Consider it a definition of the laws of nature. The laws of nature are that which govern everything that exists. Therefore, anything not governed by the laws of nature does not exist.
I think that might be where the other poster is coming from.
As Bosda has pointed out, nothing supernatural (that is, not derivable from the laws of nature) exists. That’s a consequence of the meaning of the word existence and the definition of the category “supernatural”.
This doesn’t mean that reincarnation, vampires, and such can’t exist. What it does mean is that if such phenomena occur, they’re by definition part of the natural world and thus aren’t supernatural.
Methinks JT is taking issue with the statement that everything is governed by the laws of nature. As much as I cringe to admit it, he’s absolutely dead right. We can’t prove that There Are Rules. Things could be happening willy-nilly, and we could just have such a limited view of the universe that we cannot percieve the underlying lack of order. Such an epistemology effectively precludes knowledge of anything, and is not useful. But, it is important to remember that assuming that we can infer information about the universe is an assumption, nothing more.
robertliguori’s explanation isn’t quite what I had in mind, as I was referring to the possibility that there are things which are not bound by physical rules. However, he is correct in noticing that the claim “Everything is a part of nature” is neither proven nor empirically determined.
And that’s the problem. You can keep insisting that everything is a part of nature, but that’s a circular argument. You can’t prove that there’s nothing supernatural (i.e. beyond nature) by insisting that everything is a part of nature. It’s a classic example of circular reasoning.
For the sake of argument, let us consider the notion that some sentient being created the physical universe. (I know the atheists on this board will disagree with that claim, but let’s consider it for the case of argument.) If this diety created the physical universe, then he is not a part of it – and thus, is not a part of nature. In other words, there is nothing about the universe which intrinsically precludes the possibility of things existing outside the phsyical realm. Now, one might deny the existence of God on other grounds, but not by invoking the laws of nature.
No, it is an assumption made by the laws of nature. The laws of nature implicitly assume that there is no supernatural element that will contravene to modify their behavior.
Again, that’s circular reasoning. You are assuming that there’s nothing otuside of nature, which is precisely the matter under debate.
As I pointed out, to arrive at that conclusion, you had to assume that the laws of nature are sufficient to describe every single thing in existence. As I’ve repeatedly pointed out, that is an unproven assumption – and the very matter which is being disputed.
The truth is that there has never been a single instance of any confirmed supernatural/paranormal phenomonon in all of human history. Not one ghost, not one psychic, not one display of “dowsing”, no “past lives,” no demons or angels or gods, no telekinesis, telepathy or pyrokenisis. Not one damned thing has been proven under laboratory conditions or empirically verified in any other way. It’s ALL bullshit. All of it.
Monalisa, if your huband can really “dowse” then you should encourage him to take Randi’s million dollar challenge. Not only would you both get rich but he would have the distinction of becoming the first person in world history to demonstrate an authentic paranormal ability.
Absolutely not. That conclusion does not even remotely follow.
“Existence” means the quality of existing. “Supernatural” refers to things which belong outside of nature. There is nothing inherently contradictory in these definitions – that is, unless one uses circular reasoning to insert the hidden assumption that only things within nature can exist.
I’m actually going to agree with JThunder and say that “supernatural” is a legitimate theoretical term. It refers hypothetically to any phenomena which exist outside of, or at least are not subject to, normal physical laws. Since the term “natural” seems to be a sticking point (anything which exists is tautologically “natural”) but we all know what is meant by the term. Perhaps “paranormal” or “metaphysical” would be acceptable to those who don’t like “supernatural.”
I don’t believe that anything like the supernatural exists but I accept it as a rhetorical construct.
Then we need to determine just what we mean by “physical”.
Is the number three part of the physical world?
JThunder: Then define what you mean by nature. Are computers inside or outside of nature? What about light? In what way are things that belong outside of nature capable of interacting with things inside nature?
Oh, and by the way: what do you mean by ‘existing’?
No, it is a definition. You are free not to accept the definition.
However, I think defining “the laws of nature” to be “the laws that govern all that exists” (defining “nature” to be “all that exists”) to be a pretty good definition of the laws of nature.
Well, you’re obviously defining “nature” differently from me. What definition are you using?
If they aren’t sufficient to describe every single thing in existence, then they are not the laws of nature. (At least, by my definition.)
I’m not sure it makes any sense whatsoever to think of something to which no rule or set of rules describes completely. Can you help me understand this concept?
Not necessarily. Occam’s razor holds that the simplest or most obvious explanation of several competing ones is the one that should be preferred until it is proven wrong.
That’s why skeptics need to be open-minded.
This seems perfectly logical to me. It still leaves the door open to every possibility.
It is widely accepted that the stimulation of certain parts of the brain can cause one to perceive the presence of, for want of a better word, spiritual being. The research makes no judgment on whether or not that sensation has a basis in “reality.” Who knows yet what levels of reality are accessible to some brains without the added stimulation?
I had an experience once that lasted ten minutes or so and was unlike anything I could possibly have imagined. Was my brain chemistry fooling me or was my brain chemistry allowing me to access information that had previously been obscured?
Some things which may have perfectly rational scientific explanations someday are no less awe inspiring because of those explanations.
Although I tend to reject some “new age” ideas and accept others, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t the potential for any of it to be true.
I don’t believe in dousing, for example. But at some future time there may be a scientific explanation on how it is possible. Maybe the presence of water causes some physical reaction on a quantum level in some people. That’s just an example.
From my own experience, I do believe in intuitive connections. I fully realize that that is annecdotal. Some people may have developed a part of their brains that others have not. Who knows how many senses we actually have the potential for? A child that is born blind will always wonder how his sister can tell when mother is coming when she is still a block away. There is no way to describe it or explain it so that the blind child 'gets it."
But that sense exists.
Maybe other senses are not yet as keenly evolved to the point that they can be proven by the scientific method. But then again, maybe these other senses don’t exist at all. Openness, not gullibility.
But were we to ever find scientific evidence for such a phenomenon, we would no doubt have to reconsider those “normal physical laws”; thus there would be new laws that we would consider “normal”. Remember that these physical laws are merely our observations of how the universe behaves; they are not immutable. These so-called supernatural phenomenon, if we were to actually find objective evidence for them, would simply become part of our knowledge.
For example, wouldn’t you agree that 100 years ago, the idea of time speeding up or slowing down would have been considered “supernatural”? But now that we have evidence that it’s possible, it has become part of our understanding of the natural universe. In fact, as soon as any previously unexplained phenomenon can be objectively demonstrated to exist, it immediately enters the realm of the natural, and our model of the universe changes to incorporate the new data. So the term “supernatural” is really meaningless; it is simply used to descibe that which is believed without objective evidence.
Now, if we want to limit the concept of the supernatural to refer only to phenomena that cannot be explained by our current beliefs about the nature of the universe, that’s worthy of discussion.
It’s theoretically impossible for any part of the universe to accurately represent everything about it – it logically follows from this point that no one’s ideas about the universe can ever be complete. There will always be things about the world that can’t be explained. That doesn’t remove the need to evaluate claims and beliefs rationally.
The spiritual world is not supernatural, but is very real.
Your husband is sensitive to spiritual frequencies and forces that help him determine where the water lies. It is the spiritual that creates the physical, so much can be known by “tuning” in.
The spiritual lies within us, when we lower our focus on the physical, we are then able to sense the spiritual. Anyone can do it. We are all spiritual.
LOve
Leroy
Give me one single example of anything that is not governed by physical laws in our daily lives.
The “natural law” of gravity is real. As are the Laws of Thermodynamics.
But if “ectoplasm” or “ESP” or “the Boogeyman” is real, and you can prove it, and natural laws do not apply, why don’t we use it every day?
Insurance agencies would be using precognition and Tarot cards to cut costs. The cops would hold a seance to ask the ghost of a murder victim–“Whodunnit?” Petroleum companies would not be blowing hundreds of millions of simoleons on hunting for oil, when dowsers would work.
But, these things don’t work. They aren’t real.
I agree that the supernatural isn’t real–at any rate, I haven’t been given sufficient evidence to accept anything supernatural–but I have to disagree that the supernatural is logically impossible by definition. Suppose we encountered a being who could alter what we normally describe as the “laws of nature” at will, in such a way that we could detect and verify what was happening, but not explain it. “Hey, see that lump of pitchblende? See what it does to your Geiger counter? Now–ZAP!–look at the Geiger counter now! Nothin’! Now, let’s turn the pitchblende into, oh, say…a baby duckling! POOF! Hey, video camera guy, did you get all that?” Or, less jocularly, a being who can instantaneously turn water into wine. If after investigation we were unable to reproduce or even begin to explain such phenomena, but we concluded that they had happened, I think we’d have to say that such an entity had “supernatural” powers.
I think Bosda was indeed attempting to point out the “tautologically redundancy” of the term supernatural. In Bosda’s world, nothing exists outside the World. Anything passing through consciousness is part of nature, is part of the Universe. Yet such an approach, the absolute opposite of overzealous reductionism, is quite useless in the end. It helps us describe our World as much as if I were to say everything is composed of 0s and 1s, of being an non-being. It nullifies any differentiation between various phenomenological experiences. As TVAA points out, is the number three part of the world? Certainly it’s part of the World. But did you ever see one walk about in the world, say in your back yard?
What some of you (some of you!) are missing, is that science is merely a descriptive discipline. Or as Pochacco puts it: we carry detailed models of the World around in our heads. So science aught to not be so disturbed by little green goblins rearranging furniture in Aunty Augie’s attic. The problem is that every time they show up at Aunt Augie’s, she apologizes profusely. The goblins just escaped through the grandfather clock!
The objective of science is to reduce the description of what goes on around us to its smallest useful length. Or, in Kolmogorovian terms, the shortest possible string of random bits. Therefore ABABABABABABC becomes 6(AB)C. So instead of remembering all the details of what happened at the New York stock Exchange since 1792, I can carry around little nifty ideas about game theory and such.
With the help of Occam and Kolmogorov, at a moments notice I can expand my short little string to “tomorrow, cloudy, mid 60ies, with possibility of thunder storms towards the evening”. It says nothing about how things are OUTSIDE the World, how things are in-and-of-themselves (an-und-fuer-sich), how reality looks like without the eyes of the beholder. And this is where Bosda is right in a sense. The World is what it is. The question is, how will we describe it? And who can be trusted into the inner sanctum of the inter-subjective scientific narrative? The answer is those who are phenomenal at useful string reduction. Not the belletristic figures of New Age who like to elaborate on the multifarious ways of a totally 100 percent interconnected universe. But, perhaps, the true master of Chi, skilled at the arts of acupuncture. Certainly, Aunt Augie is not a welcome member…
Que? What spirit? Your spirit? Or the Spirit? Ahh, the interconnected totally nullifying spiritual everything that creates everything that is everything creating the spiritual everything.
I see. Now suddenly everything is clear to me…
Melt away the walls of reality!!! Welcome great Nausea! Bring me into your great unkowing nothing of the unifying great nothingness that is everything in the great nothingness of everything!
O mani padre hum,
ethic
I see the number three every time I walk into my backyard.
I’ve gotta disagree with you, ethic: consciousness isn’t the determinator of what reality is. If someone sneaks up behind me and bashes me over the head with a crowbar, it doesn’t make any difference that I wasn’t conscious of their action.
Yowza. Well, then. Consider me a reformed old wife, or someone that a neurosurgeon would look at as though I were retarded.