For mashugenah
For those not on xullrae's journal, I have been involved in a lengthy discussion with mashugenah over there. As the original post has now become very buried, and I consider it rude to keep banging on under someone else's journal (and forcing them to watch the car crash), I have attempted to move the discussion here so only those of us concerned need to play with it
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Your answers suggests one's spiritual side is the capacity to ignore this naturalist approach and add some spurious supernatural cause?
Note that I am retaining the term "naturalist" as it conveys exactly the meaning I require and I reject any accusation of "emotional loading" there:
"naturalism (noun) a philosohical viewpoint according to which everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted" - Oxford English Dictionary.
My point remains: inventing a root cause which is untestable, makes no predictions, answers no questions, and for which absolutely no evidence currently exists, is an action entirely free of intellectual merit. I am not rephrasing your point to make it seem more emotive, I am paraphrasing it to what appears to be your core point as I understand it, something I believe is a pretty standard debating technique. If this is not the point you are making, I suggest you clarify, because right now it isn't my paraphrasing which is making your agument look silly; as it stands it is baseless speculation. I emphasise "baseless", because you have chosed to postulate a supernatural cause based on nothing but mankind's history of making up stories about the supernatural.
Finally, I'm not sure about the relevance of your Descartes quote, unless you are referring to metaphysical solipsism as postulated by Gorgias. If so, the whole concept is a dead end for debating purposes. Either you (and the rest of the universe) are real, or you (and the rest of the universe) are figments of my imagination and nothing effectively exists outside my own imaginings. Given that the very premise makes the suggestion untestable and unfalsifiable, I must embrace the potential illusion as though it were reality or cease to function effectively in the universe my mind has created for me. The question can never be answered and must therefore be consigned to irrelevance, neatly dovetailing with certain other unverifiable inventions.
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The originating event for any chain of events, circumstances or properties examinable by any method known to mankind cannot be verified. In the absence of demonstrable certainty about the root cause of any event, you have the option of devising an explanation suitable to yourself until further evidence is brought to light. Religion suits some people.
Given that the very premise makes the suggestion untestable and unfalsifiable, I must embrace the potential illusion as though it were reality or cease to function effectively in the universe my mind has created for me.
Yes! Hole in one. It's a choice you're making. QED.
BTW, "spurious" is funcationally the same as "bizarre" isn't it? Why not re-edit it and use "specious" in the hopes that you're not trying to predicate an answer based on the way you ask the question.
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Of course, I do think that anyone making such assertions should be keen to point out that they did, indeed, just make them up (which I realise is difficult in the case of the more ancient religions). I also think that it is dangerous when new evidence does come to light which contradicts the original assertion in some way, and the individual is too wedded to the made-up part that they cannot let go. Answers in Genesis anyone?
Finally, I should point out that your last post seems to present a very different argument than your earlier ones do. For example:
"Okay, assume you're a big-brained scientist type, for just a moment. You want to know, say, why certain chemical reactions work in just such a way. So, you ask "why?" and discover that it's to do with the valence shells around the atoms. Certain valence configurations are more stable than others, and so the atoms interact to form stable shell arrangements. But, you're not satisfied, why are certain electron arrangements more stable than others? So, you ask "why?". The answer, it turns out, is to do with the building blocks, quarks. So, now you're looking at a quark, which as it's a sub-sub-atomic particle, really can't be directly measured or examined, so you scratch your head and when you ask "why?" the quarks work in a particular way... you just have to go "because." Congratulations, you just met God.
The above strongly suggests you assert that science will run out of answers and that the only possible way to turn will be to God, which was the point I was arguing aganst in the first place.
*Alright, alright, "make something up".
**This leads inevitably to "conversely, who are they to legislate for me?" type questions, but I believe that is another topic entirely.
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