Does 'supernatural' mean 'imaginary'?

[Guy Threepwood]

And the net says we still don't have one, you say? Never mind, it'll turn up some day.

that would at least be a start on that 'mountain of evidence' you mentioned!
not holding my breath tho..

Such as what, for instance?

those elusive short neck Giraffe ancestors ...

Odd. You'd think he'd know that every living thing is a transitional example.

from one micro adaptation to the next, yes now we're talking empirical scientific observation
But he was referring to theoretical evolutionary transitions, like Giraffes growing long necks for example

Which belief is that?

^ exactly!

 

[Guy Threepwood]

What makes it more difficult is when you try to add in pieces from an entirely different puzzle. We used to think god had a very tight leash on what happens here on Earth, but we learned about infections, the core of the Earth, tectonic plates, gravity, mental illness, evolution, weather patterns, where once we saw god we found we were only seeing shadows.
Why, then, should it be that the secrets and evidence of god should lie deep in the cosmos, or external of the universe, when everywhere else we have placed god turned out to be a natural phenomena with no god involved?
And, as I pointed out, how many times can we go "this creator has a creator?" How long before it loses its meaning, and we acknowledge it as "crying wolf?"

On the other hand, some used to think the universe always existed, no need for a creator, that simple classical physics was immutable and ruled everything, no need for 'hidden mysterious guiding forces', and that cells were simple biological objects, not stuffed with millions of lines of digital code..

We can demonstrate how a watch can be made without a watchmaker, with a fully automated watch making factory. But does this take us closer, or further away, from an ultimate self explanation for the watch? without the need for a designer?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

On the other hand, some used to think the universe always existed, no need for a creator, that simple classical physics was immutable and ruled everything, no need for 'hidden mysterious guiding forces', and that cells were simple biological objects, not stuffed with millions of lines of digital code..

We can demonstrate how a watch can be made without a watchmaker, with a fully automated watch making factory. But does this take us closer, or further away, from an ultimate self explanation for the watch? without the need for a designer?

Here's another difference between us: I realize I am ignorant in many issues. I will not claim to know if the Earth, life, the universe, and so on had a natural or supernatural cause. I don't know. No one actually knows. Why believe if you cannot know with any certainty, and certainly no one has any hard and conclusive evidence either way except for philosophical speculations. Even my own views fall under this category, as though I am not a humble person and I do not view it as a virtue, the one thing that does humble is my profound and utter ignorance of everything beyond my own senses, and even then those are prone to failing me from time to time, and even the totality of what my senses do take in (including the far away galaxies and stars of the night sky) I know very so little about.
You say there must be a designer, I say "maybe, maybe not."

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Here's another difference between us: I realize I am ignorant in many issues. I will not claim to know if the Earth, life, the universe, and so on had a natural or supernatural cause. I don't know. No one actually knows. Why believe if you cannot know with any certainty, and certainly no one has any hard and conclusive evidence either way except for philosophical speculations. Even my own views fall under this category, as though I am not a humble person and I do not view it as a virtue, the one thing that does humble is my profound and utter ignorance of everything beyond my own senses, and even then those are prone to failing me from time to time, and even the totality of what my senses do take in (including the far away galaxies and stars of the night sky) I know very so little about.
You say there must be a designer, I say "maybe, maybe not."

I agree with much of that. Having changed my mind entirely before, I can prove just one thing- that my opinion on all this is totally unreliable!

Maybe we all sound a little more emphatic than we mean to in debating these things online, it's easier to see eye to eye when face to face?

either way I agree, we should always remember that our beliefs are just that.

 

[Muffled]

Paraphrasing my dictionary, ‘(the) supernatural’ means ‘things that cannot in principle be explained according to the laws of nature.'

‘Nature’ is the place beyond the lens of your eye, where everything with objective existence is found, the same thing as the realm of the physical sciences.

The same thing as ‘reality’, indeed.

Out there in reality we find no gods, spirits, ghosts, souls, demons, familiars, vampires, fairies, not even the headmistress of Hogwarts.

And we can give no useful meaning to the idea ‘outside reality’ – by definition there’s no such real place. so there can only be an imaginary one.

What have I missed?

What real things cannot in principle be explained by the laws of nature? Imaginary things, fine, but real things?

And where is ‘outside of reality’ except in the imagination?

I believe that is where you blew it. At any rate your idea of reality and mine are a bit different. For me Hogwarts is a reality as imaginative fiction. God is a reality but not natural. I suppose one could say He is supernatural since He is above nature.

 

[Muffled]

If the laws of nature were explained by appeal to the unexplainable, that wouldn't be an explanation at all, would it?

I believe a two headed cow is unnatural but certainly it is explainable.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I believe a two headed cow is unnatural but certainly it is explainable.

The term 'unnatural' is unhelpful here since it can simply mean abnormal.

 

[Muffled]

Jesus actually rose from the dead. He isn't imaginary.

I believe resurrection qualifies as a supernatural act. I have never heard of it occurring in nature.

 

[DavidFirth]

I believe resurrection qualifies as a supernatural act. I have never heard of it occurring in nature.

Definitely. There are stories of people being dead for hours or even days and then they somehow become alive again.

 

[Muffled]

The term 'unnatural' is unhelpful here since it can simply mean abnormal.

I suppose a two headed cow can be said to occur within the paradigm of nature but it is not how nature usually works.

 

[Muffled]

Definitely. There are stories of people being dead for hours or even days and then they somehow become alive again.

The Jews believed a person had to be dead for more than three days to really be dead. However with a spear wound to the heart one would not expect Jesus to naturally revive. It is the exit from the grave that bears the most supernatural portent since bodies do not naturally travel through rock.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I suppose a two headed cow can be said to occur within the paradigm of nature but it is not how nature usually works.

Therefore?

 

[blü 2]

I believe that is where you blew it. At any rate your idea of reality and mine are a bit different. For me Hogwarts is a reality as imaginative fiction. God is a reality but not natural. I suppose one could say He is supernatural since He is above nature.

Put it this way. Things can exist in two ways: as things with objective existence, out there in reality, and as things imagined, with no counterpart in objective reality.

If something exists, but not in objective reality, then the only way it can exist is in imagination.

 

[blü 2]

I believe a two headed cow is unnatural but certainly it is explainable.

But 'unnatural' in that sense doesn't mean 'outside of nature'.

Once it means 'outside of nature' (= outside of reality) then it can only be imaginary.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

But 'unnatural' in that sense doesn't mean 'outside of nature'.

Once it means 'outside of nature' (= outside of reality) then it can only be imaginary.

e.g. multiverses?

 

[blü 2]

e.g. multiverses?

No, should the existence of multiverses be demonstrated, they'll have objective existence / be in the realm of the physical sciences ─ which is where the hypotheses about them have arisen.

The same would apply to the actual discovery and demonstration of extra dimensions.

Hence any being living in another part of the multiverse, or in an n-space that overlaps our 4-space, once its objective existence were demonstrated, would likewise be real.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

So if we are looking for an explanation for the laws of nature, constraining oneself to those very same laws... is obviously paradoxical

in other words, 'supernatural' by this definition, is a box you want to be able to check, aint it?

I have to say, I find that to be just a little glib, and contains a tendency to "beg the question" you might like answered in the affirmative -- that there is, indeed, something "supernatural." Once that is answered to your satisfaction, you can then immediately assume: "that's God."

The laws of nature may seem complex to you (and to me) but that's only because one tiny "rule," executed multiple times, can very quickly get out of hand, complexity-wise speaking.

I have a view that essentially says "nothing is impossible." I don't mean what you think I mean by that. I mean that if there is nothing, then there is also not existence. Existence implies something -- even if that something is an almost infinitely small something (let's call it a "string" for convenience) that obeys only one rule: vibrate. Of course, that is not really a rule (or a "law" as you would have it). It just is. It only becomes a "law" when it can be described and tested.

And what happens when two of those vibrating things meet: I don't know, but they will behave in some way or another -- perhaps, eventually, even making new little bits of stuff that behave in other ways. And so on and so on, until....

Eventually, there's enough complex stuff around that some of that complex stuff can actually observe and start understanding how all that stuff interacts, and to find some means of describing it all in "laws." That complex stuff is called "physicists."

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

What are the laws of nature? List them.

I'm curious as to why you'd ask that? Is it an attempt to shut down debate through sheer bluster?

In any case, as we are human, we can only list "the laws of nature" as we know them so far. The list will be different tomorrow, and the day after, and wildly different in 100, 600, 8000 or 1 million years. But that list of "the laws of nature as we know them so far" is, to state it concisely, the totality of human science knowledge as written in the libraries of our species, wherever we are.

What cannot be explained outside of that compendium of knowledge might (I repeat, might) just be supernatural, and again it might not. It might be explainable by natural laws which we have not yet discovered. Or it might be explained by a nice, comforting, supernatural God. Maybe, maybe not.

The interesting thing is that so very, very many things that were once only "explainable" by the supernatural belief in a god, have since been found to explicable within the context of known science. Little by little, the supernatural gets shoved aside, shrunken, by what we ultimately find to be perfectly natural after all.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

No, should the existence of multiverses be demonstrated, they'll have objective existence / be in the realm of the physical sciences ─ which is where the hypotheses about them have arisen.

The same would apply to the actual discovery and demonstration of extra dimensions.

Hence any being living in another part of the multiverse, or in an n-space that overlaps our 4-space, once its objective existence were demonstrated, would likewise be real.

Just like Bigfoot..

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I have to say, I find that to be just a little glib, and contains a tendency to "beg the question" you might like answered in the affirmative -- that there is, indeed, something "supernatural." Once that is answered to your satisfaction, you can then immediately assume: "that's God."

The laws of nature may seem complex to you (and to me) but that's only because one tiny "rule," executed multiple times, can very quickly get out of hand, complexity-wise speaking.

That was certainly the Victorian age model of reality, before we knew about quantum mechanics, DNA, the universal constants, there is a massive amount of specific information underwriting what seems so simple, natural to us superficially

I have a view that essentially says "nothing is impossible." I don't mean what you think I mean by that. I mean that if there is nothing, then there is also not existence. Existence implies something -- even if that something is an almost infinitely small something (let's call it a "string" for convenience) that obeys only one rule: vibrate. Of course, that is not really a rule (or a "law" as you would have it). It just is. It only becomes a "law" when it can be described and tested.

And what happens when two of those vibrating things meet: I don't know, but they will behave in some way or another -- perhaps, eventually, even making new little bits of stuff that behave in other ways. And so on and so on, until....

Eventually, there's enough complex stuff around that some of that complex stuff can actually observe and start understanding how all that stuff interacts, and to find some means of describing it all in "laws." That complex stuff is called "physicists."

I understand, and it's a very interesting question I've pondered also, is the existence of literally nothing, even possible?! or does something have to exist?

I think I am with you here, but aside from this; the existence of just 'something', and then the existence of a reality which can contemplate it's own existence, as ours can, through us, including this very question... another kettle of fish.

There are so many possible realities where this would not happen, as so many hands of poker that are not royal flushes. 'Fluke' is not always the most probable answer, unless we can utterly rule out 'cheating', and we simply cannot do that, can we?