Peanut Gallery

We agree that there is a difference between genuinely supernatural feats and advanced technology — Yes?The question here is whether or not we can consider bluegenes criteria to have been met by my example. It wouldn’t just be that the dude in question seemed unbounded by the laws of nature. It would be that the dude in question resembled so closely the supernatural object of belief that those who claim to have had supernatural experiences and the like have continually claimed exists.You are quite right that it could be an advanced alien playing Jesus. You are quite right to say that it may be impossible for us to definitively tell the difference between advanced and seemingly inexplicable aliens and the genuinely supernatural, given our own limitations.But if this dude, claiming to be the son of God, raising the dead and whatnot, did actually turn up I think it would be rather churlish of me to continue to rebuke supernaturalists for talking un-evidenced garbage. I think at that point I would have to hold my hands up and say You guys may have been onto something after all. This religious stuff has a lot more validity than I had ever thought. It appears that I as an atheist may well have been wrongIf this dude turned up I would say that bluegenes theory was in rather serious trouble.Wouldn't you?

No. I don't know what principle you are applying. But that is most definitely NOT what I am saying.If the religious methods of knowing which I have treated with such scorn turn out to be able to demonstrate themselves as reliable then it would be overly stubborn of me to continue to deny their validity wouldn't it?Christians have been claiming the existence of an entity specifically like the one under consideration on the basis of subjective experiences and textual interpretation for some time. Thus far these methods of knowing have proven themselves to be wholly unreliable and to amount to nothing more than a strong sense of personal conviction. But if the Jesus dude under discussion turned out to be real..........I don't see how I could continue to tell supernaturalists that their beliefs were unevidenced and atheists would have to ask themselves some serious questions.Surely? I cannot believe that you (of all people) are telling me I should be unquestioningly atheistic no matter what evidence ever presents itself? Whooaaah there!! What principle are you applying here? It seems like a very dangerous principle and not one which I shall be employing or subscribing to.Until religious/spiritual methods of knowing do demonstrate themselves as being remotely worthy of any consideration I would strongly advise that we continue to treat claims of the supernatural with the utmost scepticism.

If the second coming of Christ as envisaged by Christians does actually take place then he, being "neither derived from nor subject to any laws of nature", could accurately be described as being supernatural could he not? By virtue of being omnipotent? If you wanna call Jesus the eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent son of God born by miraculous conception and unbounded by any natural laws "natural" you go ahead.But this would seem to me to be pushing the limit of what we commonly mean by the term "natural" well beyond breaking point.You seem to be trying to define the supernatural out of existence by simply insisting that if something turns out to be real it, by definition, must be natural.But I don’t think this is either justified or useful. If entities exist which are neither derived from, nor subject to, any laws of nature (e.g. Jesus Christ as conceived by Christians such as Buz and Slev) then these entities are both real and supernatural.That these entities almost certainly don’t exist isn’t really the point.

If you consider the second coming of Christ to be an insufficient basis for atheists to at least ponder their position then I can only conclude that you have simply a priori decided that the falsifiability of bluegenes theory is as invalid as you originally asserted and that there is no swaying you from this predefined position. You seem to have fallen into the RAZDian fallacy of demanding proofs when it suits your arguments to do so.But if you consider the second coming of Christ to be insufficient evidence upon which atheists should at least question their position I am intrigued as to what your own theistic beliefs are based on? It must be exceptionally compelling.A miraculously conceived Christ dude with DNA to match goes round raising the dead, healing the incurable and generally being as verifiably miraculous and divine as one could hope for and you want to proclaim this as a victory for naturalism on the basis that the dude in question is obviously an alien rather than anything that could possibly be described as supernatural.Yet you yourself believe in the supernatural based on some vague internal feelings of conviction.I find these two positions rather incongruent.

In the unlikely event that the second coming of Christ as conceived and envisaged by Christian supernaturalists actually occurs I think this could accurately and meaningfully be described as supernatural.If by the application of some definitional dynamics you want to relabel this as natural and in doing so render the term supernatural meaningless then I guess you can do that.But I remain wholly unconvinced that this method of argument by definition is a legitimate or even useful method of confronting the wrong-headed nature of such beliefs. There are good evidenced reasons for concluding that such beliefs are the result of human failings and inclinations. Simply defining them away as nothing seems more like a cheap way of winning a debate than an actual argument against the proposed reality of such nonsense.

No. You miss the point. If the Christian (or indeed any other) concept of the supernatural is true then you cannot simply refute this by saying "I define it otherwise". Unless the Christian concept of a supernatural God who is neither derived from, nor subject to natural laws because he is the source of such laws - actually exists.Now I think this is as as silly as you do. But your assertions make this an impossibility. And claiming that things are utterly impossible because your definitions don't allow otherwise just isn't a valid argument. Yes. You are denying the possibility of the genuinely supernatural. But that is not logically, philosophically or evidentially justified.So on what basis are you asserting that things which are genuinely supernatural in the sense of being genuinely inexplicable in terms of natural laws (e.g. the second coming of Christ as conceived by Christians) are absolutely impossible? No it doesn't explain anything. But so what? If it is both genuinely supernatural and true then it remains true regardless of what your definitions allow.

Is it anything unreal that you are calling "nothing"? Or is there more to your "absolutely nothing" label than that?This is what I don't get about your position. Is the concept of Spider-man also "nothing" because it isn't real? Simply defining things that are neither derived from, nor subject to, natural laws as "natural" does not make them so in any meaningful sense. Well Christ as the son of God in human form is the very obvious example of a tangible but supernatural entity. No? The supernatural explanations put forwards by Buz and his ilk may be stupidly wrong but they are not "nothing".The sort of deistic concept of God we have at times vaguely been confronted with by RAZ you could reasonably argue is "nothing". But not all supernatural claims are ambiguous.

Then you would agree that there is more evidence favouring the human ability and inclination to invent gods than there is of the actual existence of gods? The IPU is no more or less falsifiable than is the magically undetectable Easter rabbit. The IPU is designed to be unfalsifiable.That is the point of the IPU. Why you think even looking up the Immaterial Pink Unicorn on wikipedia before concluding that it is necessarily a human invention (being imperceptible as it is) remains a mystery.Beyond the philosophical possibility of some miraculous co-incidence whereby the human imagination has stumbled across some entirely imperceptible truth by pure chance - We know that the IPU is a made-up entity.

You are conflating the phenomenon with the supernatural explanation. The eclipse is the eclipse. It is what is believed caused the eclipse that is supernatural. Supernatural in the sense of being inherently immune from material understanding in any way. Jesus is an example of a phenomenon which is conceived to be inherently materially inexplicable (by those that believe in his divinity)The eclipse spirit (or whatever) that is the cause of your eclipse example likewise is believed to be inherently materially inexplicable by those that believe in it's existence.That is what is meant by "supernatural". Even the most wild eyed proponents of Jesus's supernatural divinity would not define supernatural to the conceptual exclusion of all else in the way that you are doing. It represents the belief that there are things which both exist and which are inherently beyond material explanation or any laws of nature. Are there any non-supernatural god concepts?Supernatural in the sense of being inherently beyond material understanding. And it almost certainly wasn't genuinely supernatural. If any of it happened at all.But simply insisting that by your definitions it must be natural if it did occur does not in any way mean that it is impossible that the genuinely supernatural does exist. Yes. And whilst they would probably both be relentlessly wrong simply defining their beliefs to be impossible does not make them so.That is the point.

The concept of spider-man is very well defined. Real or not.As are many supernatural concepts. Unless it genuinely is supernatural magic. Which is a possibility that your position necessarily denies as being impossible.But that stance is logically, evidentially and philsophically unjustified. Does being intangible make the supernatural existence of something impossible?

The fact that we can materially investigate (and thus potentially explain) the eclipse.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Hence their recourse to invoking supernatural agents to explain the phenomenon in question. If something can possibly exist it cannot accurately be described as nothing can it?So it seems that we agree that it is possible that things which are neither derived from nor bounded by any natural laws and which are thus not explicable in any natural terms can exist. Things such as the Christian concept of Christ as the miraculously and immaculately conceived son of an eternal and omniscient God.It is these possibilities that we call supernatural.Now if you want to argue that positing the existence of such things leads to pointless explanatory dead ends - I will agree. If you want to say that science can never accept supernatural answers to anything because it effectively stops any further investigation in it’s tracks — I will agree.If you want to point out that every shred of evidence we have, the entire history of human understanding beating such explanations ever further into retreat, deeply implies that such explanations are nothing more than figments of the human imagination borne out of a psychological need to try and understand nature by imposing our own needs and desires at the expense of accuracy — Then I won’t just agree with you. I will trample you down as I beat my way to the head of the queue in order to make that point myself.But as flawed as belief in the actual existence of the supernatural almost certainly is you cannot just define the concept of the supernatural out of existence and call it nothing. People’s beliefs in the supernatural are real and, despite all of the evidence favouring human invention, it remains possible that the actual entities they believe in are real too.And if they are possibly real they are not "meaningless" and they are not nothing.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.

Do you agree that we are limited to our physical senses as a means of perceiving reality external to our own minds?Do you agree that if something is immaterial it cannot be physically perceived?If the answer to both those questions is 'Yes' then I think you have your answer.

So what are you saying?Are you saying that nothing short of proof (which we probably both agree is impossible) will satisfy you that bluegenes theory has been falsified? If so why this sudden demand that we have to disprove things when science makes no claims to either prove or disprove anything?In the unlikely event of being faced with what appears to all practical intents and purposes to be the second coming of Christ I, as an atheist, would feel it necessary to re-evaluate my position on the validity of the religious methods of knowing that had predicted this event.I would also consider bluegenes theory to have been falsified to all practical intents and purposes. Not disproven. But falsified by the terms he laid down.Is that really so unreasonable? OK. But you have also said the following:Bluejay writes:"But, a religious person can easily distinguish non-empirically between their faith-based, theistic epistemology and imagination or delusion. " Message 111So what are these epistemologies and why are they so much more convincing to you regarding the existence of the supernatural than the verified existence of a miraculously conceived Christ dude with DNA to match who goes round raising the dead, healing the incurable and generally being as verifiably miraculous and divine as one could hope for?

It is almost certainly true that anything to which a supernatural explanation is being posited will turn out to be perfectly comprehensible in terms of entirely natural laws. History would strongly suggest this to be the case.But it is not absolutely certainly true.It is possible that there can exist causes which are neither derived from nor bounded by any natural laws and which are thus themselves not explicable in any natural terms .It is these possibilities that we call supernatural.These are not "nothing". Nor are they "meaningless". They are just poorly evidenced dead-end explanations that are in all probability wrong.Edited by Straggler, : No reason given.