I think the answer, "I don't know" is a valid position to take. It is also valid and appropriate for me to question whether or not someone else's answer is based on evidence or faith (pretending to know things you do not know).
Seeing this as some sort of "slight of hand" and equates with 'moving the goal posts' is a bit disingenuous.
My point was that it
isn't "I don't know". Most of the time it's
"We know! We know! We Know!....And 'anybody who questions scientific materialism's efficacy for describing reality is an idiot!' 'And we only make claims based on testable fact and those other frauds rely on all of these metaphysical assumptions and faith without evidence.....'
Until they are pressed on issues like consciousness or meaning or values or how life arises out of inorganic matter or where the 'laws of nature' were before the Big Bang etc. - and suddenly they discover humility. As I wrote,
then it becomes, "Oh well, we don't know that
yet....but we know for sure that scientific materialism can provide the answer one day."
Is that not "pretending to know things you do not know"? Is it not
belief that inspires their
faith that their methods will provide the answers? One could make the argument(as some people like Thomas Nagel has) that after decades of research the evidence to date would suggest that many of these things do not in fact reveal themselves to the scientific materialist method. Yet in spite of evidence to the contrary, their
faith that materialism is the only possibility persists.
As I said too, Shermer's arguments for these strictly materialist processes are all embedded with descriptions that presuppose
intent, meaning, design, anticipated need.....but when pressed he'll say that's not what he means. What
does he mean then? Again the answer is something along the lines of, 'Well, we don't know that yet either.....
but I know for sure it's definitely not what my own argument implies it is!'
This is the kind of loosey-goosey, implicitly metaphysical and somewhat self-contradictory style of argumentation that someone like Shermer would be all over Chopra or a PSI or NDE researcher for making. Woo woo anybody?
... he makes this extraordinary claim for so called "moral emotions" for which there is no objective evidence whatsoever ...
He makes a claim for 'moral progress', not 'moral emotions'. Moral progress is the -- “improvement in the survival and flourishing of sentient beings”. His argument is that the definition of sentient beings is broadening, based on our understanding of biology, chemistry and, yes, philosophy.
So, I'll throw the 'moral emotion' argumentation into the 'straw man' pile.
No. He makes a claim for "moral emotions" as I quoted (15:00 ). You can throw it into whichever pile you like but simply declaring it a 'straw man' doesn't make it so. They have no objective, testable, or more importantly,
falsifiable evidence that demonstrates how morality arises "biologically" from animals 'kicking' each other. They
do have a whimsical narrative however. Now if that narrative isn't based on anything remotely like conclusive objective evidence.....what could it be based on?
Belief perhaps? Like a story constructed to explain a preconceive conclusion arising from
faith that it
has to be biological?
... comes across as nothing but an attempt to use mythological narrative to account for morality in terms of a materialist belief system ...
One more time.
There is no 'materialist belief system'.
I do not pray to Darwin or worship at the periodic table.
I do not burn candles and chant calculus equations.
One more time.
This represents materialism's lack of self-awareness
I don't see why materialists find it plausible that only
other people have belief systems, not them. It is redundant of course to point out that one of the core tenets of their belief system is that materialism isn't a belief system. Worse...it's an
absolutist belief system.
Of course, I'm assuming we are using roughly the same definition of the term 'materialism', eg. reality is comprised of nothing other than physical matter and processes.
In the example you give above, you look to the
previous dominant belief system and infer that since materialists don't believe the same things
they did, it means materialism isn't a belief system. That may be comforting to materialists, but it's not particularly good reasoning.