Saturday, January 5, 2013

Naturalists win; supernaturalists lose

 I think that the previous article overwhelmingly supports naturalism. Supernaturalists use misinterpretations of evidence for evidence of the supernatural.
 Naturalism is not only the default position but it fits the evidence. Supernaturalists ever have to give convoluted, ad hoc arguments for the supernatural.
 Theists use God as that Super Mystery, surrounded by other mysteries for the ultimate explanation, but as fellow atheologist Keith Parsons notes : "  Occult power wielded by a transcendent being in an inscrutable manner for unfathomable purposes does not seem to be any sort of a good answer." Adding all those other mysteries- the Incarnation, the Trinity for Christians- just add to making Him a pseudo -answer to pseudo-questions.
     The Aquinas- Shelly superfluity argument claims that people need not add God as the ultimate explanation in Percy Bysshe Shelley's words:' To suppose that some existence beyond or above them [ the descriptions- laws-of Nature, M.l.] is to invent a second and superfluous hypothesis to account for what already is accounted." Then to argue that that is a category mistake would beg the question of that second[ metaphysical] category.
     I'll comment further at this article later.

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