# What can we say about the Supernatural **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 2, 2006, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103 "2006-01-02T18:57:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/81 "2006-01-04T08:12:59Z")
Does the word computer subsume all people ever, as well? Think carefully, Erek. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/82 "2006-01-04T12:15:16Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > To clarify, I agree with this, because I consider by definition everything that exists to be part of the natural world. Science cannot examine that which does not exist. > > Daniel Frankly, science is almost unrecognizable in some of these discussions. It’s two two two mints in one. It’s a wigwam and a teepee. It’s everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t. I’ve only just adjusted to the notion of science testing things like mathematical equations, and now I’m given to accepting that science is an existential philosophy. Matter of fact, what’s the use in having all these different words? One will do. Science. This discussion isn’t a debate; it’s a science. This science is a science. Science science is a science. Science science is science science. Science science science science science. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/83 "2006-01-04T14:21:51Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Frankly, science is almost unrecognizable in some of these discussions. It’s amazing how much a post of distilled sarcasm can advance a discussion, ain’t it? Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Psilocybe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/51bf81/32.png) [@Psilocybe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psilocybe)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/84 "2006-01-04T16:07:28Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > If I understand you correctly, people have invented the concept of the supernatural to explain perceptions, caused by altered states of conciousness, which are not explicable physically, yet which they are convinced are real. Is that close? Alien abductions of the Mack type are explained in a similar way - not drugs, just a sleep state. Thanks. You summed me up nicely. I believe everything _is_ physical on the deepest level, though. Alien abduction and near-death experiences are definately real and intense, but they’re all in the mind. Whos to say they arn’t caused by drugs? Maybe the drugs are already there, in our brain, just waiting to be released. ---
**Author:** ![bobthebuilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobthebuilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobthebuilder)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/85 "2006-01-04T16:13:34Z")
> [@Psilocybe](#): > > Thanks. You summed me up nicely. I believe everything _is_ physical on the deepest level, though. > > Alien abduction and near-death experiences are definately real and intense, but they’re all in the mind. Whos to say they arn’t caused by drugs? Maybe the drugs are already there, in our brain, just waiting to be released. it seems like your bassing this view on the assumption that the supernatural doesnt happen, a poor way to do things it seems to me. If certain things happened I would be obliged to believe that God did it. For instance if I found proof of ressurection if a man who was dead completely and totally without doubt, was found to be alive and claimed to have been ressurected by God, I would be rationally coerced to believe that he had been risen by God. You seem to be casting all of this aside and claiming because of your assumptions that there must be some other explanation. (I might be misunderstanding you, if I am please correct me and I apologize.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/86 "2006-01-04T17:35:05Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Frankly, science is almost unrecognizable in some of these discussions. It’s two two two mints in one. It’s a wigwam and a teepee. It’s everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t. I’ve only just adjusted to the notion of science testing things like mathematical equations, and now I’m given to accepting that science is an existential philosophy. Matter of fact, what’s the use in having all these different words? One will do. Science. This discussion isn’t a debate; it’s a science. This science is a science. Science science is a science. Science science is science science. Science science science science science. Be that as it may, I’m very interested in your thoughts on the ability of science to examine the impact of the supernatural on the natural world. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/87 "2006-01-04T17:51:32Z")
> [@bobthebuilder](#): > > If certain things happened I would be obliged to believe that God did it. > > For instance if I found proof of ressurection if a man who was dead completely and totally without doubt, was found to be alive and claimed to have been ressurected by God, I would be rationally coerced to believe that he had been risen by God. There are other, more plausible explanations that don’t violate physical law the way a miracle would. A disguised alien using advanced nanotechnology/biotechnology, for example. For that matter, even if the supernatural is real, why do you assume God and not Satan or Krishna or Cthulhu ? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/88 "2006-01-04T18:30:52Z")
> [@bobthebuilder](#): > > For instance if I found proof of ressurection if a man who was dead completely and totally without doubt, was found to be alive and claimed to have been ressurected by God, I would be rationally coerced to believe that he had been risen by God. And what I would argue is that maybe Death didn’t mean what you thought it meant. Or, maybe he wasn’t dead at all, and you miscalculated when you declared him as such. I’ve always kind of liked the idea of Christ as a badass Ninja proving to himself that he can survive being crucified, and that it took him 3 days to recover, at which point he got up and said “Hey, I’m back”. and everyone was like “Holy shit, he cheated death, he descended into Hell and came back to us!”, when what happened was that he just put himself through some excruciating pain, and was consumed by that pain in a comatose state until he was able to fully heal his body and get back up. Erek ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/89 "2006-01-04T18:43:44Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Let me start by saying this is the clearest explanation of your belief system yet, and is very helpful, so thanks. That I may disagree doesn’t alter the fact that I’m not shooting in the dark anymore. Well good, I felt like you might actually understand me this time when I was writing it. > [@](#): > > perhaps we are compartmentalized pieces of god’s consciousness, but I think it is more than just perceptual or cognitive. We do not directly share others’ thoughts, so something more seems to be going on. I do think we share each other’s thoughts directly, but without context they are meaningless. So while your thoughts are floating out there in the ether of the cosmic neural network, I can reach out and touch them, but I am not using the correct search strings as I am not having an experience at the time for which your thoughts would be useful. However, as you learn you advance the entire species by learning. For instance if I am the first to learn a new thing, then it is easier for the second person to learn it, and when they learn it, it’s easier for the third and so on and so forth until you have 5 year olds surfing the web better than their 40 year old parents. > [@](#): > > Here’s where I disagree, in part. The WORD computer is just a tag put on actual computers, and not the source of computers at all. Under the tag computer are tags describing kinds of computers, from Bush’s (Vannevar, not George 🙂 ) analog computer to my old friend the LGP-21 to the laptop I’m typing on now to the thin client I use at work. For Feynman a computer was a lady who spent all day at Los Alamos on a mechanical calculator doing bomb calculations. The Difference Engine was a computer before the term was invented. So even if we called them smurfs, the things would still exist, with another tag on them. It was a bad analogy, but it is a good illustration of why it’s a dangerous thing to define God. As **E-Sabbath’s** post points out, when he tells me to be careful. > [@](#): > > Now the rest I agree with. The tag god refers to a lot of different conceptions of god, most of which even believers would agree do not exist. Each person assigns a tag true or false to each, and the atheist just assigns the tag false to all the ones he’s come across. (The ones he has not don’t get a tag - but we suspect that they all get the false tag.) Except that my tags are transient. I do not have the same tags today as I had yesterday. The context is gone, I do not need those tags any more. I might use similar tags in a future context where it seems more applicable, but I don’t have a “Definition” for God. I even understand how “Limitless” is in and of itself a limit, and therefore an insufficient tool for the task I use it for. However, it’s like a Phillips Head Screwdriver that is only slightly too big for the screw, as opposed to trying to use a hammer on the screw. > [@](#): > > While I agree that the Mona Lisa does not match a person, the tag Mona Lisa, or looking at pictures of it, does not match looking at the actual Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Yes > [@](#): > > Under the tag god is the tag mswas’s God. The process of defining that god is hanging some tags on it - limitless, for instance. I agree that we cannot hang enough tags on it to fully describe it, but we can hardly do that for anything. But I suspect that the tag “Tom’s God” has some different tags on it from yours. I can hang the tag “believe to be false” on both, but I can’t hang the tag “know to be false” on them, which I can on the fundamentalist god. And the tags I hang on my version of mswas’s god are different, no doubt, from yours. MsWas doesn’t have “MsWas’s God.”, there is only one God, to which I interface. That would be kind of like saying I am talking to you on MsWas’s Internet, and you are talking to me on Voyager’s Internet. > [@](#): > > See above for what I mean by define god. And I agree that we can spend a lifetime understanding even the most trivial thing fully. Feynman’s achievement was in asking why a beam of light is straight. I vaguely understand the answer. I think I’ll be contemplating that one for a while. I would assume that the beam of light is straight, because we define straight by the nature of a beam of light. > [@](#): > > If the universe is all there is, then the supernatural does not exist outside of it, and the natural universe is a subset of the full universe. If the natural universe is the entire universe, then the supernatural is the null set. To be clear, this is what I’m betting on, due to lack of evidence, but I haven’t seen a proof except the definition of them as equivalent. Well like I said I am seeing the supernatural more in the way that I see superstructure. It’s not externalized to natural, it’s a superset of natural. I don’t know if I even agree that it’s a null set. I am still kind of leaning toward it being a not very useful term however. I don’t like to use it, and will probably continue to refrain from using it. Erek ---
**Author:** ![bobthebuilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobthebuilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobthebuilder)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/90 "2006-01-04T19:00:19Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > There are other, more plausible explanations that don’t violate physical law the way a miracle would. A disguised alien using advanced nanotechnology/biotechnology, for example. > > For that matter, even if the supernatural is real, why do you assume God and not Satan or Krishna or Cthulhu ? I dont assume anything, like I said Im not saying I believe, but im saying there are things that would make me believe. I truly question whethere a disguised alien using advanced nanotechnology/biotechnology is any more plausible than God. Im not saying that I would research it, and make sure that it couldnt be explained naturally, but there are some things that if they happened It would be most irrational and quite biased to continue denying the existence of God. your bring up an alien because of your foundational presuposition that God and miracles do not exist. I have no such presuposition so if such evidence as ressurection was proffered I would be rationally coerced into believing, and it could be a multitude of different things but I would tend to believe the person who ressurected from the dead in what he said after testing every other conceivable possibility. MSWAS that is a interesting look at it, but I do believe we know enough about the human body that if the Gospels are true that Jesus Christ indeed did die, and being laid in a tomb embalmed in the manner of the Jews is not going to help ones recovery. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/91 "2006-01-04T19:50:04Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > It’s amazing how much a post of distilled sarcasm can advance a discussion, ain’t it? > > Daniel Well, how about taking me up on my point — one I’ve made repeatedly here and elsewhere, that naturalists cannot claim existence as a proprietary property? Sarcasm may or may not advance a debate, but ignoring someone’s point surely does not. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/92 "2006-01-04T19:54:51Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Be that as it may, I’m very interested in your thoughts on the ability of science to examine the impact of the supernatural on the natural world. Science can examine the impact itself, but it cannot determine whether the impact was supernatural in origin. It shouldn’t be surprising that there is no empirical test for that which is not empirical. That is NOT to say that there are no tests of any kind — merely that there are no scientific tests. There are, for example, experiential tests, analytical tests, analogical tests, and so on. But no scientific ones. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/93 "2006-01-04T19:56:32Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Well, how about taking me up on my point — one I’ve made repeatedly here and elsewhere, that naturalists cannot claim existence as a proprietary property? Sarcasm may or may not advance a debate, but ignoring someone’s point surely does not. Make your point respectfully, and I’ll respond respectfully. Make it contemptuously, and I’ll respond dismissively. I don’t think existence is a particularly complicated quality. I don’t know what you mean by naturalists claiming existence as a proprietary property, but I _do_ think that if something exists **and if we have phsycial evidence that it exists** , it’s a proper object of study for naturalists. I’m open to counterexamples. Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/94 "2006-01-04T20:04:01Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > Make your point respectfully, and I’ll respond respectfully. Make it contemptuously, and I’ll respond dismissively. That puts us on an equal footing then. No point in either of us climbing on a moralistic pedestal, putting off the other on account of bad ethics. > [@](#): > > I don’t think existence is a particularly complicated quality. I don’t know what you mean by naturalists claiming existence as a proprietary property, but I _do_ think that if something exists **and if we have phsycial evidence that it exists** , it’s a proper object of study for naturalists. I’m open to counterexamples. > > Daniel There are an infinite number of examples in numbers alone. Two does not exist, but you use it all the time, even to quantify physical things. Width does not exist, but is a handy human concept. But noumenal things aside, clamping down on existence as nothing more than a result of observation means that things we’ve only recently discovered did not exist before. Existence may not be a complicated quality, but it is easy to oversimplify by, for example, confusing a copula with an identity. Existence has been a topic of philosophy for thousands of years, and is still controversial. See [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/95 "2006-01-04T20:18:18Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > And what I would argue is that maybe Death didn’t mean what you thought it meant. Or, maybe he wasn’t dead at all, and you miscalculated when you declared him as such. I’ve always kind of liked the idea of Christ as a badass Ninja proving to himself that he can survive being crucified, and that it took him 3 days to recover, at which point he got up and said “Hey, I’m back”. and everyone was like “Holy shit, he cheated death, he descended into Hell and came back to us!”, when what happened was that he just put himself through some excruciating pain, and was consumed by that pain in a comatose state until he was able to fully heal his body and get back up. > > Erek Ok, I admit it - Ninja Christ is a cool idea - but can he beat Pirate Christ ? > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > your bring up an alien because of your foundational presuposition that God and miracles do not exist. I have no such presuposition so if such evidence as ressurection was proffered I would be rationally coerced into believing, and it could be a multitude of different things but I would tend to believe the person who ressurected from the dead in what he said after testing every other conceivable possibility. I brought up aliens because unlike a god, they require nothing we do not know to be possible. Resurrection, frankly, is not dramatic enough to prove the supernatural. Frankly, I can’t think of any proof good enough; after all, if something is not natural, how can it interact with the natural world ? The natural world is a thing of physical forces; something lacking in those forces would be unable to touch them. For that matter, if something actually exists, how can it not qualify as a thing of the physical world ? The whole concept of something being “supernatural” simply doesn’t make sense to me. ---
**Author:** ![bobthebuilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobthebuilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobthebuilder)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/96 "2006-01-04T20:35:07Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > I brought up aliens because unlike a god, they require nothing we do not know to be possible. Resurrection, frankly, is not dramatic enough to prove the supernatural. > > Frankly, I can’t think of any proof good enough; after all, if something is not natural, how can it interact with the natural world ? The natural world is a thing of physical forces; something lacking in those forces would be unable to touch them. For that matter, if something actually exists, how can it not qualify as a thing of the physical world ? The whole concept of something being “supernatural” simply doesn’t make sense to me. How do you know aliens are possible? life could be limited to this planet, furthermore you do not know if its possible for technology to bring someone back to life in just that same way that you do not know if God is possible This goes back to your original foundational presuposition that there is no such thing as the supernatural. You assume that there is no God, therefore no proof, even power over death (ressurection) will not be proof for you. Why would the supernatural not be able to affect the natural? In a sense If God exists he would be the “perfect” natural or even “more” natural than anything else, and obviously if he brought matter into the universe why would he not be able to affect this matter? One who would immediately cast out God as a possible explanation is just as bad as those who jump to the conclusion that it was God without looking for other possible explanations. I suggest that you go back and rework your foundational pressupositions, use systematic doubt if you have too, and then maybe you will be open to more possibilities, I dont want to miss the truth if it does exist and if it does happen to come my way. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/97 "2006-01-04T20:49:03Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Science can examine the impact itself, but it cannot determine whether the impact was supernatural in origin. It shouldn’t be surprising that there is no empirical test for that which is not empirical. That is NOT to say that there are no tests of any kind — merely that there are no scientific tests. There are, for example, experiential tests, analytical tests, analogical tests, and so on. But no scientific ones. Some of the tests you mention, if I understand them correctly, are used to build hypotheses out of observed data. So, for a particular set of data which might be from the projection of the supernatural onto the natural, a scientist, as a last resort, might use these to reject natural hypotheses and posit a supernatural one. The burden of proof would be very high, but I part company from my fellow atheists in rejecting a supernatural hypothesis outright. If a guy shows up, parts the red sea, makes the earth stop rotating, and then writes my name in the stars such that astronomical evidence shows it was done 10,000 years ago, so the light would reach me now, I’d pinch myself first, and then accept that a supernatural explanation was far more probable than powerful aliens. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/98 "2006-01-04T20:53:27Z")
> [@bobthebuilder](#): > > How do you know aliens are possible? Because we exist. That doesn’t prove aliens exist, but it proves they are possible. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > life could be limited to this planet, furthermore you do not know if its possible for technology to bring someone back to life in just that same way that you do not know if God is possible It violates no physical laws, unlike a god. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > Why would the supernatural not be able to affect the natural? What would it affect the world _with_ ? Without any of the four fundamental forces, it would ignore and be ignored by everything in our universe. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > In a sense If God exists he would be the “perfect” natural or even “more” natural than anything else, and obviously if he brought matter into the universe why would he not be able to affect this matter? That’s another arguement against the existance of God, not proof of him. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > One who would immediately cast out God as a possible explanation is just as bad as those who jump to the conclusion that it was God without looking for other possible explanations. Nope. The people who refuse to use God as an explanation are the ones who achieve and discover new things. “God did it” is a dead end, and useless. > [@Voyager](#): > > The burden of proof would be very high, but I part company from my fellow atheists in rejecting a supernatural hypothesis outright. If a guy shows up, parts the red sea, makes the earth stop rotating, and then writes my name in the stars such that astronomical evidence shows it was done 10,000 years ago, so the light would reach me now, I’d pinch myself first, and then accept that a supernatural explanation was far more probable than powerful aliens. It’s more likely to be a special effect, or perhaps they stuck you in the Matrix. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/99 "2006-01-04T20:56:21Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > Frankly, I can’t think of any proof good enough; after all, if something is not natural, how can it interact with the natural world ? The natural world is a thing of physical forces; something lacking in those forces would be unable to touch them. For that matter, if something actually exists, how can it not qualify as a thing of the physical world ? The whole concept of something being “supernatural” simply doesn’t make sense to me. How about the one I put in my response to **Lib**? A natural explanation is far to be preferred. but there are imaginable circumstances where using it would put us in as many contortions as a creationist explaining away the fossil record. I prefer to go where the evidence leads, which at the moment is to the nonexistence of the supernatural. There are two ways of dealing with Biblical miracle stories. The first is to try to invent natural explanations for them, like a tide pulling away the water in the Red Sea. The second, which I think is preferable, is to ask for evidence that the stories actually happened, which is not that forthcoming. I mean, you can posit a giant gust of wind that blew Washington’s dollar across the Potomac, or just say that Parson Weems made up the story. That seems a lot more plausible to me. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2006, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/100 "2006-01-04T22:19:17Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Some of the tests you mention, if I understand them correctly, are used to build hypotheses out of observed data. So, for a particular set of data which might be from the projection of the supernatural onto the natural, a scientist, as a last resort, might use these to reject natural hypotheses and posit a supernatural one. The scientist will reject any hypothesis whose prediction he has determined by observation to be false. For example, suppose that I hypothesize that gravity bends light. You elect to test my hypothesis by making an observation during a solar eclipse of a star hidden by the sun whose position is known. Your experiment determines that the star, which should have been hidden, is visible. That is, its light has curved as it passed through the sun’s gravity. This is not proof that my hypothesis true, but it is proof that it is not false. (Science is not a bivalent system: something need not be either true or false, but not neither nor both.) However, had the star been hidden, you would have rejected my hypothesis as definitively false until and unless some fault is found with your experiment or the hypothesis is revised. > [@](#): > > The burden of proof would be very high, but I part company from my fellow atheists in rejecting a supernatural hypothesis outright. If a guy shows up, parts the red sea, makes the earth stop rotating, and then writes my name in the stars such that astronomical evidence shows it was done 10,000 years ago, so the light would reach me now, I’d pinch myself first, and then accept that a supernatural explanation was far more probable than powerful aliens. But it is naturally possible that all those things could happen. All that is required is an astoundingly improbable congruence of quantum level events. Jesus Himself, Whom some might consider to be an expert on the supernatural, taught that you cannot discern God or His kingdom by “careful observation”. You cannot say, “Look, here it is” or “Hey, there it is” because God’s Kingdom is within you (that is to say, it is a part of your own essence). Eyes see things that are made of what eyes are made of — particles that converge into recognizable material. Ears hear things that vibrate. Noses smell molecules. Fingers are electromagnetic fields that touch other electromagnetic fields. The supernatural is not investigated by tools like these. It is investigated by what it is made of — spirit: the essence of man. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103.md?page=6)