You keep insisting that your worldview is the one true correct worldview, but you haven’t established why it is – and you won’t, because you can’t: it’s entirely faith-based.

Let me know when you get some evidence Thor actually does cause lightning with Mjolnir.

But you do not say “if the world is material…” …no, you simply act as if it is self-evident that materialist assumptions are correct, and that materialist and “scientific method” ways of knowing are appropriate for all types of knowledge.”

I am sorry to disapoint you Blake. I am not a materialist. So that little trick doesn´t work with me, at all. So answer me, please, how pledging ingnorance concerning certain questions with an admition of ignorance is in any way related with faith.

The “right” answer, if you accept humanist articles of faith.

Without those articles of faith, it’s not the right answer. It’s a bad answer.

You keep insisting that your worldview is the one true correct worldview, but you haven’t established why it is – and you won’t, because you can’t: it’s entirely faith-based.

You hold faith-based beliefs.

Sure. I’ve even listed a few. That doesn’t mean quite what you seem to think it means.

How does the other guy prove Greenland exists?

Do you think there’s a difference between claiming “Greenland exists” and “Narnia exists”?

So is it more reasonable to believe there is indeed an ultimate, primary reality or to believe there is an infinite regression of contingent realities?

How should I know?

Seriously, how should I know?

Is it more reasonable to believe that the Earth is flat or that ‘down’ can actually change direction? Is it more reasonable to believe that rocks can fall from the sky or that lightning struck the ground where this rock was buried? Is it reasonable to think that continents weighing trillions of tons can move? Is it reasonable to believe that tiny creatures we can’t even see can cause people to be sick? Is it reasonable that particles can sometimes interfere with themselves as if they were waves as long as nobody’s looking? Is it reasonable to think that time’s flow can vary depending on how fast you’re moving?

As I’ve noted to you before, practically everything we’ve learned about the universe since we left the savanna has been some kind of counterintuitive surprise. When humans extrapolate past what they can experience and test… they really blow it, time and again.

Speculating about Greenland is one thing. But what if this were 1632, and someone asked you, “What causes lightning?” Would the proper answer be “God” or “Thor” or “Seth” or “the Thunderbirds”? Sometimes the right answer actually is, “We don’t know, and we don’t have enough information – yet – to know what’s a reasonable hypothesis.”

You can’t get a rock, or any configuration of rocks, or any configuration of the strictly material whatsoever, to grasp an abstract concept.

I can’t find where you answered my question. Let me know when you want to do that, and we might proceed.

You can’t even determine what counts as evidence and what does not – or what process should be used to sort out what is true from what is false – without committing the humanist equivalent of “using the Bible to prove the Bible is true”.

The assumption that a thing should be viewed as untrue or nonexistent until there is proof for it is a humanist assumption – in fact, it is one of “the” great breakthroughs of the Enlightenment. It’s a great assumption because either you’re right or your error will be made clear. It’s the same principle as the old advice “if you get lost in a labyrinth, always turn to the right”. The mistake you have made is confusing “you are most likely to find the exit if you turn right” for believing that somehow this proves the exit really is to the right.

It is not rational, but faith-based. The rational or logical assumption is to accept that we cannot know if a thing is true/untrue or whether it exists/is nonexistent until there is proof one way or the other. The odds are just as good that the exit to the labyrinth is to your left as to your right. It’s also possible that the only exit is above you, and you’ll never find a way out because there is no way out that you can access.

And, incidentally, just because you call it a “game”, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It is relevant.

Faith is a gift of God … — CCC 153

The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason … — CCC 286

There is a supernatural gift of faith which enables us to believe in divinely revealed truths. There is also a faith that leads us to believe that which is reasonable to believe but unproven. And there is a faith that is unreasonable that leads one to believe what one wants to be true for no other reason than that.

I don’t have the stamina to write a long response, but it seems to me you are basically saying there are really not two different things that we call science and religion. Whatever you believe to be true that you can’t actually prove—like Greenland exists or God exists—is your “faith.” If that is indeed what you are saying, I don’t see how you reconcile it with the idea that faith is a gift, which I take to be a fundamental belief of Catholicism.

You rely on assumptions that only work if you accept certain articles of faith.

But you do not say “if the world is material…” …no, you simply act as if it is self-evident that materialist assumptions are correct, and that materialist and “scientific method” ways of knowing are appropriate for all types of knowledge.

It’s almost as if you weren’t aware that materialist assumptions are inherently unprovable … ??

You hold faith-based beliefs. So do I. So does everybody else. The beliefs each of us has no choice but to take on faith will either be based on a reasonable faith that extends what can be known from reason and completes it, leading us to ultimate truths that cannot be arrived at by scientific proof, or they will be based on a not-so-reasonable faith that will simply have us clinging to what we want to believe.

Until and unless we get some evidence …

If two people were stranded on a desert island with no belongings except the clothes they were wearing, and one of them declared Greenland didn’t exist, how would the other prove it did? The “Greenland is a lie” guy argues that neither of them have ever met anybody from Greenland, that neither of them have ever been there, and that there is a conspiracy amongst cartographers to fool everybody into thinking Greenland exists. He insists Greenland is a joke the cartographer’s guild is playing on the world — they laugh at everybody else at their meetings and invite as guest speakers their co-conspirators from NASA who photoshop Greenland into pictures of Earth taken from space. How does the other guy prove Greenland exists? He can’t. He can only argue that it is reasonable to believe Greenland exists. The “Greenland is a lie” guy responds to this by insisting he will not believe “Until and unless we get some evidence …” which, of course, is not possible under their current circumstances.

And that doesn’t mean that the the existence “something else that eternally causes [the universe] to be” isn’t itself “eternally contingent upon something else that eternally causes it to be.” … You can always play the “infinite regress” game.

So is it more reasonable to believe there is indeed an ultimate, primary reality or to believe there is an infinite regression of contingent realities?

Is it reasonable to believe that the natural Universe popped into existence out of sheer nothingness for no reason?

Is it reasonable to believe that a strictly material Universe always was and is all there is? Is it reasonable to believe that it is the ultimate, primary reality upon which all other realities are contingent? No. It isn’t because there are immaterial realities. If we had some understanding of why a certain configuration of matter and energy would generate rational thought or be able to grasp immaterial, abstract concepts, then it would be reasonable. But we don’t and it isn’t. Those who believe the natural Universe is the primary reality do so without a rational basis for that. It is just what they want to believe. There is no scientific proof either way, but those who don’t find it reasonable to conclude that the natural Universe is the primary reality can point to the existence of immaterial realities, like abstract concepts, and point to the fact that there is no reason to believe they are contingent upon the strictly material or to believe that it is even possible for them to be generated by the strictly material. They take on faith that the natural Universe is not the ultimate, primary reality upon which everything else is contingent, but it is a reasonable faith. Those who just want to believe otherwise do so on faith as well, but theirs is a blind faith that is not an extension of reason.

Or do you really expect science to some day discover a special configuration of matter and energy that generates self-awareness, other-awareness and rational thought? There is much talk of androids doing such things, but no detailed explanation of that special configuration of matter and energy that generates the immaterial and can be affected by it, and why that configuration is able to do that. This is because the android only creates the illusion of its being capable of such things, and does not in fact have these capabilities. If it did its designers would be able to explain to the world how they arrived at that special configuration of matter and energy that enables it to generate and be affected by the immaterial and how and why that works. They don’t do that and can’t do that because nobody has any idea what that configuration might be (probably because there isn’t one.)

… there are two different types of ‘existence’ …

Right. One consists of immaterial realities the existence of which is not contingent upon the strictly material. That is why a strictly material, natural Universe cannot be the ultimate, primary reality.

In spite of the strictly material electrochemical reactions to photons taking place in a recording video camera, it isn’t seeing anything. Neither do the strictly material electrochemical reactions to photons in the human visual system that are signaled to our strictly material brains cause it to see anything. Yet we do see and the recording video camera does not. Is it reasonable to believe there is an immaterial component to ourselves the likes of which is not present in video cameras? Or is it reasonable to believe it is theoretically possible to build a video camera that really sees and is aware of that and can think about it what it sees — even though nobody has the foggiest notion as to how to do that? Again, there is no proof for either position, but which is more reasonable?

Isn’t it more reasonable to believe there is an immaterial component to life, and a rational, immaterial component to human life (traditionally referred to as our rational souls) that enables life to be self-aware and other-aware – enables it to see what the strictly material cannot, and enables the human intellect to grasp and be affected by immaterial abstract concepts which make rational thought possible?

Or is it more reasonable to believe that if we just figure out how to configure the strictly material, it too, would possess self-awareness and other-awareness and be able to generate and grasp immaterial abstract concepts, as though there is actually some reason to believe the strictly material can generate the immaterial and be affected by it when there isn’t?

Which belief is based upon a reasonable faith and which upon a blind faith that just wants to believe what it believes?

You can’t get a rock, or any configuration of rocks, or any configuration of the strictly material whatsoever, to grasp an abstract concept. The existence of immaterial realities makes it unreasonable to believe the strictly material, natural Universe is the ultimate, primary reality, and makes it very reasonable to believe there is an immaterial component to life that enables it to “see” and a rational, immaterial component to human life, since the human intellect can grasp immaterial, abstract concepts enabling it to engage in rational thought.

It seems the ultimate, primary reality must be immaterial and rational in order for immaterial realities like “seeing” and rationality to be.

If the natural Universe exists eternally, that doesn’t mean its existence isn’t eternally contingent upon something else that eternally causes it to be.

Sure. And that doesn’t mean that the the existence “something else that eternally causes [the universe] to be” isn’t itself “eternally contingent upon something else that eternally causes it to be.”

You see? You can always play the “infinite regress” game. I’m not worried about “You can’t prove it’s not!” games. Until and unless we get some evidence, I’m afraid I’m going to have to be a non-gnostic about it. (Not unlike Blake, apparently.)

If the natural, strictly material Universe is the eternal, primary reality contingent upon nothing else and from which all other realities are derived, then somehow immaterial realities — like abstract concepts — are derived from it.

Or, there are two different types of ‘existence’, and the way that the material universe exists is different from the way that pi or the Mandelbrot Set ‘exist’. They might both be eternal in different ways.

Don’t fall into what Daniel Dennett calls “The Philosopher’s Syndrome: Mistaking a failure of imagination for an insight into necessity.”

Yet our intellects generate and are affected by immaterial abstract concepts

I asked you before, and you never answered – I think you need to very carefully define ‘affect’ here. For example, do the Fibonacci numbers ‘affect’ the broccoli-cauliflower? (http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/romanesque.jpg or http://www.world-mysteries.com/illusions/BrocolliCauliflower.jpg)

There is a “difference between” business jets and life in that life consists of vastly greater functional complexity.

And is that the only difference? (Can you at least list what my counterpoint has always been?)