Does 'supernatural' mean 'imaginary'?

[Sapiens]

Jesus actually rose from the dead. He isn't imaginary.

Unsupported and absurd claims, which (if true) would be supernatural.

 

[DavidFirth]

Unsupported and absurd claims, which (if true) would be supernatural.

Read the entire New Testament. Plenty of eyewitness testimony there.

 

[Willamena]

Paraphrasing my dictionary, ‘(the) supernatural’ means ‘things that cannot in principle be explained according to the laws of nature.'

‘Nature’ is the place beyond the lens of your eye, where everything with objective existence is found, the same thing as the realm of the physical sciences.

The same thing as ‘reality’, indeed.

Out there in reality we find no gods, spirits, ghosts, souls, demons, familiars, vampires, fairies, not even the headmistress of Hogwarts.

And we can give no useful meaning to the idea ‘outside reality’ – by definition there’s no such real place. so there can only be an imaginary one.

What have I missed?

What real things cannot in principle be explained by the laws of nature? Imaginary things, fine, but real things?

And where is ‘outside of reality’ except in the imagination?

What is 'supernatural' may be imagined, but you also imagine lots of things that aren't supernatural so the terms are not interchangeable.

 

[Nous]

Paraphrasing my dictionary, ‘(the) supernatural’ means ‘things that cannot in principle be explained according to the laws of nature.'

What are the laws of nature? List them.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

in other words, 'supernatural' by this definition, is a box you want to be able to check, aint it?

No, because there is nothing to actually suggest or indicate some supernatural creator.

There are somethings we can't explain, at least yet.

That is the key word. Of course there are things we can't explain right now and just don't really know (biogenesis being a great example that many Creationists take liberties to fallaciously insist science and evolution answer that question), and there have always been things we couldn't presently explain in the past, but we have explanations now (bacteria, viruses, and mental disorders probably being great examples of this).

But arguably the phenomena of creative intelligence is quite literally supernatural, in that it very specifically transcends natural processes, ( 'Is this object natural or artificial' ?)

How can you argue this when the presence of a supernatural being has not been objectively established?

Jesus actually rose from the dead. He isn't imaginary.

What evidence can you provide of this?

 

[Sapiens]

Read the entire New Testament. Plenty of eyewitness testimony there.

Circular reasoning.

 

[Nakosis]

The universe is freaky enough that you really don't need the supernatural.

Still, the imagination does give it some royal zing to it all and people do like a good scare once in awhile.

Sure supernatural explanations are fun sometimes. I just have the mind set to disregard any explanation that tries to make serious use of the supernatural.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

No, because there is nothing to actually suggest or indicate some supernatural creator.

Apparently
there is to most of us!

How can you argue this when the presence of a supernatural being has not been objectively established?

we certainly haven't established any natural mechanism that created the universe either.

The difference being, only one belief asserts the paradox of natural laws being naturally created by.. those very same laws

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The difference being, only one belief asserts the paradox of natural laws being naturally created by.. those very same laws

No, the difference is where I see a series of natural events even beyond the beginning of this universe, you stop at the beginning of this universe and assume and insert supernatural causes beyond that.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

No, the difference is where I see a series of natural events even beyond the beginning of this universe, you stop at the beginning of this universe and assume and insert supernatural causes beyond that.

Science stops where the Bible does, the beginning, creation of everything as we can possibly ever know it.

In terms of what we both believe beyond that- I allow both natural and creative forces as possibilities, I have no need to banish one to allow the other to prevail

 

[Indagator]

consciousness and free will are supernatural, they are imaginary yet real

 

[blü 2]

One step after the other First find these laws and then try to get behind them. Maybe they are of a nature that needs no further laws? Who knows? They are out of the laws of nature (by definition).

Maybe. But maybe the laws of nature are the product of relationships within the elements of nature in our universe.

 

[Ponder This]

Paraphrasing my dictionary, ‘(the) supernatural’ means ‘things that cannot in principle be explained according to the laws of nature.'

‘Nature’ is the place beyond the lens of your eye, where everything with objective existence is found, the same thing as the realm of the physical sciences.

The same thing as ‘reality’, indeed.

Out there in reality we find no gods, spirits, ghosts, souls, demons, familiars, vampires, fairies, not even the headmistress of Hogwarts.

And we can give no useful meaning to the idea ‘outside reality’ – by definition there’s no such real place. so there can only be an imaginary one.

What have I missed?

What real things cannot in principle be explained by the laws of nature? Imaginary things, fine, but real things?

And where is ‘outside of reality’ except in the imagination?

Hmmm. The word 'supernatural' does seem to be a bit strange. Perhaps we should look at how the word is used and consider if the thing it is being used to describe are part of nature. Ghosts are apparitions of dead people. So if ghosts don't have a place in natural law, then such manifestation would be considered supernatural. If there was a natural law that explained it, then ghosts would not be supernatural. But how do we know what these laws are? If we don't know the laws of nature, then we can't really say what is natural and what is supernatural. So the use of the word supernatural presupposes an understanding of what the natural laws are.

The common understanding of what is natural is that a person's physical interaction with the world as we know it ceases when he dies. So an apparition of a dead person wouldn't be considered natural. Even if a natural explanation exists, it doesn't matter because it's not part of people's understanding of what is natural. For this reason, it is supernatural. You can argue that a natural explanation must exist, but it if you can't actually prove such an explanation, then it doesn't matter. Of course the moment you explain a seemingly supernatural phenomenon in terms of natural laws, it ceases to be a supernatural phenomenon.

So, the meaning of the word supernatural appears to be contingent upon perceptions of what is or is not natural. Things in one's imagination can be supernatural or natural. For example, if I imagine a waterfall, the waterfall is an image of a natural phenomenon (even if the particular waterfall I am imagining doesn't exist anywhere in the real world, because it follows natural law). If I imagine the water is now flowing opposite to how gravity says it should flow, then I am imagining a supernatural phenomenon. So I can distinguish that some imaginary things are supernatural and some imaginary things are natural.

In the case of ghosts, it doesn't matter if you regard them as real or imaginary. If you agree that they are beyond the laws of nature, then they are supernatural. If you believe that all things supernatural must be imaginary (or that all phenomena are explainable by natural laws even if you don't know what those natural laws are), then that's fine... but you may find it difficult to get other people to agree with you.

In the end the word 'supernatural' like all words has a meaning that is dependent upon the context in which it is used. For the word 'supernatural', part of the context is an agreement about what is natural (or follows natural law).

 

[blü 2]

arguably the phenomena of creative intelligence is quite literally supernatural, in that it very specifically transcends natural processes, ( 'Is this object natural or artificial' ?)

Who says it 'transcends natural processes'?

I've never seen that proposition anywhere in the science from modern brain research. Rather, I've seen the descriptions of neuron connection, the mapping of brain functions and their interactions, our understanding of the brain's workings as a totality, getting into finer and finer detail ─ albeit there's a lot more to do.

It can achieve what natural laws alone never can, which gives it the unique power of explanation

We could only say that if we presently knew everything that natural laws are capable of. But of course we don't or we would no longer need research.

 

[blü 2]

In my opinion you've made an unwarranted jump from "the supernatural cannot be discerned by the same means of inquiry we use to discern the natural" to "the supernatural does not exist and is imaginary".

I didn't make such a leap.

I pointed out that reality, nature, the place external to our sense of self, the place where things have objective existence, the realm of the physical sciences, provides us with the definition of 'real'.

And that if a thing isn't real, it's imaginary (or non-existent).

Hence the idea that something is outside of nature, outside of reality, whether above, below or to the right, is the idea that something is imaginary.

 

[blü 2]

If the supernatural cannot be discerned by the same means of inquiry as we use to discern the natural, then I think the implication is that the supernatural cannot be said to be real in the same sense in which we might say the natural is real.

Do we have any evidence that the supernatural can be discerned at all? Or that it ever has been?

There are many thousands of different supernatural religions, each of them distinct from each other in what supernatural things they believe.

The god-ordained morality of a religion tends to change with the values of its society, its market, so that slavery, circumcision, and cutting your beard go out, and divorce, homosexuality &c become acceptable.

Which hypothesis better accounts for these observations?

a. That there's a supernatural realm where eternal order, morality, justice and an afterlife exist in an undescribed fashion, and humans are capable of perceiving it? or

b. That religions are a social phenomenon, and their supernatural teachings are the product of so many different personal and cultural imaginings?

Which means, of course, that even if we could somehow know it was real, we would not know what we meant by "real". That could be a rather embarrassing position to take, don't you think?

Anything one can say about the existence of the supernatural would be equally true of the existence of Duckburg, would it not?

 

[blü 2]

Jesus actually rose from the dead. He isn't imaginary.

That story is found in the NT, where there are six accounts of it. None of those accounts is by an eye-witness, or is contemporary within 20 years, or is independent. All six accounts contradict the other five in various important ways.

That evidence is simply not credible.

We have videos of statues of Ganesha drinking milk, hailed as a miracle by the faithful , but only the faithful think they show anything supernatural. The evidence for Jesus' resurrection as a fact of history isn't even 1% of that quality.

 

[blü 2]

Well paraphrasing your paraphrasing of your dictionary "supernatural" means "things that cannot in principle be explained according to the laws of nature".

Not really much of a paraphrase so much as added emphasis.

The emphasis in on in principle, not on 'explainable'.

By your definition something needs to be explainable according to the laws of nature in order to disqualify it from being "supernatural".

Explainable in principle, yes.

Thus, despite the fact that the laws of nature are potentially unlimited

Potentially infinite? What's your evidence for that?

if there is no one who knows the laws of nature required to explain an existing phenomenon, then it cannot be explained by the laws of nature as there is no one to explain it.

You misunderstand. This is where, as I said, the emphasis is on in principle.

 

[blü 2]

What are the laws of nature? List them.

Let me see: we observe consistencies of behavior in aspects of the material universe and by observation we express those consistencies as well-founded formulae of general application, called 'laws'. Or something like that. (Though like all conclusions of physics, they're empirical / inductive and hence tentative, so my own preference would be to call them something less emphatic than laws ─ maybe 'rules'.)

As for the particular instances, I leave you to list them for yourself.

 

[blü 2]

we certainly haven't established any natural mechanism that created the universe either.

The difference being, only one belief asserts the paradox of natural laws being naturally created by.. those very same laws

I address this with my favorite hypothesis: that the existence of Everything is due to the existence of energy; and that spacetime is a property of energy so that spacetime exists because energy does, not vice versa. Hence the laws of nature would be properties of energy in the particular circumstances of our universe.

I can't demonstrate its correctness, of course, but I don't know of anything that rules it out and it solves a lot of problems.