One of the fundamental “facts” about existence we all experience is that physics trumps sentience. As a consequence, physics trumps goodness, trumps morality.
A single example should suffice. When a murderer points his gun at a saint and pulls the trigger, physics controls the path of the bullet without regard to the goodness of anyone in its path. Furthermore, the damage that bullet inflicts on the body of the victim is inflicted without regard to the goodness of the victim.
This is simply how our world works. It is built in that physics trumps sentience, trumps goodness, trumps morality.
Naturalism provides a coherent explanation for this: physical stuff came first. Sentience evolved afterwards within certain species as a method of improving decision-making and thus survivability as a species. But since sentience evolved later on, it is necessarily subservient to physics.
Incoherence of Supernaturalism
However, every supernatural worldview which puts goodness on top faces a coherence problem as a consequence of the reality that physics trumps sentience: They all want to make sentience primary in a universe where it obviously isn’t.
So the first incoherence is : why didn’t God (the original primary sentience) create a world, instead, in which sentience trumps physics? In which goodness is on top?
A possible explanation is that goodness is simply not preferred. Okay, but why should we sentient beings choose a worldview in which goodness could have been preferred, but was not? And how could such a worldview be coherent?
With naturalism, sentience is not on top of physics, for the obvious reason, and we just have to accept it. But with supernaturalism, how do we explain this situation if everything started with almighty goodness?
And if everything started with almighty evil instead, why should we worship or acquiesce to such an almighty.
If alternatively there are co-evil/good almighties, or if the almighty is amoral—how does such a worldview cohere better than naturalism?
So really, only a supernaturalism which starts with almighty goodness can appeal to us. But how to make it coherent? That’s the problem.
If we start with goodness, then there must have been a fall from that original goodness to arrive at the universe we have. But this inevitably introduces incoherence.
Did almighty goodness lose its way? Did it create other sentient beings who turned out not to be so good? But why?
Were they jealous of almighty goodness? But why?
What did they lack? They wanted power? But why?
What would it give them that they needed? And why should they have needed whatever it was?
In a universe where physics trumps sentience, such wants and needs are understandable—that is, in a world already fallen from goodness. But in a world not yet fallen, how to explain such needs and wants?
In fact, it seems that as soon as almighty goodness creates physics, and allows sentience and goodness to become subservient, the fall occurs. This can only be seen as an unforced blunder by almighty goodness.
And if it was a necessary rather than unforced blunder, it puts into question the primacy of almighty goodness. That is, it introduces incoherence.
We are told that almighty goodness is in a cosmic battle with evil, and that—somehow—we are necessary to assist in the battle. But how we can contribute is not explainable. We are told that almighty goodness became one of us to entice us to join its side and help in the battle. But how can we add to the unlimited power of the almighty? Infinity can’t benefit from having a few finite numbers added to it. The story is incoherent.
Or we are told that almighty goodness became one of us in order to show us the way back to goodness and earn a place at its side in heaven. However, the fall happened when a physical world was created in which physics trumped sentience and goodness. So the only way to undo the fall is remove the physical world—created as it was by almighty goodness—from the picture. So why then was the physical world created, why does it exist as it does?
Furthermore, if sentience is freed from physics at death, and can then experience full goodness in heaven, why not just have heaven—and only heaven?
If earth was created to test our suitability for heaven, why? Earth is nothing like heaven, so it can’t be a worthwhile test for suitability. Earth would need to be a bodiless realm to become a suitable test for heaven in this case.
And if we say heaven is like earth and itself not a bodiless realm, other incoherences are raised. If heaven is a bodily world where sentience/goodness trumps physics, why did almighty goodness bother to create earth (where physics trumps sentience/goodness) in addition to heaven? (And again earth can’t serve as a suitable test for heaven in this case.)
Furthermore, bodies suitable for earth (bodies which evolved to survive and reproduce) don’t make sense for heaven.
At every step there is incoherence.
In contrast, naturalism is coherent at every step. It may not be what we want to hear, but it coheres.
