Please allow me to introduce myself...

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Re: Please allow me to introduce myself...

Postby Moonwood the Hare » Thu Sep 08, 2011 10:28 am

Keep The Reason wrote:
MH wrote:I've said I'm not committed to the idea of supernatural intervention in the sense of events happening that have no possible natural explanation


If they have a natural explanation, then a supernatural explanation is unnecessary. If the explanation is supernatural, then no natural explanation is possible.

Seriously, do these words "natural" and "supernatural" have any meaning to you at all?

I think they have several different meanings which I am trying hard not to conflate. So.
1. Supernatural as belief that nature is not all there is. What this means depends a lot on what we think nature is. Is it just matter/energy and whatever other properties emerge from that or can it include noetic aspects like numbers conceived as distinct extants, platonic forms, propositions, Jungian archetypes, morphic fields etc. etc. Are human minds part of nature or in some sense supernatural? Would ghosts be supernatural or could they be a part of nature we don't yet know about? (stone tapes?)
2. Supernatural as the belief that beings who are part of nature such as God can in some way causally interact with nature in order to produce results that have no natural explanation. If this happened what we would generally expect to happen is that we would find otherwise inexplicable gaps in the causal sequence. We would always have the problem that such events might have a natural cause we did not know about so we could not be sure in any case that a supernatural event could had happened.

However it is also possible that a supernatural being could causally interact with nature in a way that did not leave such gaps. For example there is a story in the Bible where Jesus tells his disciples to go and catch a fish and they will find in its mouth a coin to pay their taxes and they do. But we know that there were types of fish in that part of the world that did sometimes swallow coins. So here is a miracle (in the sense of surprising thing) where the disciples see God as intervening but there is no gap in the causal sequence of the natural world. The virgin birth is explicable as a miracle of this kind and it is conceivable that if we knew more about the workings of nature all miracles would turn out to be of this kind. They would be attention grabbers but not supernatural events.

Hence while I am a supernaturalist according to sense 1 I am agnostic with regard to sense 2. I hope that makes sense.

The concept of the supernatural cannot be found in the Bible it is very much a modern idea though I think it grows out of the late medieval idea of nature and grace which has its roots in Hellenistic dualism.
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Re: Please allow me to introduce myself...

Postby Keep The Reason » Thu Sep 08, 2011 11:24 am

I already addressed this-- physicists have a "super"natural as well as defined by M-Theory. The model indicates it's something "beyond our universe". But there is a question as to whether something "beyond our universe" = not of nature.

But physicists are also very clear that they cannot prove this environment exists and so it remains a hypothetical.

Look, you're being pedantic again. Do we really have to travel down these side roads of terminology? When I speak of the "supernatural" I mean the imagined realm of angels, ghosts, Heaven and Hell, gods, demons, ghouls, etc., just like 99.9% of the people here understand the term.

God intervening into natural events make them no longer natural and thus irrational. But, if Yahweh used artificial insemination to impregnate Mary, i.e. if he used technology, then it's a purely natural event. Which is fine. But then you lose all claim to it being something "miraculous" as all it is is something "technological".

Take your pick -- you either come down on the side of an special irrational existence, or you come down on the side of a mundane rational one.
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Re: Please allow me to introduce myself...

Postby Moonwood the Hare » Thu Sep 08, 2011 2:21 pm

Keep The Reason wrote:I already addressed this-- physicists have a "super"natural as well as defined by M-Theory. The model indicates it's something "beyond our universe". But there is a question as to whether something "beyond our universe" = not of nature.

But physicists are also very clear that they cannot prove this environment exists and so it remains a hypothetical.

Look, you're being pedantic again. Do we really have to travel down these side roads of terminology? When I speak of the "supernatural" I mean the imagined realm of angels, ghosts, Heaven and Hell, gods, demons, ghouls, etc., just like 99.9% of the people here understand the term.

God intervening into natural events make them no longer natural and thus irrational. But, if Yahweh used artificial insemination to impregnate Mary, i.e. if he used technology, then it's a purely natural event. Which is fine. But then you lose all claim to it being something "miraculous" as all it is is something "technological".

Take your pick -- you either come down on the side of an special irrational existence, or you come down on the side of a mundane rational one.

If you define something as imagined then by definition it does not exist in reality. And your list of supernatural imaginings really don't have any more in common than that you think they are imaginary. If we want to discuss something like the supernatural we have to have a shared definition and I can see no reason whatsoever for accepting your arbitrary list. If God acts into his creation then the consequences will be natural or technological. That was the point of the meteorite poem at the front of Miracles. The act comes from outside but the consequences happen according to the laws that operate inside so their could never be the kind of sharp distinction between natural and supernatural you are positing. I thought you said you had read Lewis.
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Re: Please allow me to introduce myself...

Postby Keep The Reason » Thu Sep 08, 2011 5:30 pm

I have, and nice try getting me to debate the book, which I have no intention of doing, so save yourself some typing.

Until you show support for the realm you are defining-- then it's imaginary by default. I have no obligation to accept yours (or Lewis') contention that this realm exists. And there's no reason to grant you the premise that you're trying to support. Until you show cause and demonstrate it, I do not accept it.

PS: The meteorite doesn't "come from outside".
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