What is supernatural?

Naturalistic science often comes under attack around these parts for failing to take into account "the supernatural", whatever that means.So, what does "supernatural" mean? Obviously, "above nature", but that hardly sufficies to clarify the debate.In this thread I'd like the people who fault science for ignoring the supernatural to define "supernatural" in such a way that it falls within the purview of science in the first place. For if the supernatural is not within the purview of science, how can science be faulted for ignoring it?

BumpI was particularly hoping Buz would contribute to this thread; he's routinely criticized science for ignoring the supernatural and conflated that with outright denial that it exists at all.

What does that mean, exactly? "Leaving nature"? I don't understand. By what other means can one obtain knowledge that isn't indistinguishable from making stuff up? But if the supernatural causes an effect, it ceases to be supernatural, by definition. It's stopped being "outside" of nature by choosing to take part in it.I don't see how something can "flit" in and out of nature like walking in and out of a door. Either you're subject to the laws of physics in this universe, or you're outside of them altogether. It's simply not a coherent position to advance entities that can decide for themselves if the laws of physics will apply to them at that moment in time. Right. Therefore, supernatural entities can't take action in our universe. If they could, they wouldn't be of an order outside the universe, and so they wouldn't be supernatural.

But neither of those groups are subject to different laws of physics than the other. In fact the laws of physics describe how humans can leave lakes just as well as they describe why fish cannot.If supernatural entities exist, there must be laws of physics that describe their actions. If they can enter our universe, then the laws of physics that govern their actions are simply a set of physical laws in our universe we haven't discovered yet.At that point, the so-called "supernatural" isn't beyond or above the laws of physics at all; it's just that the laws of physics are "bigger" than we thought they were. But he's subject to the same laws of physics as the fish. But that entity must have physical laws that govern its behavior. By definition, there can't be. As soon as he's able to become part of the natural world, he is. The physical laws that govern his behavior become a subset of all physical laws; in other words, he becomes a part of our universe forever.

Sure. "God mode", we call that. But here's the thing. The game designer can't do that without adding special rules, or laws, just for himself.That means what he's doing is still governed by the same law that governs the behavior of the other elements of the game; it's just that there's a subset of those laws that only he can take advantage of.That's still not "supernatural", because he's in and of the same game world as everybody else, and subject to the same virtual laws of physics as everyone else. There's still one program running on one computer, and everything in it, including the designers character, is still a part of is and subject to it. Moreover another game character might be able to "discover" or model the additional laws that enable "god mode".That's the case with every example of the "supernatural" you've described yet - it's not that they're above natural law, it's just that natural law has some additional laws we're not aware of that allow "supernatural-like" behavior under certain circumstances - circumstances that themselves can be examined and modelled.

No, i think you're getting right to my point.Everything in history we've ever believed to be supernatural has turned out to be entirely natural; it's our understanding of natural law that has expanded.So, in other words, how could we claim anything is outside of natural law when we don't yet know (and never will) the extent of natural law?

I take it you've never done much programming?You can't instance something without defining what it's going to be an instance of. That means you have to define its methods and variables, and if you want to do it during runtime, you need to define a method to instance it on your command.This isn't something you can do "frame by frame". But there are rules in the real world; just because an artist can draw Superman flying without support doesn't mean that he can fly like Superman in our world. In a way, the artist becomes a connection between two worlds, turning them into one.At that point, nothing the artist does can be supernatural; it's completely natural according to the laws of his world, which are now a subset of the laws of both worlds.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 08-18-2004 06:46 PM

A debatable statement, but you could claim that scientifically, yes. Now you're claiming the same thing. That statement is the same thing as "no natural theory can ever explain this." How would you know if a natural explanation was unfathomable until you had the opportunity to fathom them all? And since that represenents an infinite number of theories how can you claim to have done so?

But the only way you would be able to do that would be by inserting these programming "hooks" into the code; in other words, what you would be doing would still be determined and made possible by the "virtual" laws of the program. Can any of us?I think my point stands - there's no way for a so-called "supernatural" entity to interact with the universe without the super-physics governing its behavior becoming part of our own physics.

Evolution is plausible, however.Even if you don't think it's accurate, surely you must find it plausible?

Unless you're trying to say that we're all imaginary characters in the mind of God, I don't see how this analogy even begins to approximate what we're talking about.We live in the real world. Not an imagined one.

Ah, but we have free will, do we not?Nobody has free will in my imagination but me.We're not just figments of God's imagination; we're people with free will, capable of doing what God doesn't want us to do.

Well, you're right. I shouldn't have insisted.For all I know, I live in the Matrix. The point, though, is that the world I live is is indistinguishable from a "real" world, and quite distinguishable from the world of someone else's imagination.

There must be, though, if we're to have free will.I think we're getting a little off-topic.

I don't know that it's possible to know.Certainly, at this time, people continue to act in ways that others can't predict; that's an appearance of free will, anyway. But ultimately we only get to make a particular choice once. It's impossible to "go back" and see if we would have chosen differently if all conditions had been the same.