Naturalist Inconsistencies

I hear a great deal from atheists about what they percieve to be inconsistencies in theism, but now I want to point out two apparent inconsistencies in naturalism.First let me try to define natural and supernatural. Natural is anything contained within the system: laws, matter, energy, all causes and effects. Supernatural is anything not contained in the system. Furthermore, naturalists seem to not believe that any natural thing (e.g. forming of a star, law of gravity, biogenesis) is the result of a conscious desire and/or rational thought while those who believe in the supernatural believe that consciousness and reason can be found "outside the system" of nature.INCONSISTENCY #1: rational thought
The naturalist places a great emphasis on his ability to reason. One consequence of naturalism is that free-will is an illusion. Every thought must be the result of an irrational physical cause, which can, in theory, be traced into the sub-rational quantum soup or the big bang. This means that reason must also be an illusion. The naturalist's decision to think rationally was inevitable as were his conclusions and both were ultimately the result of irrational causes, therefore the pure naturalist must acknowledge that his reasoning would be correct or truthful only by an irrational roll of the cosmic dice.However, in my experience, I can't recall a naturalist who did not believe his reasoning was pointing him in the right direction (towards truth) (If you deny that there is any such thing as truth, I ask you to deny the fact that you exist.)So... The naturalist who believes his reason to be pointing in the right direction has also indirectly acknowledged that the great chain of natural irrational causes has resulted in an arrow pointing towards truth because his own thoughts are simply the final events in this chain. Therefore all the 'irrational' natural causes leading up to one rational thought cease to be irrational if they have the discovery of truth as their end. Therefore, the naturalist who believes his reason to be good must admit that he is only a small part of a greater rational process.Inconsistency #2: the Theory of Everything
The naturalist believes everything in the universe is self-contained in a system. IOW, there is a law and equation and probability curve that can explain everything in the universe. The theory that links all of these things together mathematically is called the Theory of Everything, and I have heard some naturalists express hope that this theory will be found in this century.Now, if this theory is to explain everything, it must also explain itself. This seems to me to be impossible because it would be circular (I've already discussed this before). So there are only two options: either something came from nothing or every system is a part of a bigger system of natural laws ad infinitum (It's turtles all the way down so to speak). The first is obviously unacceptable to a naturalist because this would be a supernatural act. That leaves the second. Now, I don't know about the second one (would like to hear alternative opinions), but it doesn't sit well with me that an infinite could produce a single quantifiable truth. The fact that I exist is dependant upon an infinite number of things. And if reality is essentially infinite, then a single quantum truth seems infinitely small and meaningless to the point of non-existance (but I guess in Calculus we add up a bunch of infinitely small pieces and get a quantifiable sum)... so I don't know.At any rate, naturalists who believe there exists such a thing as a "Theory of Everything", seem to be inconsistent within their own belief system. Either everything is the result of a supernatural act or the theory that describes our universe is describing only an infinitely small piece of reality. Furthermore, with an infinite reality, I don't see any reason to believe that there cannot be a consciousness or rational thinker that desired our universe to be the way it is.Thanks if you made it this far. (I spose this would be belong to the Is It Science? forum)

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

By this definition, can anything supernatural have effects in the natural world? It doesn't look like it - at that point the supernatural would be a cause, and part of the natural world by your definition.Maybe you meant it that way, which is fine. If you're satisfied that the truly supernatural cannot ever be detected in nor have influence on the natural world, we have no disagreement on the relevance of the supernatural to anything.1) When you say "rational", what exactly do you mean? As near as I can tell the only difference between rational thought and irrational thought is that the former is simply a method of coming to conclusions via a certain set of rules.Well, we invent and follow rules all the time, and the universe follows rules too. So what? Where's the inconsistency with atheism?2) When you look up the word "dictionary" in a dictionary, does your head explode? Does the universe collapse?There's nothing circular about self-reference. Furthermore, the Theory of Everything you refer to explains the physical universe - all physical phenomena and forces. The Theory itself is not physical, so there's no requirement that it explain itself. Even if it did, it would merely have to reference itself, not contain itself. Like the dictionary does.It's possible that the simplest possible model that models everything in the universe is as complicated as the universe itself - in fact there's a possibility, perhaps, that the universe and the model are indistinguishable. Ponder that the next time you want to bake your noodle.So, yeah. I don't see any contradictions, mostly because you're confused on a couple of points. Rationality and logic are just languages (or language-like), and languages follow rules. The Theory of Everything doesn't actually describe everything, just every physical force.

Scientific laws are always approximations of reality that are held to be true (for a given value of true) is they can produce verifiable results that correlate to what is observed. Though these laws come close ( very close) they are usually never exact. After all we know the Newtonian laws are a good enough approximation of how the universe work to get us round the solar system, but we have since learned that they don’t govern everything. We also thought Quantum theory was the be all and end all but again we now know it to be lacking in certain areas. As to a ‘Theory of Everything’ it too will never match the universe 100%. Zero point fluctuations, chaos theory, good old Heisenberg, and very angry cats in boxes, that may or may not be dead, will always throw it out.

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The naturalist places a great emphasis on his ability to reason. One consequence of naturalism is that free-will is an illusion. Every thought must be the result of an irrational physical cause, which can, in theory, be traced into the sub-rational quantum soup or the big bang.

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Free-will is a concept that may or may not be true. Free-will must not be assumed, but this does not affect whether something is rational or irrational. Rationality is a comparison between logic and reality. Whether or not humans, thought, or a rational mind exist, 2+2=4 will always be true. Therefore, logic and a functionally rational reality exist outside of human experience or the mind. When we qualify something as rational, we are saying that one's ideas and thoughts correspond to that reality which is separate from the human mind. This is exactly how rational is defined (from Dictionary by Merriam-Webster: America's most-trusted online dictionary): "1 a : having reason or understanding b : relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason." How do we know if we have reason or understanding? By comparing to reality.Next, irrational does not mean uncaused. You seem to equate a random, uncaused event with irrational. I don't see the connection. How is the release of neurotransimitters irrational? How is anything random irrational? I think we are using different definitions of the same word.

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The naturalist believes everything in the universe is self-contained in a system. IOW, there is a law and equation and probability curve that can explain everything in the universe. The theory that links all of these things together mathematically is called the Theory of Everything, and I have heard some naturalists express hope that this theory will be found in this century.

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No naturalist worth his weight in bantha poodoo believes this. Quantum theory did away with this idea. The Theory of Everything may just say that random events happen without any probability, law, or model. As soon as something happens, however, it becomes part of the natural world and can be modeled.Let's take the Cassimir effect. This effect is also called quantum fluctuation. Every second, somewhere, two particles come into existence. One particle is matter and the other particle is anti-matter. Then then collide and produce energy. This all happens in a very brief amount of time. It occurs randomly and unpredictably. As of yet, and I am betting forever, the flitting of matter into our universe will never be able to be modeled. The Cassimir effect is a "First Cause", something that we simply can't model. The Cassimir effect also gives us a little glimpse into the mechanisms that might have started our universe.

Thanks for your reply. I can't follow your logic here. How does a cause external to the system make it a part of the system? Once that cause has had an effect in the natural world, a new natural chain grows out from there. If we did in fact have true free-will, this would be supernatural.For a visual example: Nature is like a placid pond and supernature is a little boy stirring it with a stick (assuming the little boy did have free-will). The pond doesn't spontaneously get ripples on it (barring an extremely freak QM thing). The little boy's free-will is a supernatural agent. His decision to stir the pond is as spontaneous as the quantum soup below the planck length only he has something the quantum soup doesn't: reason. He desires to make a splash so he acts. Now this is all supposing he has free-will and if he does, we've already disproven naturalism. Nope didn't mean it that way.I was expecting a sort of flip flopped version of this argument from naturalists. Say the Red Sea parts in front of your eyes and dry ground appears. You could assume that it was the opening of a worm hole or some wierd undiscovered natural thing or you could assume that you are experiencing mass hysteria. You can always assume that supernatural events are the result of yet unexplained natural causes. But this is a belief. Well, yes that is pretty much what I mean except I think reason implies a desire. If we think rationally, we desire to discover truth. If we act rationally we do so to accomplish a predetermined purpose. By naturalists saying that the big bang and everything that follows after is an irrational processes they are saying these processes are not occuring with any desired truth or goal in mind as their ends. Okay. We have no free-will. Every thought is the result of another cause. The last neuron firing to produce our thought is every bit as essential as the the big bang, the forming of natural laws, the condensation of stars, etc. Each step has equal significance in producing that thought therefore there should be no logical distinction between what you experience when neurons fire as a rational thought and the so called irrational process of the big bang. You only call the latter part of this chain rational where you have a part in it because you experience the desire and in you that desire is fulfilled through reason EVEN THOUGH you had no choice about this perceived rational experience.Therefore, when naturalists say that the universe has no reason or purpose in it, they are denying their own reason because the two are inseparable. Forces are governed by laws or theories and they need explaining. Why shouldn't the ToE need explaining? If the ToE is a part of nature, then it exists because it must exist, and it must exist because some other natural phenomena demands it. If the ToE demands that the ToE must exist, then what does that tell us?Let's make your dictionary example a little more applicable to this situation. Suppose you look up dictionary in the dictionary and the definition is: this book. That's fine for an outside observer. But suppose you are a peculiar type of bookworm that evolved intelligence within the dictionary and is bound to the world of definitions. Suppose this bookworm gets curious about his environment and wants to know why it exists and how it came to be. He compares words and figures out that he is in fact inside a dictionary. So he goes to look up the word and it says: this book. Now how does that help him? Well, that's possible, but if the universe has a beginning something came from nothing and that is supernatural. But if the universe is not the entirety of reality there could be other natural causes (two branes colliding or something weird). Now at some point you either have to break it off into the supernatural or you go on to infinite (which may be possible, I don't know..).

Yes, I understand all of this. And my beef with naturalists is not that the ToE would be approximate. My beef is that naturalism demands that reality be infinite, in which case the ToE would describe an infinitely small piece of reality and truth would seem to lose meaning (though here I may be wrong).

Thanks for your reply. I would say that if free-will is not an illusion created solely by a vast number of computations in our brain, then it must be supernatural. If you say we have free-will, you are, in effect, saying we are distinguished from and purposefully altering the course of nature. You are saying that nature has produced a separate something that escapes her control and has the power and desire to change her in a way that would be impossible to determine even if every variable and quantum fluctuation were known to the infinite degree of accuracy. I am a theist and I'm not so sure that free-will is not an illusion. I really don't know. But if I were a naturalist I would be forced to believe that free-will is an illusion. You are saying truth exists external to ourselves, and I agree. A very carefully picked vocabulary, but I think it is missing some other qualifiers. A person who babbles 2+2=4 all day long like a broken record is having a rational thought by that definition, but we would probably say the person is irrational because they are not thinking these thoughts for any reason. This person has no reason. He is -- like the record player -- a machine that is stuck on one truth. To have reason we must desire to discover the truth or accomplish some goal.Now here is where free-will is important. If we have free-will, then we have the ability to choose whether or not to act on that desire, and this makes the following actions and logic thoroughly our own. If we have no free-will, then that decision was likely calculable at the time our solar system was condensing and therefore the random lightning bolt that sparked the life that became you is every bit as big a player in your reason as your neurons. By the definition you gave: neurotransmitters do not have reason or understanding; therefore, they are irrational. I'll be sure to pass the word next time I hear a confession of faith and hope in the ToE. Yes, that's what I mean by quantum soup. I've never thought of it as a "First Cause" before. The question is, "is there a natural cause for this first cause". The term would imply that the answer is no. It seems to me that if you have energy existing as the result of no natural cause, then this must be a supernatural thing. You could say it needs no reason. It is because it is because it is, which I am not satisfied with.

Because the system is comprised of everything that interacts with each other. For instance, if the system contains A, and B interacts with A, then the system must necessarily include B.After all, it was in your definition:

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Natural is anything contained within the system: laws, matter, energy, all causes and effects.

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If X causes effects in the system, then the system includes X. Nothing supernatural can affect the natural world because doing so makes it part of the natural world. The pond is an open system. The natural universe is not, because we define that system as "everything that can interact with what we observe." The natural universe is a closed system, by definition, and nothing outside of it can interact with it. Well, then I have to ask, why did you write it that way? Why did you define the natural world as containing all causes and effects if you didn't mean it contained all causes and effects? We can only argue from the definitions we agree on. If you don't have any problem changing definitions mid-argument then I'm not very interested in continuing this discussion. No, it's a conclusion. All that can happen in the natural world is what is natural. The natural world contains, by definition, all that can interact in it. Therefore, by exclusion, the supernatural can contain nothing that can interact with the natural world. I don't see how it does. Or else you're equivocating on the word "rational". What it means for thought to proceed rationally and what it means for phenomena in the universe to proceed rationally are two different things; specifically because the second judgement only makes sense in the context of beings able to make the first. Absent intelligence in the universe, nothing happens rationally or irrationally.It's like, wondering about color in a universe that has never known light. "Rational" is simply a word we apply to things that follow certain rules; the universe follows rules but we don't know if it could be any other way, so I don't find that particularly significant. And not everything in the universe is known to be completely governed by rules, for that matter. I seriously couldn't find discussions of free-will and choice any more boring. Not the least of which because, in the non-deterministic universe we inhabit, there's no practical difference between having actual free-will and having only the appearance of free-will; that is, having your "choices" determined by a series of events so complicated that their outcome can never be perfectly determined.We have the appearance of free-will, and whether or not that appearance is genuine or not is simply unknowable, so really, who gives a damn? I prefer to spend my time on the questions with actual answers. But that's probably why I'm not much of a philosopher. Equivocation on the term "rational". Again, I guess you're supplying your own definition of the term "rational"; in the sense that the phenomena of the universe follow rules, they are rational. In the sense that they do so to no goal, they are not purposeful.Rational and purposeful are two different things. I would not call the function of the universe "irrational", except maybe in a poetic sense, but I would certainly call it purposeless. I don't know who you're thinking of when you say that atheists consider the universe "irrational". Ah, you must be very careful. You've confused the theory with the thing it describes, and committed the error of reification. Theories merely describe, they do not govern. The universe proceeds as it does; we come up with theories to describe and predict that procession but there's no guarantee that our theories accurately depict any fundmental reality.It's like the cameras on the Flintstones. If you never opened a camera, you could devise a perfectly predictive theory about it's operation based on the idea of a little man inside who paints a picture. You'd be completely wrong, but as long as your theory made accurate predictions, you'd never know - and it would never matter.The universe may not need rules to operate as it does; though we find that we can describe the universe best in terms of rules, we'll never be able to truly know why that is the case. Don't confuse the theory, or our concept of the universe's rules, with any kind of fundamental truth about the universe. The map is not the territory. Because it's not physical. It's simply a model. It's an idea. The universe is. Our models of it are simply attempts to guess what's going to happen next. Theories that explain physical things don't need to explain ideas, because ideas aren't physical. So many presumptions in that sentence. I wonder if you even know what they are. Why do you presume that time extends out of the universe? Why do you presume that nothing can exist? It's possible for the universe to have existed at every point in time - that is, have existed forever - and yet have a beginning. The beginning of the universe is the beginning of time, not an event.But, like I said, I don't waste my time with the questions that don't have answers.

Well there are a lot of things wrong with this.1) Rational thought does not requie libertarian Free Will. Moreover ther assertion that if the basic processes underlying thought are non-rational their combination cannot be rational is a fallacy of composition.2) The real reasons for rejecting libertarian Free will are independant of naturalism (the main issue is philosphical and does not assume naturalism at all).So the first "inconsistency" is not one at all.The second "inconsistency" is based on a failure to understand what the "theory of everything" will do based on the assumption that the name is a rigourous description of what the theory covers. Which is a little like assuming that the Big Bang was a very loud noise.In fact the Theory of Everything will NOT "explain itself". It will use as few "brute facts" as possible, but it will use some. Those aspects will NOT be explained.

Why invoke the supernatural?Because of the way the human brain works, and in respect of the connections laid down through experience and those that are ‘hard wired’ then yes each individual is more likely to take a course of action in each scenario that could be predicted by the connections in his brain. But that does not stop him taking a different action other than his experiences would normally prescribe.For example a guy who habitually avoids physical confrontation is walking through the park on his way home when he sees several large guys ‘hassling’ a woman. He knows that as he isn’t the biggest of lads and if he intervenes there is every chance he is gonna get hurt. Every instinct is screaming at him to walk on by and not get involved. (this is his experiences talking to him of future pain best avoided) but he makes the conscious choice to go against his experiences and go to the aid of the woman. Free-willWhether or not this apparent free will is actual free-will or the natural outcome of the machine running it’s pre-programmed course is not something we are ever likely to truly be able to answer. But illusion or not there is no need to invoke the supernatural in what is a biological process. Either all decisions are predetermined or they are not. I would suggest not.Chaos theory espouses the ‘butterfly effect’ as one cause of the unpredictability of the universe, and indeed it could be said that Zero Point Fluctuations could be the wings of the butterfly. Despite having two incredibly powerful computers dedicated to predicting the weather there is a window of time of about four days into the future after which all predictions become un reliable. There is a built in randomness to the universe at a fairly fundamental level and so it is fairly ridiculous to assume that all actions are or could be pre-determined as you claim in the notion that there is no ‘free will’.Saying that free will is outside nature is also dubious. Everything a Human does is a product of nature. We are a product of nature and thus everything we do must by definition be natural and part of the natural system. This includes weeding the garden, building cars, going into space, building bombs, genocide, and most importantly whether to do these things or not. Where all human actions are natural, that is totally different from them being either normal, ethical, or socially accepted.The degree to which each individual is subject to free will is purely down to his/her personal make up, some people are more impulsive other more inclined to introspection.Either way there is no reason to invoke the supernatural or fate in the choices a human makes.This message has been edited by ohnhai, 01-08-2005 09:06 AM

Thanks for your reply. Perhaps not, or perhaps in the next few decades as we watch machine intelligence surpass our own, we'll get some clues. Well, obviously not if you assume that it is natural process. And this is why I'm not debating whether or not we have free-will. I'm making the naturalist assumption that we do not. If I assumed free-will was not an illusion, then I would be saying we are something other than a natural process and have the power to change nature's course. Yes, I'm aware of how Chaos and QM theory make the universe indeterministic. But an indeterministic universe does not mean we have free will, because the quantum fluctuations are the cause of the indeterminacy rather than our being. Furthermore, even with quantum fluctuations as the wings of the butterfly, our actions should still be fairly certainly determined quite some time before our decision is made. Even a fulfilled prediction of one's actions a minute beforehand is significant enough to disprove free-will. Right. That was my assumption. And one consequence of this assumption is that we have no free-will and all our thoughts are the result of a chain of natural causes before.I'm not here to debate free-will. It is crystal clear to me that naturalism demands that there can be no free-will nor can there be any distinction between our thought process and the process that formed the rest of the universe.

Hangdawg I am sorry Hangdawg but could you reference where naturalism demands that reality be infinite?

Thanks for your reply. For that thought to be our own it does. Otherwise it belongs to the universe. And this contradicts the fact that the naturalist believes the universe to be without reason. I agree. As Crashfrog said, or maybe it was Loudmouth, what makes a process rational is the fact that it follows logic and corresponds to reality. And I added that there must be a goal of finding truth or accomplishing some goal because what good is logic if it is not used for some purpose? Therefore what we perceive to be rational thought is only irrational if the end result is a falsehood. Okay... let me make the distiction... PHILOSOPHICAL NATURALIST. I think you totally missed my point. Go back and read it again. This debate is already starting out like our last one. I hope we will not go on needlessly butting heads. So are you saying the complete explanation is a natural one and is beyond human understanding or are you saying the fundamental aspects of the universe demand no explanation?

That is the philosophical conclusion that I reached in my OP. Nothing in nature exists without relation to some other thing. Of course you can say that the universe has no relation to anything else and believe that there is no explanation, but that thought would not be based on reason but on belief, therefore you would be deviating from naturalism.