Has The Supernatural Hypothesis Failed?

Your starting position here was that supernatural has no meaning in and of itself and that it is simply a label used to refer to something that is lacking naturalistic explanation. In response it is my contention that in fact describing an explanation as supernatural does have conceptual meaning and that no matter how wrong or evidentially silly such beliefs may be, supernatural is not simply used as a placeholder or synonym for unknown.Now this entire debate site (note the name — Evolution Vs Creation) is primarily dedicated to the argument between those who advocate supernatural explanations Vs those who advocate naturalistic ones. The topics over which this debate rages do include some scientific unknowns (e.g. the origins of the universe) but they also include phenomenon to which science provides very definite answers (e.g. the origins of species). Even a cursory perusal of some of the topics on display should demonstrate to you that supernaturalists (e.g. biblical creationists) are not simply advocating a position of it is unknown. They are instead advocating explanations that are alternatives to, and which in many cases entirely contradict, scientific naturalistic explanations.Now I think that supernaturalists are wrong. I believe that supernaturalistic explanations are little more than imagined nonsense. But your original assertion that supernaturalist beliefs amount to nothing more than describing something as unknown is patently false. And your point is what? Tell what question you are posing and I will.

The length and rambling nature of your posts are making them almost incomprehensible.I still have no idea why you think human feelings of awe require any supernatural cause. Or even what you think "supernatural" means.My use of the term supernatural is as follows: An adjective to describe the attributes of being inherently materially inexplicable as a result of being neither derived from nor subject to natural laws.The divine and miraculous concept of Jesus Christ is an example of a supernatural concept. The fact I don't think this entity actually exists has no bearing on whether it can be accurately described as "supernatural" or not.Your questions. Why do you think they would they require a supernatural explanation? Because the concept of God in question meets the criteria of being supernatural given above.The fact I don't think this entity actually exists has no bearing on whether it can be accurately described as "supernatural" or not. Human brain activity? Do you think such feelings are possible without the material apparatus of the brain? Are you suggesting that a supernatural cause of such feelings is required simply because you personally know of no natural one?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

From Message 91 and upthread from that. In response (and editing out the various histrionics) you say: Yes your argument applies to all situations in which an evidenced natural explanation is pitted against an alternative which requires the existence of an unevidenced and unfalsifiable supernatural cause.Given that we can posit alternative unevidenced supernatural causes to every single scientific explanation you have succeeded in invalidating the whole of science. By the terms of your argument we can no confidence in any scientific conclusion at all.Well done. You can reword things to make them sound more reasonable as much as you like. It remains the case that by the terms of your argument we can never have any confidence in electrical resistance as the naturalistic explanation for the source of light and heat in filament bulbs because we cannot disprove the unevidenced and unfalsifiable supernatural possibilities. Possibilities such as, but not limited to, ethereal salamanders sneakily emulating the effects of electrical resistance.Now do you really think that all scientific conclusions are heuristic and unworthy of confidence? Do you really have no confidence in electrical resistance as the source of heat and light in filament bulbs?Or have you just talked yourself into a hole?

Then you have completely misunderstood bluegenes whole argument. You are making the same persistent mistake that RAZD does of conflating the phraseology of theories with statements of fact.The theory that "All supernatural beings are products of human imagination" is a theory in exactly the same way that "All filament bulbs produce light and heat by means of electrical resistance" is a theory.In neither case is anybody stating that these are certainly true. If they were they wouldn't be called theories now would they? Nor, in either case, is anybody denying the possibility of an unevidenced supernatural cause of the phenomenon in question.In both cases a well evidenced naturalistic explanation has been put forward to explain an observed phenomenon. This is what science does. And in doing so, by the terms of your own arguments, any advocacy of supernatural causes for the phenomenon in question is both unwarranted and irrelevant to the confidence we can have in that naturalistic explanation. So we cannot say that supernatural causes of light and heat in filament bulbs are impossible. But we can confidently ignore such possibilities as unlikely to the point of irrelevant because we have a well evidenced naturalistic explanation for that phenomenon in place.Likewise with the source of supernatural concepts. For every evidenced naturalistic explanation for any phenomenon you can name I can posit an unevidenced and unfalsifiable alternative supernatural cause. But by the terms of your own arguments this has no effect on our confidence in the evidenced naturalistic explanation.The human imagination is a well evidenced naturalistic explanation for the origin of supernatural concepts.So why is the possibility of a supernatural cause relevant to our confidence in this naturalistic explanation but no other?This is nothing more than special pleading.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

The tentative statement that All gods are the product of human imagination is no different from tentatively saying that All species on Earth are the result of natural selection or tentatively saying that All filament bulbs produce light and heat by means of electrical resistance.The only difference between any of these three is that you have a personal bias against one of them. OK. Hold that thought. Now let's consider the issue of "universality" that you are having such a problem with.We can legitimately have confidence beyond the known fact that humans invent gods. As the only known (and highly evidenced) source of such concepts we can justifiably have confidence in human imagination as able to account for ALL god concepts.Just as we can have high confidence in natural selection as able to account for ALL species on Earth.
Just as we can have high confidence in electrical resistance as able to account for the light and heat produced by ALL filament bulbs.The fact that some god concepts might possibly be derived from the actual existence of the supernatural is no more relevant to our confidence in the human imagination theory than the fact that some supernatural selection might possibly have taken place is to the theory of evolution by natural selection.The fact that some god concepts might possiblybe derived from the actual existence of the supernatural is no more relevant to our confidence in the human imagination theory than the fact that some filament bulbs might possibly be powered by supernatural means is to the electrical resistance theory.Such unevidenced considerations are unfalsifiable and thus logically possible. But we don’t have a single damn reason to give them any credence at all. And that applies equally to all three examples mentioned.If you are going to special plead that it applies only to some but not others you need to explicitly explain why this is justified. No more or less so than evolution can cope with rabbits in the pre-cambrian. Or with the discovery of a single filament bulb powered by some other means. It casts doubts on the universality of the theory as a whole but the human imagination still remains perfectly able to account for all other god concepts.Why do you think it is so fundamentally different?Edited by Straggler, : Outliers

Bailey
I have finally worked out what the hell you are talking about. And in doing so I can see why your thinking is so confused.You think that because out of ignorance someone can look at a fire and conclude that is supernatural whilst another person will look at an eclipse and out of a different form of ignorance conclude that is supernatural — That the term supernatural refers directly to whatever phenomenon one is personally unable to explain. On the basis that a disparate array of phenomenon have at one time or another been labelled as supernatural you thus conclude that the term has no defined meaning whatsoever.Is that right? If so the following is why you are wrong.The term supernatural is an adjective. Not a noun. The fact that it has been applied to a wide range of nouns (fire, eclipse etc.) no more makes it objectively meaningless than the fact that red can be applied to books, toasters, apples or windmills results in the term red being meaningless.When we describe something as supernatural we mean that it is inherently materially inexplicable because it is neither derived from nor subject to the laws of nature. Now the fact that people have (and do) apply this adjective erroneously to things which it later turns out are perfectly explicable in natural terms does not make the term meaningless or devoid of common conceptual content. The fact that it is highly improbable that anything genuinely supernatural actually exists does not make the term meaningless or devoid of common conceptual content. It is a descriptive term. One that that is all too often applied erroneously as the result of ignorance I agree. But that does not mean the term itself has no meaning.. The phenomenon may change but the attributes believers imbue these with can be meaningfully called "supernatural.Without wanting to get too grammatically pedantic on your arse — Basically you are conflating nouns (fire, eclipse etc.) with the adjective (i.e. supernatural) used to describe (correctly or otherwise) the attributes of those nouns.

I think so. Message 388 and upthread for reference Are you denying that it possibly can? Why does evidence have to do with the logical possibility of something existing? Unless you are saying that nothing currently un-evidenced can possibly logically exist? Well by your premise anything which exists is natural by definition. But if (for example) a genuinely divine and miraculous Jesus (not derived from or subject to natural laws) does exist he is not natural is he?So either you are saying such a being is logically impossible (unjustified) or your premise is false. It is an adjective. It can (erroneously or otherwise) be applied to describe nouns. That it can be applied to many different nouns has no bearing on it's conceptual meaningfulness as an adjective. Are you saying it is impossible that anything genuinely miraculous can possibly exist? If you define it out of existence - Either on the basis of a false premise or the unjustifiable assertion that some things are logically impossible - Then you will indeed render the term meaningless.But not justifiably so.

RAZD seems to be under the bewildering misapprehension that citing unfalsifiable supernatural alternative explanations to evidenced naturalistic theories invalidates them. And you (at least did) seem to agree with him to some extent. If (for example) a chimp colony genetically modified by humans for increased intelligence started displaying primitive theistic tendencies this would obviously render the universal form of bluegenes theory All god concepts are the products of human imagination to be false in the same way that All species on Earth are the result of evolution by means of natural selection can be rendered false by species that are developed in a lab.But in both cases these would be exceptions that have little bearing on the validity of the over-arching theory in question.It is the ability to provide an evidenced naturalistic explanation for an observed phenomenon that can be verified by prediction which is what we are talking about here. Well why don’t you explain how your statistical analysis was applied to the specific example of the Big Bang hypothesis such that it has rightfully achieved the status of high confidence. High confidence that ultimately arose as a result of the discovery of the Cosmic Background Radiation.Can you make clear what the null hypothesis was, what statistical data was analysed and how the hypothesis met the requirements of high confidence based on this statistical methodology.

Because it is not impossible. Therefore it must be considered possible. Your premise denies even this possibility and is thus invalid. All that is required of a logical possibility is that it is not internally contradictory. A square cannot be a circle. An omniscient being cannot be ignorant of it’s omniscience. These things are self contradictory and thus logically impossible. The existence of something which is neither derived from nor subject to natural laws is NOT logically impossible. Therefore it must be considered logically possible. No matter how unevidenced or unlikely we may deem it to be. Humans have a long record of erroneously believing that perfectly natural things are genuinely inexplicable in natural terms. This does not in itself preclude the possibility that there are things which are genuinely supernatural (this remains logically possible) but it does add weight to the argument that the whole idea of things which are not subject to natural laws of any sort is a human fiction. Plausibility has nothing to do with possibility. As you well know I think the actual existence of a divine and miraculous Christ is deeply implausible. But it is not impossible. Thus you cannot define it to be so. Which is what your false premise unjustifiably does. This is my position step by step. Tell me where you think it is wrong:

That which is possible is not restricted to that which is currently evidenced.

The actual existence of the genuinely supernatural (e.g. a genuinely divine and miraculous Christ who is neither derived from nor subject to laws of nature) is a possibility.

Your premise defines that which actually exists as being necessarily natural.

Should this genuinely supernatural entity (e.g. Christ as above) actually exist, by the terms of your premise, it would be natural.

Something cannot be both natural and supernatural simultaneously. This is a logical contradiction.

Thus your premise is necessarily false.

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Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I never said it was a logical proof. The requirement to consider something possible can indeed be borne from ignorance. Until we know that something is impossible how can we consider it to be anything other than a possibility?

We cannot disprove supernatural involvement in ANY observed phenomenon no matter how well materially evidenced our scientific explanation for that phenomenon may be.But nor can we prove supernatural involvement in ANY observed phenomenon either. Should disproving or proving such things have any bearing on our confidence in our theories? But the thing that you seem unable to comprehend is that ALL naturalistic explanations necessarily implicitly take the same position with regard to the unfalsifiable supernatural alternatives which is being explicitly taken here. The only difference in this instance is that it is in your face and has to be confronted head on as part of the argument rather than just assumed or ignored as is the case in every other naturalistic explanation.Every scientific theory can be falsified by observation with a naturalistic explanation. And every single scientific explanation for anything could be invalidated by the presence of unfalsifiable supernatural involvement in that phenomenon. The human imagination theory is no different except in that the normal falsification focus is reversed. Are gravitational effects the result of space-time curvature as it seems or is there a supernatural agent at work making it appear this way?

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Is evolution really the result of selection and random mutation or is there an imperceptible supernatural presence following a plan that appears random to us?

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Is the Earth really billions of years old or was it supernaturally created seconds ago with the full appearance of age?

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Are supernatural concepts sourced from the human mind as all the evidence would suggest or do some derive from the un-evidenced existence of the supernatural?You could not apply your statistical methods to any of the above questions to eliminate the supernatural possibility. Yet in each case the naturalistic explanation would be falsified by the presence of a supernatural cause for the phenomenon at hand. We cannot prove that something is definitely supernatural any more than we can prove that there is definitely no supernatural involvement present in gravity or evolution or any other physically observed phenomenon for which we have a material explanation.All we have done is reverse the normal focus of disproof from being unable to prove that there are no supernatural elements that would invalidate our naturalistic explanation to, in this case, being unable to prove that there are.It is a difference of focus. Not principle. No. It can be falsified by natural means. But because of the nature of the subject the focus is on falsifying the possible supernatural causes that, whilst ever present, normally get completely ignored.The only difference is one of emphasis. Not principle. So can the human imagination theory. All we need is physical evidence of an alien culture or other species that demonstrates it's belief in the supernatural in some way. Then humans would not be the only source of supernatural concepts.But these naturalistic alternatives are being ignored in exactly the same way that supernatural alternatives are usually ignored.It is a difference of emphasis. Not principle. The point of my bringing up the Big Bang theory was to highlight that confidence in theories rests primarily on their ability to make predictions.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

I wish you well with your exams over the next few weeks and obviously hope to see you return to this afterwards. But here — in summary — I will demonstrate why it is that your position is so flawed.Take any scientific explanation you care to consider in whatever the most succinct terms you are happy to consider it in. Now add onto the end of it And no supernatural involvement is ever present in this process.Now at this point Bluejay you will be jumping up and down. You will be telling us that no explicit statement regarding unfalsifiable possibilities can justifiably be made. You will be telling us that even if there is supernatural involvement we can never prove it to be such and that the theory in question is thus unfalsifiable and unscientific.But here is the problem with your entire position. This explicitly stated denial of supernatural involvement is implicitly present in every single naturalistic explanation. It is never explicitly stated. It doesn’t need to be. But that denial of supernatural involvement is what by definition makes it a naturalistic explanation.Now we could write the human imagination theory in the following way — Supernatural concepts are derived from the human mind. And no supernatural involvement is ever present in this process. In which case it is phrased in the same way as all other naturalistic theories but with the tentative denial of supernatural involvement necessarily made explicit because the subject matter demands it.So in summary — Your objections to the human imagination theory apply to every single naturalistic explanation. Only because of the subject matter and the phraseology this necessitates are the factors you find so offensive explicitly stated. Your position amounts to nothing more than demanding disproof of supernatural involvement and this is of course impossible in ANY naturalistic explanation. But this has no more bearing on our confidence in the human imagination theory than it does any other scientific theory or naturalistic explanation for anything.See you when you get back.

If something is not known to be impossible it must remain considered as a possibility. Right? I would have thought that this is simply inarguable.Do you know that the existence of a divine and genuinely miraculous Christ is impossible?If so how? Your reason amounts to nothing more than a restatement of your false premise. "All that exists is necessarily natural". Then you have apparently single handedly solved the ontological question. A question that has bemused philosophers for milleniaEdited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

If you are simply asserting that the term "supernatural" is devoid of any common conceptual meaning at all then I suggest that you get a collection of dictionaries and look up the word to see how it is defined.In addition all of your arguments could equally apply to numerous other words. Words such as "impossible". Words which have been erroneously applied out of ignorance ("Heavier than air flying machines are impossible" - Lord Kelvin) and words which can be applied subjectively ("I find your posts impossible to make sense of" - Straggler). Words which have defined and common conceptual meaning despite their erroneous use and subjective application. If I throw a stick will you go away?This will be my last post in response to you. Because (to put it bluntly) I think you are a bit of a twat.

I don’t know what it definitively means to exist. Nor do you. Which in turn means that declaring things as impossible based on a very definite definition of existence is unjustifiable.By defining exist as you do you have made the all human conceptions of the supernatural (e.g. a genuinely divine and miraculous Christ unbounded by the laws of nature) logically impossible.Now as a fellow atheist on this board nothing would make my life easier than for all religious conceptions of the supernatural (Allah, Christ, Vishnu et al) to be logically impossible. It would save a lot of time and effort if we could just say No. It is logically impossible for the object of your beliefs as conceived by your religion to actually exist. Thus you are refuted.But you cannot justifiably take one of the most contentious areas of philosophy, simplistically assert that all which exists must be derived from and subject to natural laws because we know of nothing else and then pronounce that anything that defies your definition is impossible, meaningless and nothing. Purely because you have dictated it to be so.Frankly if refuting theists were as trivial as you are making it this site would be a very dull place. So for that reason, even if no other, I am going to have to remain in disagreement.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.