by Fisherman 162 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
@ DJW
Sea Breeze asked
Why do you yearn for others to join you in naturalism?
I must say that you do seem to have a bee in your bonnet
So why don't you start your own thread on the wonders of naturalism instead of following Christians around and hijacking other people's threads just to discuss what you want to discuss?
I agree VH7. I will gladly remove the below post if DJW would start a new thread on Scientific Naturalism. If this is his yearning to get other adherents like he says... he shouldn't be afraid of honest discussion.
Anyway, For most people, naturalism assumes materialism. Note what Stanford Encyclopedia says:
The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944, Kim 2003).
So understood, “naturalism” is not a particularly informative term as applied to contemporary philosophers.
As far as most people are concerned, I believe that the three major components to naturalism are 1) scientism — the belief that scientific knowledge is either the only form of knowledge or a vastly superior form of knowledge; 2) the belief that the atomic theory of matter and the theory of evolution explain all events; and 3) the belief that non-physical things don’t exist and that the world isn’t here for any purpose.
Scientific Naturalism assumes that we are in a closed system. Since there is no way of testing this, it torpedoes its own foundation before it even gets started doesn't it?
If it is closed, the where did the information come from that is inherent in light, matter, DNA, etc come from ?
Scientific Naturalism is a dead end.
Correction: Where i wrote "In the future I might also become an attribute of some human-made artificially intelligent computerized robots" I meant to write 'In the future it might also become an attribute of some human-made artificially intelligent computerized robots".
Sea Breeze, I noticed a moment ago that you asked the following two questions to me. "Why do you yearn for others to join you in naturalism? What would this do for you if they did?" The answer is as follows.
In posts in other topic threads I have stated my reasons. In this post I rephrase them as follows.
I highly value truth and I despise superstition. I especially despise superstitions of the kind which are extremely prevalent in human society which are also heavily promoted in human society in my country (the USA). Some of these superstitions have been used as a foundation for the promotion of certain executive government policies and certain governmental legislation, and of the selection of certain people to the USA Supreme Court. I consider some of those actions (which used some Christian teachings as a basis) as very harmful to humans, and in some cases, also to the ecology of the planet.
Even when Christianity is not used as a basis for governmental actions, the acting on the basis of certain Christian ideas has done much harm. I and others were harmed intellectually and in other ways by the JW religion (and by certain statements in the Bible which I used to consider to be true). Many other former Christians were harmed by other types of Christianity. Many people who never were Christians were harmed (and many even were executed for not being Christians), by certain Christian ideas being put into practice. Some of the arguments against taking action against climate change (and not taking global warming seriously) are based by some teachings of Christianity (such the idea that the NT says God will burn up the Earth anyways, and very soon).
I want humanity to flourish. I believe that belief in supernaturalism, including belief in a personal God (including YHWH and Christ), is hindering human progress and hindering human flourishing. I believe that Roman Catholic Christianity greatly hindered human technological progress during the Middle Ages for about 1,000 years.
I believe that some Christian (and some non-Christian Jewish) teachings teach that women are second-rate humans and I believe that is both false and that it is harmful to human females.
I guess that my motivation for trying to persuade people to abandon Christianity and theism is much the same as that which motivated Thomas Paine to write The Age of Reason (during his life the first two volumes of it were published and later a book claiming to be the third volume was also published).
I could write more on this topic but I think the above is sufficient.
Vanderhoven7, in response to your question of "why don't you start your own thread on the wonders of naturalism instead of following Christians around and hijacking other people's threads just to discuss what you want to discuss" I say the following.
First off, I don't think of myself as hijacking any threads. I think of myself as making relevant comments in the threads.
Why do many Christians evangelize to non-Christians? Why do many Christians (even ones under the age of 12 - even ones who have not yet become baptized and thus are not yet officially Christians) walk up to strangers and offer Christian tracts and/or other Christian literature to them? Why have many JWs, Mormons, and other Christians gone house to house to evangelize to those not of their faith? Why did the apostle Paul go evangelizing to Jews and gentiles who did not already share his views about Christ?
I go to one of the places where the people are who don't accept naturalism as true. A few times I even went door-to-door in my neighborhood to promote atheism. I also few times had atheistic literature on display in public places and one time I gave a speech on the subject of the Bible not being God's word. I gave that speech (about 45 minutes long) outside in front of local library. I gave that speech about a month before I considered myself an atheist (though I had already stopped believing in God and the supernatural and thus considered myself a nontheist and a naturalist, though at the time I wasn't sure no deistic god exists).
Furthermore, I have created topic threads on this site about naturalism (including at least one thread about evidence of biological evolution). But several months ago the creator and moderator of this site placed a block on my account from me creating new topic threads on this site. As a result, on this site I can only post in already existing topic threads and there are few new topic threads on this site promoting naturalism.
belief in a personal God (including YHWH and Christ), is hindering human progress and hindering human flourishing.
I guess this explains your total lack of interest in even attempting to defend your new philosophy when questioned like I did in my last post:
Scientific Naturalism assumes that we are in a closed system. Since there is no way of testing this, it torpedoes its own foundation before it even gets started doesn't it?
If it is closed, the where did the information come from that is inherent in light, matter, DNA, etc come from ?
But, this isn't really about promoting or defending scientific naturalism is it? It is really about you being troubled that Christians don't vote like you do, right?
So why don't you just stop beating around the bush and start a topic on a political issue that you think you can defend?
But several months ago the creator and moderator of this site placed a block on my account from me creating new topic threads on this site. As a result, on this site I can only post in already existing topic threads and there are few new topic threads on this site promoting naturalism.
Were you told this? Or, is this something you assumed? Maybe you don't know how to do it. You won't be able to post until you select a subject area. Have you tried this?
Sea Breeze I don't feel the need to address every remark (both online and offline) against something I said. It would be very time consuming and thus very tiresome to rebut every remark against something I said. I thus choose which remarks to respond to and which not to bother responding to. Even the Bible teaches there is a time to speak (including a time to reprove the speech of a foolish one) and a time not to do so (including a time to not reprove the speech of a foolish one). I've already been logged in steady on this site and making posts for four hours today and soon I should log off and do something else.
I also notice that a number of Christians (including yourself) have not answered many of the questions I posed to evangelical Christians about four hours ago (in the post which begins with the phrase of "Vanderhoven7 and other evangelical Christian ...).
Wow, it didn't take long for your "yearning" to turn into yawning.
Just a little tidbit from the chap who invented / discovered calculus:
Sea Breeze it is just a pause. I will make further pro-atheism posts and further rebuttals to remarks made to me by Christian apologists. You can count on that.
How about this one. Deism had what appeared to be a very strong case in the time when Newton lived and at least into the late 18th century, but such is no longer the situation. Reading something written by Hawking disproved (at least to me to beyond a reasonable doubt) that no deistic god exists in regards to our universe. Later I read some books by Victor Stenger which further strengthened the case (at leas tin my mind) against deism.
You talking about the Hawking that once said this? Great minds think alike. Sounds like you found what you looking for.
