"yay, and nor can you use your logical faculties to conclude that your logical faculties are inherently trustworthy"

Basically, that's right.  And that's my 'B' and 'C' in my latest list:

A.  We have no choice but to regard our rationality as rational because even in examining our rationality we are using our rationality.

B.  Taking our rationality as a given is a must.

C.  If a later investigation resulted in rejecting the rationality of our rationality, we would be in a position where we used our rationality to nullify our rationality,

ie, cutting off the limb we were standing on, therefore

D.  to preserve the integrity of our reason, the conclusion reached by investigation in C would have to be rejected in principle, no matter how plausible on other grounds, because it undermined the very processes we used to reach that conclusion on those grounds.

And,  "You have to use your logical faculties to evaluate your own logical faculties" is point A.

So while our quest for a worldview must by necessity utilize logical faculties which we take for granted as valid, we are not free to adopt a worldview that has its conclusion that our logical faculties are inherently compromised.  Any internally consistent worldview will not compromise our logical faculties.

If you understand this, I'll re-apply it to materialism.

I can see how, in this abyss of abstractions, this could lead you to reject materialism.  But i wonder, what is your alternative, and how can this alternative avoid the same problem?  I suspect that no matter what theory you take, this string of premises and "conclusions" will always lead you to reject that theory.  For example, assume that God made our reason, and that our reason is made of some non-physical stuff.  As long as God had the power to do that much, then He must have also had the power to make our non-physical rationality untrustworthy.  Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.  Since this scenario allows for the possibility that our rationalities are untrustworthy, then God could not have made our rationality.  This is the same logic, but I wouldn't reject the God Hypothesis on these grounds. 

i must not be understanding him.  david, can you explain to me why this proves that a materialistic view, and thus evolution, must be wrong?

 

  It makes me wonder anew as to whether or not evolution can stand on its own two feet or if it is parasitic, drawing its credence not from the weight of the evidence for it but because of how subjectively repulsive the other options are seemed to be. 

Evolution does "stand on it's own two feet" with respect to the data. This does not make evolution a "parasite" of the scientific evidence. Consistency with the scientific evidence is requisite for any scientifically valid theory. A theory which "stands on it's own two feet" without reference to any material evidence is not a scientific theory.

We spent some time operating on the assumption that if materialism is true, some version of solipisism was plausible.  But I ran with that assumption only to make a point.

Solipsism is incompatible with the naturalist philosophy of science. Science is strongly WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). In other words, science takes the observable world at face value. This is the essence of naturalism, or materialism as you prefer to call it.

Solipsism claims just the opposite: all of reality may be an illusion except for oneself. How much further from the WYSIWYG of science can you get?  Solipsism could be called the ultimate "anti-science", it's polar opposite.

having now granted that we (or I, at least) cannot deny our own rationality, we cannot use that rationality to come to a later conclusion that undermines the very rationality we used to arrive at...  Cutting off the branch we were standing on.  As we proceed outward from an examination of our own selves, our conception of reality cannot subvert the initial principles we used to deduce or infer that conception.

Are you claiming science, or materialism as you prefer to call it, denies our rationality? Science glorifies rational thinking. Evidence plus rational thought is the basis for scientific advance. Creationism on the other hand, must either reject the evidence or rational thought.

Watch Dawkins argue for purely evolutionary and materialistic explanations for our reasoning capacities consisting largely of 'misfires' but then exempting himself at the final moment...

Dawkins is an idiot. According to him, Evolution is proof of No God. Such thinking undermines the very theory he is supposedly espousing. He is desperately seeking justification for his Atheism, even if he has to tear down science in the process. Oh, and his vehement anti-religion just happens to sell a lot of books.

But to claim that evolution casts doubt on our reasoning abilities, just the opposite is true. In evolutionary terms, only the well adapted survive in the short term and only the most adaptable survive in the long term. To be adapted to your environment, you must react to it rationally.

Even though a garden spider is not conscious in the same sense humans are, it reacts to it's environment intelligently. "Stupid" spiders are weeded out. Spiders which hunt flies and hide from birds, survive. Spiders which do the opposite, do not.

I applaud Broken for his very eloquent post.  I find myself in agreement with most of it, except the bit about creationism needing to deny either rational thought or the evidence of nature, but that's a post for another day, I think.

"There are many snide comments cast in both directions in these discussions."

If there are snide comments about evolution in this thread, that makes sense, since evolution is the target of the thread.  Evolution does not become true just because you think creationism is ridiculous.  Whether or not you have a 'legitimate scientific criticism of creationism' is irrelevant to an evaluation of evolution.  I don't think you have a legitimate criticism, but that is neither here nor there.  But such comments speak to a larger trend among evolutionary apologists, and we see this with Z-man already (zjohnson)... look at all the smart people, they're evolutionists, they think creationism is ridiculous...   a logical fallacy.  I submit again that if you believe that evolution can stand on its own feet then you won't have a need to attack creationism.

"I mean observation of the real world, nature, takes precedence over belief. In science."

This is still largely inoccuous.  Observation of the real world trumps speculation even in my supernaturalism.   An observation that Jesus rose from the dead- really- trumps the belief that the supernatural is a sham and serves as positive evidence for the supernatural.  But we do not all conform ourselves to EVERYTHING we see in the real world, do we? 

The view that the 'real world,' the 'natural world' is the sum of all reality is a step beyond what our observations can tell us.  It is this philosophical step that I am taking aim at.  There have been a great many scientists who believe that a single experiment is worth more than a thousand theories that have also been Christian.

At anyrate, it is the philosophical naturalism that I am arguing reduces to solipsism.  Not methodological naturalism.

"I agree that there is more to science than we currently see on it's face."

Science, or reality?  This is the sort of equivocation that I find to be flawed, or if you didn't mean it, unhelpful.  Precision in language would be our friend, here. 

"It is also reasonable to say there are matters that will be always beyond science. Science only applies to the evidence we have on hand about the natural world."

Then I think we are on the same page.  For example, something always beyond science will be my own thinking as I myself experience it.

"Evolution fits the evidence we have on hand better than any other theory. Much better."

But as it stands in the conversation right now it is wholly unclear as to whether or not evolution is derived from methodological or philosophical naturalistic mechanisms, ie, materialism.  If evolution is derived from a perspective which excludes certain possibilities by virtue of the expectation that science must exclude certain types of explanations, then it only follows that evolution fits the evidence we have on hand given only a narrow range of allowed explanations.  Ie, if supernaturalism is excluded a priori because science does insist on not being methodologically naturalistic but philosophically so, it is not very impressive to say that evolution fits the evidence better.  Better than what?  Better only than other philosophically tolerable explanations... certain philosophically intolerable explanations aren't even allowed to compete... by definition [science as de facto materialism].

This raises a critical point, and I think, given your comments about Dawkins, you might agree with me.  If by evolution you refer to a theory generated according to methodological presuppositions only, then it is not necessarily the case that evolution collapses into solipsism, since it is only materialism that I am arguing reduces to solipsism.  This is why I asked the Z-man whether or not it was really the case that materialism and evolution and the scientific method were so inextricably bound that if materialism falls, so too does evolution.

If a hostile and rabid atheistic methodology is applied to the evidence, we should not in the slightest be surprised that it produces a theory that excludes non-materialistic explanations.   If science proceeds along those rabidly atheistic lines it may be said that science has shown evolution to be true, but that is only showing the 'best explanation of all the naturalistic ones' and while not impressing me in general, then falls into the category that I'm attacking as falling into solipsism.

Is such a methodology being employed as de facto what science is?  I think in many quarters yes, but I don't think it needs to be.  Insofar as evolution is derived without that philosophical presupposition it is not in the category that I am attacking.

"In the past, your main objection to science and naturalism was that it is too strongly WYSIWYG, too face value. "

No.  My objection was always as described above.  I too take reality at its face.  I just don't exclude non-materialistic explanations a priori.  I follow the evidence whereever it goes.  If I think an agency explanation fits it better, that's where I go.  In either case, I'm still taking the world at its face.

"Occam's razor requires you reject the unnatural unless you have rejected all natural possibilities. So far, all that is known about nature appears to be quite natural."

Occam was a strident Christian who gave no hint that this was the way it worked.  Even so, the razor is a general rule, not an absolute fact.  You should reject the unnatural explanation if there is no evidence to suggest it.  If you have evidence to suggest it then you are warranted in examining that possibility.

"The paradigm of naturalism has proven to be extremely useful. By being a paradigm, it constitutes a philosophy of methodology, blurring your two distinctions."

But that doesn't mean we should let it blur unhindered.  The paradigm of naturalism as you call it poses no threat to me or any supernaturalist and many Christians have been scientists without fear that they may some how discover that there is no God.   

"Yes again. We have only as much rationality as we have needed to survive so far."

Right.