Atheism is a subset of Naturalism

[juliod]

Another way of looking at strong atheism (and seeing how it is correct) is to consider atheism as a subset of naturalism.

Naturalism is the view that only the real, physical world around us exists and that all mystical or supernatural beings, objects, events, forces, etc, do not exist. Since "god", as usually conceived, is one of these mystical supernatural things, strong atheism is merely one specific type of naturalism.

To see that supernatural things don't exist, one must look at how something comes to be labelled as "supernatural". In reality, this only happens as a result of the falsification of the idea.

Consider a dowser. This is a person who believes that they can find water or objects by the use of sticks or other similar apparati. They believe that they can actually perform this task. When challenged to do this under proper controlled circumstances, they expect to be able to. However, because dowsing is bogus, they never fail to fail.

At this point, there is a change in the perception of the dowser. (It is a very rare one indeed who accepts that they don't actually have the skill.) Once their claims have been shown to be utterly false, they begin to make additional, novel claims and rationalizations. They attempt to explain away the results of the fair and open trial.

Inevitably, they degenerate into supernaturalism. The usual claim is that this power or ability is "supernatural" and therefore not suscepible to testing and/or evaluation.

The same is true for psychics, astrologers, etc, and many examples of this can be seen at www.randi.org

So we can see the dichotomy here. If dowsing were a real ability it would be natural (simlar perhaps to existing moisture meters). But since dowsing is not real, it's adherents must make strange and unusual claims about it to keep believing. Hence the supernaturalism.

There is a one-to-one correspondence here. Real=natural, phoney=supernatural.

Sometimes this process can be shortened. When a charletan or loonie invents some new claims that they know is bogus, they may begin to make supernatural claims from the start.

So we are in a pretty clear situation as far as truth-claims or existance-claims:

1) For all of the claims of supernatural beings, forces, objects, events, etc, there are exactly none for which we have any good reason to believe they are real.

2) For all the natural claims of beings, forces, events, objects, etc, we can easily decide which are true and which are false, by evidence.

3) Everything for which there is good evidence that it exists is natural.

4) The sum total of good evidence is support of superanturalism remains zero.

DanZ

[harvey1]

Naturalism is the view that only the real, physical world around us exists and that all mystical or supernatural beings, objects, events, forces, etc, do not exist.

That would be a physicalist. Metaphysical naturalism is the view that rejects that there are other factors besides natural processes that are needed to account for the world we see.

Atheism is a subset of Naturalism

I disagree. The later Darwin was a metaphysical naturalist, he was an agnostic.

[juliod]

That would be a physicalist. Metaphysical naturalism is the view that rejects that there are other factors besides natural processes that are needed to account for the world we see.

Methinks you are dividing it up a bit too finely. There is a danger of making things too precise. I've seen descriptions of metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism, and I'm not happy with them.

It's a bit too fancy for we non-professional philosophers. I prefer a more general approach: naturalists are people who point out that supernatural things don't exist.

I disagree. The later Darwin was a metaphysical naturalist, he was an agnostic.

There's no problem with this. By subset I mean that atheism denies the existance of one specific class of supernatural things. Other naturalists may or may not deny the same things.

DanZ