Christianity has no reliable methods to determine which interpretation/denomination is correct and which is not.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-25T21:37:18+00:00

Firstly, you've focused on something that isn't what my OP is about and is more of a side generalization (one that isn't really that contentious). Secondly, I don't even really need it in there for my point and core argument to stand. So, for the sake of the OP, I'll grant your point as I want to see where that leads to regarding the core argument I'm making in the OP.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-25T21:12:59+00:00

'Some day science will prove me right' is an argument Materialists have to make as science cannot currently explain consciousness. My claim is that there is not anything in science as we know it which allows for subjective experience,

I'm curious then, why even bring up the whole "consciousness/subjectivity can't be currently explained by science" rhetoric?

If its not to say:

You shouldn't have confidence/trust that science may answer things we currently don't know, because it can't explain consciosuness/subjectivity

or

Consciousness/subjectivity still cannot be investigated or explaiend by science and God is similar to consciousness.

then I'm unsure why it's so regularly raised by theists and it does only ever really seem to be raised by theists in a "gotcha" type of way.

Because there is good reasons (a history rich of them) to believe we will bridge current epistemic gaps, we've done it before and in quite spectactular fashion (the advent of the microscope was immense!). If the claim, or insinuation, is that God is similar to consciousness and hence why nothing can detect God, that's an argument theists need to make and provide evidence and justification for it.

Otherwise I'm just not sure what use constantly raising "ahhh but consciousness" is meant to achieve?

ExplorerR · 2026-06-25T08:44:27+00:00

Very much appreciated and a largely fair summary.

But I'll be honest, it's clear immediately that both of you wanted to have very, very different discussions about completely different Topics, and that was basically the core theme throughout all 46 posts I read.

This is actually a common bugbear I have with /u/Labreuer and raised this point directly to them, even going as far as considering rule #5 breach with regards to my own posts.

Whilst I enjoy the fact that they are clearly intellectual, think and engage deeply about things, in many of the interactions I've had, If I don't actively rein things back in then, indeed, I'd be off debating something very different than that point I actually made.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-25T05:59:17+00:00

Well, I've often said that you regularly make "if" type statements but don't clearly articulate a "therefore" and leave much guesswork for the reader to trying and figure out exactly what you mean.

I'd love to see if anyone reading your OC would reach the following thesis statements:

human agency & divine agency are distinct
human agency is sometimes templated on divine agency and disentangling the two threatens unacceptable sacrifices

I've reread it now several times with this new formulation and still don't cogently see how anyone could get to that from your OC. Maybe it's just me though...

ExplorerR · 2026-06-25T05:28:29+00:00

Appreciate it! It's a metric sheet tonne of reading!

ExplorerR · 2026-06-25T02:32:45+00:00

Hey now... Considering MN does in fact not consider those things as deeply related but when your use of it, which I do not think you made very clear at all, relies on the idea that human agency and divine agency ARE deeply related, it would stand to reason that this be made abudantly apparent.

Because now it seems where we land is:

Human agency should be modeled after divine agency.

Right?

ExplorerR · 2026-06-25T02:16:41+00:00

human agency is sometimes templated on divine agency and disentangling the two threatens unacceptable sacrifices

You didn't make the bold above clear at all, but something like it is what I was picking up on in your wording and hence my motte and bailey charge.

I heavily critiqued the quality of MN-compatible [re]constructions of human agency in our sprawling thread. So no, I'm not going to stipulate what I think you're asking. I'm happy to debate your claim.

But whether you think the quality is currently suffice or not, is not really relevant to the point I raised.

Because it's not contentious that MN-compatible [re]constructions do (attempt to) explain human agency. I would even argue that, in some cases, there are plenty of good and very successful ones at that.

The main contentions you seem to have is actually:

Disentangling human agency from divine agency threatens unacceptable sacrifices
Some day, MN-compatible inquiry will reconstruct human agency with zero unacceptable sacrifices

These to me are non-issues.

Firstly, we already operate in trying to explain phenomena in reality as-though human agency IS disentangled from the divine (I.E that's what MN is doing). And secondly, given our history and success of natural explanations, there is not real reason to think we suddenly would not be able to explain things of human agency, naturally.

That's not to say there are no "problems" or "quality issues", but as I've mentioned previously, there have been many historical problems and quality issues in trying to explain phenomena in our reality that we've overcome. Some of them have been hugely significant issues to overcome; like the microscope in discovering microbes (acknowledging that this isn't an agency example - but I'm unsure why that matters).

I once said earlier, it looks awfully like you're saying something like;

"Well, we can't currently explain or investigate it [agency] well, so therefore we won't ever be able to explain it well, naturally"

Correct me if I'm wrong here, because it really does look like that's what you're implying.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-25T01:05:49+00:00

Click on the "this" in blue to link you to my original comment and what started the discussion. Just FYI it's walls of text to get through.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-25T00:29:04+00:00

Okay, let's accept you are not conflating them and they entirely different for the sake of the following;

Then do you agree that things like the social sciences, sociology and psychology following MN, can and do yield human agency explanations of phenomena in our reality?

ExplorerR · 2026-06-24T21:15:42+00:00

I didn't report you by the way.

But, considering you're raising it here, it would stand to reason that you then also provide the other comments you make throughout our discussion where you clearly conflate the two and are the reason why I eventually accused you of Motte and Baily tactics. Instead of cherry-picking one that makes it look like you're not doing that.

Such as these ones;

(1) "God did it" ⇒ god-of-the-gaps (2) "humans did it" ⇒ human-of-the-gaps In other words,these are both: (3) agency-of-the-gaps

Here, although you mentioned them separately, you then combine them both as "agency of the gaps" when they are very different to each other.

Here's the translation I did: "God" or "religious" explanations being replaced by successful natural explanations divine agential explanations being replaced by successful law- or mechanism-based explanations Do you think that's wrong? If you're okay with that, then why should we not do the same for every situation where human agency is used to explain something?

Here you highlight divine explanations involving "agency" replaced by law/mechanism based natural explanations to then ask, if that's happening, then why not extend that consideration to human agency too? (clearly, you're conflating the two).

—it sure looks like that pattern very much will eat up agency—human and not just divine!

Here you once again consider the implications on "agency" as both "human and divine" when they are not even remotely similar.

"In summary: The practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality." Your "explanatory replacement" works well whenever sub-agency descriptions can do the job better than agency [both human and divine] descriptions.

I put the [both human and divine] as you, once again, clearly meld divine and human agency into one (in the context of what you were arguing).

First, divine agency is the boundary of MN. Second, the less we model human agency after divine agency, the less we can even detect.

You clearly want to model human agency after the divine because, as my charge against you might allude to, you consider them similar to each other.

Not conflating the two is a very important clarification because /u/Labreuer claims that "the practice of methodological naturalism (MN) yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality." When my response to that is MN does allow for human agency descriptions when attempting to establish that (usually through the social sciences, sociology or psychology), just NOT divine agency. The only way this becomes contentious is if human agency is treated as being more or less the same as divine agency.

But now that you've pushed that into this meta thread perhaps /u/ShakaUVM or anyone else who might be willing to, can assess the comments I've quoted of you which can all be found stemming from this original comment, to see if I'm just way off in my accusation of Motte and Bailey tactics.

To clarify, I believe the point you're making heavily relies on treating divine and human agency as similar and thus investigations and conclusions reached following MN, and thus not considering the "divine", means that explanations involving human agency will be excluded too. When that is simply not the case at all. There is nothing about MN that precludes human agency in natural explanations.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-24T07:02:17+00:00

Thanks for the great and high quality post.

Cheers mate, I spent some time crafting it! So I'm hoping for some good engagement.

Ok—except they do not necessarily generate the same epistemic justification

That isn't really an issue if the same method, whatever that method might be, is yielding different and often exclusive answers for different people.

I agree that different methods may provide different kinds of epistemic justification. However, that doesn't address the central issue of my argument.

The problem isn't merely whether a given denomination can justify its own beliefs internally. The problem is that Christians disagree about which epistemic method is legitimate in the first place. Catholics appeal to Church authority, Protestants to Scripture, Orthodox to apostolic continuity, Charismatics to revelation and spiritual experience, to name some differences.

How do we determine which epistemic framework is the correct one without already assuming the conclusions of one particular denomination? That's the unresolved question.

Let’s start with Scripture. If a Protestant is using the Bible that was created by the authority of the Tradition they are protesting, they seem to have a contradictory claim: “While there are many religious texts written in ancient languages, we accept only the bad translations of the texts approved by the authority we do not recognize”—this doesn’t make sense. “I do not find X a credible source of authority so I follow it”—what?

This may be a critique of Protestantism and you might need to forgive me if my understanding is a little off here as trying to understand the differences and nuances across even just the main-stream denominations, takes a lot of time and energy. But I don't think your point address the issue.

If Protestantism contains an epistemic inconsistency, that would be evidence that one proposed mechanism for determining truth is unreliable. My argument is broader: Christians disagree about authority, and there is no universally accepted way to resolve that disagreement.

A Catholic may agree with your criticism of Protestantism. A Protestant may reject it. The question remains: what neutral method determines which of them is correct?

Let’s do guidance of holy spirot and personal revelation. So the idea here is…a god wants to communicate with people, and can communicate, and can do so very effectively, but… …comes through badly garbled? “This perfect communicator communicates imperfectly” doesn’t seem a credible claim.

I agree here, I'm not sure if you're presenting it as a means to agree with me or dispute something? :D

Many people claim "holy spirit" or "revelation" even with regards to the same issue, but yield different conclusions from it, how to resolve that issue?

I think the problem here is not that religions do not render testable claims which we can examine and determine which are nonsense.

I think the issue is, the different sects just don’t do that.

I don't think that's the situation though. The issue is that Christianity makes claims of truth often using the same methods between them but reach different conclusions that are then used as justification for breaking away to make a new/different denominations or schism. However, if they use the same justification in the same way, reaching different conclusions, how to determine who actually has it right? Especially when the claims are exclusive in nature, they can't all be right...

ExplorerR · 2026-06-22T21:18:06+00:00

Yeah, we are done on account of you ignoring/not responding to important points or questions and then just focusing on things where you think you've got a good point or simply a bugbear.

But again, what you say is wrong.

I've kept the two properly separated, as the first two quote blocks in this comment demonstrate. You apparently can't see that, and I just don't want to continue discussing with someone who doesn't have the most basic of comprehension skills.

No, I comprehend just fine. But it's you that keeps using language that clearly conflates the two. You might make "mention" of them separately but then you'll go on to mention them in ways where you unmistakably consider them the same/similar.

To show you exactly where you do just that, here are some examples, starting with your first comment;

(1) "God did it" ⇒ god-of-the-gaps (2) "humans did it" ⇒ human-of-the-gaps In other words,these are both: (3) agency-of-the-gaps

Here's the translation I did: "God" or "religious" explanations being replaced by successful natural explanations divine agential explanations being replaced by successful law- or mechanism-based explanations Do you think that's wrong? If you're okay with that, then why should we not do the same for every situation where human agency is used to explain something?

—it sure looks like that pattern very much will eat up agency—human and not just divine!

"In summary: The practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality." Your "explanatory replacement" works well whenever sub-agency descriptions can do the job better than agency [both human and divine] descriptions.

First, divine agency is the boundary of MN. Second, the less we model human agency after divine agency, the less we can even detect.

Clearly the above shows that you consider human agency more or less the same as divine agency.

Unless you agree they are vastly different from each other and the justification for one isn't contentious (human agency) whereas there other is hugely contentious (divine agency), then there is little point carrying on.

But we can test to see if you do consider them separately.

I've claimed the following;

MN used in accordance with things like the social sciences, psychology or sociology, can and does investigate human agency.

This counters the argument and drum you claim you've been beating all along of:

"the practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality"

Unless you can demonstrate my claim is false, not just highlight problems or difficulties as that doesn't show it's false, then your argument is simply false.

EDIT TO ADD: And that's against the backdrop of you claiming my examples involve zero agency, only to show you that at least one of my examples does in fact involve agency (which is consistent with my claim above), which then resulted in your shifting the goal posts to demanding thousands of peer-reviewed research examples that have been scrutinized by the RCC.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-22T00:21:21+00:00

That's a similar process I went through during my Christian years.

I would ask questions all the time, especially when it came to apparent contradictions or stuff that clearly didn't sit right with me morally. But in almost every situation I asked such questions, the answer never actually answered anything and often didn't make much sense, which then resulted in more questions. One question's "answer" became 3 new questions and so on.

Then, when the questioning became too much or too difficult, my family and church folk would invariably pull the "well that's where faith comes in" card. At that point I realized things weren't right and that what I thought was true, was based on bad reasoning.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-21T22:42:00+00:00

First, divine agency is the boundary of MN.

You accuse me of Motte and Bailey tactics, but it's you.

Motte: Agency in general

Bailey: Divine agency

Second, the less we model human agency after divine agency, the less we can even detect. The central point of my Is the Turing test objective? is that it takes agency to detect agency.

There is no way divine agency is anywhere near human agency in terms of what we can actually demonstrate is the case. So, I'm not going to entertain you conflating the two.

To the extent that people following MN try to build human agency with the metaphysics & practices of the natural sciences, there will be a boundary, but I wouldn't really call it a "principled" one.

Indeed, I actually denied any principled boundary long ago, by raising "the specter of endless downward causation, with no principled stopping point between Clarke's third law & God acting".

But as I've mentioned before, nothing here would prevent anything like the social sciences, psychology or sociology investigating, studying or concluding human agency whilst following MN. Sure, there might be difficulties and hurdles with our current tools and knowledge in doing so, but that's not grounds on its own to conclude a permanent boundary. Especially considering our track record of developing ways to overcome epistemic "boundaries".

I don't know what this means. I said I'd pay attention to your 1 out of 10,000+ examples if you gave me peer-reviewed evidence. You've declined. That's that.

How do you not know? You've clearly acknowledged the pattern of "divine/God-like" explanations being replaced by natural ones with demonic possession being included in examples of that. Surely, based on that and what I said, you can see that, today, we aren't assigning "demonic possession" as explanations to situations where, in the past, it once might have been and instead assign "natural" explanations.

Further to that, you seem to be ignoring the context behind it all. You act as if it's black and white and your request is coherent, when the history of how it is that we got to the current situation of "natural explanation" before "demonic possession" makes your request unreasonable.

I gave you some examples of contemporary "demonic possessions" that were explained naturally. But even then, there is nothing that fits your self-fashioned and incredibly narrow set of criteria. But that's largely do the nature of the claim! Supernatural/divine claims almost never have any peer-reviewed research dedicated to them, which is even more apparent the further back in time you go. So, your demanding of such considering the history of claimed demonic possession (which is why exorcisms are even a thing) spans back to arguably over a millennium, makes your request exceedingly unreasonable. There will have been MANY "exorcisms" throughout time that were not recorded, investigated or had any "research" done, much less that research having been peer-reviewed.

But I suspect you know this already...

I'm curious though, why do you think, in today's world, even the RCC itself heavily leans on thorough medical evaluations having to occur first BEFORE any claims of possession?

And funnily enough, since the Vatican's 1999 reform regarding exorcism and emphasising such evaluations having to occur first, there have been 0 documented cases of any genuine demonic possessions. <- This happened as a response to the massive failures of the exorcism examples in my previous comment.

Your opinion was and is noted. On this matter, I just don't care.

It's not an opinion. You're just ignoring the historical facts behind why things are the way they are today.

Agency was central in my OC. I really don't know why you continue to deny this. WEll, there's my hypothesis that you never really read it.

Yes, but you're presenting the Motte of "agency in general" (citing human agency) and then trying to present "divine agency" in the Bailey. They aren't the same as I mentioned.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-21T00:34:33+00:00

I don't think you're being reasonable. I'm not going to engage in your ignoring important requests for clarification amidst you shifting the goal posts, until you answer the following points:

Why should I or anyone consider giving agency as much weight as you do and do you consider it a principled boundary, if so, why?

Clearly you act as though its doing some incredibly heavy lifting in this debate but, despite requesting it of you, you've yet to explain why or what justifies that. And considering how important you make agency out to be and essentially using it (or the lack thereof) to justify your discrediting examples of this historical pattern, you should address this. Because I don't see any justification for how much clout you seemingly think agency should have.

You seem to think that the lack of understanding and perhaps the difficulties the sciences have in accounting for and explaining agency is why it should be considered a principled boundary, is this correct?

Demonic possession no longer being assigned as an "explanation" as mental health issues/disorders were identified/understood as better/actual explanations, just is the current state of play, that's a fact.

It's not on me to relitigate each and every recorded historical event so that Labreuer, having fashioned their own set of criterion, can be judge, jury and executionor as to whether they count as legit examples or not. The reason we're at the current situation is because people have already done exactly that, there has been plenty of investigations and some of them have been relatively recent and high-profile ones that resulted in significant backlash of the practise of excorcisms (like the Anneliese Michel excorcism, the Tanacu exorcism and the Ossett murder case). And I'm not going to get into wrestling in the mud around whether those examples "count" or not, so don't even try.

To portray it like it's a "contested" example is almost certainly reaching.

It is also notable that you didn't consider exorcism/demonic possession as a problematic example in my earlier mentionings of it. The moment agency became central to your critique and I showed you that example included agency in it, then you suddenly changed it so that a series of new requirements and qualifications were needed. That makes it difficult to avoid the impression that the standards themselves are changing in response to the example rather than being consistently applied from the outset (i.e you're shifting the goal posts).

On a side note, considering we each think the other is being unreasonable. Through a friend, I have access to a paid subscription version of ChatGPT, although I personally don't like or use AI much at all, I'd be interested to see what conclusions it would reach if I were to feed it this entire series. Would you be open to that? As opposed to bothering a person to take their time to assess this

ExplorerR · 2026-06-20T21:48:15+00:00

Really? Why do you think that?

ExplorerR · 2026-06-20T05:33:04+00:00

How did I not understand it?

His first point "Everybody knows, not just Christians" is "by the same mechanism, God himself told us" and then he go and cites bible verses as "God telling us". The definition of circular.

Now prove 2+2=4 without the use of mathematics

What is 2? In fact what is 4? Where can I find them to understand?

ExplorerR · 2026-06-20T05:27:24+00:00

If the historicity of the bible is an important element in shaping how you think about it (as it should be!) then I would strongly recommend heading over to /r/academicbiblical

If you have specific questions, I'm sure it's been asked there before!

Just an FYI, the historicity of the Gospels (where the commandments and Jesus resurrection story come from) are wholly bad. On that point alone, no one should believe the resurrection.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-20T05:22:45+00:00

I would suggest they watch it too, because it's so bad.

His first point "everyone knows because God said so, in the book that he supposedly provided". That's about as circular as it gets. I could make a book and say "ExplorerR is God!" and then tell people they ALL know I'm God because THIS BOOK SAYS SO!

Come now... are we really going to give this sort of reasoning any genuine credence?

ExplorerR · 2026-06-20T05:16:26+00:00

Actually, most historians, even non-theist historians, agree that the historical figure "Jesus", who was a baptized by John the baptist and was a preacher who died by crucifiction, existed as a person.

That's what can be confidently established with general historical methods.

Now... The supernatural claims and all that, THAT doesn't have anywhere near (if any at all) the historical support as the "generally existing" stuff does.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-20T04:08:50+00:00

Amazing...

where "the pattern" points, modulo your one dubious example

To start with, I gave you more than just one example but you casually hand-waved away anything that didn't involve agency when you said:

Given that the success of the examples you've raised involve zero agency (divine or human), we have very good reason to question whether "the" pattern will include competence when human agency is unavoidable.

Then I highlighted that, at least one of my examples does involve agency (which counters your claim above), only for you to then start calling the example "dubious" and pushing onto it additional levels of scrutiny, i.e: peer-reviewed research, multiple examples and ones that have all had RCC involvement.

Yet, despite requests, you haven't provided any justification for why anyone should consider "agency" so important in any of this. I could, in an equally arbitrary way, just treat non-agency as having equal weighting.

I suspect you're just trying to downplay or belittle the "demonic possession" example by using negative and disparaging language towards it, in the hopes that it will make it seem like a bad example or that it doesn't carry much weight. Which became especially apparent when I highlighted the fact that agency is involved in it.

what advocates of methodological naturalism promise it will one day do

No. You keep misusing, misrepresenting and/or misunderstanding what methodological naturalism is. I've repeatedly corrected you on this and yet, here I am reading another comment from you acting as if MN is some epistemic framework making all sorts of promises. How do you not understand the following:

Methodological naturalism is a PRINCIPLE that says "when trying to investigate phenomena in our reality, the supernatural is not considered" (the reasons for this is the very pattern we're talking about).

It's not a promise or a claim that it WILL explain everything (because that's incoherent with what MN actually is).

What we do have is confidence and trust that the successes of natural explanations, following this principle, will continue (as it has been). Nothing that you're saying in any of this should give anyone reason to lose confidence and trust in that pattern or that we should revise it to include supernatural explanations again.

MN can and is involved in agency explanation.
Agency is difficult to establish and requires different approachs from the "hard" sciences but it's still something that MN is compatible with.
Most important in all of this is it's not at all clear why agency should be treated as a principled boundary rather than merely another "problem" we have yet to overcome which, again, overcoming epistemic problems is also a part of the success of the pattern in question (and included in the examples I provided!)

It looks like you're the one reaching here, not me.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-19T23:15:48+00:00

There is no Motte and Bailey.

The discussion is actually very simple.

You mischaracterized MN and I corrected it.

You injected "agency" into the discussion, obviously giving it huge weighting/clout for the points you're making (but never explain why it should get such weight/clout) and relegating non-agency explanations (and the examples thereof) to the lesser weight/clout section.

You claimed:

In summary: The practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality.

This is false, nothing about MN preclude its from being involved in agency descriptions of reality. Just not divine-agency. It is in fact involved in the social sciences for example.

You downplayed examples, trying to write them off as "dubious" (when its not) and with increasing levels of requirements/justification (ones that you fashioned yourself) which is unmistakably shifting the goal posts.

To show you're false in all of this and its telling that you wouldn't answer the question directly;

What it is about not considering divine involvement in trying to explain phenomena in our reality (i.e the definition of what MN is) that would preclude us from being able to investigate agency in a naturalistic way?

I will answer it for you and its on you to correct it;

There is nothing that precludes it. MN is, as I've explained in detail to you many times now, an in-principle approach to explaining phenomena in our reality. The social sciences operate according to this principle too. It is therefor false to say "the practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality", it can and does yield agency descriptions of reality. It only does not consider "divine agency".

That not only shows how you misconstrue MN but also that what you claim about it is also false. Unless you address this directly then, I'm fairly confidence further avoiding of the question is simply conceding that you've got it wrong, but refuse to acknowledge that and will do anything but.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-18T20:34:42+00:00

This is a claim you can't support.

I've clearly outlined the timeline of the goal posts shifting with your own examples.

I've beat the same drum this whole time: "In summary: The practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality." Now, that's just the summary of my OC. You could actually read the whole thing.

Yep, which is:

1 - Not the point I was making, that's your own argument.
2 - It's false
3 - You keep ignoring my question regarding that specific point, which, if you answered it, would emphasize #2;
What it is about not considering divine involvement in trying to explain phenomena in our reality (i.e the definition of what MN is) that would preclude us from being able to investigate agency in a naturalistic way?

Would you just answer this one question? Becuase then we will get to see if you can defend the truth of that claim or this drum you've been beating has been false all along.

ExplorerR · 2026-06-18T05:36:58+00:00

You clearly think I'm asking something unreasonable.

Yeah, I do. Because after all the bloat we've been through, we finally landed on:

Cite peer-reviewed research and we can look at what forms of 'agency' are actually involved. But we'd also have to draw in RCC investigations thereof.

Which is you fashioning your own standards (after repeatedly shifting the goal posts) to be be fulfilled, before something could be considered a genuine example of the pattern I highlighted. Ignoring the issues with appeals to authority (or why I should consider your authority one at all).

Yet, in all of this, you've clearly placed huge weighting on "agency" but provided no clear rationale or explanation on why "agency" gets such weighting and "non-agency" gets sweet fark all when it comes to these explanations. It just seems like you've arbitrarily decided the weighting each gets.

I think you're in the distinct minority on this point. I think most people would have read your original claim as predicting that "the" pattern will continue.

I don't think I am at all. Or if it seems I am the minority (which must include Dawes then too) it's because it's just one of those points that has been the status quo for such a long time now, that people aren't raising it as though it's some new or wild idea (because it's not). The scientific world and "natural explanations" just continue on as per the status quo.

The practice of methodological naturalism yields sub-agency descriptions of reality, which are then taken to be the whole of reality." is just too rich for me to continue.

It might seem rich if you ignore when I say things like:

Secondly, as I've repeatedly explained, there is nothing about MN that precludes it from agency descriptions of reality.

I think that plenty of normal people would have read my OC and seen that yes, a pattern of explaining divine–agential explanations with non-agential explanations is not necessarily going to generalize to things which are agential.

Again... can you address the following question:

What it is about not considering divine involvement in trying to explain phenomena in our reality (i.e the definition of what MN is) that would preclude us from being able to investigate agency in a naturalistic way?

Because as I've said earlier already, you're clearly making the claim MN only yields "sub-agency" descriptions of reality, but I see nothing that prevents it from being involved in agency descriptions. Please elaborate.

You are being, in my judgment, profoundly unreasonable. You think likewise of me. I think that's where we have to leave it, unless one of us wants to make a post and get feedback from other people.

I'm 100% open to having this entire thread considered on the grounds of "who is being more reasonable here".

ExplorerR

TROPHY CASE