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Member (Idle past 1393 days) Posts: 1495 From: Framingham, MA, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: The Three Kinds of Creationists | |||||||||||||||||||||||
jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Unknown and Supernatural are not synonyms.
Unknown is very broad and includes everything we cannot explain. Supernatural though is a subset of unknown, things where the actual cause are not natural. We can test things and determine that they have a natural cause, that they have an unknown clause, but I can see no way we could test something and determine that it has a supernatural cause.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Right. Things like the hypothetical genuinely magical leprechauns we have been discussing. They would qualify as "supernatural" because they are genuinely magical and thus not limited to natural causes. I would say no.
But do you accept that simply being supernatural doesn't preclude something from being investigated by applying the scientific method? No, I can see no way that the scientific method could investigate the supernatural by definition.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
The definition of supernatural is something that is not natural and caused by a being that is not natural.
I can see no way of testing that can determine if something is magical. We can determine that something is NOT magical, but how can we test to see if it IS magical?Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
But how can one observe or identify or see or test "supernatural"?
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
HUH?
How do we know they are magical, any different than Carnac the Magnificent? We can test to see if they are natural, but what test shows they are supernatural?Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
I see no way to even identify a "genuinely magical Leprechaun" for study.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
LOL
Sorry but that makes no sense, how do you study a genuinely magical leprechaun when you cannot even identify a genuinely magical leprechaun? And the scientific method involves natural things. It can be used to study something claimed to be supernatural but how can it study something that IS supernatural?Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
We can investigate it and determine if it is explainable or unexplainable.
If explainable then we can say that it is natural. But if it is not explainable then we can not say that it is supernatural.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
All of it is quite frankly, worthless when it comes to investigating the supernatural.
You can investigate something that is claimed to be supernatural but you can never know whether or not your are investigating the supernatural unless you can show me some way to distinguish between just unknown and supernatural.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
No, I do not accept that it is possible to scientifically investigate the supernatural if the "the supernatural" in question is empirically detectable because there is no way that I can see to tell if what is being investigated i supernatural.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
No, we can investigate something claimed to be supernatural, and we can determine if it is not supernatural or if it is unexplainable but so far no one has shown anyway that we could tell if it was supernatural.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
We can study what we can sense and test, but I cannot imagine any test that would show that something was supernatural.
The best we could do is to determine that whatever it is could be explained naturally, or that it cannot yet be explained, but neither of those tell us whether or not what we are observing IS supernatural. Consider "Loki" or "Coyote", both tricksters. They could be supernatural yet still influence the results of any test to show that they were NOT supernatural. I imagine almost everyone here knows that I happen to believe, and believe strongly, that there is Supernatural, but I do not try to show that is true because I realize that even if true, I can not imagine any possible way to test or demonstrate that belief.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Correct kinda.
It has no bearing on whether the entity or incident or effect is supernatural or not. The problem is when in our ignorance we claim to have studied the supernatural.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Yes, I know that you have made that claim, and I think it is just nonsense.
Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
And as I pointed out, I can see no way to detect whether something is supernatural or not.
If someone could point to some test that shows something is supernatural then I would certainly reconsider my position. If someone could even show that they studied the supernatural then I would reconsider my position. But again, being undetectable tells us nothing about whether or not something exists. Examples I've used in the past (and they are simply made up examples but we seem to have lots of that from others so I may get to play too) would be GOD influencing a doctor to explore one more option when diagnosing a patient, or GOD planting an inspiration that leads a person to some new insight or discovery. Neither would seem different or even unusual and all tests and examination we could do would fail to show supernatural intervention, yet the results would stand. Personally the position I hold is that it's silly to ever go beyond a personal expression that someone thinks something is miraculous or supernatural. To claim that science studies supernatural is pretty pointless and in ever case mentioned so far we could restate the example without invoking supernatural. We can say that we test Buddhist Monks that levitate. We can say we tested a little man wearing green that claimed to grant wishes.Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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