Has The Supernatural Hypothesis Failed?

Let me preclude this reply with this:You may have noticed that I haven't participated here in a month; I have been too busy. I now have some free time that I am going to spend explaining to you how my thinking differs from your's, as a constructive attempt. If you're going to prefer to be argumentative and bring up the same old shit and just re-say things that you already have, then I am going to not reply any more. M'kay? I don't think this is true, and I think it is an error in inductive logic.Take the observation that every crow that you've seen has been black. There would then be a scientific theory that all crows are black. This theory is not saying that there are no white crows that exist. That is the nature of inductive logic. That doesn't mean that you cannot have any confidence in the all crows are black theory, especially if it is working.Now, scientific theories do not explicitly state the lack of the supernatural, nor do I think they implicitly imply it. They simply don't touch on it. If it works then sweet, we can just continue on with it and get more shit done.In Message 263, you wrote: Of course we can have confidence that the pen will drop, and mass bending spacetime is the best explanation we have for that, and we can have confidence in that explanation. But this is not saying that, to be ridiculous, there are not undetecable angels dancing on the pen to make it drop. And it doesn't matter how many times you reproduce your result, that fits within your prediction, you are still not providing evidence that the angels are not there. But if your explanation works, then fuck the angels... nobody cares.We can have confidence that they aren't there, and our predictions will be met, all the while not having anything to say about whether or not those angels actually exist. Yes we can have confidence in them, especially if they are working, but they are not statiscally, or logically, valid.I think I've brought this up before, and you didn't reply...What you are relying on is Inductive Probability:

quote:

---

It has often been noted that the word ‘probability’ is used in two different
senses in ordinary language. In one sense, probability is relative
to the available evidence and does not depend on unknown facts about
the world; probability in this sense has something to do with inductive
inference and so I will call it inductive probability. In the other sense,
probability is a fact about the world and not relative to the available
evidence; I will call this physical probability.

​

As an illustration of the difference between these two concepts, suppose
you have been told that a coin is either two-headed or two-tailed
but you have no information about which it is. The coin is about to be
tossed. What is the probability that it will land heads? There are two
natural answers to this question:

​

(i) 1/2.
(ii) Either 0 or 1 but I do not know which.

​

Answer (i) is natural if the question is taken to be about inductive
probability, while (ii) is the natural answer if the question is taken to
be about physical probability.

---

I still think you are trying to take an inductive probability about the supernatural and assign it a physical probability and that this is where the error of your logic occurs.

quote:

---

Continuing with this example, suppose you now observe that the
coin has a head on one side. Given the information you now have, the
inductive probability of it landing heads on the next toss is 1. Thus
the inductive probability has changed with the new evidence. You also
now know that the physical probability of the coin landing heads is 1,
but this probability has not changed, it was 1 before as well, only your
knowledge about it has changed. This further illustrates how inductive
probability is relative to evidence and physical probability is not.

---

I also think that part of your error is in assuming that a scientific explanation acutally precludes a supernatural one, and you think that pretty much all the supernatural explanations have been refuted by scientific ones. I don't think this is true. Just like it doesn't matter how many times you drop your pen, you still haven't shown that the angels aren't there.Now, this doesn't mean that we cannot have confidence that the scientific explanation will work, it just means that inductice logic doesn't preclude an alternative. And I think this is what Bluejay was getting into with having something to compare it to. In the end, you're still just assuming that the supernatural doesn't exist. It isn't something that you're arriving at from the available evidence.

Let's take this step by step. So we can have confidence in our naturalistic explanation because it has resulted in verifiable predictions. Good. We agree on that.Now if we are confident that gravitational effects are caused by by space-time curvature then we must correspondingly consider it unlikley that gravitational effects are caused by dancing angels. Do you agree?This is rather fundamental so an answer would be appreciated. Except that this explanation is simply unable to make any verifiable predictions. And is thus unworthy of any confidence. In short it is unlikely to be a correct explanation as the cause of the observed phenomenon (gravitational effects in this case). No? So according to your argument we are only ever talking about supernatural entities which are utterly imperceptible. Utterly imperceptible because they either play no causal role in any aspect of observable reality or they do so in a manner that is indistinguishable from natural law.Is that your position?Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

How confident are you that when I drop my pen it will simply fall to the floor?How confident are you that the entire universe was not created supernaturally in full (including our memories) two nanoseconds ago solely to make me look silly when I drop my pen, expect it to fall to the floor, and isntead watch in bewilderment as it flies out of the window?Is the above supernatural possibility falsified? No. Obviously not until I actually drop my pen.So on what comparison are you rejecting this supernatural possibility as pointlessly unlikely?Or am I wrong to have confidence in my pen simply falling to the floor?

Hi, Straggler.This whole time, you’ve been arguing from the position that you think I’m reasoning inconsistently. So, you keep demanding that I respond to various examples, thinking that, when I see what conclusions my arguments come to, I will suddenly decide that I don’t agree with it.Your reasoning for this is apparently that you personally find the conclusions nonsensical.
But, I ask you, what reason do you have to believes that I will also find the conclusions nonsensical?I am aware of what conclusions my argument leads to, and I don’t have a problem with them. Good grief, drop the gravity crap already!As far as I’m aware, there isn’t a clear naturalistic explanation for gravity yet, so this is hardly as analogous to the situation at hand as you seem to think it is.As far as can be told with present knowledge, gravity is supernatural.It is possible to have confidence that a pen will fall when I drop it.
But, it is not possible to have confidence that the explanation for why the pen will fall when I drop it is naturalistic, because naturalism cannot be used to demonstrate its own veracity.This is the logical conclusion of my argument.
I do not have any problems with this conclusion, and I don’t find it to be nonsensical. Furthermore, it doesn’t have the catastrophic effects on my ability to reason that you seem to think it would.----- I have made no such claim, and thus, do not have to provide the comparison on which I have made the claim.And, once again, I have already told you that scientific confidence is not robust to supernatural explanations.
And, I have no problem with the ramifications of this position, which are neither as severe nor as melodramatic as you seem to think they are.Why do I have to keep saying this?
Will you finally accept that this is, indeed, my position?
Or, will you demand that I hold your hand and walk you through yet another example?If you’d like, we can go through every theory that currently exists in science, one at a time, and I can show you how to apply my reasoning to each of them, and describe for you what the conclusions will be. However, I think you are fully capable of doing that on your own if you actually apply my reasoning the way I’m explaining it to you.I am not afraid of the conclusions of my own reasoning, Straggler. So, please stop throwing out examples of the ramifications of my reasoning, because I am aware of them already, and you keep messing it up anyway.In particular, my argument never has the ramification that supernatural alternatives are confidently rejected. Stop presenting examples in which you think it does.

---

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

No. I don't think so because I don't think it follows from the inductive logic, but I'm having trouble with this example. I can't imagine any observations of mass curving spacetime so I don't see how it rules out something like angels being responsible.Can you think of a better example? No, something like that wouldn't follow from the inductive logic nor the observations. I see why you'd think that though. Not necessarily, I just thought you wanted to limit it to those. I don't like limiting the supernatural to utterly imperceptible things because then were limited to things that are impossible to ever be observed.

On what basis? Be specific.You haven't falsified the possibility that the universe was supernaturally created in it's entirety 2 nano-seconds ago and that our memories and expectations of gravitational law are nothing but false inserted experiences designed to fool us into expecting my pen to drop to the floor instead of shoot out of the window.According to your arguments any conclusion that unfalsified supernatural possibilities such as the above scenario are "very improbable" are heuristic, statistically invalid and unworthy of any confidence. So on what basis do you dismiss this scenario? Then how can you have any confidence in my pen simply dropping to the floor rather than shooting out of the window as per the above scenario?By the terms of your own argument - You can't.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

CS if we have confidence in space-time curvature as being the cause of gravitational effects how can we consider it anything other than unlikely that dancing angels are the cause of gravitational effects? I didn't say any observation ruled out your angels. I said that the ability of space-time curvature as an explanation to make predictions which have been verified makes this a superior explanation in which we can have confidence as being an accurate reflection of reality.And if we have strong confidence that space-time curvature is the cause of gravitational effects we are correspondingly sceptical about other competing explanations. Especially ones which are wholly unevidenced and unable to make any predictions at all.Surely this is simply inarguable?

By what standard are we judging its failure? It seems disingenuous to judge something on a scale it was never claimed to occupy. There is no such thing as a 'super natural hypothesis'. An hypothesis by definition must be testable. By placing our hypothesis out of the realm of the natural, it is impossible to, through the natural empirical means to which the scientific method is subservient, verify or falsify—that, to test.Anyone who believes supernatural notions scientifically testable is either misguided or a liar or quack. Others realize it is outside the realm of science, and thus any judgement on it by science as being a failure is clearly inappropriate.So, by what standard are you judging it as a failure? And, is it appropriate to apply this standard to the notion of the supernatural?Jon

---

"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer

​

"Dim bulbs save on energy..." - jar

Numbers writes:
Pleading to the supernatural to explain anything is a nonstarter imo. Different because the supernatural is supernatural.QM theory can show that the pen your so fond of dropping in thought experiments can, in theory, quantum tunnel through your fingers.My dear Watson, Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.Except maybe it is impossible to eliminate all possibilities imo.

So you think the existence of the supernatural has never been posited as the cause of any observable phenomenon?

There have been many tests of the supernatural hypothesis.One simple example: determining that thunder and lightning were not caused by Thor.Science tested that issue, and determined that there was a natural cause. Those who believed in a supernatural cause were shown that there was no evidence supporting their belief.Multiply this by hundreds or thousands of tests. (This would have been enough evidence for any field of science, but those who believe in the supernatural are not susceptible to such evidence.)

---

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Have you read this thread at all? Have you seen my argument with Oni? Nobody, least of all I, is denying possibilities.Once again I supply my most used quote:Betrand Russel writes:

quote:

---

"To my mind the essential thing is that one should base one's arguments upon the kind of grounds that are accepted in science, and one should not regard anything that one accepts as quite certain, but only as probable in a greater or a less degree. Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality".

---

Sure it has. What does that have to do with what I said? It doesn't matter what it seeks to explain, it's simply not an hypothesis—and not subject to review by the scientific method—if it precludes from its very form any scientific means of falsification, which is what supernatural explanations do.Science is biased against supernatural explanations; it excludes them on account of their being non-natural. There is nothing wrong with this, but it does mean that we cannot use science to falsify or verify supernatural explanations, and as such we cannot judge the veracity of a supernatural claim via the scientific method. We need an alternate, more appropriate, ruler against which to test such claims.Jon

---

"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer

​

"Dim bulbs save on energy..." - jar

Again, read what I've written. If the explanation is supernatural, then the natural methodologies of the scientific method do not apply. We found a natural explanation for lightening, but our tests and resulting explanations had nothing to do with old Thor.Jon

---

"Can we say the chair on the cat, for example? Or the basket in the person? No, we can't..." - Harriet J. Ottenheimer

​

"Dim bulbs save on energy..." - jar

Do you think there is a supernatural causes for apples falling from trees?Do some things happen by themselves or is supernatural involvement required for everything?