Again, you say "only natural causes." You keep slipping the philosophy of naturalism into the mind of every scientist. It's quite true that science tries to discover what natural causes exist. And science has been very good at that. But it's only in the minds of science critics that science utterly denies the existence of the spiritual domain. We've gone around on this before, and you haven't changed your mind, so I guess we'll just have to disagree on this one forever. Too bad, because it causes you to misunderstand my motives, and I can't talk you out of it.
What I have observed is that metaphysical supernaturalists (which I think all creationists are) not only have a problem with metaphysical naturalism but also with methodological naturalism as it is practiced in science. It somehow seems to vex them that scientists don't even bother to look for supernatural explanations and that they don't even address supernaturalism in their papers or scientific literature like in form of a disclaimer that states that the described phenomenon might also have a supernatural cause.
However, I don't know what good such a disclaimer would do. Also, I don't know anybody who claims that supernatural explanations are impossible. Their explanatory value may be null but for each phenomenon you can postulate a dozen supernatural scenarios and that for every religion. And this is the problem: once you allow the supernatural in, everything goes and there is no way to verify the different supernatural scenarios or else they would be considered to be natural.
What I also don't understand is the fact that the statement that our minds may only be an epiphenomenon of our brains is considered to be more abominable than the statement that there must be some supernatural component (call it ectoplasm if you will) to our minds. It seems that even the attempt to seek natural explanations for the human mind is seen as blasphemy because it might lead to a point where we simply "don't need this hypothesis" (to cite Laplace).
But even if there is such a supernatural component to our mind then it somehow interacts with our material brain, in other words our brain is a material device that detects/measures/observes the supernatural. This means that we could (at least in principle or in reality if we are technologically advanced enough) build a device that can detect this supernatural component of our minds and how it interacts with its host brain. So in the end this component would also be considered to be natural just like lightning or earthquakes which were also supernatural some time in the past.
Just my rant for the weekend ;)
tortoise is an A.I. expert and he has made relevant comments on another thread which might interest you. The discussion begins at post 1179.
Plato inclined to a metaphysical supernaturalism, Socrates a religious supernaturalism. Some creationists in early Christianity do both.
This, in part, was my criticism at #219. One must consider the scenarios of human nature when nature is spiritualized ex facto.
Only the physical, or natural exists. IOWs if it's real, it exists, as you concluded in your final paragraph. There is no such thing as the supernatural.
"However, I don't know what good such a disclaimer would do."
It's a forced confession by those demanding free advertisement.
I agree. There's a big difference between metaphysical naturalism (the philosophy which denies the existence of spiritual phenomena) and methodological naturalism, which science practices of necessity. I wish more people were aware of this.
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