Say what? The etymology I quoted has nothing to do with how "dictionaries use words".
Obviously the word "supernatural" was not coined by Charles Tart. Your claim is false.
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Interesting That There Is No Word In The Bible For Natural And Supernatural
- Thread starter james bond
- Start date
Obviously the word "supernatural" was not coined by Charles Tart. Your claim is false.
FunctionalAtheist
Hammer of Reason
As someone who has spent many hours thinking about natural and supernatural, I for one do not believe you should speak about what atheists think on the subject.
In days of old, people did not understand the relationship between existence, objective reality, physics, etc., (nature) and their own subjective reality. That relationship is defined by our senses, i.e. eyesight, hearing, touching etc.
Today science has proven that sight is an interpretation of light waves, sound is an interpretation of sound waves, etc.
If you see it, it is either natural, or it is in your mind. If you see and angel, or a ghost, then you are either misinterpreting a natural phenomena, or you are imagining it.
Given the nature of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste relating to the subjective interpretation of natural phenomena, supernatural is therefore defined as unseeable, unhearable, untouchable, untasteabale, and unsmellable. In other words, if there is anything that is supernatural, it is beyond our senses, by definition, since our senses are only capable of detecting natural phenomena,
In short, supernatural = nonsense! Literally.
james bond
Well-Known Member
Napoleon was the first anti-Christ. You can keep your barking chickens. You're mind just exploded, that's all.
james bond
Well-Known Member
You're very short on answers and full of opinion and rhetoric, so this is where I say good luck and toodle loo ha ha.
siti
Well-Known Member
Try 1 Corinthians 2:14-15 for an example. Whilst it does nor use a separate word for "natural" it is understood as the anthropos ('natural man') is opposed to the pneumatikos ('spiritual one').
Also James 1:23 where the Greek word genesis is used to denote the "natural face" of a man.
In Romans 11:21 and 24 the Greek words kata physis ('according to nature') are used to denote the 'natural' branches of a symbolic olive tree indicating the natural nation of Israel - as opposed to the divinely (supernaturally) grafted branches from among the non-natural (gentile) nations. Physis is of course from the same root that we get our modern word physics and physical from. And there it is in the Bible used in a very similar connotation.
Here is the entry in Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testamanet Words for this use of both these last two words (check the context links for more about 'nature' and 'natural' in the Bible):
Also James 1:23 where the Greek word genesis is used to denote the "natural face" of a man.
In Romans 11:21 and 24 the Greek words kata physis ('according to nature') are used to denote the 'natural' branches of a symbolic olive tree indicating the natural nation of Israel - as opposed to the divinely (supernaturally) grafted branches from among the non-natural (gentile) nations. Physis is of course from the same root that we get our modern word physics and physical from. And there it is in the Bible used in a very similar connotation.
Here is the entry in Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testamanet Words for this use of both these last two words (check the context links for more about 'nature' and 'natural' in the Bible):
101
Noun Strong's Number: g1078 Greek: genesis
Natural, Naturally:
"birth," is used in Jam 1:23, of the "natural face," lit., "the face of his birth," "what God made him to be" (Hort).
See GENERATION, NATURE, No. 2.
Note: In Rom 11:21, 24 the preposition kata, "according to," with the noun phusis, "nature," is translated "natural," of branches, metaphorically describing members of the nation of Israel.
[View Entry in Its Context]
2 Strong's Number: g1078 Greek: genesis
Nature:
is used in the phrase in Jam 3:6, "the wheel of nature," RV (marg., "birth"). Some regard this as the course of birth or of creation, or the course of man's "nature" according to its original Divine purpose; Major (on the Ep. of James) regards trochos here as a wheel, "which, catching fire from the glowing axle, is compared to the widespreading mischief done by the tongue," and shows that "the fully developed meaning" of genesis denotes "the incessant change of life... the sphere of this earthly life, meaning all that is contained in our life." The significance, then, would appear to be the whole round of human life and activity. Moulton and Milligan illustrate it in this sense from the papyri.
See NATURAL, B.
Noun Strong's Number: g1078 Greek: genesis
Natural, Naturally:
"birth," is used in Jam 1:23, of the "natural face," lit., "the face of his birth," "what God made him to be" (Hort).
See GENERATION, NATURE, No. 2.
Note: In Rom 11:21, 24 the preposition kata, "according to," with the noun phusis, "nature," is translated "natural," of branches, metaphorically describing members of the nation of Israel.
[View Entry in Its Context]
2 Strong's Number: g1078 Greek: genesis
Nature:
is used in the phrase in Jam 3:6, "the wheel of nature," RV (marg., "birth"). Some regard this as the course of birth or of creation, or the course of man's "nature" according to its original Divine purpose; Major (on the Ep. of James) regards trochos here as a wheel, "which, catching fire from the glowing axle, is compared to the widespreading mischief done by the tongue," and shows that "the fully developed meaning" of genesis denotes "the incessant change of life... the sphere of this earthly life, meaning all that is contained in our life." The significance, then, would appear to be the whole round of human life and activity. Moulton and Milligan illustrate it in this sense from the papyri.
See NATURAL, B.
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It does not strike me as all that interesting nor significant that biblical peoples failed to make a distinction between nature and supernature. They were, after all, fairly backwards even when compared to other cultures of their day -- such as the Greek, Chinese, and Indian cultures. Biblical people didn't have words for electricity, evolution, germs, or quantum flux, either. To say supernatural/natural is a false or meaningless distinction because biblical peoples didn't make it strikes me as the equivalent of saying the germ theory of disease is false because biblical people didn't hold it.
james bond
Well-Known Member
Yup, you're right. My bad. No Charles Tart. Thus, I had to reassess and found that the other parts of my claim is still valid just that there's more to it. I found that creation science says that the supernatural is "a secular designation for those who believe that there are beings, forces, and phenomena such as the human soul, God, angels, miracles, pixies, faeries, hobbits, etc. which claim to interact with the physical universe in remarkable and unique ways.
The belief in an unseen spiritual realm is a fundamental premise of theism, who hold to a spiritual worldview standing in contrast to the atheistic premise of naturalism, which denies the existence of any spiritual phenomena.
The Scripture does not differentiate between supernatural and natural. These are secular definitions to separate what secularists view as "reality" (the natural world) from "make-believe" (the supernatural world). In their view, the natural world is where God is "not", and the supernatural world is where God, faeries, pixies and miscellaneous deities cohabitate. In contrast, God upholds the entire creation by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3), so there is no place in the entire creation where God is "not". The irony here is that the world the secularists describe as "reality" (the world where God-is-not) is actually a make-believe world.
The Bible uses the words "God", "eternity", "heavenly", "spirit", "angel", "demon" etc. in regular accounts as if the inhabitants of the unseen spirit world actually cohabitate the creation with mankind. This page will use the word "supernatural" sparingly and instead focus on the heavenly or unseen."
Supernaturalism - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
james bond
Well-Known Member
Ha ha. Atheists are wrong again.
How can you say the Biblical peoples were backward when the first atheists recorded in history were a pygmy tribe in Africa with no beliefs? You have no concept of the history of Biblical people as they invented electricity, fighting germs and discovered quantum flux. Even evolution, but we won't take that credit for that except for natural selection.
Ancient Electricity
A Short History of Ancient Electricity
Ancient Copper
The bacteria-fighting super element making a return to hospitals: Copper
Flux or Dysentary
FLUX IN THE BIBLE
Quantum Flux - Heisenberg
The religion of Werner Heisenberg, physicist
You're reaching.
james bond
Well-Known Member
>>biblical peoples... They were, after all, fairly backwards even when compared to other cultures of their day -- such as the Greek, Chinese, and Indian cultures. Biblical people didn't have words for electricity, evolution, germs, or quantum flux, either.
Wrong again. It was you who was reaching.
Ricktheheretic
"Do what thou will shall be the whole of the law"
Words are just a human way of designating things. What is a tree? What is a car? What is a cat? What is a brain? Supernatural means beyond man's natural experience, what people regard as from "another" world. Did the ancient Greeks see their gods as supernatural? Did they believe that magic was supernatural? They probably didn't have a term for something like that. What if such things exist, but they are just as "natural" as everything else. Maybe ghosts are natural. If something like a soul indwells a mortal body and leaves at death, maybe it is just another part of nature. If something like magic exists in our world maybe its natural like everything else. One designation we find is between the manmade and the natural, but humans are part of nature and everything we make comes from nature. A dam is made of natural materials: stone and metal etc., it's the product of man using his brain to make another part of nature work for him. Manmade drugs like morphine come from nature, morphine is an alkaloid found in the opium poppy. What we wear on our bodies is natural: wool, cotton, leather etc. clothes are man's natural way of adapting to the environment.
james bond
Well-Known Member
I would tend to agree with you, but the adherents of naturalism here look at things in a skewed way such as differentiating that which is "natural" and that which is "supernatural." I think I have showed these words have human judgment behind it, so are objective, descriptive terms.
Naturalism is a "philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way."
In our case with RF, the majority of adherents of naturalism make a judgment in placing objects that are natural or supernatural category based on what exists and what doesn't exist. Thus, I was pointing out in my post above that:
"The belief in an unseen spiritual realm is a fundamental premise of theism, who hold to a spiritual worldview standing in contrast to the atheistic premise of naturalism, which denies the existence of any spiritual phenomena.
The Scripture does not differentiate between supernatural and natural. These are secular definitions to separate what secularists view as "reality" (the natural world) from "make-believe" (the supernatural world). In their view, the natural world is where God is "not", and the supernatural world is where God, faeries, pixies and miscellaneous deities cohabitate. In contrast, God upholds the entire creation by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3), so there is no place in the entire creation where God is "not". The irony here is that the world the secularists describe as "reality" (the world where God-is-not) is actually a make-believe world."
God is described as unseen or invisible. That does not mean he doesn't exist. Many things are invisible like force of gravity. God is described as spiritual. I think that we recognize a spirit exists in all of us even though it is is unseen. Else we are dead. So we can say that a being described as such can exist. God is also described as a being with qualities that are human. He can be described with a human face, voice and features. He has values. We have a conscience or a knowledge of what is right or wrong unless one has mutated into evil or has a mental disorder. I think if one gets past the narrow views of the naturalists (that which is natural, materialistic or physical), then we see that our world isn't just that. It isn't just natural, materialistic or physical versus that which is imaginary. Our world isn't run by nature, but by God. However, the naturalism cannot accept that, so they look for things that are imaginary to explain how our world is not under God's command.
james bond
Well-Known Member
I think in your passages, it is referring to the facial image. In my NRSV, it just says, "looks at himself in the mirror." Others show "looks at his face in the mirror." As for Jam 3:6, it's referring to how his tongue can cause much damage. Neither of these are referring to natural or nature as naturalism views it.
Also, does divinely mean supernatural? I think it means relating to God or a deity, supreme or heavenly. Thus, it's not supernatural, or that which is beyond the visible observable universe or transcend laws of nature.
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Ricktheheretic
"Do what thou will shall be the whole of the law"
Good response. On some other threads I was trying to bridge the gap between "naturalism" and what is "supernatural." I rely a lot on philosophy. I included something once or twice on Benedict Spinoza, a Dutch Jew who came up with a third "substance," which is god or the absolute that makes up all things: both the ideal(spiritual) and the physical or material. He got in a lot of trouble with the Synagogue for making the natural world out to be god(pantheism). I have read that there are Christian pantheists, but I think that's kind of a contradiction in terms.
siti
Well-Known Member
Well I tried to be reasonably selective and focus on words that could reasonably be rendered as "natural" in English. But I think it is very clear in scripture that there is a distinction between the "fleshly" and the "spiritual" (see for example Galatians 5:7, Romans 8:5, Colossians 3:2). So you can argue that they were not talking about a naturalistic versus a spiritualistic or dualistic worldview. But that's not really the point. The writer(s) clearly had a dualistic worldview in mind when they wrote this stuff. And they recognized that the naturalistic (fleshly) was dominant 'down here'.
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You get big points with me for acknowledging your error. It's apparently a rare quality. It distinguishes between those who learn from the errors and those who don't.
Doesn't the Bible speak a lot about miracles? My impression was that it emphasizes occurrences such as bushes that burn but are not consumed, Moses parting the waters, Jesus feeding 6,000 hungry people with a few loaves and fishes, with more left over than begun with, etc., etc. These are not everyday occurrences.
james bond
Well-Known Member
Jesus started with five barley loaves and two fishes and fed 5,000 borrowed from a boy's lunch. What's even more miraculous is he could have fed 15,000 to 20,000. Biblical scholars differ on the number. The Apostles who had seen Jesus perform miracles before were worried they could not buy enough to feed the people who came. They were going to send them away. Yet, Jesus called the bread and fishes be brought to him, gave thanks, broke the bread and told the Apostles to hand it out and was able to satisfy the masses. He said they could eat as much as they wanted. Even then there were leftovers. It goes to show that he actually handed out the food and wasn't some kind of trick.
I don't know how many miracles he did, but it was a lot. What was told to me that Jesus performed countless miracles, bit the vast majority of people still did not believe in him. That's the thinking of Christians today. Even if God did the miracles, it would not be enough to show all the people to believe in God. They would only believe for a short time. Thus, one has to have faith and believe in God first and then they start to experience the miracles.
Ricktheheretic
"Do what thou will shall be the whole of the law"
?
I remember reading something in a book on alchemy about how some scientists actually transmutated metal(mercury) into gold using radiation. There's a book I have by Charles Filmore who started the Unity School of Christianity, its called "The Atom Smashing Power of Mind," it explains how everyone is able to perform miracles like Jesus did by using the mind to release the hidden energy in atoms. The splitting of atoms releases energy great enough to destroy entire cities. Could atomic energy have more positive uses? I just recently got done with some threads where I said the occult, supernatural, etc. could have scientific explanations. There was something I said about maybe there being a "substance" that couldn't be detected by instruments and didn't have any interaction with matter except maybe it can pass through matter and doesn't hinder material from occupying the same space as it, maybe the substance of spirits or even god. I read some neat stuff about a formerly unknown type of material know as "black matter" or "black energy" that scientists once denied the existence of but now there seems to be evidence for it. I am interested in future things in science that might tie in with the "occult" or "supernatural."
I remember reading something in a book on alchemy about how some scientists actually transmutated metal(mercury) into gold using radiation. There's a book I have by Charles Filmore who started the Unity School of Christianity, its called "The Atom Smashing Power of Mind," it explains how everyone is able to perform miracles like Jesus did by using the mind to release the hidden energy in atoms. The splitting of atoms releases energy great enough to destroy entire cities. Could atomic energy have more positive uses? I just recently got done with some threads where I said the occult, supernatural, etc. could have scientific explanations. There was something I said about maybe there being a "substance" that couldn't be detected by instruments and didn't have any interaction with matter except maybe it can pass through matter and doesn't hinder material from occupying the same space as it, maybe the substance of spirits or even god. I read some neat stuff about a formerly unknown type of material know as "black matter" or "black energy" that scientists once denied the existence of but now there seems to be evidence for it. I am interested in future things in science that might tie in with the "occult" or "supernatural."
james bond
Well-Known Member
Let's stop at the word "supernatural" which is the subject of this thread. If something is judged that, then we see that it won't be taken seriously as a real-life event or a power or ability that it can be done. What you are describing is a fantastic claim being made such as the universe came from invisible particles.
First, let's look to see if the claim actually happened. This is an event in the past, so all we have are the historical record of it. For example, let's say you and a friend went to a nightclub and a superstar performer showed up and performed a one-hour set and left. No one was able to record this event because your phone had to be turned off and no cameras were allowed. Thus, all you and the people there have are memories of the event. You and your friend know it happened, but all you can do is tell your other friends and acquaintances about it. They don't believe you.
Let's say we have photos of the loaves and fishes event. We see various shots of people eating, talking and enjoying themselves. Now, we have evidence that this was an event that occurred. However, we do not have photos, so all we have is the word of people and that it was recorded in writing. If we go back to the hypothetical concert, and there was a reporter who just happened to be there and she writes a story, then you would have more credibility. Back to the miracle. Once we established that the miraculous event happened, then what we would be looking for is where the bread and fish came from besides the original. One of the ideas being propagated is God is able to move through spacetime and multidimensions and so would be able to find another source of the loaves and fishes.
Thus, the important thing to look for with any claims such as the power of the mind, miraculous events or is what events occurred from this power is to first verify that it did happen or can happen. Another would be to verify that it wasn't a trick and that it indeed was a transformation. There is an aspect of your greed being played upon in this transmutation. Plenty of people out there to trick you out of money by buying a book or DVD. Could they be using miracles in Christianity to sway your thinking? Then you have to look at how something like this could happen. While the power of positive thinking or the way our minds work is indeed incredible, there has been no evidence of someone "transmuting" mercury into gold using the mind. It would take a tremendous amount of energy in order to do it. We do have gold that was produced by bombarding mercury with radiation in a high-energy collider, but the gold is so small that it's not worth the energy needed to create it. Then special care is needed to handle this radioactive gold and it doesn't have practical uses AFAIK.