Do we have evidence against the supernatural?

I agree 100% Well.. now you're stepping back. "Limited" and "no" are different; there is a limited ability to understand, not no ability. So that doesn't seem to fit to me. Plus, they are said to hold to known laws of the universe (at least black holes), and predictions have been made that have been confirmed (event horizons, xxx xxx types of radiation, etc).I was going to propose "testability" as a basic premise for supernatural, but I've been so busy with schoolwork. I wanted to at least throw my support behind your definition, because I totally agree, and I think the consequences of accepting such a definition are really .. interesting. I'll get back during the weekend and try to flesh that out (unless some kind soul does it for me! )Ben

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Everything natural is physical--that's my idea.

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Which doesn't address the issues. For a start it's incomplete without an eplanation of what it means to be "physical". Are patterns of processes physical ? They may require SOME physical object to exist but they aren't dependant on specific physical objects.Nor does it explain why equating "spiritual" - which you claim to be supernatural - with "mental" is helpful at all. So far as I can see it still amuonts to begging the question by defining something known to exist as supernatural without making any case for such a definition.

"Personally I think the word supernatural is a general word for things that are unknown and/or imagined and doesn't really have any substance outside of stories and literature." - purpledawnI agree; 'supernatural' is a concept we use to describe (in a very messy way) what we can't explain with science. I would like to say 'yet' but as QM shows us, we can't know every thing.However, a quark's motion variables not being fully known does not render it out side of 'natural'. There are things we may never know (at least simultaneously) but we don't need to invoke the supernatural.I would say 'supernatural' is a meaningless concept. I serves no purpose and can retard scientific inquiry, e.g. "goddunit"This message has been edited by Larni, 10-05-2005 07:04 AM

Maybe the physical is that which is or is made up of elementary particles.
I'm not sure what you mean by "patterns of process." Maybe something like electricity? That's physical. Presumably, what we call "energy" is physical.Thoughts, one would assume, are physical, although it doesn't seem like that to our private experience. In fact, I have an idea that the whole concept of "spirit" came originally from our private experience of mentality, which feels like, but presumably is not, its own special type of reality--an incorporeal reality. A physical reality cannot produce some other type of reality. It can only produce more physical stuff.The appropriateness of using the word "mental" as a synonym of "spiritual" becomes obvious when we think for example of the concept of "my soul." It cannot be distinguished from "my mind." Our identity, our soul, is our mind. So the soul, if there were such a thing, would be a different type of reality, not divisible and not made up of elementary particles or little packets of energy.So if there was something that was real, but was not physical, then we could call it supernatural.

Consider music. A piece of music is both a pattern (that is it has a certain structure which identifies it) and a process (that is that the pattern has a temporal aspect - it changes over time, either in reaction to internal or external states or in the case of music the pattern itself includes a temporal element).Whether in a written form (which is a pattern rather than a process) or as a performance (which is both) it exists based on a material substrate. However we would distinguish either from the composition itself, considered as a thing. So is music physical or not ?I would add that I would consider mind to be similar to a performance of a musical piece in some respects, being both pattern and process. Although, it is more like improvisational music in that the temporal development is not fixed, but instead represents the interaction of the mind with its environment.Your invocation of the concept of the soul here just confirms my point. As you agree the mind may be natural while the "soul" or "spirit" are supernatural. Identifying the mind with the supernatural elides this distinction without clarifying what is meant by the supernatural.

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However, a quark's motion variables not being fully known does not render it out side of 'natural'. There are things we may never know (at least simultaneously) but we don't need to invoke the supernatural.

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Exactly! Personally I don't feel that scientific phenoms fall into the truly supernatural "realm."Looking at the etymology of the word supernatural we see that it started as a religious term. Considering their cosmology, viewing God as literally above nature makes sense. He was part of the "higher realm." Eventually the word went on to be associated with spirits in the ghostly sense.Even the definition that 1.61803 gave in Message 52 supports the religous or ghostly meaning.Plus when we look at the OP Ben is not presenting a scientific phenom, it is a religious or faith based claim.I found this article on Neurocience and the Soul which highlights a presentation by Dr. Malcolm Jeeves, who is also a person of deep religious belief. Here are some parts I found interesting. Not all faiths support the idea of an independent soul after death.
Science doesn't seem to have found the soul to be a separate entity unaffected by what happens to the body.Would these be considered evidence against there being a nonphysical afterlife?

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"The average man does not know what to do with this life, yet wants another one which lasts forever." --Anatole France

Just a couple of comments, to hint at where I'm going (hopefully I'll find time this weekend to go there) "Need" (we don't need to invoke) is a utilitarian concept. Science and scientific theories are utilitarian. There's no need to invoke them... for science.For "truth"? There's no argument for or against invoking supernatural for that. There's no reason to invoke supernatural when talking about "truth"... and there's no reason against it. "Truth" is, by the definition given by 1..61803 in this thread, supernatural. Parsimony is not a guideline applicable for the "supernatural", and therefore not applicable to "truth". It serves the purpose for explaining the unexplainable. It definitely can retard scientific inquiry. But it's definitely not meaningless, and definitely serves some purpose.Some people simply seem unable to be satisfied with the answer "I don't know". Even labelling something, which gives the appearance of understanding, is more comfortable to people (in general) than simply leaving it "untouched" (a pure "I don't know"). Supernatural is then, in this regards, useful.It's crazy to delude ourselves and describing ourselves as "rational animals." (pending definitions), we most certainly are not. We should face the reality of our psychological traits. "Supernatural", or "explaining that which we do not know", is critical to what we are. Whether we explain it with the naturalistic assumption (nothing "spooky" exists; that which is unknown can either be known, or simply does not exist), or with the "supernaturalistic" assumption (there are things which "exist" that cannot be addressed through emprical investigation or theory).Damn... there's no way I can go further today. Sorry. But this is the direction I'm headed. There are things which are not "successfully" addressed by empirical investigation to date. We have to deal with that fact. How we deal with it is up to us, and in principle not open to claims of "right" or "wrong", only lesser claims, such as "utility".Again, sorry for the hasty, unsupported post. Not sure if this is useful at all, but I'll try to get back to it this weekend.

nwr,I'm bumping this because I am of course interested in your perspective on this. Would you be so kind as to address my original response to you? I'm afraid you may have found it dismissive; if so, I'm sorry. I tried to address what I could understand (first two bullets) and ask a question for the 3rd.Of course, if it's simply not interesting to you to discuss, that's fine too. But I wanted to follow up.Thanks!
Ben

Sure.In your earlier response (Message 11) you said:

• The concept of no afterlife has a human origin;
• There was no empirical evidence to support that concept;
• It is known that scammers offer that seem too good to be true.

It always seemed to me that the idea of no afterlife was the default assumption. I assume that when children see their pet cat or dog die, they do not expect any afterlife for that cat or dog. And I assume that when they first stumble upon a case of human death, they likewise do not expect there to be an afterlife.I admit that I have no evidence to back up this opinion. Certainly, some cultures have a concept of an afterlife. Others have a concept of reincarnation, which is a modified concept of afterlife.I'm not sure how you would ever investigate what is the default assumption. By the time children have reached an age where they might think about the question, they have already been indoctrinated by the assumptions of the culture.Apologies if this isn't much of a response. That's why I didn't reply initially.

This is good. I appreciate the response.I don't know how you'd go about finding the "default" response either, especially since kids' thoughts are confounded with the fact that they're in development. Is kids' response due to a developmental factor (i.e. it's incomplete), or just a lack of a culturally learned factor (i.e. it's complete and pure)? I have no idea.My assumption is different. I tried to outline it in Message 67; it seems most adults feel the need to have some "mechanism" that either explains things, or (via assumption) WOULD or WILL explain things. But right now, it's basically an assumption. No hard data.So I guess we get nowhere with it for now. Thanks for the clarification.This message has been edited by Ben, Wednesday, 2005/10/05 11:27 AM

Considered in one aspect, music is physical sounds. From other aspects, it is an abstraction.It can be compared to chess. The pieces are physical, but the rules assigned to them by chess are abstract. Physically, a bishop can move any which way, but according to the abstraction of chess, it can only move diagonally.But considering the definition of "supernatural," we can say that if it is not physical, then it does not fit the natural system. But if it is abstract, it is not real.So the supernatural is that which would be both real and incorporeal.

Robin, two questions, just out of curiosity:- Could the supernatural exist if there were no conscious beings in the universe?
- Is gravity incorporeal?

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins

Hello robinrohan, I think that music is a interesting example. First off it is subjective what music is. Some would say that Pantera was not music. Second, if one composes a piece of music, then is the score considered music or does the notes need to be played
in order to be music? Third, I can imagine Bach's Air in G in my mind note for note, tempo, key. I can hear the music in my head.
Is the music real? Is sound required?To me, the term supernatural is a catch all phrase for something that goes beyound our everyday normal/ natural experiance.Ever see the movie: "The gods must be Crazy" ?
In that movie a pilot in a air plane flying low over some African plains throws a empty Coke bottle out of his cockpit.
The indigenous tribes man looks up in the sky and see the plane and picks up the glass bottle and assumes it has come from the god's.Now, you and I both know the Coke bottle is not supernatural..
not to us. But to those primitive people it was.
So it seems the term supernatural is in the eye of the beholder.Now back to music: Nothing that exist is truly corporeal.
Drill down far enough into what composes matter and we end up with probability waves.
Modern theories of the nature of reality are now postulating that perhaps the universe is a symphony of vibrating strings woven into a fabric / membrane. It is the frequencies of the strings that manifest the fundalmental forces that compose this music we call matter.

The reality of abstracts is a big philosphical debating point. While I do not beleive that abstracts exist in the same way as concretes it certainly seems meaningful to say that they do exist and are real.So presumably you mean that supernatural entites would be concrete entities that are "incorporeal". Now all you have to do is deal with the question of what "incorporeal" refers to - which I have already effectively asked. Would, for instance, an intelligent entity that used space-time as a substrate rather than matter be considered corporeal ?
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"Considering their cosmology, viewing God as literally above nature makes sense. He was part of the "higher realm." Eventually the word went on to be associated with spirits in the ghostly sense." -purpledawnI think you got it right. Supernatural seems to really mean pertaining to god. I know others may argue that it's not just god, but thats the question being asked here really; does god i.e. a supernatural entity (brace for definition quibbles) exist. I could rephrase the OP as "do we have evidence against god's existance?"BTW The Bible is not evidence for god, people.