Thursday, February 18, 2010

Neutral ground

Annoyed with the fact that I nor the class could come to an answer about what the neutral ground is between supernatural and naturalistic, I will attempt again to logically examine the possibilities or lack thereof. It’s so hard to just throw the thought of there being a neutral ground away, especially when I know the beliefs of great philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes. In Leviathan, Hobbes mentions God and he is a materialist. It works for him, he believes in God and doesn’t believe in free will, he is in-between naturalistic and super naturalistic. So, even though I don't understand how believing in God and Microevolution is not common ground, I'll ignore that possibility.

The first statement I made in class yesterday was under looked as a possibility because of its apparent relation of Emily's statement. Yet Emily did not mention the article by Moreland like I did, and how he states that when we look at morality, free will, rationality, and consciousness from a naturalistic point of view we cannot find an answer. I was suggesting that that could be our common ground. Or at least that is what I was trying to say.

Anyways, there are things that can be explained through the naturalistic point of view and things that can be explained through the supernatural view. Supposedly, morality, free will, rationality and conscientiousness can be explained only through the supernatural. ‘God lets us know what is wrong from right,’ yet everyone has different morals, so that can’t be explained supernaturally. The bible may point out what is wrong in the Ten Commandments and such, but that does not necessarily mean that the readers build morals from it. In fact, to me, morals seem mostly cognitive, social, and cultural. There is not just one view world wide of what is and isn’t morally right. Other cultures believe in things that we feel are just wrong. Since there is not one view of morality and it is not measurable, it cannot be empirically observed. (How would we even operationally define morality?) So with those explanations I feel that morality cannot fully be explained through either supernatural or naturalistic views. That it is it. So were we that blind? The neutral ground is not a view of something that is both naturalistic and supernaturalistic, it is in things that are not naturalistic nor supernaturalistic. That is my conclusion. Are rationality, consciousness, and free will also neutral ground?

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