Naturalism

[stevencarrwork]

Exodus 8
10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. 11 Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: 12 Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake.

On a naturalistic view of the Universe, is this story to be taken
as untrue on the grounds that the Egyptian sorcerers could not work miracles and were unable to change wood into snakes?

[TQWcS]

A long time ago I posed myself the question “Can god break the moral laws of the universe (that god created)?” I decided yes, god could, but would always chose not to. I decided it must be the same for the physical laws of the universe. Of course god could, but it would serve no purpose. There is always an easier way to accomplish the same result.

Indeed this is an interesting subject. Michael Sudduth wrote an excellent paper on this very subject. It is entitled Is it coherent to believe that God is morally good and above morality, he concludes that it is. I recommend that you read it.

[BeHereNow]

Michael Sudduth wrote an excellent paper on this very subject. It is entitled Is it coherent to believe that God is morally good and above morality, he concludes that it is. I recommend that you read it.

Mildly interesting.
I’m afraid I disagree with too many of his assumptions to make it very thought provoking.

[Dilettante]

The best answer is probably that Exodus is an epic. As such, it is designed to impress the reader, but we should not take its highly embellished narrative literally.

Quote:

A long time ago I posed myself the question “Can god break the moral laws of the universe (that god created)?” I decided yes, god could, but would always chose not to. I decided it must be the same for the physical laws of the universe. Of course god could, but it would serve no purpose. There is always an easier way to accomplish the same result.

Indeed this is an interesting subject. Michael Sudduth wrote an excellent paper on this very subject. It is entitled Is it coherent to believe that God is morally good and above morality, he concludes that it is. I recommend that you read it.

Really interesting subject. But I still agree more with Aquinas than with Ockham on this subject. It is also interesting that some have suggested that God's goodness may not be similar in any way to our concept of goodness, but this is very problematic also.
Quote from J.S. Mill:

To say that God's goodness may be different in kind to man's goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good?

Maybe God is just as bounded by morality as we are. If he is not, we probably have no way of knowing whether he is good or not.
As for miracles and naturalism, I admit it would be circular reasoning to argue that miracles could not occur because they violate the laws of nature. It so happens that miracles are precisely such violations of natural laws--by definition! Having said this, it would take some extraordinary evidence for me to ascribe some event to a miraculous intervention. There's too much deception and self-deception in this world to hastily rule it out. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

[QED]

That would be the priests and shamans (I believe QED would say).
Well intended, but sorely mistaken.

What is most striking to me while spending time in conversation with many others on this forum is that there would be no shortage of candidates here for the task of writing a philosophical treatise on par with the bible. I honestly think people are routinely overlooking the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the human mind.

Having said that, I have commented many times on how the bible reveals the limited technical knowledge of its authors in ways that lead me to believe the key elements to be entirely man-made. But this lack of knowledge does not imply a lack of intellect, indeed I am making the point that the authors were not lacking in ingenuity when it came to drafting the stories in a fashion which would keep people glued to them for so long.

But let me relate what I see as typical of the sort of deceit that is employed in maintaining the entire edifice of religion, a particular example that I came across for the first time yesterday:

It was a documentary in which an anthropologist travels from the Holy land to Ethiopia where Solomons son is thought to have taken the Ark of the Covenant. Eventually the chap shows up at a small compound guarded by men brandishing AK47 rifles, where he asks for permission to see the Holy relic. His request is refused on the basis that the power of the relic is so strong that it will turn him to dust

Now I wonder if anyone here actually believes this. I see it as being a typical (albeit one of the most tangible) trick which effectively puts pay to any rational enquiry - leaving us either to take on faith it or leave it. This type of trick seems to be pulled time and time again by presenting propositions carefully constructed to create an impasse to investigation and validation. If it wasn't for the critical mass due to the sheer numbers of followers, elaborate rituals and impressive machinery of all the major religions conducting such exercises who would really take any of it seriously?

The answer to the above question has to be the typical iron-age-man-in-the-street. From that point on the rest, as they say, would be history.

[QED]

I have started a new debate around this matter of the Ark of the Covenant because I think it's an interesting example of an extraordinary claim that is potentially open to validation today.

[ST88]

I see it as being a typical (albeit one of the most tangible) trick which effectively puts pay to any rational enquiry - leaving us either to take on faith it or leave it. This type of trick seems to be pulled time and time again by presenting propositions carefully constructed to create an impasse to investigation and validation. If it wasn't for the critical mass due to the sheer numbers of followers, elaborate rituals and impressive machinery of all the major religions conducting such exercises who would really take any of it seriously?

The answer to the above question has to be the typical iron-age-man-in-the-street. From that point on the rest, as they say, would be history.

It's interesting that you see this as the results of a deliberate intellectual exercise -- that a group of people came to the conclusion that it would be most effective to come up with and promote an inherently unverifiable set of conclusions. Myself, I advocate the view that of the many thousands of belief systems there were but a few that survived the invention of a permanent record of language (and therefore of doctrine verification). And these were the ones that couldn't be refuted through intellectual means.

[QED]

I see it as being a typical (albeit one of the most tangible) trick which effectively puts pay to any rational enquiry - leaving us either to take on faith it or leave it. This type of trick seems to be pulled time and time again by presenting propositions carefully constructed to create an impasse to investigation and validation. If it wasn't for the critical mass due to the sheer numbers of followers, elaborate rituals and impressive machinery of all the major religions conducting such exercises who would really take any of it seriously?

The answer to the above question has to be the typical iron-age-man-in-the-street. From that point on the rest, as they say, would be history.

It's interesting that you see this as the results of a deliberate intellectual exercise -- that a group of people came to the conclusion that it would be most effective to come up with and promote an inherently unverifiable set of conclusions. Myself, I advocate the view that of the many thousands of belief systems there were but a few that survived the invention of a permanent record of language (and therefore of doctrine verification). And these were the ones that couldn't be refuted through intellectual means.

In my view it's not so much a team effort, but a consequence of the evolution of the ideas themselves. With vulnerability to logical refutation as the selection mechanism, the surviving ideas are those that are inherently irrefutable. The development of language simply accelerates the process and encapsulates the conclusions.