# 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:** 7
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/121 "2006-01-05T11:19:58Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Why not? Bring them on - though I don’t quite know what testing by prayer means. Perhaps it means prayer can cause something to violate the laws of physics. It means asking God whether science is right about this or that. Dear God: Is Einsteint right? Please signify yes with a thunder clap and no with nothing. > [@](#): > > Not when faith says something like God loves us. But if Jim Bob the faith healer says that faith makes the lame walk, I surely want to test that. If there is faith that those in the church of your choice have better lives, I want to test that. As long as faith makes claims that have meaning in the physical world, I want to test them. It’s a bit unsettling that you find love to have no effect in the real world, but once again, there is no prohibition against testing God. The only prohibition is against science testing God. Why that must be repeatedly reiterated and ignored is unclear. It seems that the altar of science has become so broad as to occupy every cell in the brain. You pooh-poohed my satire of science being the only word we need, and yet you act it out in every post. There. Are. More. Ways. To. Test. Things. Than. With. Science. > [@](#): > > Are you still saying that I claim we can directly observe the supernatural (which I’m not) or is the claim that there is zero probability that the supernatural will impact the natural world. Best as I can observe, I agree, but I wasn’t aware you had become one of us materialists. Or have you become an extreme deist? I’ve been an extreme deist since my first epiphany. But the claim — one more time — is that science cannot detect, test, measure, or claim anything at all about the supernatural, including whether it impacted anything. > [@](#): > > Okay… What I want to know is, how did I become the most religious person in the thread? ;j I don’t know. But I’ve often said that it is hard to imagine a more mystical philosophy than materialism. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/122 "2006-01-05T11:24:06Z")
> [@Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > No I don’t. YOU seem to be getting at that, specifically when you say, > You offered these as counterexamples for my assertion that “if something exists and if we have phsycial evidence that it exists, it’s a proper object of study for naturalists.” Entities that do not exist cannot disprove this assertion. > > If you’d like to revise your earlier claim, such that two and width do exist, that’s cool, but at least let me know whether they exist or not, in your belief. > > Daniel No, no. That was arguendo. Remember the post you made fun of but didn’t answer? It is hard to imagine how you could mistake me for someone who thinks only physical things exist. But frankly, at this point, it would be nice if you made an honest attempt at engaging the issue I keep raising or else pick up on some other discussion. These punch-and-dodge banter-posts are wasting both my time and yours. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/123 "2006-01-05T13:17:11Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I call this the “There is no God and Jesus is his Son” syndrome. 😃 Lib is more of a traditional Christian than you (or at least I thought so.) I realize that people take different messages from the Bible, and the percentage of it thought to be accurate varies wildly. > > Really, this thread is not going at all as I expected - it is far more interesting. I never thought that so few people would be willing to defend the supernatural. Ya never know. For me the term supernatural simply means what is that we don’t understand yet. or as you put it “things that violate natural laws without invalidating the laws.” It seems apparent that there is much we don’t know about exactly how our world works, the potential and possibilities. We have many things now that would have been thought impossible not all that long ago. How much knowledge has not advanced simply because funding wasn’t available or a scientist turned in a different direction in his search? Then there’s the profit factor. ---
**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 5, 2006, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/124 "2006-01-05T13:54:47Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Remember the post you made fun of but didn’t answer? The post that used gibberish to mock my position? Yeah, I remember it. You’re not going to get a response to it. You’ll get a response to your respectful posts. > [@](#): > > It is hard to imagine how you could mistake me for someone who thinks only physical things exist. I don’t mistake you for that. I just asked you to clarify whether you think that two or width exist. I’m trying to understand your position, but it looks inconsistent to me, and when you offer examples, they don’t make sense to me. Can you follow through with your two and width examples, or else come up with different examples? Remember, I’m looking for examples of things which exist and are not proper objects of study for the natural sciences: those will be counterexamples for my assertion that “if something exists and if we have physical evidence that it exists, it’s a proper object of study for naturalists.” Daniel ---
**Author:** ![bobthebuilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobthebuilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobthebuilder)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/125 "2006-01-05T15:47:44Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > Because we exist. That doesn’t prove aliens exist, but it proves they are possible. > > It violates no physical laws, unlike a god. > > 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. > > That’s another arguement against the existance of God, not proof of him. > > 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. > > It’s more likely to be a special effect, or perhaps they stuck you in the Matrix. Our existence is proof of our existence nothing more. How do you know that something that exists outside of the natural cannot effect that natural? How do you know a being doesnt have the power to speak things into being, or to by thought cause things to be or not to be? Im not saying that one exists, but to say that “THere is no God” or “God is impossible” are unverifiable statements and statements that cannot be made by a human. Anyway your bring up physical laws, as if physical laws neccesarily effect or apply to everything, that is an asusmption based on observation, but it is only a guess that they apply to everything, since we do not have the capabilities to observe everything. (Which i might add is a major flaw in the belief that observation is the only way to knowledge not that im saying that is your belief.) It is apparent that your believe and desire to believe that there is no God, so you would never believe even if evidence for the existence of such was given. And God did it isnt a dead or usless if God actually did it, which as im trying to say could in some instances be the only rational statement to make. (Im not sure if aliens did it due to some bio/nano technology is any less of a dead end then God doing it) Your pressuposition being that naturalism or materialism or the non existence of God, mean thats you will try to find a natural or material explanation for everything, which is as it should be, but you will go one step further and would never believe even if the evidence points towards a creator/God that there is one. ---
**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 5, 2006, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/126 "2006-01-05T16:33:16Z")
> [@bobthebuilder](#): > > Our existence is proof of our existence nothing more. Hardly, it proves all sorts of things. For example, it proves that life is possible, that some planets can support life, that self awareness is possible, and that technology is possible. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > How do you know that something that exists outside of the natural cannot effect that natural? I don’t; I simply don’t see how it could. Physical things interact with physical things. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > How do you know a being doesnt have the power to speak things into being, or to by thought cause things to be or not to be? Im not saying that one exists, but to say that “THere is no God” or “God is impossible” are unverifiable statements and statements that cannot be made by a human. There is no reason to believe in such a thing, and many not to; therefore I don’t. Besides, it’s a religious idea, which makes it implausible; given religion’s track history, the fact that a statement is religious makes it less likely to be true. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > Anyway your bring up physical laws, as if physical laws neccesarily effect or apply to everything, that is an asusmption based on observation, but it is only a guess that they apply to everything, since we do not have the capabilities to observe everything. (Which i might add is a major flaw in the belief that observation is the only way to knowledge not that im saying that is your belief.) Physical laws define and control everything we know of, including us. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > And God did it isnt a dead or usless if God actually did it, which as im trying to say could in some instances be the only rational statement to make. (Im not sure if aliens did it due to some bio/nano technology is any less of a dead end then God doing it) In theory we could discover the truth about hypothetical aliens, or disprove their involvement; one can’t do the same for God. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > Your pressuposition being that naturalism or materialism or the non existence of God, mean thats you will try to find a natural or material explanation for everything, which is as it should be, but you will go one step further and would never believe even if the evidence points towards a creator/God that there is one. The concept of God makes no sense; I’d believe I was hallucinating or subject to a fraud or in a Matrix type simulation first. There are an infinity of more plausible explanations for anything than God. ---
**Author:** ![bobthebuilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobthebuilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobthebuilder)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/127 "2006-01-05T16:43:32Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > Hardly, it proves all sorts of things. For example, it proves that life is possible, that some planets can support life, that self awareness is possible, and that technology is possible. > > I don’t; I simply don’t see how it could. Physical things interact with physical things. > > There is no reason to believe in such a thing, and many not to; therefore I don’t. Besides, it’s a religious idea, which makes it implausible; given religion’s track history, the fact that a statement is religious makes it less likely to be true. > > Physical laws define and control everything we know of, including us. > > In theory we could discover the truth about hypothetical aliens, or disprove their involvement; one can’t do the same for God. > > The concept of God makes no sense; I’d believe I was hallucinating or subject to a fraud or in a Matrix type simulation first. There are an infinity of more plausible explanations for anything than God. Yes but it proves that life is possible HERE, it proves that technology is possible NOW ect ect it proves nothing else about anywhere else. Wow religion has a bad track record therefore a black mark against all religion and therefore you wont even consider the possibility. There is actually no reason to believe so dramatically against a God if given evidence. Physical laws define and control everything we know of including us at this point in time and in our observation, blanket statements can not be made by observation. True we couldnt disprove the involvement of God which might make it not science but does not make in neccesarily impossible. The concept of God makes no sense because you will not allow it to make sense, you would prefer to believe in the hallucination or fraud or simulation. Im not sure how those ideas are any more plausible than God? ---
**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 5, 2006, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/128 "2006-01-05T16:56:06Z")
> [@bobthebuilder](#): > > Yes but it proves that life is possible HERE, it proves that technology is possible NOW ect ect it proves nothing else about anywhere else. We have telescopes; there’s nothing all that unique about our location. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > There is actually no reason to believe so dramatically against a God if given evidence. Yes there is. First, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Second, fraud and delusion. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > Physical laws define and control everything we know of including us at this point in time and in our observation, blanket statements can not be made by observation. They can be about what we observe. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > True we couldnt disprove the involvement of God which might make it not science but does not make in neccesarily impossible. Neither is the possibility that I’m God, but I’ve gone nuts and think I’m human. “Not impossible” isn’t the same as “worth considering”. > [@bobthebuilder](#): > > The concept of God makes no sense because you will not allow it to make sense, you would prefer to believe in the hallucination or fraud or simulation. Im not sure how those ideas are any more plausible than God? It violates no physical laws, nor requires nothing we do not know to exist. God does; mystic powers violate the laws, and I’m not aware of any supplies of Godium to make Gods out of. ---
**Author:** ![bobthebuilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c67d28/32.png) [@bobthebuilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobthebuilder)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/129 "2006-01-05T17:14:45Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > We have telescopes; there’s nothing all that unique about our location. > > Yes there is. First, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Second, fraud and delusion. > > They can be about what we observe. > > Neither is the possibility that I’m God, but I’ve gone nuts and think I’m human. “Not impossible” isn’t the same as “worth considering”. > > It violates no physical laws, nor requires nothing we do not know to exist. God does; mystic powers violate the laws, and I’m not aware of any supplies of Godium to make Gods out of. There is nothing unique that we have yet to realize about our location. I agree…but Im saying that those extraordinary evidences can happen there are certain things that would and should convince of God. Yes but we havent observed everything and never will…they only behave as such when we observe them…we dont know there behavior when we arent observing them. You keep talking about physical laws, physical laws which we dont know if they are constant or if they always have been or even if they are everywhere right now, its all assumption. WE dont know he doesnt exist, therefore given the correct evidence we should be rationally compelled to believe unless we are hindered by a desire of belief. ---
**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 5, 2006, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/130 "2006-01-05T17:38:05Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > It’s a bit unsettling that you find love to have no effect in the real world, but once again, there is no prohibition against testing God. The only prohibition is against science testing God. Why that must be repeatedly reiterated and ignored is unclear. It seems that the altar of science has become so broad as to occupy every cell in the brain. You pooh-poohed my satire of science being the only word we need, and yet you act it out in every post. There. Are. More. Ways. To. Test. Things. Than. With. Science. No, whether God’s love affects us (by making Rev. Ike’s followers able to buy Cadillacs, for example) is a different question from whether God loves us. That would be directly observing the supernatural, which science cannot do. > [@](#): > > I’ve been an extreme deist since my first epiphany. But the claim — one more time — is that science cannot detect, test, measure, or claim anything at all about the supernatural, including whether it impacted anything. Suppose you want to measure whether a student learned her math lesson. As of yet we cannot look into her head to find out. We can only measure the result of her writing the answers to questions. We then hypothesize that her knowledge is in proportion to her test scores, but we can be wrong. She might have had a cold, and done much worse than her true knowledge. Maybe she memorized a dozen answers, and they all showed up. Then her score is higher than her knowledge. In the same way, science can measure the physical impact of the supernatural (if there were any) and hypothesize its characteristics. Sure we might be totally wrong. Big deal. We might be wrong about anything. Now, if God(Lib) has no impact on the physical world, then science cannot examine God(Lib). That I agree with. But God(average Christian) does have an impact, and can be examined. > [@](#): > > I don’t know. But I’ve often said that it is hard to imagine a more mystical philosophy than materialism. Lib, meet mswas. Mswas, Lib. 🙂 ---
**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 5, 2006, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/131 "2006-01-05T17:44:08Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > For me the term supernatural simply means what is that we don’t understand yet. I don’t think that works, since there are many things in science we don’t understand yet (and I was just reading a copy of Science which listed many of them) which are not thought to be supernatural. > [@](#): > > or as you put it “things that violate natural laws without invalidating the laws.” > It seems apparent that there is much we don’t know about exactly how our world works, the potential and possibilities. We have many things now that would have been thought impossible not all that long ago. My definition implies that we have observed these supernatural things, and that we have good reason to believe they violate physical laws, and that we cannot modify physical laws to include them naturally. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/132 "2006-01-05T18:53:53Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > No, whether God’s love affects us (by making Rev. Ike’s followers able to buy Cadillacs, for example) is a different question from whether God loves us. That would be directly observing the supernatural, which science cannot do. Well, that’s some progress. Now, if we can get beyond the inability of science to observe the supernatural to the inapplicability of science in interpreting the supernatural we’ll be in agreement. There is no way, scientifically speaking, to determine whether an effect had a supernatural cause. If you disagree, then please explain why you have not already attributed the collapse of an electron’s orbit — an apparently uncaused event — to the supernatural. Since science cannot determine the cause for a particle emission, has it found evidence that God exists? > [@](#): > > Suppose you want to measure whether a student learned her math lesson. As of yet we cannot look into her head to find out. We can only measure the result of her writing the answers to questions. We then hypothesize that her knowledge is in proportion to her test scores, but we can be wrong. She might have had a cold, and done much worse than her true knowledge. Maybe she memorized a dozen answers, and they all showed up. Then her score is higher than her knowledge. In the same way, science can measure the physical impact of the supernatural (if there were any) and hypothesize its characteristics. Sure we might be totally wrong. Big deal. We might be wrong about anything. But it doesn’t know that that is where the impact came from. How _can_ it? > [@](#): > > Now, if God(Lib) has no impact on the physical world, then science cannot examine God(Lib). That I agree with. But God(average Christian) does have an impact, and can be examined. It makes no difference whether God does or does not have an impact on the physical world. Science cannot examine God either way, unless God is physical too. ---
**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 5, 2006, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/133 "2006-01-05T19:55:30Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Well, that’s some progress. Progress? Please show where I even once said that science can directly view the supernatural. I think I have been excessively clear on this point, to the point of verbosity. > [@](#): > > Now, if we can get beyond the inability of science to observe the supernatural to the inapplicability of science in interpreting the supernatural we’ll be in agreement. There is no way, scientifically speaking, to determine whether an effect had a supernatural cause. If you disagree, then please explain why you have not already attributed the collapse of an electron’s orbit — an apparently uncaused event — to the supernatural. Since science cannot determine the cause for a particle emission, has it found evidence that God exists? I’ve also been very clear on this. Science does not go from an unexplained event directly to the supernatural. Natural hypotheses, as I have said many times in this thread, have precedence. Only when the observed phenomena violates physical laws, and no set of natural explanations work, would the supernatural be called in. In this case no laws are being violated - the need for a cause is not a law - and these events are well behaved statistically even if they are not predictable individually. > [@](#): > > But it doesn’t know that that is where the impact came from. How _can_ it? Science doesn’t “know” anything in the proper sense. The actual hypothesis wouldn’t be “it’s supernatural” and end at that. It would be, say, there is some supernatural way of doing telepathy, or there is a deity who can violate natural laws, or something else. And you could even try to falsify the hypothesis, for instance by observing if god needed a starship. It would be harder to do if this supernatural entity did produce effects on a regular basis, but it took a while to collect evidence for meteorites also, remember. > [@](#): > > It makes no difference whether God does or does not have an impact on the physical world. Science cannot examine God either way, unless God is physical too. Not directly, but indirectly. Certainly we know more about a god who impacts the physical world than we would about one who didn’t - don’t you agree? And I’m not claiming it is likely for science to completely understand a supernatural entity in any conceivable situation - just that it could be studied through its effects on the physical world. I have a hard time seeing how anyone could support the contention that the level of scientific understanding of an entity that never impacted the physical world is identical to that for one that does. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/134 "2006-01-05T21:10:16Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I don’t think that is going on at all. When the first person learns something, he has filtered out all the dead ends, so the second person has a much easier time of it. If the first person really understands it, then he can teach it fairly well. I don’t know if you have had this experience, but last year I figured out something about a certain type of failed chip, which no one has understood before. I can’t even imagine why it took me a year to see this, it is so obvious now. Plus, I’ve seen the light come on in other people I have given talks to. One fairly famous guy who was my session chair when I presented this paper was explaining it to someone else, and he got it. We had a meeting with a vendor, and other people from my company, who I didn’t think saw it, clearly had gotten it too. No shared thoughts going on, just a meme being transmitted. The meme being transmitted IS thoughts being shared. It’s a physical manifestation of an idea. What we do here in the physical world is kind of like actors on a stage acting out abstract processes. The information age has made things blur a little bit in that the physical world is becoming increasingly abstract as we perform abstractions in physical manners, such as sending information back and forth over the internet. The Qabbalistic concept “Binah” loosely translated as ‘understanding’ works based on the exact same principle as Binary Code. It’s the state of consciousness where we seperate ideas into individual bits. This is where I have been making that argument these past few months of Ancient Mysticism and Modern Science working together. Many of our modern ideas that science is bringing into the mainstream, and causing western society to accept them as valid fact, have been concepts used by Mystics for thousands of years. They are used in different ways by different people, but without the contributions of the ancients to the meme pool, we wouldn’t have the memes transmitted in order for scientists to grasp them today. It’s a long lineage that grows organically rather than in a “Eureka” epiphanic fashion. Basically someone addresses the concept, the scribes write it down, the members of the mystery school that maintains that bit of knowledge contemplate it for eons, work is written on it, it moves back and forth across cultures, it becomes embedded deeply in the psyche of some cultures, then one day scientists start working on aspects of it, and they start to PROVE it. This does not however mean that people in the past did not conceive of some of the higher sciences that we have today. So in the past these ideas were seen as not being of the “natural” world. They were supernatural. To our more primitive advancement in the past they seemed to be from somewhere ‘beyond’. Now that we have things like cognitive science, quantum mechanics, genomics and computer science, these ancient “Supernatural” concepts have entered into the practical realm. This is why it is difficult for me to prove my points to people, because I am trying to say that we have had these ideas for a long time, and the only way I can prove it is to point to ancient literature that contains these notions. So by clinging to this idea of supernatural, we cling to the primitive conception of what is “Natural”, when a lot of these ‘spiritual’ ideas have merely been redefined with terms like “meme transmission”. But Meme transmission is shared thoughts. Just because you can give a physical explanation for it, doesn’t deny what I am saying. This is why I have been arguing semantics, because I think that it is semantics that seperates it, and not some intrinsic fundamental difference in the methods that these things work. > [@](#): > > Got any other evidence? I clearly don’t buy that set. Again, because you define it in a different way you think that you are talking about a different thing. I disagree. > [@](#): > > I think that was what I was saying. The utility of the term is to talk about things that violate natural laws without invalidating the laws. > > I agree that your god tag changes all the time. In fact the mswas internet is different from the Voyager internet since we inhabit different parts of it, and probably have seen pieces the other has not. Our understanding of how it works is way different, as is our experience in using it. yes, this is true, subjectively there are multiple INTERPRETATIONS of the internet, but it is still THE internet, and it doesn’t belong to either you or I. This is why people make the interpretation of Google as a “Deus Ex Machina” because it is one of the more elegant representations of deity that we have thus far constructed. However, it is important to note that to think that Google was God, would be to create yet another false idol. Erek ---
**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 5, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/135 "2006-01-05T22:07:04Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > The meme being transmitted IS thoughts being shared. It’s a physical manifestation of an idea. What we do here in the physical world is kind of like actors on a stage acting out abstract processes. The information age has made things blur a little bit in that the physical world is becoming increasingly abstract as we perform abstractions in physical manners, such as sending information back and forth over the internet. Describing the sharing of information and ideas as sharing thoughts sounds reasonable. My objection would be to a non-physical mechanism. > [@](#): > > This is where I have been making that argument these past few months of Ancient Mysticism and Modern Science working together. Many of our modern ideas that science is bringing into the mainstream, and causing western society to accept them as valid fact, have been concepts used by Mystics for thousands of years. There are definitely ancient concepts that are right, like some natural remedies. There are some that are wrong, such as mental illness being caused by demons. There are people today who reinterpret both science and the old meme to make the tradition sound right, like creationists who claim that the fact that different species and classes of animals appeared at different times validates the Genesis story. It’s really about the process the ancients used. Could they come up with a fairly reliable way of knowing, or did they throw out 1,000 ideas, 100 of them correct and 200 correct with the right adjustment? (And I mean partially correct, not completely.) It is kind of like predictions in science fiction. The field throws out thousands of preditions, but the writer who hits it on the nose is likely lucky, not prescient. (Small exception for scientists writing about fields with which they are familiar.) With selective hindsight we might claim that sf predicts the future well, but it’s not true, since there is no way of filtering the hits from the misses at the time. I think you are doing the same thing. I can accept that some advances might occur because the meme is around, and that the meme was created by the ancients. Similarly, some rocket scientists got inspired by Jules Verne. But there is a big, big gap between wanting to do something read in an ancient book and being able to. > [@](#): > > So by clinging to this idea of supernatural, we cling to the primitive conception of what is “Natural”, when a lot of these ‘spiritual’ ideas have merely been redefined with terms like “meme transmission”. But Meme transmission is shared thoughts. Just because you can give a physical explanation for it, doesn’t deny what I am saying. This is why I have been arguing semantics, because I think that it is semantics that seperates it, and not some intrinsic fundamental difference in the methods that these things work. I thought you meant something else by sharing thoughts. This definition has not problems as far as I can see - but how do you transmit memes to inanimate objects, again? > [@](#): > > yes, this is true, subjectively there are multiple INTERPRETATIONS of the internet, but it is still THE internet, and it doesn’t belong to either you or I. This is why people make the interpretation of Google as a “Deus Ex Machina” because it is one of the more elegant representations of deity that we have thus far constructed. However, it is important to note that to think that Google was God, would be to create yet another false idol. > > Erek Huh? How is Google god? Besides that the stock price is getting kind of heavenly? Sure there is a real internet, but no person on earth can see the whole thing. The speed at which it changes, with people connecting and disconnecting and adding nodes and websites, means that though you could theoretically talk about the state of the Internet at a given time, practically you would never be able to record this state. Good example! ---
**Author:** ![Hoodoo\_Ulove](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/58956e/32.png) [@Hoodoo\_Ulove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoodoo_Ulove)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/136 "2006-01-05T22:12:01Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Oddly, you keep skipping the gist of each post, and responding to the dependent metaphor; therefore, I’m going to say this time only that we should clear up what you mean be life and death. Please do so. Well, life has more than a few interpretations, as does death, but your formulation of my usage is close enough. > [@](#): > > If by life and death you mean the activation or deactivation of cellular replication . . . And I will agree that “there is no life in the atoms.” > [@](#): > > There is no life in the atoms. The whole history and future of the universe is a symphony of death in slow diminuendo. And I am not asserting that the second law of thermodynamics is false. There were two questions floating around in our exchange. The more trivial to me, but puzzling, is your remark that the universe is dying, while you deny that it’s alive. Now in some metaphorical sense, the universe could be characterized as _either_ dead or alive, but I don’t see how It could never be alive and yet be dying. Now your remark that you trust your eyes for only the most trivial matters brought to my mind an image of you driving a car with your loved ones as passengers, and failing to trust your eyes’ message that there is a semi heading right at you, and your beloved wife, child, etc. being “killed” as a result. Now I pretty much suspected that you would stick to your philosophical guns and call this a trivial matter, but I perversely wanted to hear you say it again. If this was a cheap shot, I’m sorry. ---
**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 5, 2006, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/137 "2006-01-05T22:14:58Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > It makes no difference whether God does or does not have an impact on the physical world. Science cannot examine God either way, unless God is physical too. Incorrect; if something has an impact on the physical world it can be studied, even if it can’t be detected directly; neutrinos were like that for a long time. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/138 "2006-01-05T23:02:16Z")
> [@Hoodoo Ulove](#): > > There were two questions floating around in our exchange. The more trivial to me, but puzzling, is your remark that the universe is dying, while you deny that it’s alive. Now in some metaphorical sense, the universe could be characterized as _either_ dead or alive, but I don’t see how It could never be alive and yet be dying. Like I said, the word has many definitions, including “2 a : to pass out of existence : CEASE \”. (Merriam-Webster) No one would suggest the words were at any point alive. > [@](#): > > Now your remark that you trust your eyes for only the most trivial matters brought to my mind an image of you driving a car with your loved ones as passengers, and failing to trust your eyes’ message that there is a semi heading right at you, and your beloved wife, child, etc. being “killed” as a result. Now I pretty much suspected that you would stick to your philosophical guns and call this a trivial matter, but I perversely wanted to hear you say it again. If this was a cheap shot, I’m sorry. Don’t you dare apologize. 🙂 Your intellectual honesty is pristine. As I said before, it is what I most admire about you and your questions. You certainly are not always tactful, but I’ve never found you to be disingenuous. The universe and everything in it is trivial. It lasts a few billion years, and then it’s gone — wild speculations about multiverses and reversed entropy notwithstanding. Although I meant that I do not trust my eyes with respect to miracles in the sense that they may be optical illusions, it certainly is the case that my loved ones are not made of atoms. Those bodies are mere shells. Car crashes don’t kill people; they kill only bodies. Man’s essence is spirit, not flesh. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2006, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/139 "2006-01-05T23:05:44Z")
> [@Der Trihs](#): > > Incorrect; if something has an impact on the physical world it can be studied, even if it can’t be detected directly; neutrinos were like that for a long time. Are you saying that neutrinos were once supernatural? If not, what is your point? You may study effects all you please, but that does not mean you know their causes — especially with a tool like science. For example, consider the case someone gave of inducing spiritual experience through temporal lobe stimulation. As VS Ramachandran, an expert and pioneer in those experiments, has said, science cannot determine which is the case: does the stimulation produce God or does God produce the stimulation? The data, as he points out, may be freely interpreted either way. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2006, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103/140 "2006-01-06T03:21:42Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I don’t think that works, since there are many things in science we don’t understand yet (and I was just reading a copy of Science which listed many of them) which are not thought to be supernatural. Of course you’re right. My definition was inaccurate. What I meant was in time many of the things we have little knowledge about now, and might be called supernatural by some, will be understood better. and perhaps be commonplace. ONe example, IN martial arts through years of training and practice people are taught to do things that would seem physically impossible to most people. They are taught to foucus their body and mind to accomplish these tasks. Part of that training is to visualize as reality what you once thought impossible. What are the limits of that kind of focus and concetration? The way electric impulses affect the brain to simulate spiritual experiences is likely only the tip of the iceberg of what we will discover about the brain. I find this thread dam interesting. I’ve thought for a while that our known reality is merely a smaller part of something more and it may be unrealistic to expect us to be able to test that larger reality form within this one. > [@](#): > > My definition implies that we have observed these supernatural things, and that we have good reason to believe they violate physical laws, and that we cannot modify physical laws to include them naturally. Yes. Gravity exists but we have learned to fly. Flying was once a myth. We have achieved the myth without violating any physical laws. What else is possible? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-we-say-about-the-supernatural/338103.md?page=8)