An Agnostic perspective on Metaphysical Naturalism!

[AgnosticBoy]

I don't have an entire essay to write here because I have one or two simple reasons why I don't accept metaphysical naturalism.

Here's a good summary of 'metaphysical naturalism' from fandom (i chose this source because it was well organized and an easy read):

Metaphysical naturalism is any worldview in which nature is all there is and nothing supernatural exists. It is often simply referred to as naturalism, and occasionally as philosophical naturalism or ontological naturalism,

The concept of "nature" embraced by contemporary metaphysical naturalists excludes by definition gods, spirits, and any other supernatural beings, objects, or forces. There are many different varieties of metaphysical naturalism, but all can be separated into two general categories, physicalism and pluralism. Physicalism entails the claim that everything everyone has observed or claimed to observe is in actual fact the product of fundamentally mindless arrangements or interactions of matter-energy in space-time, and therefore it is unreasonable to believe anything else exists.

Of course, I accept that the laws of nature exist but what I don't know is the nature of these laws. Do these laws exist like a computer code? If so, then they can be modified or broken. Also, a related question is why can't the laws be different or why are they the way they are? Sure, we can say that x can't happen because of some given law of nature. But the ability or possibility of event x happening is relative to a law. In other words, it could happen if the law was different or if it is not fixed or if it doesn't have to be the way it is (e.g. can change just like any computer program code can be changed). Think of something bizarre like a horse being able to speak human languages. Most would say that it's absurd to think that horses can speak our languages but that's only because of the laws of nature we observed for that behavior. If we observed horses being able to talk and the laws behind it, then that wouldn't be absurd. In short, if the laws of nature don't have to be the way they are, then anything is possible. Everything would have to be logically possible at the least so that it would make sense to us (i.e. no contradictions).

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Here's Thomas Huxley's take on Naturalism or the using of that to determine what's impossible...

All excerpts below are taken from Huxley's essay that's called, Possibilities and Impossibilities..

Strictly speaking, I am unaware of any thing that has a right to the title of an "impossibility" except a contradiction in terms. There are impossibilities logical, but none natural. A "round square," a "present past," "two parallel lines that intersect," are impossibilities, because the ideas denoted by the predicates, round, present, intersect, are contradictory of the ideas denoted by the subjects, squared, past, parallel. But walking on water, or turning water into wine, or procreation without male intervention, or raising the dead, are plainly not "impossibilities" in this sense.

Undoubtedly, there are very strong physical and biological arguments for thinking it extremely improbable that a man could be supported on the surface of the water as the insect is; or that his organization could be compatible with the possession and use of wings; or that he could rise through the air without mechanical aid. Indeed, if we have any reason to believe that our present knowledge of the nature of things exhausts the possibilities of nature, we might properly say that the attributes of men are contradictory of walking on water, or floating in the air, and consequently that these acts are truly "impossible" for him. But it is sufficiently obvious, not only that we are at the beginning of our knowledge of nature, instead of having arrived at the end of it, but that the limitations of our faculties are such that we never can be in a position to set bounds to the possibilities of nature. We have knowledge of what is happening and of what has happened; of what will happen we have and can have no more than expectation, grounded on our more or less correct reading of past experience and prompted by the faith, begotten of that experience, that the order of nature in the future will resemble its order in the past.

The same considerations apply to the other [199] examples of supposed miraculous events. The change of water into wine undoubtedly implies a contradiction, and is assuredly "impossible," if we are permitted to assume that the "elementary bodies" of the chemists are, now and for ever, immutable.

When it is rightly stated, the Agnostic view of "miracles" is, in my judgment, unassailable. We are not justified in the a priori assertion that the order of nature, as experience has revealed it to us, cannot change. In arguing about the miraculous, the assumption is illegitimate, because it involves the whole point in dispute. Furthermore, it is an assumption which takes us beyond the range of our faculties. Obviously, no amount of past experience can warrant us in anything more than a correspondingly strong expectation for the present and future. We find, practically, that [205] expectations, based upon careful observations of past events, are, as a rule, trustworthy. We should be foolish indeed not to follow the only guide we have through life. But, for all that, our highest and surest generalizations remain on the level of justifiable expectations; that is, very high probabilities.