The term “supernatural” comes up on this and other boards and in similar discussion forums from time to time and I have come to the conclusion that there can be no such thing. Or, at the very least, if there really is something that could be accurately labeled as supernatural, such would have to be completely beyond understanding by anything (like we humans) that is not supernatural.
As an example, I’ve been studying quantum entanglement a bit. Pretty weird phenomenon from the perspective of those of us in a non-quantum, macro dimension. Very difficult to conceptualize how certain particle states could possibly be correlated, but correlated they are. So is this correlation “supernatural”? I certainly would not define it that way and I know of no physicists who would either.
The point is, even if one really believes that something like entanglement – a repeatably verifiable and investigatible phenomenon – has a supernatural basis, what could possibly be understood about that supernatural component? How could it be verified at all and what could investigating it add to any kind of understanding about…oh…anything?
So for those of you who do believe there is something that can be classified as supernatural, I’m just curious as to what supernatural means to you and what type of event or phenomenon would indicate to you that something is supernatural.
I’ve written this before. God cannot not exist. It is God’s nature to exist. Everything else, not so much. What you call “nature” or “natural” is just the opposite. It is very un-natural.
I did…but I was hoping you’d write something like this:
The only “miracles” that are possible according to McKinnon are unlikely coincidences. Those kinds of things don’t give much comfort to people hungry for supernatural happenings. Those kinds of things don’t give much comfort to people hungry for supernatural happenings.
So, the origin of life clearly qualifies to be that unlikely coincident but it surly gives much comfort to people hungry for natural happenings that are classified as miracles…
Mung,
What you seem to mean by “natural” there is non-contingent or essential. And you get there because, in ordinary language, “natural” can mean “expected” (as in “it’s only natural that a ghost would scare somebody”). But of course, that’s not the sense of “natural” that Robin is talking about.
Natural is a result of or associated with nature. I don’t feel the need to assess most phenomenon’s association with nature scientifically. Entanglement may well be an interesting exception, but so far studies have not indicated such.
I don’t, but then given the associations and conditions are consistent, I strikes me as meaningless to refer to the same parameters by two different terms. Got a reason why such would be practical or useful?
I’m not the one making the distinction. I don’t believe there is such a thing as “supernatural”. I’m asking those who do think the supernatural exists and is distinct from the natural to describe how they propose distinguishing between the two concepts.
Well then, feel free to explain how you distinguish between the two.
If everything is supernatural, then everything is the same stuff and there nothing beyond simple mechanics of the world. I’m good with that. No gods, no miracles, nothing but good old supernatural physics. Fine.
Dunno, you could be right but….Was the origin of life an unlikely coincidence? What were the odds? Is it possible to calculate them?
So then God – assuming such an entity could be demonstrated – would be natural and there would be no such thing as supernatural. I’m good with that perspective too.
I’m still curious. Are “made or caused by humankind” and “made or caused by God” mutually exclusive categories?
Sounds right to me. How can something be “super” to something that doesn’t exist? The mere concept of something being supernatural is predicated on the majority of things being natural.
Says who, and how do you determine what percentage of things are natural vs supernatural? You are assuming your conclusion and begging the question.
You need to at least try to answer the same questions I posed to Robin.
Sure you are. You are saying that everything is natural, and to say that, you have to be excluding all those things from being supernatural. But you have no principled way to do that. You’re engaged in a huge exercise of begging the question.
How do you know that the things that you are labeling natural are in fact not supernatural? You don’t, but at least you admit it.
Says the etymology of the word “supernatural”.
LOL! How do you determine what things are supernatural, Mung, if the majority of things are NOT natural?
Oh…it’s definitely not Roy who’s assuming any conclusion…
I don’t know of a way to tell the difference. Science can’t answer the question. If you are aware of something that can tell us how to make the distinction I am all ears.
🙂
I don’t need to do anything. And perhaps you could answer the question that I have posed to you twice now.
I don’t. I never said that the majority of things are NOT natural. So why would I even try defend that silly claim.
Like you, I don’t need to do anything.
For starters, something has to be “natural” or else “supernatural” makes no sense. Superluminal speeds would be nonsensical if light didn’t exist.
Linguistically, “natural” would encompass the majority of objects and events. Otherwise, we would be talking about “natural” and “subnatural”.
Can we agree on that much?
From the OP:
There are things completely beyond human understanding. Therefore, the supernatural is real.
Q.E.D.
How do you know this?
And if you can put it that way, why can’t I put it this way?
For starters, something has to be “supernatural” or else “natural” makes no sense.
If the supernatural does not exist, then nothing is gained by saying that something is natural. Natural, as opposed to what? Pink?
Time spent at TSZ. 🙂
You certainly can put it that way. It’s a free country. It just doesn’t make any sense from a linguistic or logical standpoint. The root would have to exist at least in concept before any modifiers could be applied to it. Supernatural, subnatural, seminatural, all take their meaning from a modification of the word “natural”.
I’m not the one proposing a dichotomy. I’m not the one who really feels strongly about coming up with a way to make a distinction. I’m the one asking if those who think there is a dichotomy have any ideas of how to determine a difference.
I’m taking your comments as a “well I can’t figure out a distinction and I don’t care.” Ok…
Why supernatural as opposed to natural? why not subnatural? or paranatural? or pseudonatural? non-natural perhaps? all of them?
So your question to Roy about percentage was merely a digression then. Got it. Thanks.
Indeed. Anatural? Antinatural? Quasinatural? Irnatural? Adipnatural? ignatural?
The list of Greek and Latin prefixes is rather extensive.
I suppose I deserved that.
While we wait, I thought of an analogy on the commute home that I read in one of Stephen Hawking’s pop-sci books. If all of nature can be thought of as a sphere, it would be absurd to suggest going North of the North Pole or vice versa. In such an analogy, it would be more fruitful to try and map the sphere rather than expending energy trying to “understand” what doesn’t lie on the sphere.
I have no idea how big of a metaphysical baggage-cart that analogy ties me to, but it sounded convincing in my head for the 5 minutes that I reflected on it in between Starbucks and the Turnpike.
Therefore it is possible supernatural is real.
There are regions of our universe that are too far away and expanding too rapidly for any information from those places ever to reach us. They must be, according to you, “beyond human understanding”, and, once again according to your words above, must prove that “the supernatural is real”. Even though the processes involved are perfectly understandable using no more than standard physics.
Sometimes it beggars belief that you are serious.
Or, more down to earth, there are histories that have been erased, people that have been forgotten, events that are unexplained.
All supernatural?
I think the OP question could be re phrases as what kind of phenomenon would convince you it was supernatural.
Cecil B DeMille knew instinctively what kind of thing would be convincing, and depicted them in his movies.
timothya,
To be fair, I think mung was using somebody else’s definition there. You could think of his argument as a reductio.
I think the term ‘supernatural’ is nonsensical. If something was utterly beyond our universe and assuming that it doesn’t interact with our universe then there is no possible way we could know about it and theres no point in speculating about it.
If this thing does interact with our universe then by definition its not supernatural and we could actually study its effects in our universe. It doesnt matter if this thing only partially interacts with our universe – if we see only the tip of the iceberg- that could be the case with everything we observe. What matters is that this thing is part of the chain of cause and effect that we observe in our world
I like that analogy. It reminds me of a discussion I was in some time ago where someone was trying to describe what might have been “outside” the singularity prior to the Big Bang.
Depends on that definition, no?
Well it would seem that our interlocutor read the same Hawking book as me (The Grand Design, perhaps) because that is the same point that Hawking was making using the analogy.
I agree. I used an example in the thread on gpuccio’s design inference that I think is relevant here. My example was taken from the plot of the movie ‘Interstellar’ where a wormhole is detected near Saturn. Ultimately, it is determined that the wormhole leads to other potentially habitable planets and it was most likely put there by an intelligent agent to give humans a means of escaping a dying Earth. The important point is that, without some knowledge of how wormholes could be built or what purpose they could serve, we would have no idea whether it was a natural anomaly or something intentionally put there by an intelligent agent.
“Flatland” is an extended discussion of this analogy. It’s been in print for over a hundred years. Perhaps relevant to this thread, because it explicitly discusses how one could study something impinging on the universe from “outside”.
Thank you very much for the reference. That example popped up on another discussion thread a few months ago (I think that you may have been on that thread as well) with keiths, ffm, and colewd among others. The analogy made sense to me, but I didn’t know where it originated, but now I know. I’ll look into the book when I have some time.
I guess quantum mechanics does’t fit into this chain of cause and effect, where effects have been experimentally proven to happen before cause?
What now?
I like this part of your comment particularly. Whatever part of a chain of causation interacts with our universe is all that we can be aware of. If it behaves in a way which is consistent with the physics of our universe, then we will have no way of knowing anything about the nature of the chain beyond that. On the other hand, if it utterly at odds with how the rest of the natural universe then intelligibility would no longer seem to be a viable assumption.
Why don’t you look it up yourself? It is going to be much more beneficial to all if you do it…
You don’t have to go far…One protein appearing spontaneously will do it… It’s like 10^400, if i’m not mistaken…
Just keep in mind that no amount of evidence will convince people who don’t want to be convinced, because they will always apply the optimism bias…
I think that Robin’s comment above explains a reasonable way of looking at the definition:
If something outside of our universe has is causally linked with events inside of our universe, then it would seem to be part of nature and we could try to understand it within the context of how it impacts our universe. The problem for me is that the way I think most people mean supernatural is a sort of alternate operating system that can choose to either act in concert with the normal functioning of our universe or override it at any time. This would likely have grave repercussions with regards to the intelligibility of our universe.
I suspect (though I may well be mistaken) that this is at the root of Mung’s insistence that only God’s existence is ‘nature’. If God and all of creation is natural, then there is no need for the term ‘supernatural’. Robin has already said, and I agree with him, that we can work with that definition and the discussion becomes much simpler. However, this makes it difficult to justify the existence of miracles which appear to suspend the normal order of things.
Of course quantum effects fit into the chain of cause and effect. If something can be detected by an instrument its in the chain of cause and effect. For that matter half the tech in your house relies on quantum effects
I agree. Knowing whether an object is created has nothing to do with how complex it is. It has to do with knowing what processes could produce it. I made the analogy a week or so ago of finding an iron ball about a foot across in the woods. Its a very simple objects but natural processes couldn’t produce it
If it’s electronic tech, it all depends on technology developed from quantum theory.
If it isn’t electronic, it’s made using manufacturing processes that rely on electronics.
Unless maybe it’s a ceramic pot thrown on a kick driven wheel and fired in a wood burning kiln.
Even then…
I think if we’re going to explore the possibility that the supernatural exists we can’t start with a definitional framework that already assumes it exists. We have to start with what we know exists and work outward from there
You’re mistaken. You have to be careful with post facto calculations, most importantly because you have no idea about how any proteins arose, and thus, you have no idea about the variables you have to consider. You also have to be careful about what’s meant by “spontaneously.”
Oh, I know. You’re un-convincible of your mistakes, even when they’re too obvious.
Thanks
I think the last refuge of the supernaturalist is to claim that only the human mind ( or ‘soul’) can perceive the supernatural because we all have one foot in the supernatural world but none of our instruments can detect it. But that excuse fails because if we can perceive it then it has a connection in our world. A good demonstration of this comes from the movie “Contact” ( not the novel- Sagan would never have allowed this foolishness). In the movie a senator ( played by James Woods) questions whether Jodie Foster actually traveled to another planet because none of the recording devices worked and she was only in the sphere a few seconds. In the movie they left off the question of whether she did in fact travel there as a matter of ‘faith’ But this is nonsense. They still have the machine. They can send another person. And another. And other until they build up a record of experiences that can give evidence for genuine travel vs induced hallucination. And if one day someone reports that the aliens told them about a supernova in a specific location- and then it happens- that would be strong evidence its real.
The same could be done for any supernatural claim. But all such attempts instead give evidence against the supernatural
🙂
How could they fit if the cause has been consistently detected before the effect?