On your initial analogy:
Looking for a life jacket or a flotation device is very reasonable in this situation given you have several instances of seeing boats or hearing about boats with life jackets and flotation devices. Even if you can’t immediately find them, you might keep looking because you have been exposed to several instances in life when boats contained life jackets. You know they often go together.
More analogous would be your crew starts sinking and you start a search for fairies, calling out to them and wishing them to come help you. Or perhaps calling out to mermaids, or Poseidon to save you. Or even looking for a hidden button in the boat which would teleport you home immediately. These things you have no evidence for, no prior experience with, at best you have legends and stories.
If calling out to the fairies makes you feel good, or looking for the magic teleportation button in the boat seems good to you, go ahead. But don’t act like it’s the same level of reasonable as looking for life jackets — which you have more than just legends pointing you to the possibility there could be one in your situation.
TheOverExcitedDragon t1_j2l90az wrote
Reply to Atheistic Naturalism does not offer any long-term pragmatic outcome of value when compared to Non-Naturalist views, such as Theism by _Zirath_
On your initial analogy: Looking for a life jacket or a flotation device is very reasonable in this situation given you have several instances of seeing boats or hearing about boats with life jackets and flotation devices. Even if you can’t immediately find them, you might keep looking because you have been exposed to several instances in life when boats contained life jackets. You know they often go together.
More analogous would be your crew starts sinking and you start a search for fairies, calling out to them and wishing them to come help you. Or perhaps calling out to mermaids, or Poseidon to save you. Or even looking for a hidden button in the boat which would teleport you home immediately. These things you have no evidence for, no prior experience with, at best you have legends and stories.
If calling out to the fairies makes you feel good, or looking for the magic teleportation button in the boat seems good to you, go ahead. But don’t act like it’s the same level of reasonable as looking for life jackets — which you have more than just legends pointing you to the possibility there could be one in your situation.