I think some of the folks here are being a little unfair to OP's point (or, if this is not OP's point, then to a slightly different point that I think this post raises!) - so correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this argument boil down to something like this:
If we restrict ourselves to a naturalistic worldview, the only resources we have for claims or beliefs or attitudes like hope about the future are the predictions we can make based on the facts of the situation and the various statistical probabilities of things being likely or not likely. If this is the case, it would follow that it is difficult to see how we could generate attitudes like faith and hope that we would need to be open to radical kinds of interventions or unexpected solutions to seemingly impossible situations (and this might include the miraculous appearance, appearing miraculous of course from the context of the people on the roof of the house, of the rescuers.) So if this is so, it would mean that there is good reason to hold some kind of, if not super-naturalist, at least openness to non-naturalistically expected intervention that appear to operate according to a dynamic or set of laws that is somehow beyond the ordinary natural order, which, taken on its own, would naturally lead us to despair, and thus, to foreclose many possibilities that would not only lead to our happiness, but lead us to be able to lead richer lives, and to find solutions to difficult situations, and to ultimately lead better lives (OP's utility point, I take it) and perhaps even more moral lives insofar as despair can be toxic to the achievement of moral ambitions. Or if this last point is put a bit dramatically, the trouble is that it just appears that there are nor resources or grounds for attitudes like hope or faith in the future given the strictly constrained boundaries of the naturalism that OP has brought into view for us. And to the extent that those attitudes seem practically indispensable for the achievement of goods, and of moral goods, and of goods that contribute to our happiness, it would appear to present a problem for an epistemic perspective that was restricted only to naturalistic claims. Is it something like this, perhaps?
sometimesphilosophy t1_j2lfi2y 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_
I think some of the folks here are being a little unfair to OP's point (or, if this is not OP's point, then to a slightly different point that I think this post raises!) - so correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this argument boil down to something like this:
If we restrict ourselves to a naturalistic worldview, the only resources we have for claims or beliefs or attitudes like hope about the future are the predictions we can make based on the facts of the situation and the various statistical probabilities of things being likely or not likely. If this is the case, it would follow that it is difficult to see how we could generate attitudes like faith and hope that we would need to be open to radical kinds of interventions or unexpected solutions to seemingly impossible situations (and this might include the miraculous appearance, appearing miraculous of course from the context of the people on the roof of the house, of the rescuers.) So if this is so, it would mean that there is good reason to hold some kind of, if not super-naturalist, at least openness to non-naturalistically expected intervention that appear to operate according to a dynamic or set of laws that is somehow beyond the ordinary natural order, which, taken on its own, would naturally lead us to despair, and thus, to foreclose many possibilities that would not only lead to our happiness, but lead us to be able to lead richer lives, and to find solutions to difficult situations, and to ultimately lead better lives (OP's utility point, I take it) and perhaps even more moral lives insofar as despair can be toxic to the achievement of moral ambitions. Or if this last point is put a bit dramatically, the trouble is that it just appears that there are nor resources or grounds for attitudes like hope or faith in the future given the strictly constrained boundaries of the naturalism that OP has brought into view for us. And to the extent that those attitudes seem practically indispensable for the achievement of goods, and of moral goods, and of goods that contribute to our happiness, it would appear to present a problem for an epistemic perspective that was restricted only to naturalistic claims. Is it something like this, perhaps?