An a priori anti-supernatural bias

[Rye]

My apologies if this doesn't flow well, but I just wrote it pretty much as a stream straight from my mind, it's quite late, I don't think I have many typos, but it might not be as clear as I want it. Please critique.


A priori anti-supernatural bias

This is a phrase I often hear when arguing with the smarter theists about souls, gods and miracles and so on, general unknowable mechanisms to account for the unknown. Religious apologists may keep up a smarmy countenance to make sure you look more irrational if you're like me and you erupt into mockery and contempt for such explanations.

Here is an example to begin with, theistic quotes in italics, atheistic quotes in bold:

"But while we're pursuing scientific explanations, let's not become scientistically dogmatic. That's putting the cart before the horse. If or until science provides a scientific explanation, all other alternative explanations are possible. Actually, even when science claims to offer an explanation, all other explanations are still possible since science isn't in any way final or infallible."

Now, the issue that prompted this argument and this mini-essay was about the soul. Now, I, as you might've guessed don't believe in a soul (I have an article I wrote about it here)

The following is symptomatic of your average conversation on the initial proposal of the soul from archaic folklore, and then to a little ghost that someone has to quibble over to make the atheist acknowledge it's possibility.

"The soul is our true self, not the body.In the material world, we need a body for the soul to find expression in the material. The wise ones will develop both their souls and bodies, to take care of their needs in both the material and spiritual worlds..."

And they'll go on like that. So then you can just butt in with something concise and to the point, like:

"There's no such thing as a soul."

Straightforward, to the point, and worded in absolutes. While this has the advantage of being clear, it will also encourage pedants to say, in long-winded terms that you're nto allowed to say stuff in absolutes, you must always preface your words by saying "it is my conclusion, based on the available physical evidence and my lack of spiritual evidence that souls are probably imaginary, but they might exist, because a spiritual realm might exist and I might not know about it."

Now, I don't know about you, but such uber philosophical correctness fucks me off something chronic. Now, I don't know who has enough time in the day to cover their ass so completely every time they say something, but I sure as hell can't be bothered doing that. So, I've decided to put down my epistemological ideas once and for all regarding an a priori anti-supernatural bias, the bias against automatically accepting spurious notions merely because they are possible. It is also the bias for having nature, that is, physical reality as the automatic starting point for anything unexplained, and how proposals fitting categories contrary to this should be considered runny, pointless, vacuous bullshit automatically, even if they are, in a metaphysical sense, possible.

This is how a theist might set up the accusation of an atheist as one with an a priori anti-supernatural bias:

"The idea of a soul is a valid possibility, a philosophical or theological explanation, of certain mental phenomena that aren't yet explained by naturalistic methods like science. And the soul will continue to be a possibility until it's sufficiently ruled out by some other demonstration.
The possibility that a spirit or soul causes these phenomena is a philosophical, rational possibility. It may be that science will never explain them sufficiently because their source is spiritual rather than natural."

Now, I would respond to this with a question like this:

"Why should I consider "spiritual" a plausible area or category of existence? It seems like a thick slice of archaic imagination to me. What cause would you have to assert that other than a) your own imagination or b) ancient tradition?"

Which would then lead to:

"If you don't admit it's even possible, you have a dogmatic view of the universe.. one which science itself might shatter one day. In other words, dogmatism is anti-scientific in spirit."

Now this obviously didn't answer my question, very rarely will honest, straightforward questions like this get answered, instead, an assertion that the automatic discounting of proposed explanations is unscientific (since that should annoy a scientifically minded atheist, or indeed, any poseur atheist debater that wants to appear scientific) will arise. This is the gist of the aasb accusation.

Now, the trouble with these sorts of claims is that ultimately "spirit" in the above claim can be replaced with anything so long as it is currently unfalsifiable. The spiritual realm doesn't have to be established, according to these people, before it can be rationally proposed as an explanatory mechanism for anything we don't know, or even, anything we think we do know, merely because there's nothing to negate it and all observations are potentially suspect and nothing is exempt from sufficiently concocted explanations that are ultimately or for the moment unknowable.

So, why stop at spiritual matters? Well, there is no logical reason to not extend forward other similarly "rational" proposals, parodies, references to fiction, go nuts. Hopefully, people watching or listening in will realise just how baseless the supernaturalist claim is and how it is worthless as an explanation since it explains absolutely nothing other than its own inclusion. This claim, however, is not what the apasb accusation is about. The apasb accusation is about the dismissal of all these claims when they address something we're ignorant of, and there's still a possibility, presumably a small one, that it's true, and there is.

An atheist with his head screwed on right will have to acknowledge this, even though it performs no function in a debate other than to perhaps get him riled because he's trying to put a stop to those stupid kinds of claims in case the idea gets into someone's head and breeds more bullshit. The irritating thing is that a theist will often state that getting an atheist to admit the possibility of spirits, chaos, gods, whatever exists and not touch on the plausibility, and then claim that was the entire purpose of their argument.

Now, it is my proposal that there be an assumption that we all acknowledge that yes, these stupid, unfalsifiable, unknowable but irrefutable little things might exist, but there needs to be justification before you propose it as an explanation. I think that at the start of any debate or argument, both sides should agree to only propose explanations or possibilities if they think they can support it in some manner beyond ignorance or an inability to disprove it.

This way, the theist will be less likely to assert the apasb because they won't be able to chuck out meaningless little claims and argue they have some intellectual high ground over the atheist's "dogma" that these stupid things shouldn't be considered as explanations or proposed at all and should be automatically discounted on account of their vacuous nature. Something the atheist may also wish to point out is that their existence is no more likely than the existence of something else preventign their existence, and given the lack of evidence, the logical position is to actually conclude they are not the case. There is nothing to be gained from giving it undue credit as a concept, there is no reason to consider it realistic unless the proposer gives it.

Now, say we are ignorant of how consciousness works. Technically, the almighty space haddock and a spiritual realm are the facts behind the matter, they are potential explanatory mechanisms if we ever worked out how they work. BUT, that (unnecessarily) said, there is no cause to actually propose them in the first place, there is no existent knowledge that leads to them as a hypothetical conclusion, there is only imagination and tradition, and you cannot found a hypothesis purely on those. This is why purely speculative and fallacious bases must be prevented from proposal as an explanatory mechanism. This is why it's critical to get both sides to consent to only bring up proposals they can justify in some manner.

Now, both sides can obviously consent to evaluating any given concept, you could dismantle the space haddock if you wished, but if you don't want to deal with that, and only deal with proper, positive theistic claims, make sure you demand that they be able to justify it to be a realistic proposal in their own heads from what they know before throwing it out to you.

Once that starts, then you can start dismantling any assertions of spiritual realms et al on the agreed terms both sides consented to.


There is nothing wrong with an a priori naturalistic bias.

An a priori naturalistic bias is actually a sensible thing, since first and foremost, we all know nature exists. It is the logical starting point, indeed, the enforced starting point for all of us. We can conclude that other realms are made up when there's no cause to propose them in the first place. We concede that we might be wrong, but we have no reason to believe we are. There is no cause to invoke spirits or the supernatural in the first place, they don't explain anything, they have no logic or evidence connecting the real world to them if they are true, so they are unknowable and illogical to posit and believe.


"Supernatural" is an inherently incoherent term

if reality as we know it, i.e. the physical universe, were "editable" by an extension of reality that we don't know about, let us call it "heaven" or "the warp," then it would simply be another facet of the natural makeup of the universe. It would be magical, sure, bit it wouldn't be "supernatural." You can't go "above" the automatic state of existence in the hierarchy of existing things.

Essentially, what would be allowing God to do miracles or whatever would just be another bit of the nature of matter and energy. To use an analogy, imagine an untitled text document on your desktop. This document has in it an arrangement of letters and words. If you then open that document with a text editor and rewrite it to something you prefer, it is not "supertext" or "transcendence of the computer" that's involved, it would just be an application of the nature of the text editing software. Likewise, using magic in this universe, if it existed, would be in a similar category in relation to matter and energy instead of text.

Of course, such magic doesn't actually exist, but that category is much more consistent and straightforward than "supernatural".

A reasonable strong atheist could just say that the category god is not known to exist and is a subsidiary category of supernature, which is an incoherent concept and thus dismissable. If you then address the notion of invisible people with magical powers as a seperate issue to supernature (wherein magical phenomena would count under a larger, natural order of existence), then while you cannot prove they do not exist, you can also show that doesn't mean you can't come to the conclusion that they don't exist, based on what you do know, and the justification required for proposing the existence of anything, especially a sapient intelligence that interacts with mankind.

Of course, this type of atheist should welcome evidence proving him wrong, and be amenable to reasonable discourse and changing his views. Otherwise he'd just be another arsehole fundy.


Rye's Final Thought

The accusations of bias don't exactly prove he's being irrational, nor that he's wrong, nor that he will automatically disregard an actual refutation. People need reminding of that when they throw around accusations of bias.

[mr friendly guy]

Can't you cram all those counter arguments as just
"I am not close minded or bias, I can admit the existence of your supernatural thing / concept as soon as you provide some evidence."

[Rye]

Not really, there's more than one issue going down in that lot. To deny there's any possibility for something that's unknowable existing is a seperate issue to whether it's logical to believe said unknowable thing.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I think you brought this up (perhaps quotes from a previous version?) on a thread I posted about the nature of the supernatural. I've been interested in what people mean by supernatural. Clearly if it's a catchall explanation that's supposed to lie outside of human logic, then it's self defeating, since Theists invariably make specific claims about their particular version of ultimate reality. They then have to dismiss competing claims (there are always other ancient sophisticated and contradictory competing religious traditions) despite having destroyed any basis for determining other than their own assertion. If one posits beings such as demons willing and able to deceive the minds and senses of humans at will and without detection (possibly except by religious "experts"), then how can they determine that they are in fact dealing with the ultimate God and not some lesser demon passing himself off as something greater in his "revelations?" I suppose it's just like Plantinga's absurd proposition that belief in God is a "properly basic" belief and doesn't really need justification. But still, I should go ask Christians what they really mean by the term supernatural and if they have any sort of coherent framework for it.

[Ryushikaze]

I've done that before. Usually, they do not have a useful answer, or one that justifies their usage of the term supernatural. The most coherent answer I got was that he was basically using it to refer to the unknown. When I asked why he did not simply refer to it as the unknown, he had no answer.

[Medic]

This thread reminds me of one discussing whether atheism was illogical because it ASSERTS there isn't a god, and that strictly agnosticism is the most logical position. Even though the premise against atheism wanted to paint it as an "extreme" [I don't recall if this was taken to the extent to claim it's "extreme" like religious beliefs are] the underlying premise is that you have to have ABSOLUTE knowledge and ABSOLUTE evidence against God. It set an unreasonable burden of proof. IIRC, the distinction between scientific proof and mathematical proof was made.

You even mentioned they key distinction to point out and ride like a horse Rye, and that's to admit the possibility of but give no quarter to plausibility or probability, with the evidence at hand, of the supernatural.

Is that not good enough?

[Darth Wong]

It's important to remember that one must emphasize the importance of being both logical and objective. It is quite possible to construct a completely logical argument based on totally made-up premises. The argument will be consistent with the premise, but not consistent with reality.

A logical and objective worldview will be "biased" against anything which cannot be logically shown to be necessitated by observed data, which pretty much disqualifies any "explanation" of a phenomenon that is untestable.