Has The Supernatural Hypothesis Failed?

Yes. Then it wouldn't actually be magic. It would just appear to be so by those too scientifically and technologically limited to know otherwise. Those applying the laws of nature would know that they were not magicians. Because if they are natural they are not supernatural. So you think the natural world cannot have come about by supernatural means......Try telling that to a supernaturalist.

I guess it is a good job most of us aren't expected to plant any crops this year!! I think you are right to suggest that we are all irrationally superstitious to some extent. Even when we rationally know it is nonsense. Well it seems obvious to me. But apparently it isn't nearly so obvious to a huge number of people. What is it that either we are seeing that they are not or they are seeing that we are not? And that feeling of confidence seems to ultimately be responsible for a great deal of dispute. The EvC debate board would I suspect be a very quiet place without it.

Your mind contains a model of the world that it expects is accurate. Seeing something isn't really a question of some Cartesian entity accepting photons...it is 'merely' a near real-time model. Someone might be visually exposed to some bit of evidence that undermines their existing model and the brain weighs things up. The existing functional model that has gotten us this far - or an unknown model based on one experience. Brains tend to choose the former more.As such - their 'visual model' of what they are experiencing when confronted with something might be quite different than our own.What they aren't seeing therefore (I think) is a viable alternative model that can be reasonably adopted to account for all the things they have previously experienced (memories of which are altered to retain consistency...).Basically it's the old 'worldview'/cognitive dissonance argument.They see it - they just make different links, associations and inferences (or just plainly cast it aside as an outlier). Yep - and it's also how professional poker players make a profit

I guess I just don't get what "supernatural" means, and what separates it from "natural".I guess something like magnetism would seem magic or supernatural to many people (including myself!) in the sense that I can't see how it works. But we now have ways of detecting it, and laws that define it, so we say it is part of the natural world.If an entity created the universe, it must have had a mechanism for doing so. If we found out what that mechanism was, why wouldn't it be classified as "natural" just as things like magnetism, gravity and electricity are?If it could never be defined as natural, why is that? What is the dividing line between supernatural and natural?

OK. As does my supernaturalistic "opponent" (to describe one with an opposing view) OK. But is it "correct"? How do they (or indeed we) determine this? Epystemology 101. Def your bag!!! Why is "their" view unreasonable and "our" view viable? What makes it such? AAAAArrrGGGhhh!!!But that aside.Surely some world views are more "reasonable" and "viable" than others? What determines this? When does (the much overstated) cognitive dissonance come into play on such matters? So are all POV equally valid? Yep. And if there was a "reality" poker game the supernaturalist would be clasping his hands over his naked genitals whilst debating which sock to remove as the last garment before one.

Imperceptible unknowablity?Seriously - A theist or some other form of supernaturalist would be better placed to answer these questions.I basically agree with you.But if "gods" (or whatever) is just that which we don't understand in the same sense that Thor is simply static electricity building up in clouds then I have no quarrel with the supernatural per se.But I doubt that those who advocate supernatural explanations would accept that definition.

Discussions using the word ''supernatural'' will often amount to nothing if the definitions aren't agreed upon in the beginning. We can see it here in the exchange between JUC ans straggler where they obviously aren't using the same definition of 'supernatural'.I have always tried to define supernatural along the lines of ''outside of nature''. Nature here being our multi-dimensional universe. An alternate definition would be ''everything that is not bound by the laws of nature''.The christian God would therefore be supernatural according to this definition. Ohter universes in a possible multiverse would also become defined as supernatural, however. This could make some sense in the way that even if these other universes interacted with ours, not being bound by natural laws, this would appear like some kind of 'supernatural' interaction from our point of view.This definition therefore also allows for interaction between supernatural and natural, without the former becoming the latter because of this. and this interaction will be detectable/observable, although not scientifically detectable because it cannot be repeated as a natural phenomenon could.

They're both 'correct' and they're both 'wrong'. It really depends on what you are measuring with 'correctness'! The only way we can measure 'accuracy' is through using multiple independent measuring tools. A system seemingly unavailable to dualists. They can only measure things with one instrument - their mind. If that's not callibrated to an 'accurate as measured by multiple independent measuring tools' - then it's probably going to give innacurate answers. One can't expect to accurately conclude how long something is when you are using a ruler of unknown length to measure it!But they'll probably be 'good enough' to allow survival and reproduction. In the sense I was arguing it - their view is reasonable. But as for why their model is likely to contain inaccuracies - the above should suffice. Valid to what measure? Not equally accurate, perhaps. Why not? It's a Dead Cert!

Indeed.Your multidimensional universe idea highlights this problem quite well.Of course, as a monist - I am perfectly happy that there is just a 'natural' world. It is the dualists who have to tell us what this other 'substance' is. Some dualists believe the spirit realm (or supernatural or non material) is a realm of perfect abstract ideas (aka Platonism). Others have less defninitive understandings of what they are talking about.Locke seems to have gone for the traditional dichotomy of active but immaterial substance and passive but material substance.Which would seem to indicate that 'energy' was spirit and 'baryonic matter' was earthy substance. But physicists have killed that line of thinking by showing how they are the same thing (the monists were right in that case).Indeed, those who believe in the supernatural rely on everybody else's cultural views of some kind of ghostly spooky spirit stuff to carry them through such discussions.I doubt many 'supernaturalists' would be satisfied to learn that the universe was created by a scientist who was made up of the same core stuff as we were and whose linneage evolved quite 'naturally'. But they need to have something spooky and spiritual - otherwise there's no soul which is, they generally assure us, definitely not natural/material.Oh - forgot to add: many supernaturalists need a way around the laws of Thermodynamics or they lose all prospects at immortality...Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

But aren't we correct in assuming that these multi-verses would still bound to their own natural laws? The same laws that sprung ours out of the colliding brains/strings/what have you. Their laws would be different, according to these leading theories mind you, but still laws and still natural in the same sense as our is, right?- OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

As much as it pains me here is a dictionary definition: For the purposes of this thread I would suggest - The divine, the miraculous and/or that pertaining "to things that cannot be explained according to natural laws". And by "cannot" I mean inherenetly cannot. Not just that it is practically difficult to do so.Alternate universes can potentially be investigated in terms of, and explained according to, natural laws. So can magnetism. Can God? Can the soul? Can the afterlife? What experiments can we conceivably do to study these phenomenon?These things may well have material explanations. But I don't think many supernaturalists would be very happy having the object of their belief being reduced down to an equation or demonstrated as to exist only as a result of the material brains of humans.In general it seems supernaturalists want to be able to claim the innate and inherent incomprehensibility of the object of their beliefs when it suits them but suddenly get all coy about this innate unknowabliity when seeking to conflate supernatural notions of God with materially derived concepts such as alternate universes in conversations like this one.

Agreed, but their own natural laws are unknowable to us, they are outside of our 4D universe which is the only place we can conduct scientific investigation.As i said, any interaction by these universe into our own would appear from our point of view as ''supernatural''.But it's debatable I agree, I draw the line with our universe because that is where we can do science. We cannot do science in those other universes. But I guess you could draw the line to include all the multiverse.

Yet. But what do you call the science being done in cosmology?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Cosmology deals with our universe.Any study of the multiverses seems inherently different from modern science in that all you can do is extrapolating mathematical constructs. The scientific method and experimentation cannot be applied.But as I said, it's simply a line drawn in the sand. The dictionnary definition given by Straggler is maybe more general, and would include God but exclude the multiverse.

But there are experiments going on now that will test many of the theories about other dimensions or even universes. So how is that not science?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!