There is no such thing as the supernatural. Plain and simple. If you look at what it means to be natural, this becomes blatantly obvious. For something to be natural, it must abide by natural laws, arise through natural processes, and interact with other natural constructs. This encompasses everything in the universe, as anything that defies any part of this definition is, by definition, nonexistent.
Even ideas and consciousness arise through physical processes in our brains, and therefore are part of nature. Light interacts with gravity and time, electricity interacts with magnetism, even dark matter exerts gravitational forces on the universe. Everything that is or ever will be is part of nature, which sort of makes the term useless. It's literally the least specific noun or adjective applicable in any conversation. To exist is to be natural.
The point of all this is to say that something is supernatural is to say it doesn't exist. To say something is unnatural is the same thing. Something can't exist outside of natural laws and processes, because if it did then the laws and processes would be revised to account for it. Before we understood gravity, black holes weren't supernatural, we just didn't know about them yet. Our understanding of natural laws was too infantile to comprehend such constructs.
To expand on an earlier idea, interactions with natural constructs is key here. If you were to say God is supernatural, that would mean that he is above what is natural. This might sound correct according to western understanding of theology, but makes no sense scientifically. If God was truly supernatural, he couldn't interact with the natural world. He would be unable to create us, would never hear our prayers, never answer them, and never even be able to conceive of our existence. So if you want a creator God, he has to be a natural being, and must be bound by natural laws. No travel beyond light speed, no creation or destruction of matter, no tomfoolery with the laws of physics. Because of this, the universe and its laws must have existed before God! A natural thing must arise through natural processes, and since God must be natural, something must have created him! And since something made him and manufacturing takes time, God could not exist before time, or the universe.
With this in mind, all natural things must be quantifiable, by definition. So, even if we don't know how to do it yet, God will eventually be found, measured, catalogued, bagged, tagged, and thrown in the zoo of human knowledge along with everything else. But if he doesn't exist, nothing about the universe changes. Everything is still just how it would be.
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Nothing wrong in that statement.
a gold star for you Jared.
Yay! Feels like I'm back in second grade and I could trade my Capri Sun for more on the black market. Ah, memories...
You do it every time Jared. You express just what I am thinking in words I struggle to express. Copied and filed for future use. Old Man is too stingy in his praise, have two gold stars. :)
My parents told me once that I should be a politician, because I have a knack for articulating things in coherent ways. As my mom put it, "You could tell a snowflake that it's supposed to melt when it's forty below, and it would believe you."
Lucky for you I didn't listen, because I use my power for good. *conspiratorial wink*
@Jared
Excellent post. I may have to take writing lessons from you, young man. *grin*
Great post!
I hate being a party pooper, but how would you handle my earlier swimming pool example? (When the last person leaves it freezes solid instantly; when someone enters, it becomes a nice pool.) The assumption that this situation would be no more than a bizarre case of natural phenomena to which natural laws would eventually apply is a risky assumption. The rip is so fundamental that essentially all known principles would have to be abandoned. Conservation of energy is lost. The second law of thermodynamics fails. And, the peculiar timing would hardly fit any respectable principle. One might still hold out for a natural explanation, someday, but that strikes me about as rational as the creationist who holds out for the future overthrow of evolution. The best conclusion would almost have to be that this event is totally out of joint with natural principles, thus giving us what might be called a supernatural event!
For that reason, I advocate a slightly different approach that I feel is much more rigorous. We begin by noting that there never has been a case like this properly documented, that no situation hopelessly at odds with our bedrock natural principles, given their proper extensions, has ever been scientifically documented. Thus, we have zero evidence for supernatural events. We note the maxim that Carl Sagan popularized, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Now, it's hard to imagine a claim more extraordinary than the existence of a supernatural realm. Yet, it is supported by no evidence at all, let along an extraordinary evidence! We therefore reject the claim for the same reason that we would reject the Easter Bunny.
Instead of attempting to rule the supernatural out, which really takes us beyond what we can know, we simply say that at present it has zero credibility and, therefore, has no more explanatory power than a fairy tale. God's supernatural powers are just another trip in fantasyland until extraordinary evidence proves otherwise. There is no rational, objective reason to pretend (at present) that a discussion of the supernatural is more respectable than a discussion of Santa's elves or the Easter Bunny. (Does the Easter Bunny violate more well established principles than does the supernatural? Now, there's a thought to end this on!)
I think you mistake my point. What I mean to say is that the colloquial use of supernatural is erroneous. Let's say ghosts exist. And let's also say they interact with matter in some way. Well, anything that has at least these two properties must also possess the ability to be altered, and alteration requires some quantifiable mechanism to actually do the altering. Some natural law must exist, whether we understand it or not, that governs this object's interaction with matter. So, therefore a ghost must be a natural being.
I'm not saying that an entity we consider supernatural cannot exist, I'm simply saying that we're thinking about the entity incorrectly. By definition, a supernatural entity or force cannot coexist with a natural one. The terms are mutually exclusive in a logical universe. So if God is 'supernatural', he's either nonexistent or you're using the term incorrectly.
If a supernatural event is defined as not being connected with natural laws, then a supernatural event could not have any explanation based on natural laws which is the only tool kit we have. Thus, a supernatural event could not be a part of science even if it did happen.
If a supernatural event is defined as an event that cannot be explained, even in principle, via natural laws then how does it follow that it cannot happen in our universe, that it cannot affect something in our universe? Take my swimming pool example. When the last person leaves the water instantly turns into solid ice; when someone enters, the swimming is just fine! When the ice is examined, it is fully in accordance with natural, deeply frozen ice. After each switch, the swimming pool acts in accordance with natural law. It seems we have an on-going series of supernatural events that interact just fine with the surrounding environment.
I suspect that you are using a different definition for "supernatural." As I use the word, a supernatural event would occur in the natural world but could not be explained by natural principles (there being no realistic hope that it could ever be so explained). An odd note: My definition does not imply that there is some realm of existence outside of our physical universe.
We couldn't explain lots of things a couple centuries ago. Doesn't make them supernatural. We just didn't understand it yet. If any event occurs in the natural world, it must itself be a natural phenomena. Weird doesn't mean supernatural.
The problem with your pool analogy is that you're just arbitrarily labeling the event as supernatural for no real reason. Inexplicable and supernatural aren't synonymous with each other. If you consider the definition of both words, it becomes obvious that a supernatural event is not only impossible logically but scientifically as well.
To address your final paragraph, yes. You're using a different definition of the word. But not only that, you seem to assume that science will never find an explanation for such phenomena, which is simply daft. It was thought for thousands of years that man would never fly, never understand what is going on in space, never live free of disease, never live beyond 35... The list goes on. To just assume knowledge is unattainable is to disregard the last 600 years of evidence to the contrary.
Also, your assertion in the first paragraph is troublesome, because you disregard the fact that nothing exists outside natural laws. If something were ever discovered to act contrary to natural laws, the laws would be re-examined to account for new evidence. That's what science is. To affect the natural world requires government of interaction. Electrons don't just fuck around doing whatever. Bodies move in accordance with natural laws. So if something affects anything, it must have a quantifiable mechanism like gravity, electromagnetism, or whatever. I don't know how I can say this more clearly, so I apologize for the repetitive nature of this post.
Long story short, natural laws govern things. Things do things to other things. Anything that does anything to a thing is governed by natural laws. These things are called natural. Everything does things to other things, ergo everything is either natural or not real.
"Instead of attempting to rule the supernatural out, which really takes us beyond what we can know, we simply say that at present it has zero credibility and, therefore, has no more explanatory power than a fairy tale. God's supernatural powers are just another trip in fantasyland until extraordinary evidence proves otherwise. There is no rational, objective reason to pretend (at present) that a discussion of the supernatural is more respectable than a discussion of Santa's elves or the Easter Bunny."
10/10, that's precisely correct. It's easy to let hubris take us into a position that demands we evidence a claim, when in fact it's not necessary to find reasons to disbelieve claims for which no objective evidence can be demonstrated.
Hitchens's razor applies "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"
Hitchens's razor is actually an English translation of the Latin proverb "Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur" ("What is freely asserted is freely dismissed"), which was commonly used in the 19th century.[4][5] It takes a stronger stance than the Sagan standard ("Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"), instead applying to even non-extraordinary claims.
There's no supernatural, but there is another spiritual realm called the unnatural. To this realm belong child genital mutilation, caste systems, monks and nuns, vows of celibacy and silence, kosher, halal, tapu, religious dress codes, and every aspect of the Catholic church and its clergy.
If my swimming pool example were discovered, what would you call it if not a supernatural series of events?
I'd call it a thermal reservoir; but I know that isn't the question you are asking.
An unexplained event?
It's interesting because your example amply exposes the trouble of evidencing supernatural events, how are we to know it's not a natural phenomenon we simply don't currently understand that runs contrary to our current understanding of natural laws? Lets not forget that humans have attached supernatural causation to phenomena they couldn't explain throughout human history. So your example might be considered argumentum ad ignorantiam, even if it does reverse almost everything we know about the natural world and how it works, which is more likely that we have followed the evidence into massive error or that something supernatural has occurred? Since the first is not just plausible but has been documented more than once, and the second never has been objectively evidenced, then I don't think it's hubristic to lean in favour of the first. This then is sciences greatest strength that it can admit ignorance and that errors are caused by it, and of course paradoxically one of religion's greatest weaknesses that it never can, but must cling doggedly to what the evidence shows is objectively false.
I absolutely agree with Jared and Algebe on this.
If you look at dictionary definition it is also the very definition of the begging the question fallacy.
supernatural
adjective
1. (of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.
Note the assumption that there *IS anything beyond the laws of nature, wouldn't that be the very thing the word is arguing for? I'm inclined to agree that word is arbitrary and therefore meaningless until someone shows some objective evidence for anything that exists beyond the natural physical world. If the definition rules out the best method we have for validation (empirical science) then I'm keen to know what methods are left that can be used.