On Balance, Naturalism Is More Plausible Than Theism

Rules and Format: Round 1 of the debate shall be used to make the case for your side. Round 2 is for counterarguments against the opposing case. Round 3 is for the defense of your case against the opposition. Round 4 is for demonstrating why the opposing side's defense fails and for writing a conclusion. Neither debater may use any cheap tactics that go against the spirit of the debate. No semantics, no randomly posting new arguments in the conclusion in Round 4, etc. All sources must be discussed; a link with no explanation that says "read this" is not a source. Basically anything abusive as deemed by voters is not allowed. I don't see this being a problem but it is good to establish rules anyway. Finally, because this debate is philosophical in nature, I ask that the sources point be awarded only if one side fails terribly to use sources when it is actually necessary or doesn't provide references at all. This is to discourage random use of sources that aren't really necessary to try to win the point in a debate. Philosophy debates often require lots of exposition and the random discussion of sources to appear better in that category bogs the overall discussion down. That should be all. Good luck to my opponent! Introduction: The Oxford English Dictionary defines naturalism as, "The idea or belief that only natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces operate in the world; (occas.) the idea or belief that nothing exists beyond the natural world." [1] I will be contending that based on human knowledge and reason, this is the most plausible way to view the universe. My opponent will be arguing that there is a God that exists such that this theory is not universally true. I will leave the exact definition of God up to my opponent; the only requirement is that He is supernatural and exists beyond the natural laws and forces of the universe. My contentions are as follows: C1: Naturalism Is Epistemologically Sound The naturalistic worldview proposes an epistemological system, methodological naturalism (the scientific method), that has been proven time and time again to be an extremely reliable means of understanding the universe. [2] Important scientific discoveries include general relativity, the laws of thermodynamics, most of the knowledge that modern medicine depends on, and the physics that allow us to construct computers. Because technology like computers works, it is reasonable to believe (though not certain) that the knowledge used to produce them was accurate. This is based on the philosophical idea of pragmatism, which arose as an integration of empiricism and rationalism. [3] Comparatively, solutions based on the belief in supernatural forces have not been able to produce knowledge that actually creates viable technology. This does NOT mean that theism is necessarily false, but it means that naturalism appears more reasonable on balance because we have direct evidence that its means of attaining knowledge is reliable. Methodological naturalism is also itself based on sound epistemological principles: it incorporates both the a priori reasoning that allows us to deduce the laws of math and logic and a rigorous and systematic way of interpreting our empirical understanding of the natural world. Though the thorough application of these principles for hundreds of years, scientists have uncovered countless truths about the physical world and found nothing to indicate proof of the supernatural. Naturalism uses a means of attaining knowledge that would allow its premises to be disproven, but they have not been disproven. Not only is naturalism's epistemology demonstrably useful, it does not produce internal contradictions. As a final point, when science is in error these errors can be discovered by improved applications of scientific discoveries and eliminated. Thus, naturalism provides us with an extremely accurate view of the universe (one which does not include supernatural entities). C2: Naturalism Is Parsimonious Naturalism is the simplest way to explain the universe; it is based on the fewest unnecessary assumptions. Naturalism relies on the axiomatic laws of math and logic (which cannot be denied without self-contradiction) and the assumption that human experience is reliable. If we are to have any understanding of the world beyond our own minds it is necessary to assume that human experience is reliable, so this is hardly a leap. All other viewpoints will require assumptions beyond those that naturalism uses and will make assumptions that are less essential. Furthermore, supernatural explanations of phenomena will rely on more assumptions and be less parsimonious than naturalistic assumptions of those same phenomena. This further adds to the case that naturalism is more plausible. C3: Methodological Naturalism Points to Physicalism Physicalism is the belief that, "the language of physics is the universal language of science and, consequently, any knowledge can be brought back to the statements on the physical objects." [4] If naturalistic epistemology is sound, and I have described in some length above why it is, then there is good reason to believe that physicalism is true. The world as discovered by the application of methodological naturalism includes only physical objects; nothing has been shown to exist by naturalistic epistemology that points to the existence of the supernatural even though naturalistic epistemology does not preclude and is in fact quite opponent to the possibility of supernatural entities. All the evidence points to the conclusion that only physical objects exist. This adds further credibility to both the accuracy and internal consistency of the claims and methods of naturalism. Conclusion: I am going to leave my opponent with this for now to avoid overloading him with an avalanche of Round 1 contentions and make sure he has ample space to address all my claims fully. I believe I have offered sufficient rational to accept that naturalism is the most plausible viewpoint. It is heavily based on sound and consistent epistemological principles that point to the truth of its final claim (that supernatural entities do not exist). The fact that any contradiction of naturalism is more problematic than naturalism itself is also a strong reason to favor it, as I will demonstrate later in the debate. Lastly, I would request that popculturepooka not rip me apart too badly in the comments section if he sees this debate because I have nightmares about debating this topic with him. I arbitrarily did or did not link to Wikipedia based on my feeling of how useful it would be to look something up. If I did not cite an argument that is not my own assume that I am assuming it to be common knowledge or easily accessible and not that I am falsely claiming it as my own. I did not invent any of these ideas and I am only trying to present them as fairly, accurately, and compellingly as possible. Thanks to my opponent in advance for accepting this debate. I hope we will have a meaningful discussion. Sources: [1] http://en.wikipedia.org... [2] ibid [3] http://en.wikipedia.org... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org...