CDHarris wrote:
The sun is the mystical being who has given us life... wait... no, it's a burning ball of gas. We are the center of the universe for we are the chosen ones... wait... no, we're on an insignificant planet on the edge of the galaxy. The ground shakes because our god is angry... wait... no, it's just the result of massive plates of land releasing tension from rubbing against each other. It's never as exciting as our first guess. Automatically jumping to the supernatural as an explanation is like believing that a magician has special powers just because you can't explain how he performs his tricks.
Again, I cannot understand this. Surely it's just as true that jumping to the scientific as an explanation is like automatically assuming that a magician does NOT have special powers just because you CAN explain them
in another way.
Why not "The Sun has given us life, is a burning ball of gas, AND may or may not be a mystical being?" As usual, a lack of knowledge is used as a route to write off any kind of supernatural potential. Makes no sense.
Another example: if we were to apply this regular scientific explanation to ourselves, we might observe: "Humans are sentient life-forms that are able to think, learn and decide... oh but wait... no, they're just walking lumps of electric meat. Guess there's no potential there."
However, both the former and latter observation are valid, and one should not cancel the other out. If you decide thereafter that the combined observation still does not merit any sort of mysticism or whatever on humanity's part, then fair enough, but I think that we should at least be able to get to that point in the debate without entirely writing it off beforehand.