Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
6 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Do we have evidence against the supernatural?
lfen
Member (Idle past 4677 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 102 of 106 (252598)
10-18-2005 3:20 AM
Reply to: Message 9 by Ben!
10-02-2005 2:31 PM


Ben,
I haven't read beyond this point in the thread but it's bedtime. I'll probably regret this but I'll throw this out now and read more tomorrow.
You said about the concept of an afterlife, "In the way that it has absolutely NO effect on any natural thing. In other words, it's not measurable in any way, at least as far as I can see. It seems really that simple--definitional. Maybe one step, a simple syllogism."
I just want to point out that believers in an afterlife often believe that it has effects and will point to things just as disasters or good things as being examples of those effects. So for believers the supernatural is an explanation of the manifestation of desired as well as undesired events, also low probability events.
Many of them find the scientific explanations difficult even impossible to comprehend. I will say at this point that the supernatural exists as a primitive explanatory mechanism that is often more satisfying to the way many human brains function than is rational scientific theories.
Best of luck on educating believers in the supernatural! I don't envy you your mission.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Ben!, posted 10-02-2005 2:31 PM Ben! has not replied

  
lfen
Member (Idle past 4677 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 103 of 106 (252600)
10-18-2005 3:33 AM
Reply to: Message 12 by Ben!
10-02-2005 2:39 PM


It is untestable; you can't have evidence for it or against it (as far as I can tell).
As I was walking up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd go away.
~Hugh Mearns
Thought is immaterial? What is thought? Perhaps the IPU is thought, as real as thought, or as unreal as thought as the case maybe.
Are you and I thoughts? If we drop that thinking then what? Immateriality seems important to me but I don't see how it can be science at this point, though it might in some sense be mathmatics.
lfen

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Ben!, posted 10-02-2005 2:39 PM Ben! has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 104 by 1.61803, posted 11-01-2005 5:14 PM lfen has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024