Stephen Jones, in a recent post, says,
No one is denying that "there is a natural world". But Chris assumes as
part of his ultimate premise that the "natural world" is *all* that there is.
This is not true, for two reasons:
1. That there is a natural world is *not* my ultimate premise. My ultimate
premise is that there *is* a world. The differences is subtle, but is
basically that the concept of a natural world is somewhat complicated
refinement of the concept of a world. Existence (in *some* form) is
axiomatic. The idea that Existence (i.e., all that exists) is (presumably)
a natural world is a non-axiomatic and more complicated development *from*
the axiomatic fact.
2. I definitely do not *assume* that the natural world is all there is,
except in the weak sense of *presuming* that it is all there is until some
evidence proves that Existence is "guilty" of harboring something else.
All I really ask is that anything beyond the natural world meet normal
criteria for acceptance as known fact -- the *same* criteria that apply to
such acceptance with respect to naturalistic facts. The burden of proof for
theism is on theism's side.
Lately, it is true, I've come to think that the Principle of Naturalistic
Sufficiency is logically demonstrable as absolute fact, but *not* as part
of my "ultimate premise." Rather, I've come to this conclusion via a fairly
complex and wide-ranging analysis of the limitations of human knowledge and
the potential extravagant richness and depth of the *natural* world,
richness and depth that would eliminate any need for supernatural explanations.
Everything we have access to, we have access to via some sort of
experience, whether it be perceptual experience of our physical world and
our bodies, or the various internal processes, events, and states of our
minds. What we *don't* have is magical access to whatever (if anything)
lies *outside* of the world thus accessed. We can make scientific theories
about aspects of the world that we can't perceive, and, if these theories
pass sufficiently strong tests, we can incrementally expand our
understanding of the world.
But we don't have rules of inference or a sound methodology for validating
theories about anything that is supposed to be metaphysically transcendent,
truly *beyond* our world. If Jones and his ilk can give us such rules or
methodologies (and validate *them*), fine.
But I'm not holding *my* breath, because it's just do damn *easy* to make
naturalistic theories that do the same jobs that non-naturalistic theories
are supposed to do. There does not seem to be *any* ultimate limit for
naturalistic explanation of any facts that we can establish *and* that
logically need an explanation (not all facts do).
Thus, in order for Jones to show that there are such rules of inference or
a sound methodology for validating non-natural claims, he must show that
there is a cognitive *need* for such theories. That is he must show that
there is at least one fact that does not admit of a naturalistic
explanation but which nevertheless needs an explanation. In fact, this
seems to me to be the only logically acceptable way to validate the
existence of non-natural facts (if any).
However, as I said, it's just too *easy* to generate naturalistic theories
for things, so easy that there seems to be no limit to imaginable empirical
data that can be dealt with naturalistically.
But, if everything that is theoretically doable with a theory can be done
with *naturalistic* theories alone, just *what* do we need non-naturalistic
theories for? What cognitive function can they serve if they are unable to
do anything beyond what naturalistic theories can do?
The challenge for Stephen and Johnson is to find some set of facts that are
known to be real by empirical means that *cannot* be explained by
naturalistic means (and that logically need an explanation). This means
that they have to rationally exclude not only non-intelligent naturalistic
forces, but possible intervention by aliens, beings from a naturalistic
"metaverse," etc.
Without such exclusion, the naturalistic theories' lack of any requirement
for radical metaphysical claims will always "trump" non-naturalistic
theories. Non-naturalism is, above all, a basic and radical *metaphysical*
claim. As such, it will require extraordinary cognitive validation (and
that validation will have to be *philosophical*, not empirical, because
interpretation of empirical data rests on philosophical premises, not the
other way around -- any basic metaphysical conclusions drawn from the
specific content of empirical data will thus always be derived circularly,
(assuming internal validity of the reasoning)).
It will never be enough to simply offer a non-naturalistic theory and say,
as Jones effectively does, "We should accept this theory because I *like*
it better than naturalistic theories."
Jones' frequent complaining and whining about the standard rules of
evidence is not justified. He should have chosen a position that had some
rational chance of support. But nooooo . . . *he* chose an ancient *myth*
that was philosophically untenable even in the days of its origin. It's not
*my* fault he chose such an evidence-free position to support.
If he wants a "level playing field," he should choose a position that is
equal to, and has the same degree and kinds of support as does the
proposition that the natural world exists.
Although it is true that I think no God exists, this is really not the
position Jones and Johnson must answer. They must answer the view that
holds that non-naturalism is simply not *needed*, that it is cognitively
*superfluous*, like the theory that swarms of invisible gnomes fly along
with all the planets and *indetectably* ensure that the planets stay in
their proper orbits. Such a theory is superfluous, because we have much
better naturalistic theories, but it would *also* be superfluous if we did
*not* have such ordinary naturalistic theories, because such theories
involve questions of greater severity than the questions they are intended
to answer, and because they are ad hoc, and because there is nothing in the
evidence to suggest that such incredibly *drastic* theories are justified.
That is, even if we *don't* know (*yet!*) of any adequate naturalistic
theory, we *do* have enough sense of proportion to understand that invoking
swarms of gnomes is utterly unjustifiable by the evidence of the problem.
There is no excuse for invoking gnomes every time we don't happen to have a
suitable naturalistic theory instantly handy. Similarly, there is no excuse
for invoking *God* just because we don't happen to have (at the moment) a
satisfactory *naturalistic* theory for something.
And, the situation is even worse when one's rejection of naturalism rests
on one's adamant, persistent, determined, and willful *refusal* to even
bother to come to understand existing naturalistic theories, as Jones has
done with respect to evolution for over a year and a half (to my knowledge
-- probably much longer in fact). This is like invoking God to explain why
apples fall to the ground because one is too *bigotedly* anti-naturalistic
to bother to study and understand the theory of gravity.
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Note on my background for accepting the Principle of Naturalistic Sufficiency:
It was after a few *decades* of observing and analyzing anti-naturalistic
and non-naturalistic arguments that I came to the conclusion that the
Principle of Naturalistic Sufficiency was in fact true (and not merely a
heuristic principle). What kept gnawing at me was the observation that, for
each such argument that I came across, it was trivially easy to provide
naturalistic alternatives that simply did not require the metaphysical
conclusions that these arguments called for. At this level, it doesn't even
matter that, for all these observations might imply, some non-naturalistic
theory might be *true*, because, if they are true but not justified by the
evidence, the non-naturalism simply remains *unknown* and purely speculative.
That there might also be a means of demonstrating the incoherence and
*logical* impossibility of non-naturalistic claims is a different topic.
But, what if Jones' views are not even *logically* possible, for reasons
having nothing to do with naturalism but with the *logical* nature of the
claims made? (I hope this will be the topic of a later post.)
Or, nearly as strong: What if all such claims simply boil down to being
*arbitrary*, driven by *psychological* considerations or by confused and
unexamined premises that allow *logically* unacceptable pseudo-inferences?
What if, for example, the inference *from* order, structure, function, and
complexity in biology *to* design is simply *logically* invalid? What if,
even in a crude Popperian sense, such hypothesis is simply ludicrously
under-supported by the type of evidence claimed for it, even if the claimed
evidence were accepted at claimed face value? What if it is as senseless to
invoke God for alleged "design" in Nature as it is to invoke God for
gravity or Santa Claus for toys under the Christmas tree?
Thinking that God must be invoked to explain the facts of the history of
life on Earth is like thinking that we *must* have a trillion-ton
steam-roller to smash a single mini-marshmallow in the middle of the
hottest pavement in the middle of Death Valley in the middle of the hottest
day of the year. The observation that non-naturalistic theories seemed
*always* to be *radical* overkill for the facts to be explained is one of
the key clues that led me to accept the Principle of Naturalistic
Sufficiency. Jones' relevant arguments, and those of Johnson, only serve to
support this conclusion, because they demonstrate over and over just how
they refuse to consider or even understand fairly obvious naturalistic
alternatives before they announce triumphantly that a non-naturalistic
conclusion is required. If it only takes ten seconds of thought to come up
with naturalistic alternatives to such conclusions, perhaps it's
questionable whether there is *ever* a need for a non-naturalistic theory.
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