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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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You are asking for the supernatural to be proven under a naturalist framework. I am asking you to demonstrate that the natural can be proven under a naturalist framework. This does not seem to be an unreasonable request to me.

And again, this is not an endorsement of supernatural claims. If someone tells me they have done or seen a miracle, I assume that they are mistaken or lying for what seems to me to be very solid reasons. What I am arguing against, what I will always argue against, is the idea that beliefs are a deterministic product of evidence. They are generally not, and ironically this belief is one of the few which can actually be proven pretty solidly with strong evidence, only it doesn't matter because beliefs are not formed by proof.

I don’t know what you mean by “demonstrate that the natural can be proven under a naturalist framework” when I’m asking for evidence of the mere existence of some claimed phenomenon. “Supernatural vs. natural” is a red herring because the claim is that there is an effect on the material world. Calling “can I see evidence of it” a “naturalist framework” is not even wrong. It’s just common sense to not merely take someone’s word for it.

We have used science to discover tiny things and invisible forces by extending our powers of observation. We’ve had theories make predictions that we can later observe to be true as technology improved. We may not have a full understanding of say quantum physics, but we have experiments that allow us to observe the effects.

If the supernatural touches the natural, we should be able to observe evidence of the interaction. Holy books are full of accounts of such interactions. People today often claim such interactions happen.

And yet, we just can’t quite seem to get good evidence such things happen.

I’m not sure if I’m parsing the meaning of your last paragraph correctly, but if it’s something along the lines of “people don’t form their beliefs logically” then, logically, I can’t change your mind. Obviously, humans are not consistently rational in their epistemology. Religious beliefs are sacred/anchor beliefs married to trapped priors and most people are immune to contradictory evidence. But not all.