At face value, without considering anything else, Naturalism has an enormous hurdle to leap as it cannot allow even one instance of supernatural intervention (i.e. miracles) ever, for all of time, or the whole theory falls apart. Supernaturalism, on the other hand, can allow for Nature to be the dominant force in this world 99.999% of the time and still remain valid.
In other words, Naturalism requires a LOT more faith than Supernaturalism.
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The belief that I have never been eaten by a tiger cannot allow even one instance of my being eaten by a tiger, while the belief that I have been eaten by a tiger allows for the concept that over 99.999% of my life, I have not been eaten by a tiger.
Herr Blucher, Supernaturalism only needs a teeny bit of the action for just 0.001% of the time to prove us wrong. Just that teensy-weensy 0.001% of the time is all you need to make us think differently. We're still waiting? Come on. Surely you can come up with something supernatural for just 0.001% of the time? Or were you just talking bollocks like you usually do for 99.999% of the time?
"Naturalism has an enormous hurdle to leap as it cannot allow even one instance of supernatural intervention (i.e. miracles) ever, for all of time"
That's because no one has ever witnessed the supernatural, not once, ever. If you have any evidence of things that exist above nature then please present it. Until then you're just another religionist liar.
"...and still remain valid."
Apart from the fact that no one has ever witnessed the supernatural, not once, ever.
"In other words, Naturalism requires a LOT more faith than Supernaturalism."
Being able to witness nature all around us - to be able to touch, see, taste and smell it - takes more faith than believing in something that no one has ever witnessed? You're weird.
Someone needs to remember how subjective a term "supernatural" is. Once was lightning thought to be a supernatural product. No longer.
Even should God prove to exist, would he necessarily be thought of as "supernatural"? I'm not convinced that would be the case forever...
the "supernatural" isn't magic
it just isn't explained
yet
remember at one point something as simple as lightning was magic and fairy dust to us
we know very little still
Oh yeah, much more faith to believe in things that we can feel, touch and measure.
Only for people who are allergic to the words "I don't know".
There is no such thing as "supernatural". Supernatural implies that it is "above nature". This is not possible..... To claim that believing in or accepting something that is true 99.999% of the time, while not believing something that you claim happens 0.001% of the time requires more "faith" is just absurd. Plus, show me valid proof of something, anything, that falls into your 0.001% category (say, for example, an amputee re-growing a limb spontaneously), then, and only then, would I even consider your bullshit.
Let me get this straight, the belief that miracles do not happen takes more faith than the belief that they take place?
"In other words, Naturalism requires a LOT more faith than Supernaturalism."
On the contrary, Naturalism requires only a LITTLE more intelligence than Supernaturalism.
Faith is belief in the face of evidence to the contrary. There is no evidence contradicting naturalism. Therefore naturalism requires no faith. If there were any evidence discovered that contradicted naturalism, either it would be believed on faith or it would no longer be believed. Guess which! (Hint: it's the latter)
Naturalism is falsifiable, so it isn't a matter of faith. We can look at it and see that it's probably right, but we will continue to look for more information. If we eventually DO find something supernatural, then naturalism will be beaten and will fall apart, but that HASN'T HAPPENED YET.
Supernaturalism, on the other hand, is NOT falsifiable, because one cannot prove a negative.
1 chance in 100 000 is not all that much when an uncountable number of events are happening every femtosecond.
There are also 6+BILLION of us - surely the odds are that a miracle has happened somewhere - or is it so obscure that somehow we missed it?
Look it is easy...
;)
> At face value, without considering anything else, Naturalism has an enormous hurdle to leap as it cannot allow even one instance of supernatural intervention (i.e. miracles) ever, for all of time, or the whole theory falls apart.
No, it doesn't fall apart. Various phenomena just need explanations. If there were miracles, those phenomena would have explanations: divine intervention.
But aside of that rhetorical example, you don't see many things happening that can be explained only as divine interventions, do you?
At face value, without considering anything else, Supernaturalism has an enormous hurdle to leap, in that it is based on goddiddit, thus making it look completely retarded.
In other words, naturalism would be very easy to disprove if it was wrong, and considering it hasn't been, it is almost certainly right.
Naturalism requires more faith? You mean it requires more faith to believe that there is no supernatural realm which nobody has ever seen and no miracles which defy the laws of nature can occur, when people typically can't make miracles happen and no miracles or supernatural phenomena have ever been verified as actually happening?
I swear these fundies like to twist beliefs around to where they make absolutely no sense.
And by the way, I thought that faith was a good thing with fundies? Why do they find it necessary to try to prove that nonbelievers have even more faith than they do? For some reason, it's perfectly OK to them if someone says they have faith God exists even though they haven't seen him, but when it comes to atheists they tend to deride our lack of belief with claims that we have to have more faith than they do to not believe in their god.
THEIRS NO SUCH FUCKING THING AS 'SUPERNATURAL'!
'supernatural' is a word used by ignorant, superstitious people like you to justify why the we've never found a single piece of 'natural' evidence for your dumbass beliefs.
OK, fine. Show me ONE instance of something supernatural, and if we cant find a scientific explanation for it, I'll listen to what you have to say. I wont be holding my breath.
nope
KNOB
Ok Mr Blucher. Seeing how you discredit faith in the natural, how about backing it up with a demonstration of the supernatural? Make that whole natural theory fall apart. All of you (xians) can go jump off the empire state building. One after the other. Let me know when the natural phenomenon of the theory of gravity falls apart. Persoanally, I have faith that it will hold. Show me your faith in your supernatural and jump.
On to commenting on the next nit wit....
So...Something that relies only on what we can see, and only testable explanations, somehow requires more faith than something that relies on what we can't see and untestable explanations?
In that case...My faith is stronger than yours.
Superficially valid... hmm... except that past events don't have probability, they either did or did not happen, and since claims of miracles are as of yet unsupported, the null hypothesis and thus weak naturalism win out.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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