[quote author=“l_johan_k”]I guess this is a stupid question, but when I talk to theists they claim that “logical laws disprove naturalism” or that “I can’t trust my senses” etc.
The best thing to do when someone claims something silly like “logical laws disprove naturalism” is to get them to actually give you the argument. There isn’t any such argument, so whatever they tell you can be dealt with pretty quickly. (Usually such ‘arguments’ depend on a very silly definition of ‘naturalism’, or a misunderstanding of what a logical law is).
As for not trusting your senses ... that is clearly true; we can’t trust them 100%. But the question is where we have better knowledge of the world than through our senses. Put another way, the senses aren’t perfect, but nothing else is any better. So we’re stuck with them.
[quote author=“l_johan_k”]My philosophical atheism/naturalism is based on the methodological naturalism of science (every phenomena that can be explained in a naturalistic frame makes God more and more reduntant…)
I need some good arguments for naturalism…
Well, you’re asking for a whole book here. Actually, you’re asking for at least two books, one on arguments for naturalism, another on arguments against the existence of god. In my view these questions can be separated. For a general approach to arguments against god see JL Mackie’s Miracle of Theism. Put roughly, the problem with belief in god is:
(1) It is unparsimonious in that it posits the existence of at least one object in addition to the (natural) objects of the universe.
(2) None of the standard arguments for god’s existence are valid or convincing.
(3) The argument from evil gives us prima facie reason to doubt that god was responsible for our creation, and ipso facto reason to doubt that god exists.
Naturalism is rather a different matter; it is an issue of ontology. When we do a careful ontology we want to create a theory which is the best possible explanation for the phenomena we see before us. By “best” we mean simplest, for one thing. Then we look at what’s in our ontology, and if it’s the ‘natural’ things, you’re a naturalist.
Now, some may take ‘naturalism’ to mean that there aren’t any abstracta like numbers or mathematical objects. I don’t actually go that route. But one could.
The other question one should ask as a naturalist is what is the alternative? Presumably some form of “supernaturalism”; at least, that is the classic alternative in the popular press. Naturalism would be false if there were such things as ghosts, ESP, magic, the Evil Eye, fairies, dowsing, etc. But careful experimentation has shown these to be bankrupt notions.
Clearly, one can’t say such a thing if one understands what logic is, what refutation is, and what Zeno’s Paradoxes said.
