Re: The Question of Starting Point Premises, and the Burden of Proof for Non-Naturalism

From: Richard Wein (rwein@lineone.net)
Date: Sun Jul 02 2000 - 21:07:47 EDT

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    Thanks for the essay, Chris. I'd just like to nit-pick on one point. You
    wrote:

    >Naturalism is minimal; it assumes only the already-known natural world.

    This statement seems ambiguous to me. It could be taken as meaning that
    naturalism assumes no more than what we already know. But naturalism *does*
    assume the existence of not-yet-known entities and mechanisms in the natural
    world. For example, naturalism assumes that a natural mechanism for
    abiogenesis exists, even though we don't know what the mechanism is.

    I would say that naturalism extrapolates from the fact that we have natural
    explanations of many phenomena to the assumption that there are natural
    explanations for all phenomena. Given the enormous past success of science
    in finding natural explanations (often for phenomena which were previously
    claimed to be supernatural), this seems a reasonable extrapolation to make.

    On the other hand, supernaturalism does not just extrapolate. It postulates
    an entirely knew type of phenomenon. That's why it carries the burden of
    proof, as far as science is concerned.

    Richard Wein (Tich)



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