# I just found out I've been presupposing naturalism my whole life. Is this a fallacy?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [August 14, 2011, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693 "2011-08-14T16:39:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@tim-n-va](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim-n-va)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/21 "2011-08-15T05:27:24Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> No, it’s using Occam’s Razor. The existence of nothing more than the known natural forces should be the presumption you run on unless and until something comes along that cannot be explained by only them.
It seems to me this is the big point. To a true believer an explanation that involves God doesn’t require assumptions. A conclusion that involves belief is not exportable but it is hard to argue with because what someone believes has the same weight as a fact in their internal processing.
Do you “know” that what you can observe is the best basis for knowledge or is that what you “believe”?
There is a lot to that “logic” that I agree with. It is just that I’ve spent a lot of time with religious family members and I’m trying to reconcile otherwise bright people not seeing the world as I do.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/22 "2011-08-15T05:36:04Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#):
>
> To simplify further: Hear hoofbeats, expect horses, not zebras.
Ummm…
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/23 "2011-08-15T06:09:38Z")
> [@The\_Hamster\_King](#):
>
> EVERYONE presupposes naturalism. Even the most God-besotted fanatics use the evidence of their senses to navigate from the dinner table to the toilet. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could conduct the most basic functions of day-to-day life without assuming that the evidence provided by our eyes and ears correlates with reality in some meaningful way.
But that’s not what “naturalism” means, if I’m understanding it correctly. Everyone agrees that nature exists, and that things generally and predictably follow natural laws. What naturalism insists on is that nothing **but** nature exists, and that there never are and can never be exceptions to those natural laws.
To the OP: I’d be interested in knowing the context of the remark—what point or argument the guest in question was trying to make at the time.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/24 "2011-08-15T10:19:13Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Ummm…
> **[Zebra (medicine)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra_(medicine))**
>
> Zebra is the American medical slang for a surprising, often exotic, medical diagnosis, especially when a more commonplace explanation is more likely. It is shorthand for the aphorism coined in the late 1940s by Theodore Woodward, professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who instructed his medical interns: "When you hear hoofbeats behind you, don't expect to see a zebra." (Alternative phrasing: when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras. Since zebras are much r Medic...
You never heard the phrase before? It means that if something is true most of the time, and you meet something that has symptoms of the true thing, expect it to be the true thing. Everything in life one experiences on a daily basis tends to operate under a naturalistic basis. Encounter something new, expect it to also be naturalistic.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/25 "2011-08-15T10:33:59Z")
> [@Grumman](#):
>
> It’s the same reason we presuppose that dogs exist
Yes, but they can’t look up.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/26 "2011-08-15T11:26:29Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#):
>
> [Zebra (medicine) - Wikipedia](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Zebra_%28medicine%29)
>
> You never heard the phrase before? It means that if something is true most of the time, and you meet something that has symptoms of the true thing, expect it to be the true thing. Everything in life one experiences on a daily basis tends to operate under a naturalistic basis. Encounter something new, expect it to also be naturalistic.
I hadn’t actually. But I was just pulling your leg - I live in Africa, it being zebras wouldn’t be out of all bounds of reason.
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### Author:  [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/27 "2011-08-15T13:03:07Z")
> [@I\_Know\_Nothing](#):
>
> While listening to an old Don Johnson Christian Debates podcast, he pointed out that his guest was presupposing naturalism. My gut response was “Well …_duh_.” If I see card trick, I would never consider the option that it was the result of actual magic; I would search for some natural explanation for it. Is this presupposing naturalism? That sounds so closed minded. Do you agree with how the phrase was used? Is it possible to presuppose, say, the laws of physics, or do they just exist?
IIRC, he’s a presuppositionalist - which means that he believes there is no ‘neutral’ ground. You cannot ‘prove’ worldviews per say, you can only show which ones are consistent.
Look up Van Til, Gordon Clark, Greg Bahnsen.
It’s a load of rubbish, but it’s quite sophisticated.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/28 "2011-08-15T13:59:09Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#):
>
> Yes, but they can’t look up.
Mine can. She charges across the yard, turns, looks up, catches the frisbee. Sometimes. It’s kind of iffy, but I’ve caught her doing it. Worth noting.
MrDibble: Ha! Yes, well, there you go.
> **[Hickam's dictum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickam's_dictum)**
>
> Hickam's dictum is a medical principle that a patient's symptoms could be caused by several diseases. It is a counterargument to misapplying Occam's razor in the medical profession. A common version of Hickam's dictum states: "A man can have as many diseases as he damn well pleases." The principle is attributed to an apocryphal physician named Hickam, possibly John Bamber Hickam, MD. When he began saying this is uncertain.
> Occam's razor is frequently misinterpreted to mean that the simplest exp...
> **[Sutton's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton's_law)**
>
> Sutton's law states that when diagnosing, one should first consider the obvious. It suggests that one should first conduct those tests which could confirm (or rule out) the most likely diagnosis. It is taught in medical schools to suggest to medical students that they might best order tests in that sequence which is most likely to result in a quick diagnosis, hence treatment, while minimizing unnecessary costs. It is also applied in pharmacology, when choosing a drug to treat a specific disease y...
These are also interesting. Hickam’s Dictum is actually a counterpoint to the Razor.
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### Author:  [@KellyCriterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyCriterion)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/29 "2011-08-15T14:10:44Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#):
>
> No, it’s using Occam’s Razor. The existence of nothing more than the known natural forces should be the presumption you run on unless and until something comes along that cannot be explained by only them.
The uncaused first cause.
How do you explain that?
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/30 "2011-08-15T14:36:57Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#):
>
> The uncaused first cause.
>
> How do you explain that?
You don’t…yet. In science, you are allowed to say “I don’t know.”
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### Author:  [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/31 "2011-08-15T14:41:33Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#):
>
> The uncaused first cause.
>
> How do you explain that?
I actually have problems with both premises of the Kalam.
I don’t think we have an experience with ‘nothing’, so I do not think our intuition is enough to ground ex nihilo, nihilo fit. Further, I don’t think the universe did ever _not_ exist. The Kalam presupposes the a theory of time, which I do not support.
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### Author:  [@KellyCriterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyCriterion)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/32 "2011-08-15T15:05:02Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> You don’t…yet. In science, you are allowed to say “I don’t know.”
Well, there’s certainly some things we can logically deduce from what science claims to know.
If Stephen Hawking is right, in that time, space and matter were created at the moment of the Big Bang, then whatever caused the Big Bang was timeless, spaceless and immaterial.
That sure doesn’t sound to me like we’re still talking about “naturalistic” forces..
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### Author:  [@Meatros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meatros)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/33 "2011-08-15T15:17:13Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#):
>
> Well, there’s certainly some things we can logically deduce from what science claims to know.
>
> If Stephen Hawking is right, in that time, space and matter were created at the moment of the Big Bang, then whatever caused the Big Bang was timeless, spaceless and immaterial.
Even though I read his book, I can’t remember what he posited with regard to the beginning of the universe. Your position supposes that he is right, of course, which isn’t a settled issue.
That said, there are a multitude of models that put forth a universe ‘from nothing’. Here’s [one](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0370269382908668).
> [@KellyCriterion](#):
>
> That sure doesn’t sound to me like we’re still talking about “naturalistic” forces..
It does to me, then again, I don’t know what you mean by supernaturalististic forces.
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### Author:  [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/34 "2011-08-15T15:23:01Z")
It was not necessarily timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. It is simply that what we define as time, started with the Big Bang. The problem we have is that we can not observe what existed before, due to running out of what we define as time.
It is possible, to pull one example out of many (and simplifying \_vastly), that our universe is a bubble inside a large universe, like air bubbles in jello. Perhaps this outside universe has existed for ten times longer than ours has. We can’t tell: we can’t look outside the bubble we’re in.
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### Author:  [@I\_Know\_Nothing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Know_Nothing)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/35 "2011-08-15T15:28:08Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#):
>
> To the OP: I’d be interested in knowing the context of the remark—what point or argument the guest in question was trying to make at the time.
DJ starts out with a series of questions trying to understand the guest’s ‘worldview’. He asks questions like “Is matter all there is?” “Do we live in a closed system of cause and effect?” “Does everything need to be empirically verifiable?”
So the guest wasn’t yet arguing a point, he was just in the hotseat while DJ asked him questions to explain his worldview. The guest said he believes in tangible, physical, demonstrable reality. Somewhere along the line DJ made the point that his worldview presupposes naturalism.
DJ has a model of a natural world with god existing outside, in the supernatural, whatever that is.
He uses the terms naturalist, materialist, and empiricist interchangeably, AFAIKT
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### Author:  [@KellyCriterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyCriterion)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/36 "2011-08-15T15:33:37Z")
> [@Meatros](#):
>
> Even though I read his book, I can’t remember what he posited with regard to the beginning of the universe. Your position supposes that he is right, of course, which isn’t a settled issue.
>
> That said, there are a multitude of models that put forth a universe ‘from nothing’. Here’s [one](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0370269382908668).
I’m no physicist, but the link you provide here theorises about a universe originating from [quantum tunnelling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling), which requires, at the very least, one particle. In other words, something. Not nothing.
Aristotle came up with the best definition of _nothing_ that I’ve come across: _Nothing_ is what rocks dream about.
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/37 "2011-08-15T15:35:10Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#):
>
> The uncaused first cause.
>
> How do you explain that?
Don’t have to. Prove causality first.
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### Author:  [@KellyCriterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyCriterion)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/38 "2011-08-15T15:35:49Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#):
>
> It was not necessarily timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. It is simply that what we define as time, started with the Big Bang. The problem we have is that we can not observe what existed before, due to running out of what we define as time.
But we need to be consistent with our definitions when inside a singular context. By our definitions, whatever caused time, space and matter to exist, must, by definition, be timeless, spaceless and immaterial.
> [@](#):
>
> It is possible, to pull one example out of many (and simplifying \_vastly), that our universe is a bubble inside a large universe, like air bubbles in jello. Perhaps this outside universe has existed for ten times longer than ours has.
But there’s no evidence for this, hence, no reason to believe it.
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### Author:  [@KellyCriterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyCriterion)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/39 "2011-08-15T15:36:54Z")
> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> Don’t have to. Prove causality first.
Causality is an axiom for me. If you believe things can begin without a cause, well, I admire your faith 🆒
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2011, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-found-out-ive-been-presupposing-naturalism-my-whole-life-is-this-a-fallacy/592693/40 "2011-08-15T15:38:39Z")
> [@KellyCriterion](#):
>
> Causality is an axiom for me. If you believe things can begin without a cause, well, I admire your faith 🆒
What caused God?
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