Atheist VS Naturalist - the latter sounds more appealing to me...

[Belacqua]

Give a counter example, and how it can potentially be demonstrated.

I just got through saying that I changed my mind. It can't be demonstrated. Because True Believers can always find a way.

Science can't explain some things right now. You assume that all those things can be explained by science eventually. I am not sure of that. That is all. 

It's like the Loch Ness monster example. The existence of the monster cannot be falsified. However, an abundance of evidence makes it reasonable for us to assume that there is no monster. 

Likewise, the statement "science can explain everything" can't be falsified. A preponderance of evidence may make it reasonable to assume that everything can be explained by science, but no certainty is possible.

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I find that honest people are usually willing to talk about themselves.

And I find that people who can't justify their assertions like to change the subject and attack the guy who asks them to do it.

And if I don't agree with your assertions and/or justifications what is the truth then? You'll insist yours is the truth, I'll insist mine is. I wonder what that is called? 

That's called a demand for logical argument and reasons. If we go on insisting without those things it's a waste of time.

If we change the subject to talk about the people in the discussion, that's a distraction.

My conclusions regarding you and the  supernatural stand.

Our experience discussing Giordano Bruno makes this unsurprising. You actually decided what to believe about him based on the desire to believe the opposite of me. You were unable to support your conclusion, but you held to it anyway. So I don't expect any of your conclusions to be subject to change.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Give a counter example, and how it can potentially be demonstrated.

I just got through saying that I changed my mind. It can't be demonstrated. Because True Believers can always find a way.

Science can't explain some things. You assume that all those things can be explained by science. I am not sure of that. That is all. 

It's like the Loch Ness monster example. The existence of the monster cannot be falsified. However, an abundance of evidence makes it reasonable for us to assume that there is no monster. 

Likewise, the statement "science can explain everything" can't be falsified. A preponderance of evidence may make it reasonable to assume that everything can be explained by science, but no certainty is possible.

Since the statement in question is not a scientific one, it clearly isn’t falsifiable (glad to see you changed your mind on that), nor should it be. It is essentially on a par with the statement ‘only scientific statements have value’, which is scientism, not science.


Boru

[LadyForCamus]

Give a counter example, and how it can potentially be demonstrated.

I just got through saying that I changed my mind. It can't be demonstrated. Because True Believers can always find a way.

Find a way to what? 

Science can't explain some things right now. You assume that all those things can be explained by science eventually.

No. I actually don’t assume that. But, until there’s a way to demonstrate a not-natural cause, that means “supernatural” causes, and as-of-yet explained natural causes are indistinguishable. 

Personally, I stick to “I don’t know.” I think that’s the most intellectually honest position for most mysteries. If science ends up explaining it, cool. If not, then I stand at “I don’t know.” And, believe me, I have a few of these from personal experience. Sometimes it’s not easy to sit at “I don’t know” for long periods of time. But as I said, until there’s a way to show the supernatural as a cause, or that such a separate category of reality exists at all, I don’t see how such a leap would be reasonable.

[Succubus#2]

So if we found something that couldn't be explained by science, then we'd know that not everything can be explained by science.

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Likewise, the statement "science can explain everything"...

Who said this, when and where did they say it?

[brewer]

Give a counter example, and how it can potentially be demonstrated.

I just got through saying that I changed my mind. It can't be demonstrated. Because True Believers can always find a way.

Science can't explain some things right now. You assume that all those things can be explained by science eventually. I am not sure of that. That is all. 

It's like the Loch Ness monster example. The existence of the monster cannot be falsified. However, an abundance of evidence makes it reasonable for us to assume that there is no monster. 

Likewise, the statement "science can explain everything" can't be falsified. A preponderance of evidence may make it reasonable to assume that everything can be explained by science, but no certainty is possible.

---

I find that honest people are usually willing to talk about themselves.

And I find that people who can't justify their assertions like to change the subject and attack the guy who asks them to do it.

And if I don't agree with your assertions and/or justifications what is the truth then? You'll insist yours is the truth, I'll insist mine is. I wonder what that is called? 

That's called a demand for logical argument and reasons. If we go on insisting without those things it's a waste of time.

If we change the subject to talk about the people in the discussion, that's a distraction.

My conclusions regarding you and the  supernatural stand.

Our experience discussing Giordano Bruno makes this unsurprising. You actually decided what to believe about him based on the desire to believe the opposite of me. You were unable to support your conclusion, but you held to it anyway. So I don't expect any of your conclusions to be subject to change.

Nope, my conclusion was supported just fine. The thread started out as biased from the very beginning and devolved from there. I knew nothing of this guy and then found sources that disagreed with your sources/position. You cherry picked my sources and dismissed/ignored the statements that talked about science. Is it any wonder that I didn't play nice. It often seems that it's your way or the highway.

See, this is why truth is subjective.

From the beginning thru to the end you were more incensed that people were saying that he was a martyr for science rather than the church burned someone alive.

[Rahn127]

There are roughly 3.154 billion seconds in 100 years.

If I were to start counting now by whole numbers, 1,2,3,4,5, etc
I could not get to 3.2 billion.

But let's say someone heard me counting and I said 3 billion, 100 million, 999 thousand, 999

That would seem impossible, unless I broke my own rules.
Things that seemingly don't have an explanation can be explained if the rules as we know them can be broken or bent.

We have a good handle on things right now and how physics work, but we'll know more next year and more 100 years from now.

We can't imagine what we might know 100,000 years from now. Something we can't explain right now still has an explanation.
We'll find it in time.

And that explanation will be part of our expanded knowledge of the world.

[Belacqua]

Personally, I stick to “I don’t know.” I think that’s the most intellectually honest position for most mysteries. If science ends up explaining it, cool. If not, then I stand at “I don’t know.” 

Thank you, this is my position also.

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Nope, my conclusion was supported just fine. 

I have no doubt that you found your own arguments persuasive.

And I have no doubt that no matter how many times I ask you to support the truth-claim you made earlier on this thread, you will avoid doing so.

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Likewise, the statement "science can explain everything"...

Who said this, when and where did they say it?

A man of great and unshakable faith recently wrote:

Something we can't explain right now still has an explanation.

We'll find it in time.

[Belacqua]

I think we've about covered it. So I'll sum up. Whether anyone wants it or not.

In part I think we've conflated two different issues. We started off talking about the supernatural. Is there such a thing, and if so how do we define it? Since somebody earlier declared that there is only the natural world, and that world is knowable by science, I think we sort of slid sideways into a related but different question, which is: can science tell us everything there is to know?

To the second question, I think we could answer "no" without positing anything supernatural. There could easily be things that are natural which are beyond human comprehension. And since science is carried out by humans (despite its near divine status on this forum) if people can't comprehend it then science can't answer it.

My go-to example for this kind of thing is from a lecture by Noam Chomsky. He said that researchers have set up mazes for rats involving fairly complicated math problems. It turns out that to get through their maze, rats can grasp surprisingly high level math. However, it appears that they can't solve a maze based on prime numbers. That concept is just not something that rat minds can get. So I see no reason to assume that human minds are immune from such limitations. We get prime numbers, and some other things rats don't, but we don't know what we're not getting.

So it makes sense to me that there could easily be all kinds of things in the natural world that people just aren't going to figure out. That maybe aliens somewhere find easy. And that means that just because science can't manage it doesn't mean that it's supernatural.

Unless someone wanted to define "natural" as "that which humans can know through empirical means." I think that would be a little unusual for science-type people, but not without precedent. It's normal for mystics from several traditions to say that nature is a kind of veil or surface of reality -- the portion of reality that humans can get through their senses. But they say there is far more to the world than that. They might call the portion of reality beyond what we perceive "supernatural," and if that's the way they do it I'd go along with them. I'm pretty sure I agree with them that what humans can perceive is only a very limited part of reality, though I might think about it in a Kantian rather than a mystical sense.

I think I pissed some people off by defining "evidence" in a certain way. I said that evidence is any input which increases a person's confidence in a proposition. And whether that input counts as evidence or not depends on the way a person interprets it. It has to fit into a larger model, and the model will largely determine what the evidence points to.

So I think that for many reasonable people, there is plenty of evidence for the supernatural. Among this evidence is 1) the obvious fact that people know very little of the world. 2) The fact that science seems to have no clue as to how we should approach some really big questions about reality -- e.g. what is consciousness? and why is there something rather than nothing? (And I know some people are attached to their theories and don't agree that these are mysteries. But lots of scientists agree with me about consciousness. And in Krauss's book about why there is something rather than nothing he actually admits in the last chapter that he doesn't know.) So if a person has a model which is skeptical of complete naturalism, and open to the idea that the supernatural is real, then these mysteries would be evidence (not proof) of the supernatural.

Obviously to people whose models hold solely to naturalism, who have faith that all unanswered questions will have natural solutions, the lack of answers in those problems *doesn't* constitute evidence for the supernatural. They interpret the lack differently.

Then there are the many many people in history who say they have had supernatural experiences. Some are fakers, some are obviously mistaken. But if we declare tout court that they are all wrong, we are doing so because a priori we have declared that only naturalism is possible. We don't know what those people experienced, we haven't had the same experience. Again, for anyone whose model allows the supernatural or skepticism about pure naturalism, their testimony is evidence. Not proof, but evidence. I know that a lot of people -- especially on this forum -- have no qualms about calling anyone who disagrees with them a liar or an idiot. But I think that is having too much faith in our own judgment about things we can't know for sure.

So I think there is lots of evidence for the supernatural, if a person hasn't ruled it out already. If you have ruled it out already, there is no evidence.

Anyway, people are extremely limited, it's the height of arrogance to imagine that we can understand more than a tiny fraction of the world, and over-confident conclusions about things we don't really know are just self-promoting fantasies.

OK, I'll drop it now.

[Succubus#2]

I think we've about covered it. So I'll sum up. Whether anyone wants it or not.

No mister arrogant arse, you don't decide when a subject is closed.

So I think there is lots of evidence for the supernatural, if a person hasn't ruled it out already. If you have ruled it out already, there is no evidence.

The supernatural does not exist.

[brewer]

Nope, my conclusion was supported just fine. 

I have no doubt that you found your own arguments persuasive.

And I have no doubt that no matter how many times I ask you to support the truth-claim you made earlier on this thread, you will avoid doing so.

I do support my claims when I need to, you choose to not like my support. Probably because I refuse to play your game by your rules.

Can't wait till our next encounter.