right about anything?

[LadyForCamus]

This is what I don’t understand:

We all seem to agree that things exist.  That this category; “real things” is not an empty set. Earth is real. My bed is real. Your car is a real thing. Snow belongs in this set.  Where we differ is that some you believe or assume that there also exists a second and distinct category of real things - I’ll call it “RealPlus” - that are somehow just as real as real things, but different enough to qualify as their own category. Can someone, anyone, please:

1. List in detail, the positive descriptors of things in the “RealPlus” set (mind, the supernatural, god, etc) and-

2. Explain to me what other distinctions besides, “cannot be empirically detected” render it in need of its own category, and—

3. If the only distinction between things in the “RealThings” set and things in the “RealPlus” set is the ability to be detected, what qualifies anything in the latter set as real at all?

[The Grand Nudger]

If neither of these hookers get around to it I'll play devils advocate, if you'd be down.

[LadyForCamus]

Always! 😁

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah...fuck it, these guys had their shot.

I'll be running along under the assumption that the "real" is the empirical, whereas the "real+" is anything other-than empirical.  I'll start with an argument that's probably the weakest form of the real+ but one that's widely regarded as an argument that any nominally rational person in the real camp can accept.

It's called the intuition thesis.  I'll start by reversing the characterization above, even.  Intuition is what's real, and empirical verification of intuition is real+.  There are things that we can know by intuition, and further..there are things that we can then deduce from those intuitions.  We can know, for example..that our idea of a manticore includes the idea that it has a tail..even if we've never seen a manticore.  We can know that if it doesn't have a tail, it isn't a manticore.  The intuitionists manticore has a tail even if he's never seen one, and seeing a manticore and that it has a tail is an additional empirical fact.  

This could be simplified even further - we can sometimes guess and get it right.

How are we doing so far?

[LadyForCamus]

Sure. No objections to anything above.

[Jehanne]

That you defaulted to bitching about science after failing to present a single example of anything that belonged in the metaphysical or immaterial set is a matter of historical record, all one needs to do is go back a couple pages to see how this all began, Benny.

Nobody's "bitching" about science.  I don't bitch about a hammer because it can't turn a screw.

---

Whether or not there are questions that science isn't well suited to answer is immaterial to whether or not there is anything in the metaphysical or immaterial sets.  There may be, though it would be interesting to see how a person would know that or what those questions are, but if so that won't certify that there was a metaphysical answer or immaterial answer or that anything belonged in either of -those- sets.

Stop talking about my mom's socks.

Notice that the "immaterial" is defined in terms of what it is not, namely "not material" as opposed to what it is, which no one knows, let alone define.  For instance, if we posses souls/or spirits that cause the electrons in our brains to move, then the Conservation laws (namely, energy, momentum and angular momentum) are false.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I wasn't programmed to believe as a child, so I never bothered with beliefs. Yes, that's not a reasoned position, but I don't have to defend it. If someone has real evidence for a god or gods, trot it out.

Do you believe in unicorns? If not, do you have reasons?

There are several good ones I can think of. 

~ I've never seen one. 
~ I've never heard a serious person claim they exist.
~ No fossil or skeletal remains. 
~ They don't appear in Medieval fact-based books like hunting manuals -- only books of legends, alongside clearly fictional creatures like the cynocephali. 

Those are good reasons, I think.

That's wandering down a dead end road. I have no reason to consider unicorns.

[The Grand Nudger]

Awesome...so....let's ratchet up the dial, shall we?  What if I were to posit, pursuant to the above upon which we have agreed, that we can intuit and deduce....that among the things we know, empirical facts can never give us the whole picture?  That no amount of empirical instances proves the necessity of some truth?  That a necessary truth, then, does not and cannot depend on individual instances of empirical facts.  

We possess knowledge about our external world, necessary truths.  Necessary truths, however, do not and cannot depend on individual instances of truth, therefore we can deduce that knowledge does not depend on sense experience.  

I'll pause here.

---

  For instance, if we posses souls/or spirits that cause the electrons in our brains to move, then the Conservation laws (namely, energy, momentum and angular momentum) are false.

There's a range of alleged metaphysical truths that, if true, mean that a range of physics is false.  By contraposition, thus, we can state that if (or whatever amongst) that range of physics is true..then the corresponding range of metaphysics is false.

The problem that metaphysics faces, in this..is that the range of physics we are willing to say "are true" has become immensely larger than it once was and continues to grow. Every single tiny item of physics added to that pile necessarily renders it's contrapositive metaphysical claim obsolescent. Just like god, metaphysics is shrinking, and just like theologians, metaphysicians keep insisting that their subject lies in whatever remains of that tightening chasm.

Or, you know..in pig english, "but what about -this- unanswered question, huh..checkmate!"

It's a shitty spot to be stuck in, and I can easily sympathize...it's very much akin to the collapse of the scientific notions of aether and phlogiston, or the slow rolling execution of the psychogenic homunculus.