It's not more a value judgement than your assertion about materialism.
Keith: My point here was that you are expecting that the methods of science
that have proven successful in the past will continue to do so in the
future. This is to apply the inductive principle which assumes the
uniformity of nature. I was asking you to provide a rational
Uniformity of nature ? Or the stability of the laws of nature ? After all
from a scientific point of view there is no reason to believe that such
laws are temporal. But it could make for a nice hypothesis, now if you
have some data supporting your assertion or data showing that such laws
are not uniform ?
Could you perhaps also explain why the morality from a christian
perspective will remain the same in the future ?
Keith: justification for the belief that nature will operate in a uniform
manner witihout assuming the truthfulness of what you are seeking to
prove (i.e. "Because it's always been uniform in the past"). Why, on
materialistic grounds, is such a belief justified?
Because observation does not provide us with any reasons to doubt. But of
course as science works, if you have data contradicting this hypothesis
feel free to prove this.
Keith: That's my point, objects released from a height do not fall in every
imagineable situation and therefore the proposition "All objects
released at a height from the surface of the ground fall" is not true in
every circumstance. We can conceive of a situation, as you did, in
But this is merely a poor statement of fact. All objects which have a
resultant force working on them will move in the direction of the force.
If the resultant force is zero the acceleration of the object is zero.
It's all a matter of correctly phrasing the statement.
Keith: Either you will offer a materialistic explanation for such an event
or you will claim ignorance of a yet unknown materialistic explanation
although you
would be certatain that such existed.
Both are preferable to resorting to a cop out like god did it, would you
not agree ? That's worse than ignorance.
At least from a scientific point of view. From a religious of
philosophical point of view nothing is 'sacred'. How can for instance
morality be considered a constant under religious beliefs ? After all what
will prevent a god from changing her mind ?
Regards
Pim