"why do so many people continue to have a problem with it?"

Mostly because the media, and BLMs average supporters, either claim or insinuate that only black people are killed by police in the USA, indicating they don't look things up before believing them.

So, you're not really trying to understand Someone's argument. You are just looking for excuses to dismiss it. You came looking for a non-existent so-called "logical fallacy" rhetorical magic wand to wave at it and make it disappear. — T Clark

And the reason why this is actually what Someone is doing is because this appeal to the difference between methological and metaphysical naturalism is just as effete as insisting my argument can't work because of the difference between supernatural and natural.

Metaphysical naturalism says there are no supernatural phenomena. Scientific methodological naturalism says only that science is not capable of examining supernatural phenomena. — T Clark

And why should I care about this? It has no effect on my argument. It's just coming up with a distinction that I'm not logically committed into accepting and insisting it stops me from making my conclusion. Sort of like a rhetorical magic wand to wave at my argument and make it go away.

If my premises are about natural things, then God is natural. If they are about supernatural things, then God is supernatural. I made this point to someone in the argument and a couple of times here in the forum and I don't know why you're not accepting it.

I'm basing my premises on facts about physics and mathematics. If someone insists that makes it metaphysically natural, then the consequence is my argument proves metaphysical naturalism wrong. If someone insists my argument exists within the confines of methodological naturalism (which is what they insisted), then it proves that God is not one of the phenomena excluded by methodological naturalism.

"But if God doesn't exist, who wrote the laws of physics?" This is analogous to asking: if Santa didn't put the toys under the tree, then who did? In the case of the toys, it was Dad. In the case of the laws of physics, opinions vary. God is in the line-up but is only one suspect out of several mentioned in this thread. — Cuthbert

Key thing you are missing: whoever did, has to have a mind (which you already granted with your Santa-Giver analogy).

No, this is precisely what Someone is doing.

Yes, it's insisting that something I've said is in one category or equivocating it as some phenomena, then missing the point that this has no bearing, and it's all done based on the presumption of some closed, circular definition.

Ignorantia elenchi (missing the point) — Agent Smith

Yes, it's ignorentia elenchi, thanks! :up:

OK, so as I suspected, it has no more weight or relevance than the error that I made this post to point out.

Fallacies of irrelevence, I'll check it out, thanks. I was going with "fallacies of definition" but it's not obvious if it's possible to make it more specific.

If Someone failed to provide an argument that will convince you, there's little chance I will. I think how he expressed it is better than I can do it. — T Clark

You said

You don't seem to grasp the distinction between methodological and metaphysical naturalism — T Clark

but someone didn't explain any distinction between the two and didn't explain why it would affect my argument. So you and they are claiming I've misunderstood something without any elaboration.
I suspect that whatever that distinction is, it turns out to have no more an impact on my argument than does labeling my premises natural and my conclusion supernatural and insisting I can't make the conclusion because of that.

What is it that I've failed to understand?

One in which mathematical descriptions didn't hold would be one of randomness or total chaos. Such a world wouldn't have any coherent perceptions, conceptions or events of any kind, so it wouldn't contain anything else in addition to nonexistent mathematical descriptions.

Yes that's right. I'm not saying there's no valid distinction between natural and supernatural, I'm saying you can't just insist x is supernatural and plug your ears to any natural evidence for it.

OK. You attempt to present an argument or evidence that O. J. Simpson killed his ex-wife.

I object that you won't be able to do this, because to establish such truths, we use a certain methodology, which is only applicable to beeb-bobs and excludes any proof about super-beeb-bobs.

A beeb-bob is someone who can be proven to have killed their ex-wife.
A super-beeb-bob is the opposite of this, someone who cannot be proven to have killed their ex-wife.

The evidence you're trying to present is all about beeb-bobs. But people with the name "O. J. Simpson" are super-beeb-bobs.

Why are they?

Because I JUST INSIST.

You then attempt to present the argument or evidence that you have. But I just ignore what the evidence, absent of any preconceived notions, proves. Instead, I focus on calling it a beeb-bob, so therefore it can't be used to prove anything about super-beeb-bobs.

You then reply that this beeb-bob/super-beeb-bob distinction doesn't detract from the evidence and that it doesn't matter what I call it. You say that if your evidence is beeb-bob, then whoever it proves to be a killer of their ex-wife is also a beeb-bob.

I then reply that it isn't clear who you're talking about, because anyone with the name "O. J. Simpson" is paradigmatic of such super-beeb-bobs. And I JUST INSIST that no beeb-bob evidence can evidence a super-beeb-bob.

You then say, you're talking about whoever killed O. J. Simpson's ex-wife.

I then say "your argument requires super-beeb-bobs but it only has beeb-bobs, these have no metaphysical force. O. J. Simpson is a super-beeb-bob, so your position is inconsistent, viz: 1) O. J. Simpson is a beeb-bob 2) O. J. Simpson is a super-beeb-bob 3) nothing is both beeb-bob and super-beeb-bob 4) nothing is O. J. Simpson."

Seems to me that any confusion comes from disagreements on the meanings of several words - natural vs. supernatural, — T Clark

No, I'm saying his imposition of natural vs supernatural makes no difference to the argument. I am not disagreeing at all with what they mean. I even said at least once that I'm letting him decide what they mean.

There's a dual relationship between knowing and being. For something to be, it has to be compatible with the laws of perception and attribution. Otherwise, that which perceives and knows wouldn't share a reality with what we're proposing to "be". They must share the same reality, and therefore share the same rules. So it actually isn't the object that is logically prior, it is the rules of interaction between objects and knowledge thereof that is prior.

Mathematical descriptions are capable of describing the world because they have an ontological status in the world; ie the world is mathematical in itself. If this weren't the case, mathematical descriptions would be useless.

Human language and the world likewise have a metaphysical relationship, albeit one less precise, hence the need for mathematical language.

Accepting this isn't necessary for my argument, but only necessary for the rebuttal of their objection to my premises.

This isn't what I wanted the post to be about though. I'm looking for the kind of error being committed when he's basing his disagreement on a few definitions about natural and supernatural in which they contradict and insisting that I'm concluding a supernatural thing from natural premises. I was trying to get through to him (presumably a he) that I'm letting him decide whether my arguments basis was either natural or supernatural and that it made no actual difference. If my premises are natural, then God is natural. If God is supernatural, then the very definitions he's insisting on that natural premises exclude supernatural conclusions is wrong.

"That's baloney." His reason? You've mistaken science for metaphysics. — T Clark

The relationship between physics and mathematics isn't a scientific one; it is metaphysical. This is inconsequential for my argument however (it wouldn't prove me wrong even if you or he were right about my premises appealing to "natural law" and my conclusion being "supernatural").

Please note materialism in the poll includes dualism

https://ctmucommunity.org/wiki/Distributed_solipsism

Bernardo Kastrup's paper, it's very good:
https://philpapers.org/archive/KASAOS.pdf

Definitions of words are established by humans based on a consensus of usage. There are good and bad definitions, but no true or false ones. — T Clark

You are contradicting yourself; claiming that there are no true or false definitions rests on objectively true definitions with which you make the claim.

Yours is a bad definition if for the only reason that no one else will know what you're talking about. — T Clark

My definition is objectively true, and you've got no reason to think other people won't know what I'm talking about when I offer a different definition of a word since we communicate in common definitions.

That's what my point was, which is why I was pointing out what the actual definition of reality is.

"By definition" refers to what something is, not what people conventionally think it is. E.g. Someone can say "true is by definition the opposite of false" but people merely disagreeing doesn't mean that this definition is not the case.

That is not a standard definition of "reality." — T Clark

I think in absentia of the principle Nickolasgaspar and I put forward, people don't have a coherent idea of reality. An "independent" existence of the surrounding medium isn't defensible, and what we imagine must ultimately depend on that medium just as the objects we identify as taking on an actuality do.

Your comment doesn't substantively address anything that I said.

Reality is by definition the containing medium of anything you're able to interact with.
Any member of this domain by definition attains the descriptor "real", putting it in descriptive contact with all of reality's other members.
This entails that a causal or interactive relation distributes across the whole of reality, through which members can interact across shared structure.
Objections to this principle self-contradict invariantly, as they all propose a disentangling of reality as constituting a shared medium across which members interact, from the descriptor "real"; e.g. anything proposed to be real outside reality would not be real enough to affect reality owing to not being a part of its shared structure.

https://ctmucommunity.org/wiki/Reality

You claimed passing wind is non-linguistic so I refuted this claim. Same goes for rocks.

Passing wind may convey information as may a million other non-linguistic events. — Baden

Passing wind can't be inherently non-linguistic otherwise you wouldn't be able to identify it and communicate it to us via language. In otherwords, it has to be language-like for it to enter into and be informationally accepted by your linguistic model. If the structure it exists in weren't itself a language, you would be able to say what "it" is using language, as there'd be no structure connecting it with your identification of it.

Not quite. You're correct to link grammar and logic. Logic itself is a language composed of a syntax.
The nature of spacetime must ultimately be language, since language is the most general algebraic structure. For something to obey rules it's got to conform to the rules of language otherwise it's unintelligible. In spacetime you've got objects, these correspond to nouns, you've got time, which correspond to verbs and functions and you've got space which is prepositional. There isn't anything in spacetime that isn't describable in language. Notice how all attempts to unify the sciences involve trying to boil them all down to one language within a unified grammar. The thoughts we model reality with must also be continuous with that reality and continuity implies shared structure. In the CTMU this is called the metaformal system and it couples that which you describe the universe with that which structures it.

https://ctmucommunity.org/wiki/Principle_of_Linguistic_Reducibility
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTIv4GiDGOk - language of spacetime
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXvUyrhAaN8 - reality is a language

The analogy just went over your head. I understand letting children suffer would be an injustice - thus I pointed it out. — ToothyMaw

No nothing went over my head. You were pointing out something in agreement with what I originally stated, which was:

We have free will and it is our responsibility to create just outcomes in society. — Hallucinogen

When you responded asking whether we should "allow children to suffer so we can test them?", I had therefore already answered this question in the comment I made you were responding to. So I don't know which analogy you think I missed, if it isn't the comparison you made between people's responsibility to intervene and God's responsibility to intervene, which I've pointed out isn't a correct comparison.

If we allow those whose condition we have control over to suffer, then we are guilty for not preventing that suffering, no matter how, as I have had to point out many times in this thread, unfathomable God is — ToothyMaw

Yes that's definitely correct, and I didn't assert at any point such a dependency of our responsibility to intervene on God's unfathomability.

Then God is even more culpable than the parent who lets their child suffer, as he has absolute control over our outcomes and whether or not they are just. — ToothyMaw

This is just you repeating that you think God is responsible for creating justice among humans, when I've already pointed out this is our responsibility which you haven't countered, as well as you assuming that God doesn't create justice in heaven in rectification for that earthly suffering. God has power over the destination of person's spirit, which is the reason why allowing suffering in the material realm does not make God unjust, as he can rectify this in heaven, according to the suffering someone suffered.

We could just try to arrange society in such a way that people get what they deserve? Do you honestly believe that someone could only be rewarded with a Nobel Prize if someone else falls off a cliff? What connection is there between some people's suffering, or the lack of just outcomes, and the just outcomes others receive, and why couldn't we all at least mostly get what we deserve? — ToothyMaw

Hello left-wing utopianism. Everyone gets a participation trophy, and anything less than that is all God's fault! I'm concluding here that you're just angry at reality for containing suffering and that you're just going to keep insisting that the responsibility lies in God's lap instead of in the laps of people who make those decisions, while ignoring that the justice God appropriates is divine and therefore trumps any assertion of injustice on God's part you can make.

Would you say that adults should allow their children to suffer injustices at each other's hands merely so they can be judged by adults? That we should allow children to suffer so we can test them? — ToothyMaw

I said it was our responsibility to create just outcomes in society; allowing our children to suffer injustices would be the opposite of that. The direct comparison between people and God also isn't justified. People don't have the power to decide the fate and destination of other people's spirits, unlike God.

From the rest of your comment, I'm getting a strong impression of left-wing idealism and bitterness about inequality, which tells me that your moral intuitions here are just expressions of your personality rather than moral statements I have to acknowledge as being objective or factual.

And what about good people that get cancer? How are we supposed to enact justness there? If we can't enact justness, then shouldn't God protect good people from injustices we cannot rectify if he is even remotely just? — ToothyMaw

No, this is just your moral intuition/outrage again. I don't have to accept the assertion that God should do anything. Intervening to cure every person of cancer would make creating a world with cancer in it pointless. Cancer gives the sufferer (who is ultimately an alter-ego of God) the opportunity to experience and learn from mortality in a particular way, and it gives a unique experience to their loved ones and anyone trying to help them as well.

Expecting God to do everything for us so we needn't do anything is lumping the means by which we show God who we are onto God's lap, which would be pointless because God created creation to see how we react to life. — Hallucinogen

Then God really half-assed creation. We could demonstrate our worth, compassion, bravery, ingenuity etc. in a world with significantly less suffering. — ToothyMaw

This is yet again you repeating the insistence there should be significantly less suffering, which I don't have to accept because it is an expression of your personality. I'm curious how you think we could demonstrate our compassion in a world with significantly less suffering, though. Wouldn't that mean significantly less compassion?

We have free will and it is our responsibility to create just outcomes in society.
We will be judged by God commensurate with the extent to which each of us has done that.
Expecting God to do everything for us so we needn't do anything is lumping the means by which we show God who we are onto God's lap, which would be pointless because God created creation to see how we react to life.

It's more than a claim - the page gives an argument. Causation is the telic (wilful) rearrangement of vocabulary according to a grammar or syntax

Intentionality which is anti-existence

true, if one equates causality to mean determinism

Linguistic AND in the world
https://ctmucommunity.org/wiki/Principle_of_Linguistic_Reducibility

Material world = thoughts of God all subsidiary minds interact with

Isn't it like that? — Cuthbert

No. What you said is "All x are y, except y1". What dclements said was "x is not x". dclements isn't pointing out any exception to the rule like you are.

ALL of THEM — dclements

Applying a truth-value to every element in a domain, as an invariant and valid operation toward producing a result; there you go using a self-evident axiom again.

are based on one's own beliefs and desires — dclements

The examples that I gave and am basing my argument on aren't. They're self-evident in logic. Using examples other people have incorrectly said are self-evident isn't a counter-argument to my position.

how things really are. — dclements

So there is a true way in which things are?

"Black Swan Theory" — dclements

So black swan theory is a true axiom?

Descartes's "I think therefore I am". It assumes that a "thinking thing" — dclements

I don't think it "assumes" a thinking being, rather points out to you the fact that you are thinking. All it assumes is a dependence of thinking on being, and so therefore produces the result that observing you are thinking proves that you are being.

However, it doesn't address the issue of how such a thing exist — dclements

It doesn't need to.

"The only truth (axiom) is that there is no truth (or 'true axiom")" — dclements

Like all formulations of logical relativism, this is a self-contradiction. It's literally "the x is not x".

If this God has free will, then how do you know he will always do good? — Michael McMahon

God's mind contains everything and is omniscient (also proven by the duality between ontology and epistemology, and God's omnipresence), which means God has no ignorance. Evil is a product of ignorance (as per both Western and Eastern religions), so God never chooses to commit evil.