Natural vs Supernatural

[CaptainBritain]

Just wanted to do a head count, can people list supernatural answers that have been replaced by naturalistic ones and visa versa.

To my knowledge this will be a bit one sided but I guess it leads me to ask what makes supernatural assumptions likely given the poor track record of such assumptions.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Goedel?

 

[CaptainBritain]

Goedel?

troll elsewhere please.

 

[michel]

I don't particularly believe in the "Supernatural"; I think that if you are ngoing to use the word, it ought to be defined as "The natural, but at a level such that with our understanding of science at that moment in time, we cannot understand."

 

[Storm]

I don't particularly believe in the "Supernatural"; I think that if you are ngoing to use the word, it ought to be defined as "The natural, but at a level such that with our understanding of science at that moment in time, we cannot understand.

I'm with him....

 

[Otherright]

I'm with him....

I second that.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

"Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science!"

 

[Storm]

In all fairness, though... some people do believe in the supernatural, silly as it is.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Just wanted to do a head count, can people list supernatural answers that have been replaced by naturalistic ones and visa versa.

To my knowledge this will be a bit one sided but I guess it leads me to ask what makes supernatural assumptions likely given the poor track record of such assumptions.

I'd say a better understanding of the vagaries of psychology and perception, and an increased knowledge of physics and the physical world, pretty well explain everything previously thought of as supernatural. Albeit, most still lack such understanding.

 

[CaptainBritain]

To clarify what I mean by super natural answers.

various folks look at the code in DNA to be evidence of the super natural, also that life arose atall must have had a supernatural hand.

Now I dont know the above is true or not because I cant know.

But what is for sure is however men may thinks the super natural goes about its business never meshes with the reality.

ie when we thought God sent lightning and rain etc,

that kind of angle.

Im sort of getting at how can any be sure of a super natural answer to a natural phenomina?

I know my good friend Storm views the Universe a God itself so that rules a lot of scenarios but in terms of popular conceptions of what god did and how, how can anybody be so sure of thier position,

On the flip side for an Atheist such as I the question why is there something rather than nothing, is one question I cant see a natural answer too but I hold that there must be one in spite of any evidence.

 

[outhouse]

Im sort of getting at how can any be sure of a super natural answer to a natural phenomina?

OK

lets look at witching for water, It is a phenomina that no one can begin to explain.

but it works.

NOW, it doesnt have a shred of anything to do with divinity, more to do with a scientic proccess we havnt discovered yet.

in this case we can prove god or a deity out of the picture easily. You wil find with most supernatural areas there is no god or deity involved at all

 

[Erebus]

I tend to find that the whole concept of "natural vs supernatural" is flawed to begin with. If something exists, it's natural, even if we don't understand it. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of folklore that we've either replaced with other explanations or done away with entirely, there's a lot of cryptids that have been explained too, it doesn't mean they were ever "supernatural" and it doesn't always mean they've been disproved either.

Think about Krakens and sea serpents, we now know about giant squids and oarfish which would have appeared monstrous to people in the past. Doesn't mean these things don't exist or that they were supernatural until we gave them a more modern name, it just means that we now know what they are.

 

[Gjallarhorn]

I tend to find that the whole concept of "natural vs supernatural" is flawed to begin with. If something exists, it's natural, even if we don't understand it. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of folklore that we've either replaced with other explanations or done away with entirely, there's a lot of cryptids that have been explained too, it doesn't mean they were ever "supernatural" and it doesn't always mean they've been disproved either.

Think about Krakens and sea serpents, we now know about giant squids and oarfish which would have appeared monstrous to people in the past. Doesn't mean these things don't exist or that they were supernatural until we gave them a more modern name, it just means that we now know what they are.

Think of it as the helpful mental distinction of Newtonian physics and quantum physics. In reality it's all quantum (or worse) but for the sake of the human mind we separate the micro and the macro.

 

[Erebus]

Think of it as the helpful mental distinction of Newtonian physics and quantum physics. In reality it's all quantum (or worse) but for the sake of the human mind we separate the micro and the macro.

But wouldn't that just leave us with a definition of supernatural that basically says "if we don't understand how it's done yet, it's supernatural"? Sorry if I've misunderstood you there

 

[McBell]

Just wanted to do a head count, can people list supernatural answers that have been replaced by naturalistic ones and visa versa.

To my knowledge this will be a bit one sided but I guess it leads me to ask what makes supernatural assumptions likely given the poor track record of such assumptions.

Are you talking about like how people once thought that colds and sickness was caused by demons?

Or perhaps spontaneous generation?

 

[Alex_G]

Just wanted to do a head count, can people list supernatural answers that have been replaced by naturalistic ones and visa versa.

To my knowledge this will be a bit one sided but I guess it leads me to ask what makes supernatural assumptions likely given the poor track record of such assumptions.

Humans crave reasons for things, and will indeed tend to choose a bad explanation for a phenomenon over no explanation at all. Such an example is thunder and lightning having been caused by angry Gods.
It can be a big weakness with regards to understanding the world around us, but also i think it can be one of our strengths, fuelling our ability to make sense of raw data, put some meaning to things and make imaginative connections that would otherwise go undone.

The word 'Natural' for me means something that is in keeping with our general understanding for how our world works. It can refer to that which is passive with respects to human involvement/manipulation/contribution. It can be used sometimes as a cover word, for some phenomenon that is not mechanistically understood, but is quite clearly just another aspect of the world in which we live. 'Oh its just natural' and so on.
Its a bit of a buzz word, a reasonably generic umbrella term for that which is part of existence without being contingent on humanity's construction of it.

Of course saying that, the content or data that constitutes what is 'natural' changes as our understanding changes.

Supernatural is a word of distinction, highlighting that which does not reasonably fall under the category of natural, or what is to be expected.
What might be called supernatural? Well that will ultimately depend of the user who is making the subjective call, but it might relate to any feature that makes it seemingly apart from the normal. It might have characteristics that are impressive or unexplainably augmented, it might be simply so unexplainable by our current modes of inquiry or it might be that which is statistically rare, such as things donned with the title of miracle.

Of course its not evidence for any divine presence to merely choose some phenomenon, deem it as supernatural based loosely on such criteria as touched on above, and then deduce that by virtue of that some higher power must therefore exist.

Alex

 

[Gjallarhorn]

But wouldn't that just leave us with a definition of supernatural that basically says "if we don't understand how it's done yet, it's supernatural"? Sorry if I've misunderstood you there

In a word, absolutely.

 

[CaptainBritain]

Are you talking about like how people once thought that colds and sickness was caused by demons?

Or perhaps spontaneous generation?

Back in the day colds and sickness yes, today we get phrases like: coded info in DNA, cant have a programme without a programmer etc,

Gods modern day refuges where he is supposed to have actually done something,

ie the process of the formation of the world and the Sun is well known to Science so that must mean though God didnt actually make the Earth, stars and raise the mountains so to speak, the new line in the sand is, well God caused the big bang and A lead to B by design.

Any modern claim that revolves around an area science has yet to figure out and because science has yet to figure it out apparently that means a God with a mind did it.

 

[Erebus]

In a word, absolutely.

absolutely misunderstood you or absolutely that's the definition?

 

[Gjallarhorn]

absolutely misunderstood you or absolutely that's the definition?

A bit of both perhaps. We know things work on the quantum level and we know things work on the macro level. It's bringing them together in a consistent theory that's the issue. If supernatural events are real, then they are just another aspect of this TOE, albeit an underdeveloped one.

So yes, they are the same thing, and yes it is only called supernatural because we can't accurately explain it yet, but we can accurately explain quantum mechanics for the most part and yet we don't consider all events quantum events.

In short, Clarke's third law run wild.