I wrote it to best understand, explain, and define the metaphysics of my worldview at the time, one that was implicitly based on skepticism with fundamental axiomatic flaws.

Existence exists. Everything else comes from this.

The terms materialist and physicalist are irrelevant now; I’m simply an Objectivist.

You’ll be disappointed to know that I won’t read a single word of it. Instead I’m going to leave it there but delete the bulk of it.

I hope you didn’t spend too much time writing that – no, actually I hope you did, it makes deleting it all the more fun.

1. THE PURPOSE OF MAN’S EXISTENCE
Who we are? Why are we in this world? Where are we going?
Have you ever asked yourself why this questions and what the meaning of the human life is? No matter what type of person you are or what your profession is, there are a few things which you, like most people, would agree with, that is:
Money cannot satisfy man; neither can education satisfies man, nor can
Pleasure do not satisfy man, Nor can success satisfy man.
WHY?
Because you have not yet realized:

[ Evanescent deleted 2,312 words ]

http://www.qsmithwmu.com/

http://www.qsmithwmu.com/metaphilosophy_of_naturalism.htm

http://consc.net/online/7/all

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-naturalized/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/

There are so many books I don’t know where to even start!

Concerning Naturalism, atheism, and physicalism, the works of the following fantastic philosophers will guide you (all lists not exhaustive):

Contemporary:

Quentin Smith, Tim Crane, Wallace Matson, Nicholas Everitt, Andrea M. Weisberger, Robert C. Solomon, Julian Baggini, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Paul Edwards, Daniel Harbou, Theodore Schick Jr, J. C. A. Gaskin, David O’Connor, Robin LePoidevin, William Rowe, J. D. Trout, Michael Scriven, Owen Flanagen, J. L. Pollock, Norwood R. Hanson, Ted A. Warfield, Panayot Butchravor, J. L. Schellenberg, Valerii A. Kuvakin, Erich Fromm, Richard LaCroix, Paul Thagard, Peter Angeles, Douglas Kruger, C. D. Broad, Corliss Lamont, Evan Fales, Ted Honderich, Matt McCormick, Aurthur Falk, Terence Horgan, Patrick Nowell-Smith, A. C. MacIntyre, Andrew Melnyk, Richard Gale, Bruce Russell, Jan Narveson, Corey Washington, Terence Penelhum, Kurt Baier, David M. Rosenthal, Jeffery Polland, John Heil, Anthony O’Hear, H. J. McCloskey, Jack Smart, Ed Zalta, Donald Davidson, John McDowell, Daniel Dennett, Michael Martin, John Dilworth, Robert Pennock, Marc Alspector-Kelly, Paul Draper, Austin Dacey, Jaegwon Kim, Mario Augusto Bunge, Barbara Forrest, Kai Nielsen, David Papineau, Graham Oppy, Theodore Drange, Paul Kurtz, Micheal Tooley, Theodore Sider, Antony Flew, I. Pyysiäinen, Jaohn Searle, David Armstrong, David Chalmers, Jerry Fodor, Adolf Grunbaum, Philip Kitcher, Thomas Nagel, Richard Rorty, Richard Boyd, Paul Moser, Bernard Williams, D. H. Mellor, Keith Parsons, James Rachels, Joseph Levine, Daniel Garber, Daniel Ferell, Edwin Curley, Marvin Belzer, James Tappenden, Anthony S. Laden, Marcia Homiak, Kenneth Taylore, Robert J. Fogelin, David Owens, Richard Feldmen, Elisabeth S. Anderson, Georges Ray, Jonathan Adler, Paul and Pat Churchland, Peter Singer, Ernst Nagel, Colin McGinn, John Perry, A. J. Ayer, John Dewey, Howard J. Sobel, Elliott Sober, Ned Block, Louise M. Antony, Ernest Sosa, Katherine Hawley, John Bigelow, Hans Reichenbach, Lawrence Sklar, A. C. Grayling, Mark Heller, Theodore Sider, Simon Blackburn, Christopher S. Hill, Stephen P. Stich, John Bickle, L. Nathan Oaklander, John F. Post, Jeffrey Poland, Louis P. Pojman, Noam Chomsky, Stewart Shapiro, Galen Strawson, David Sosa, John Pollack,

Contemporary and non-contemporary Dead:

W.V.O. Quine, David Lewis, Will Durant, Walter Kaufman, Sidney Hook, Friedrich Nietzsche Wilfred Sellars , Robert Nozick, Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Mackie, Bertrand Russell, George Santayana, John Stuart Mill, Sigmund Freud, Robert G. Ingersoll, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, David Hume, Giordano Bruno, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Dennis Diderot, Baron d’Holbach, Epicurus, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Lucretius, Plato (believe it).

(and the better Theistic/non-naturalist philosophers out there; I have purposely left out many of the very intelligent liars for Jesus (Bill Craig, et al.), fideists and dogmatists (Plantinga) and )

Hilary Putnam (A quasi-Jamesian deism/theism).
Dean Zimmerman (Protestant)
Keith DeRose (Protestant)
Nicholas Rescher (Catholic)
Mortimer Adler (Protestant)
Peter Van Inwagen (Protestant)
Anthony Kenny (Catholic)
Bas Van Fraassen (Perhaps Catholic – Dominican?)
Derek Pereboom (Protestant)
Lynne Rudder Baker (Protestant)
Saul Kripke (Jewish)
Martha Nussbaum (Jewish)
Michael Dummett (Catholic)
Charles Taylor (Catholic)
Robert Adams (Protestant)
Edward Wieringa (Protestant)
John Earman (Perhaps?)
Philip Quinn (Protestant)
Peter Geach (Catholic)
Roderick M. Chisholm (Perhaps?)
Trenton Merricks (Protestant)
Robert Audi (Catholic)
Eleonore Stump (Protestant)
Elizabeth Anscombe (Catholic)
Michael Loux (Protestant)
Nicholas Wolterstorff (Protestant)

Best,

M

Dennett makes most of his counter arguments against qualia in his book Consciousness Explained, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained

You can also read his essay Quining Qualia here: http://cogprints.org/254/0/quinqual.htm

Once I put on my glasses, I was able to read this article.

Why should we believe that purely natural mechanisms would not increase the reliability of our senses?

For example, we can use natural methods (such as wearing glasses) to improve the reliability of the sense-data gathered by my eyes.

Why should I think that the only way of increasing the reliability of my eyesight is by having God gift me good eyes?

—

Cheers for the comment DaVinci!

When you said: Methodological naturalism is the assumption (most prevalent in science) that the universe and everything in it can be ultimately attributed to natural causes.” it brought me back to the question of what is knowable. My mind is a very strange place sometimes, let me explain. When humans first began to think enough to ask questions, or probably more accurately to seek explanations for things that were a threat to their survival, they of course came up empty. How do you explain lightening, or locust swarm? That large expensive brain needed to come up with something to justify itself to the animals own thought pattern, else insanity would result. So even though it was impossible to know anything more than what the senses gathered, at least in that the animal couldn’t process the event with any other known experience, it opted to create an explanation, which rightly fits supernaturalism even though we now know it to be a false assumption. It had the advantage of giving the animal a sense of control over that which was otherwise uncontrollable and stressful. Eliminating stress is a very positive trait to possess, and no doubt gave the animal a better chance for survival. However it was a false belief, and destined to become a disadvantage to the animal’s progeny. Humans are now dealing with the unnecessary trait because it is starting to impede progress in other areas.

Some traits are easily traceable to natural selection, and others also involve knowing the environment and psychology of the animal. In the case of supernaturalism, I don’t think natural selection had anything to do at all, one might find the same result on our ancestor if we were to say rather than creating a supernatural explanation for some natural misunderstood happening that they all smoked a joint instead, it would amount to the same thing. The fact is that we didn’t and now we have a church on every corner and get busted for getting high.

I’m going to stop rambling and read some more of your blog now.

Have a good day.