Sure.. Your battery example is the perfect example of you making an assumption and NOT withholding belief. If I told you the battery was charged.. if you truly withheld belief, you would not assume it is either charged or not charged and check it for yourself. Then when you see if it is or isn't.. you can decide what it is. That is how you truly withhold belief.. you don't make an assumption until you observe for yourself. The only problem is.. you literally cannot physically observe something that is intangible or immaterial or metaphysical.. so there is no point in making up an answer and all the reason to continue looking for the evidence you can observe. It is the same with your intangible belief. Say you and I were chatting in a room and an object mysteriously falls over. You and I try to figure out what caused it. I try to come up with a natural explanation.. maybe the wind knocked it over, maybe it was just slowly tipping-over over an extended period of time and we happened to be there when it happens.. something.. but fail to produce any evidence. You would then assume that it had to have been something supernatural.. while I continue trying to figure out the natural cause. That mindset of believing in something that is intangible, immaterial, supernatural, or metaphysical due to the lack of physical evidence is the dangerous mindset of the masses that lead to religions and blind following. I mean.. that's how most religions started.. there was a natural event or object that we couldn't yet discover, so we assumed some dumb bullshit. Before we knew that planets were planets, they were our gods. When a scary natural event happened, like a volcano or lightning storm or tsunami.. we failed to discover their natural cause and believed in a supernatural explanation. It's how ghosts became fabricated.. goblins and unicorns and demons were created. They were all fabricated supernatural explanations for something that they didn't have the natural explanation for.
I'm not saying it is unknowable totally. I just don't think (most) of the universe's secrets will be able to be discovered with the resources we have now, including our intelligence. Imagine this: Humans are able to see more than 4 primary colors. The whole world would change to suit our senses at that point. Or at least that's what it'd seem like. But that stuff we weren't able to see before was already there, we just didn't have the ability or resources to see it. I fully believe that things which affect our universe are unknowable to us right now (and the near future) because we won't be able to evolve enough to comprehend everything the universe has to offer. That's not based on an intelligence level though. It's based on a lack of ability with what we have. And even if we do, i think the universe will come to an end before we are able to do so. I also believe in life beyond our planet, but unless they created the universe, there's no real way to be able to tell that they'll be able to help figure everything out either. I'm guessing that we've probably uncovered a very diminutive amount of knowledge about the universe. I think we have a building block towards many more building blocks to come. If I'm honest, I don't even think we'll be able to even fully harness the potential energy of our sun within the time we have left on our planet. This is all opinion though. Just something to think about when people think they're close to finding anything significant.
There you go again! You are trying to equate 'natural' with 'physical' and 'supernatural' with 'nonphysical'. Do you not realize you are presupposing nature is physical? The whole point I have been trying to make is that We have no evidence NOR reason to believe nature is physical But you feel compelled to assert your assumption as a given. Having said that, all of your analogies are completely dissimilar to the discussion. In regards the battery analogy, here is the difference. Scientists have been earnestly looking for something tangible, so using the battery analogy, I tried every with way to determine it had a charge and for hundreds of years came up wanting. Where the analogies slightly part company is here. In the case of the battery, had it a charge, I would expect to have found it. In the case of the physical, I wouldn't be quite so sure. As I said it is inconsequential to me. Like if said there is an elephant in my living room, I would expect to have found it. If you say there is a flea, and I looked for days, I would still admit there could be a flea. If I looked for hundreds of years... I'd have no evidence or reason to believe there is a flea in my living room.
If you don't believe in silly fantasies.. such as metaphysical or intangible or supernatural explanations.. all.. you.. are.. left.. with.. is.. physical. It's not an assumption.. it's a lack of assumption. That's what you're not getting.. well.. you are getting but you're trying to pretend that you are the one not assuming things.. and I find it funny that you try to say that you withhold belief when in your very own battery example.. your conclusion was "I am left to believe". Someone who withholds belief wouldn't be left to believe a damn thing until they tangibly observe it.. in other words, you're not actually doing what you believe you are doing. It's like people who cling harder to God when science was yet to uncover the answer. The lack of evidence in the physical just reinforces their belief in the metaphysical.. even though there will never be evidence for their metaphysical belief. That's not using the logical parts of your brain.. it's using your emotional parts, settling on a fabricated answer for an unknown to appease your emotional brain.
You do believe in a silly fantasy, that reality is physical! If it isn't a belief then put up the evidence.
I'm gonna go with NorseMythology on this one. There is no guarantee that the world we live in now isn't just some consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. To us, it may seem real, but so do dreams and other things of that nature.
There is nothing logical about your mindset with this.. it is the terrible mindset of the masses throughout human history, assuming something is nonphysical that lead us to religion. It is some consciousness experiencing the world.. it's called your brain. Now the idea that reality doesn't actually exist.. that it is all a creation of your mind.. that's silly. It's fun to think about.. but asinine to put actual belief in. Anything is a possibility.. but without proof, it is just a possibility. That's where a lot of people fail.. they pick out a possibility that is impossible to gather proof for. For whatever reason, they feel emotionally connected to this possibility.. and nothing can sway their emotions since it's impossible to falsify. Aside from the cheesy jokes.. this is actually a pretty good video that helps demonstrate the difference between science and pseudoscience. Yes, there is no guarantee this reality isn't some sort of fabrication.. but to put weight behind a pseudoscientific belief relying on a lot of assumptions. And you know what they say about assuming..
It's not putting belief in pseudoscience. It's keeping an openness to things we have yet to understand. Just like you said with aliens previously, it'd be ignorant not to think that it could be true. Without a definitive understanding of the beginning or end to creation, one cannot really delve into the topic of fact vs fiction when discussing the universe (as well as anything beyond) and its origins.
What does physical even mean? Being real? A guaranteed, unopposed fact of something's creation and existence? Or are we talking perception and what is believed to be there based on scientific theories?
What I said way back in the beginning, was that scientists thought that at some level of reality there was something solid, an indivisible material thing. That is the physical I am talking about. Because so far, the deeper we look into the smaller portions of reality, we keep not finding any material as our minds conceive as being material.
I am not arguing that this reality is illusory, just that there is no evidence for this reality being physical.
But even to call this a reality would seem like an overstep. It would imply it is real rather than being perceived to be real. Physical is also one of those words with a loose definition. I even tried to google it and got nothing substantial. It would imply that it is beyond any reason of a doubt to be real. There is no full fledged proof based on undoubtable evidence that anything is real to begin with, so it really just leaves you with an unknown. I'm not saying that we aren't real. I'm saying that without proof, who's to say what dictates possibilities? Another human with the same perception of "Reality" as me? It all just seems like a concept that could be true but can't ever be proven to be true due to our lack of understanding of the unknown.
I think I get what you are saying. What, to you, is the difference between perceived reality and actual reality?