Studying the supernatural

I've never really understood the difference between "natural" and "supernatural."It seems to me that there two sets: things that exist, and things that do not exist. We can add a third set, things that conceivably may exist but for which there is no evidence...but eventually if all things were known, everything that could conceivably exist would fit into one of those first two sets - either it exists or it doesn't.Let's stick with ghosts, since they're less emotionally-charged than deities tend to be. Ghosts are a conceivable possibility by a completely unknown mechanism; they're a popular hypothesis to explain a widely disparate set of phenomenon (we'll leave aside for now the discussion on whether they actually serve that purpose well). At the end of the day, however, either ghosts exist, or they do not.Is it that mysteriousness that makes them qualify as "supernatural?" Is that just a label that we apply to conceivably possible things when we don't know the mechanism that could be involved? Is it a label that we apply when a hypothesis seems to contradict other, more certain theories about reality, and we're just either too lazy to try to figure out the real rules that reality is using that explain all of the phenomenon, or too stubborn to let go of a hypothesis that we really like?As far as I'm concerned, any conceivable entity either exists or it does not. When some observation suggests a mysterious mechanism, such as contradicting well-established physical laws, I don't think it's appropriate to create a brand new subset of things that exist but which are somehow separate from the rest of reality.If it can be observed, it can be studied. Just because something has a mysterious mechanism doesn't mean it's an "exception" to the laws of reality - it just means we don't understand everything about reality yet. That's fine, I was never under the presumption that humanity had figured it all out yet. If the thing is conscious and intentionally avoids detection in most circumstances...well, that just means it's difficult to study, not that it's outside the realm of human understanding. And even if it were incomprehensible, that wouldn't mean it's somehow an exception to the laws of reality. Once again, it would just mean that the laws of reality are different to some degree from what we currently think they are, and we already know that to be near-certainly true.

That's fine RAZD - I don;t think we're here to discuss whether ghosts/spirits actually exist or whether appealing to the popularity of an idea lends weight to its probability of accuracy. It's just an example of something usually labelled "supernatural." That's all. All you're doing with those examples is subdividing the sets {exist} and {not exist}. It's irrelevant. It's conceptually possible that aspects of reality might exist yet be undetectable to us. In fact, it's historically true - quarks and gluons, as random examples, were for the great majority of human experience, completely undetectable.I'm not at all talking about the sets {known to exist} and {not known to exist} or {known to not exist}. I'm talking about the sets {exist} and {not exist}. In every single case, either a thing exists, or it does not, correct? What we currently know boils down to a matter of probability assigned by previous observation and testing, but what exists is irrelevant to our knowledge - the territory is independant of the map. North America existed long before Columbus or Eric the Red. Stop. Is that "non-natural behavior?" Or is it simply "behavior not in accordance with currently understood natural law?" In other words, a mystery?By labelling the phenomenon "un-natural" or "supernatural," it seems to me that you're identifying a mystery, a gap in our understanding and saying "wow, this doesn't fit with what I think I know, so I must never be able to really know it, it's compeltely untestable."That's not the proper response to a mysterious question. The proper response is to accept that you don;t understand the phenomenon, and try to come up with some tests to determine what mechanism is at work. "Walking through walls" isn't even all that special - certain forms of matter like neutrinos pass through walls all the time. Electromagnetic fields can pass through most walls as well, which is why I'm able to post this despite the fact that my wireless access point is on the other side of a concrete pillar at the moment, and why my cell phone works indoors.Identifying a mystery just doesn't mean you identify the phenomenon as some brand-new special subset that somehow disqualifies it from natual laws. Mysterious phenomenon, in fact, are exactly what help us the most in determining what the real natural laws are.Remember, a scant few hundred years ago, Lord Kelvin identified the response of muscles to conscious thought as something "infinitely beyond" human understanding. This tendency to worship one's own ignorance by revering the mysteriousness of mysteries rather than trying to just figure out what's really going on is fascinating. If it's observable, RAZD, then it is testable. It may not be easy to do so, but that hardly justifies the creation of a brand new set of ambiguous phenomenon called {supernatural}.If it's not observable, meaning it cannot be detected with any of the senses, then how would you ever get the idea that it happens in the first place? If I can observe a mysterious human-looking figure or other object passing through a wall, then I can try to test under what circumstances this phenomenon seems to happen; test whether some substances are permeable and some are not; see whether the object responds to various stimuli; etc. "Posession" may be extremely difficult to differentiate from mental illness or powerful suggestion and the like, but again - if someone thinks they've seen it happen to themselves or others, then they've observed it and we can test it. Does a posessed individual respond to psychiatric medication? To verbal stimuli? Does it only happen in specific locations and conditions? To specific individuals who may share a common trait? To animals? What would be an indication of "posession" that differenciates it from "mental illness" so that we can tell which phenomenon we're studying in a given individual? The question isn't whether it's a "natural" phenomenon or an "unnatural" phenomenon. The question is, what is the real mechanism at work in this case?" In any case with a mysterious question, we have to try to differenciate between many potential hypotheses to see which is the closest to reality. If we observe a parrtern of numbers that goes {2, 4, 6}, the rule "the number increases by two each time" fits equally well as the rule "the number increases each time" or even "any selection of numbers at all." That's the entire point of investigating a phenomenon - in large part you just have to describe the phenomenon by what you can test to be not happening.The question should be "does the mechanism of posession exist or not," not "is the mechanism 'natural.'" Once again - that a phenomenon may be difficult to investigate, but if a phenomenon is observable in the first place, then further observations can be made to investigate what's going on. Sometimes we don't have the tools to really figure it out; sometimes we don't even have the tools to make the tools that would let us test another phenomenon that would let us create the tools to even observe what's really going on. At no point does that make the phenomenon some super-special set that takes exception to reality's laws. We don;t know all of reality's laws with absolute certainty; that much is going to be true for the forseeable future, and so the proper response to a mysterious question is "let's investigate and see what's going on; if we can't do it yet, let's try to find out what we might need to do so; and until then, we'll accept that we just don't know. Yet.The response to a mysterious question is never to simply revel in our own ignorance, create a special set of phenomenon that "cannot ever be understood," and make sacred our lack of understanding. Either a thing exists, or it does not. The territory is the way it is, and our lack of an accurate map for one part doesn't say anything whatsoever other than that we are ignorant of that part of reality.

Hi RAZD,That was certainly lengthy. I’m going to try to keep my response shorter, so as to prevent going off on a tangent.You’ve recreated some terminology in your prior participation in this thread — I’ll say right now, I couldn’t care less whether you say un-natural or a-natural or supernatural. The reason is that my entire point has been that these subsets are unnecessary, and harmfully so.There are two sets: {exist} and {not exist}. These sets are fully known to nature, but not to us. We use our senses to explore nature. We ask her questions through experimental tests, and we do our best to accurately make sense of her answers. We then make our own sets of {exist} and {not exist}, made to mirror those of nature to the best of our ability.Whether we’re currently able to test a given hypothesis to determine whether its subject belongs in the {exist} or {not exist} set is irrelevant — that hypothesis is still either valid or invalid the moment we write it down. We might not know which is which, and we might not be able to for some timebut that doesn’t mean that investigation will forever be impossible.The term supernatural has traditionally been used to describe phenomenon that share certain themes in common. They tend to be unfalsifiable to one degree or another (sometimes this is actually due to the current unfeasibility of investigation; sometimes not). They tend to seemingly contradict current understandings of nature’s laws in a very significant way. Even the term itself, supernatural, means above or higher than nature; phenomenon carrying this label are typically understood to operate on a higher level than mundane nature. That they belong to a new, special set, one immune to mundane things like science or human understanding. Indeed, when a mundane explanation is brought forth that feasibly explains the aberrant observation, many people will actually still prefer the supernatural hypothesis, simply on the basis of personal preference. So immune to science are these so-called supernatural phenomenon that even a plausible naturalistic explanation after a full investigation is frequently ignored! The terms you’re trying to use simply add another layer of semantics to the problem; they don’t change the nature of the beast at all.RAZD, an actual observation of a phenomenon that contradicts well-established theory should never be dropped down the supernatural hole. These observations are the potential keys to discovering where our maps do not match the territory, whether because we’re wrong or because we just haven’t even seen that part of the territory before. Statistically speaking, the vast, overwhelming majority are more likely to be a poor observation followed by overeager conclusions or a thousand other more normal phenomenon that completely match with our current understanding of nature and her laws. But those rare few exceptions are the hints that will drive another round of exploration and explanation!Supernatural is an extraneous term. There should be no distinction whatsoever between phenomenon that lack explanations. There are only two sets: those things that {exist}, and those that do {not exist}. Our identification of what belongs in each of those sets is governed by evidence, our confidence controlled by the degree of testing we’ve been capable of so far. The term supernatural simply provides an unfounded excuse for people to either disregard a hypothesis totally, or to hold significant confidence in the accuracy of a hypothesis in the absence of evidence justifying such confidence.Why bother with such a label? Why not simply acknowledge the difficulty in repeating observations of such phenomenon under controlled circumstances, and go about trying to determine a way to do so, even if it’s beyond current capabilities? Neutrinos, as an example, are extremely difficult to detect because they pass through matter about as easily as through empty space. A hundred years ago, detection would not have even been possible. Did we identify neutrinos as magic? Did we call them supernatural? No — we thought about the problem and eventually designed and constructed detectors for the weakly-interacting, elusive particles.Why are phenomenon frequently identified as ghosts, as an example, treated differently? Why does this seems difficult or impossible to test at the moment translate to this is outside the realm of science entirely, and can never be tested?Perhaps most importantly, why is this distinction drawn only for specific phenomenon, and not for all such difficult to test phenomenon?

That's a pretty broad and vague suggestion, Percy. "The supernatural" is hardly a consistently defined set. I still think it's a poor label to use - the way the term is treated, one would think that verification of one phenomenon labelled as "supernatural" would similarly verify or at least give support to other, unrelated phenomenon whose sole point of commonality is that they are also labelled "supernatural." If "ghosts" are proven to exist, does that mean all variations on the broad class of phenomenon are also valid? Are ET or Bigfoot or God or fairies or elves more likely if just ghosts are shown to actually exist? What would a "supernatural explanation" look like?See, personally, I think a "supernatural explanation" looks an awful lot like a "natural explanation." An explanation brings a phenomenon out of the set of {not understood} and puts it in the set {at least somewhat understood}. Lightning was once considered a supernatural phenomenon - nobody had any idea how it worked, and myriad hypotheses involving spirits and elements and gods and so forth were invented in various cultures as potential explanations. The real explanation involves electromagnetism and differing charges between the atmosphere and the ground.Isn't that a "supernatural explanation?" It's a testable, working explanation for a phenomenon once considered "supernatural." So too have we explained volcanoes and tornadoes and earthquakes and the motion of the Sun and Moon and stars. Are those not all explanations of "supernatural" phenomenon? We didn't, after all, prove that these things don't exist, akin to proving "ghosts" don't exist. Instead, we tested the phenomenon through repeated observation (in many cases of phenomenon that, like "ghosts" and other "supernatural" phenomenon, occur seemingly at random and without cause to those not already privy to the real explanations).It seems curious to me that in every case where we actually explain a phenomenon (meaning describe the underlying mechanism in a way that can make testable, accurate predictions regarding the phenomenon), we stop labeling that phenomenon as supernatural.Why is that, I wonder?

I think we've been explaining "supernatural" phenomenon for centuries. The actual explanations are often even more amazing than the speculation that came before. The reality of lightning, for example, is significantly more impressive than a guy with a hammer!But when we have an actual explanation for a phenomenon, something that actually makes us feel as though we truly understand at least the basic mechanism at work...we lose that sense of mystery. Curiosity is self-annihilating, after all - once you find the answer, you are no longer curious.I think that, once we have explored a phenomenon sufficiently that we're able to make accurate, testable predictions, we just...stop using the "supernatural" label.Lightning used to be considered supernatural. Volcanoes, tornadoes, even everyday things like the rising of the Sun, the cycles of the Moon...You do know that ancient priests in some cultures would use their ability to mathematically predict lunar eclipses as a way to impress worshippers, right?Today, we think nothing of the regular cycles of the Moon. Eclipses are still rare and impressive, and everybody stops to watch (hopefully with appropriate tools, not the naked eye...), but we don't think an eclipse is "a warning from {insert deity here}" any more. We know that at a certain place on Earth at a certain date and time, an eclipse will happen, whether a deity wants to warn us or not, or even exists or not.It's not mysterious to us any more. It's still impressive, but we don't think of it as "supernatural" any more. Not really, Chuck. I think I already know the reason.If we discovered solid evidence that spirits do actually exist (it doesn;t matter what the actual explanation is - nonphysical remains of human consciousness, sentient alien intelligences from a nonbaryonic parallel Universe formed from the emotional psychic bleedover from the sentient beings in our own Universe called the Warp, whatever), within a few generations we wouldn't be thinking of them as "magic." We'd study them, find out why they can disappear and reappear seemingly at will; why they seem to show up to certain people in certain places; why they can pass through walls; etc.We'd incorporate that knowledge into our understanding of what actually exists. We'd lose our sense of mystery surrounding spirits.And our grandchildren wouldn't even think of them as "supernatural" any more.Have you heard the famous Arthur C Clarke quote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?"The reverse is also true: any sufficiently understood magic is indistinguishable from technology.You could say that we've already proven that the "supernatural" exists: we've proven that lightning exists, and that the Moon really does block out the Sun periodically, and so on. We just don't think of them mysteriously any more...and so now we don't usually think of them as "supernatural."

QM is completely normal. We're strange.

Indeed.Nature defines what "normal" is. To assume that we, with our tiny fragment of knowledge of nature, get to decide what is normal and what is aberrant or unusual is merely hubris.

Why?Be specific. In what way can a "prime mover" be "infinite?" What would an "infinite" person look like, if people could be "infinite?" Why is an "infinite prime mover" a solution to the problem of infinite regression?I ask, GDR, because I don't think your usage of the term is actually an explanation. I think it's just a word that lets you feel like you've responded to the challenge of the regressing turtles, but I don't think it actually explains anything at all. If there were an "infinite prime mover," what predictions would you make (testable or otherwise) that would be different from a non-infinite "prime mover?" If we had perfect knowledge of the Universe and reality, how would our omniscient observations differ between an "infinite prime mover" and a non-infinite "prime mover," or a Universe that does not include a "prime mover" of any sort?

Sure you can. But I don't see how positing additional timelike dimensions for reality answers that question. And science doesn;t just "speculate" based on nothing - when physicists hypothesize about additional dimensions, they're doing so because adding additional dimensions to specific mathematical equasions makes the results come out more like what we observe. Essentially they're using math based on observed physics to predict a possible solution.That's not quite like you or me saying "well, what if the prime mover was infinite!" That's not so speculative actually - it's actually closer to a real view of the actual Universe. Humans only experience time as a one-way constant-speed ride because our brains run on entropy. Our thoughts, because they are electrochemical reactions in our meat brains, can only ever run in the direction of increasing entropy at the speed of those electrochemical reactions. Computers are similar, requiring an increase in entropy for processing data, but the mechanism of flipping transistors on and off is significantly faster than biological neural activity, so you could say that they "think" faster.But time really is just like the spacial dimensions. It's just a continuum of coordinates, where (just as with the spacial dimensions) events and objects at given coordinates have a specific relationship to nearby coordinates (ie, "causes" and "effects" are related in the coordinate system of time in that any "cause" must exist at a time coordinate posessing a lower amount of entropy than its "effect"). If our meat brains, or a computer's electronic processor, were not entropy machines, our perspective on time would be a lot more similar to our perspective on length, or width.How, though, does this solve the problem of infinite regression? The logic behind demanding a "prime mover" in the first place requires that all complex entities be "designed" or "caused" by a more complex entity. How would an "infinite prime mover" then not itself require a still more compelx entity as a "cause?" Why does the ability to perceive time as just another spacial dimension, being free to move to various points in the timeline, solve the question of infinite regression?It sounds like just more special pleading to me, honestly. It's just another way to say "yeah, but this is the first cause" with no actual reason at all to suggest it other than personal preference...and hypothesizing about reality is something quite apart from choosing one's favorite color. Evidence is not what allows us to believe our preferred solution; evidence is what forces us to believe the logically most likely hypothesis. If you intend to be logically consistent, I don't see how an "infinite prime mover" is any different at all from a non-infinite version, except with the nifty word "infinite" attached. Well, that's trivially easy: we already study parts of the Universe that are beyond what we can perceive with our 5 senses. We use technology and mathematics to develop the tools to make observations that let us mathematically predict the existence of things that we can then use technology and mathematics to detect and then display the results in a format that our five senses can perceive. We do this every day.After all, you can't directly observe a neutrino. Innumerable neutrinos pass through your body every day, and not one of your five sense would tell you. Only a specialized detector can do that. We already know that we're part of a much greater reality than the Universe as we perceive it. We've known that virtually since Galileo pointed a telescope at the sky instead of a distant ground-based object and saw a bunch of "stars" (moons) orbiting Jupiter. What we see at the human-sized scale is a teensy, tiny, fragment of a fraction of a percentage of the actual Universe. I'm sure you've read some of cavediver's posts about real quantum fields...The reality is that the Universe is not at all limited to just what we see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. The underlying reality is far more elegant, simple, complex, and amazing than anything we will ever be able to directly perceive. After all, you've never ever actually touched anything - the electrons orbiting the atoms in the cells that make up your skin electromagnetically repelled against the electrons in every object you've ever picked up, keeping just a tiny amount of distance between the two. You don;t even see ultraviolet, or infrared, or x-rays or radio or gamma rays - those wavelengths of light (and others) are all around us every moment and you'd never even know it. In every breath, you take in uncounted gluons and quarks without realizing. I could go on for hours like this, GDR.Science doesn't ignore what we can't see, taste, touch, hear or smell. Science figures out what can detect those things we cannot, and then builds a machine to do so to see what exists and what doesn't.The investigation of the supernatural is what science is all about. We just stop calling it "supernatural" once we no longer feel confused about a mysterious question.More specifically, once a real explanation forces us to believe based on evidence, rather than myriad speculations allowing us to believe whatever is most pleasing based on ignorance.

Not quite. We, as human beings with brains that of necessity run on entropy, experience change in one direction.The Universe just exists, at every moment of time simultaneously. If we could take a step back "outside" of the Universe and take a look at it, what we'd actually see is a four (or more...) dimensional "object" made up of the three spacial dimensions plus time. We'd be able to look at any given time coordinate just as easily as we could look at any given spacial coordinate. The Unvierse would have different states at different coordinates (for instance, as you approach T=0 the spacial dimensions become smaller and smaller), but you could play the timeline of the Universe forwards or backwards or just look at the whole thing at once, and it would be just as internally consistent. It's not an intuitive concept, but that's reality - our intuition is framed by our experiences, which themselves are drawn only from a very tiny, limited subset of the real Universe.I wouldn;t call that "supernatural." I'd call that "using mathematics and observations to see what the Universe is really like." But this doesn;t solve the problem of infintie regression at all. Instead, it brings us back to special pleading on the matter of complexity.Again: the argument for the necessity of a "prime mover" rests on the hypothesis that all complex entities require a still more complex creator. If you hypothesize a "prime mover" who himself does not need a still more complex creator, then you lose logical consistency in claiming that the Universe itself requires a complex creator. In other words, if the "prime mover" doesn;t need a "prime mover"...then why does the Universe itself require a "prime mover?" If everything that exists does not require a more complex creator, then why can't the Universe just exist without one?It's a lose-lose scenario for the theist, GDR, simply because you cannot maintain logical consistency by insisting the requirement of a "prime mover" while not requiring a "prime mover" for the "prime mover" itself. The entire argument is flawed from the beginning, and the theist is doomed to special pleading regardless of the tactic used. It's either infinite regression, turtles all the way down (typically considered unacceptable) or an uncaused cause, which directly contradicts the argument used to suggest a cause in the first place. That's the thing, GDR - we can "make sense" of the world we experience all we want, but most of what we come up with jsut isn;t going to be at all accurate.The problem is that our ability to hypothesize increases with less knowledge. The less we know about a thing, the more conceivable options we have that would look logically consistent with our limited data.If I tell you "I saw something," what could you hypothesize that would "make sense" of that statement?I could have seen a person. Or a pencil. Or a computer, or a cloud, or a ghost, or a troll, or a pencap, or a sandwitch, or the Sun, or a god...Every last one of those, and an infinite number more, are viable hypotheses for what I saw given the information only that it was (at least briefly) visible.What happens if we know more? What if I say "I saw something blue, on wheels." Now you know it's not likely to have been a person. Or a ghost. Or a pencil, or the Sun. It could still be a truck, or a bike, or a car, or a wheelbarrow, or a long list of other possibilities, but with just a tiny little bit of additional information we've excluded the vast majority of possibilities from the first example.We've already established that the world you and I experience is only a teeny, tiny fragment of a precentage of a fraction of the real Universe, that the human-sized scale is simultaneously too large and too small and too limited by our entropic brains and our visible-spectrum-only-eyes and our compelte lack of ability to detect neutrinos or protons or galactic clusters within our own experience. We're doomed to ignorance in our everyday lives; that's why we've needed to use mathematics and tools like the Tevatron or the new Large Hadron Collider or the Hubble Space Telescope to "see" what the Unvierse is really like - our experience alone can never and will never tell us enough about the Universe to let us make accurate hypotheses.Combine that, then, with the fact that our ability to hypothesize solutions is increased by less knowledge about the world, and you can see the problem. To put it simply - even though it works just fine for everyday experiences, our gut feelings are nearly always wrong when applied at any scale outside of the everyday human life. Why?Infinity is a concept that gets thrown around an awful lot by people who don;t understand what it means. Is it impossible that the Universe "just exists?" Perhaps "existence" is inevitable.Why is a finite "first cause" impossible? Is it inconceivable that a "first cause" can exist for all of time and yet still be finite? Is it inconceivable that perhaps a "first cause" could actually be a finite entity in a dimesional set superimposed over the set we're familiar with? I'm perhaps delving farther into the theistic realm of speculation than I'm typically comfortable with, but I see absolutely zero reason to focus on an "infinite first cause."If not all things require a cause, then it's conceivable that the Unvierse just exists...or that the Universe was simply caused by something else that just exists. When you abandon the reasoning that tries to force the sqare peg of "Everything requires a more complex cause" into the round hole of logical consistency, you arrive back at the beginning: the Universe requires a cause, or it does not; the distinction can only be drawn by evidence. No matter how strong our 5 senses are, we'd never be able to see a neutrino. The detection of neutrinos is not at all analogous to any of the 5 human senses - that's the point! We're limited by what we can detect ourselves, but what we can detect can clue us in to some of the deeper workings of the Universe, and we can use math to predict things that we can't actually detect, and then design technology to meet the sensory requirement!If something is utterly impossible to detect, if it truly doesn't interact with reality in any way whatsoever...well, what's the difference between total and utter noninteraction and nonexistence? How would you know the difference? If there is no difference...then isn't that an admission that such things don't actually exist? Why the separation of a "supernatural world?" Reality just as we know it today contains countless phenomenon that have traditionally been considered "supernatural" until a very short time ago. Why must the "supernatural" be a "different world?"As far as I'm concerned, there is what {exists}, and what does {not exist}. Mysterious phenomenon are mysterious phenomenon, whether some people call them "supernatural" or not, whether they seem to contradict other well-established theories of nature or not. So far as we've seen, so far as we have reason at all to believe, reality seems to be governed by some set of consistent rules. It seems to me that, when an apparent contradiction is encountered, the rational approach is to investigate and find out if our observation is leading us to a false conclusion (meaning there was never a real contradiction), or if the observation is the key that proves our understanding of the rules of nature is flawed.I view the investigation of the "supernatural" to be no different from the exploration of nature. There is only the discovery of what {exists} and what does {not exist}. Precisely. So what would be the difference between the "natural" and the "supernatural?" The determination of whether sentience exists outside of Earth is a far more specific question than is asked in this thread.I still see your position as drawing a very significant distinction between the "natural" and the "supernatural." You talk about two separate "worlds" interwoven, when what we're actually talking about is a loosely defined collection of mysterious phenomenon. I think you're making the very significant mistake of defining "the supernatural" as "GDR's Christian beliefs," which are actually themselves a very tiny subset of the "supernatural." When we ask "can we investigate the supernatural," we aren't asking "can we find heaven."Even so, the question is moot. It is undeniably true that reality consists of more than what we are currently aware of. Our map of the territory is neither perfectly accurate nor perfectly complete. There are stranger things in Heaven and Earth, GDR, than are dreamt of in your or any other philosophy. Yet the remaining mysteries of the Universe still, at the end of the day, boil down to things that {exist} and things that do {not exist}. If a thing does {exist}, if that thing interacts with the Universe sufficiently for us to ever become aware of it in the first place, then it can be studied. Investigation may be difficult or impractical or even impossible at a specific moment in time due to technological capabilities, or even simply having not made the observations that would let us create the math that would predict the existence of the things that we could observe to give us even the idea that a given thing could exist (who would have even thought of neutrinos a thousand years ago?). But if a thing is possible to know about, then it is possible to investigate. If an observation can be made, that observation can be repeated and tested. It can't always happen on demand, but we manage to investigate supernovae despite not being able to cause them on demand. I don't search for truth. Not at all. You can keep truth. I make my own meaning for life and all its wonders.I search for facts. I find beauty in the methodical investigation of Nature, asking her questions and making sense of her answers, discovering the underlying rules that truly govern reality and testing them to test the accuracy of my own understanding, separate from my own limited human perceptions. I find grace not in the ability to hold steadfast and become more convinced of my existing beliefs regardless of experimental results and new observations, but rather in the capacity to change my mind. It is by changing my own understanding of Nature based on the answers she gives me, unrestrained by prior opinions or personal preference, that I grow. Not all change makes us stronger, but becoming stronger is always a change. Each time I am forced to chance my understanding of Nature by logic and evidence, my understanding becomes stronger, more accurate. My map becomes that much more complete.Can we investigate and study the "supernatural?" Of course we can. We've been doing it for centuries.The difference between "natural" and "supernatural" is only that, once we understand an aspect of nature, we stop calling it "supernatural." "Supernatural" explanations are simply speculative hypotheses granted the unfounded courage afforded by the freedom of ignorance, and which usually really explain nothing at all; the ability to be allowed to believe, rather than be compelled to believe by evidence.When we eliminate the mysteriousness of a question by giving it an answer based not on speculation but based on fact and observation and predictions and tests, we stop revering our own sense of mystery, we stop reveling in the freedom of ignorance, and we embrace the beauty of reality over fantasy.

I don't think we should do any such thing.Let's look closely at an example of how a phenomenon that was regarded as "supernatural" was investigated, and the results of that investigation. I'm going to pick lightning, because it's decently well understood.Up until the 18th century or so (and later, really), lightning was a mysterious phenomenon. Because it's fairly universal around the world, essentially every culture had their own hypothesis to explain the mystery. To the Greeks, lightning bolts were javelins of godly power thrown my Zeus, and a lightning strike meant the victim had somehow offended the god. To the Norse, lightning was caused by the thunder god Thor and his mighty hammer Mjolnir. In some Native American and African cultures, lightning was caused by various "thunder bird" entities. The Bible has stories of the Hebrew god lighting sacrificial altars with "fire from heaven," which sounds an awful lot like lightning.The key similarities? Everyone had seen lightning, and nobody had any idea what was going on.Human beings are inherently curious by nature, and we dislike perceiving ourselves as ignorant. When we see a mysterious phenomenon, we try to come up with plausible hypotheses to explain the mystery and satisfy our curiosity. The problem is that we don't always do this rationally...and in the absence of evidence, all hypotheses are equally plausible. The less you know, the more possible hypotheses can potentially offer an explanation - additional evidence helps us narrow the options down to the most likely few, and eventually the real answer.Ancient cultures had no concept of electromagnetism. They didn't even have the tools to make the tools that would give them the clues to make the tools needed to make regular observations or take measurements. They had their eyes and ears, and what they saw and hears were completely unpredictable flashes of extremely bright light followed by an incredibly loud sound that tended to (but didn't always) happen during rainstorms.What happened over the last few hundred years? We don't consider lightning to be "supernatural" any more, or even all that mysterious!We investigated. Scientists made observations using ever-more-modern tools, developed hypotheses, and tested them. They used additional information, evidence, to narrow down the field of nearly-infinite plausible hypotheses to just a few that explained all of the results accurately, and eventually settled on the currently accepted model. Lightning is (very basically) an electrical phenomenon caused by a difference in charge between the ground and the atmosphere sufficiently strong to overcome the resistance of air, functionally similar to the sparks of static electricity one can generate from one's finger.Now, nobody really thinks Thor or Zeus are up in the sky or on a high mountain tossing lightning bolts.Did we eliminate the "supernatural?" No. The original "supernatural" phenomenon was lightning and lightning was proven to actually exist.We just stopped applying the "supernatural" descriptor because, with a well-supported theory for the actual mechanism at work, the phenomenon is no longer mysterious.The only things "dismissed" or "refuted" were the competing hypotheses, made up in absolute ignorance, which had no actual tie to the very real phenomenon itself.Judging by this model, then, what would happen if, just as an example, the entity that inspired the mythologized description of the Biblical deity were to one day be observable? Just for the sake of exploring what would likely happen, imagine that some new ectoplasmic telescope was developed that allowed us to detect and measure a previously unobserved section of reality, and there we actually came into direct contact with Yahweh, who (after a bit of translation) greets us with "Yes, I've been here all along, it took you long enough to find me."Certainly the emotional impact and the media headlines would be spectacular. But what else would happen?Wouldn't we try to use our new tools to make more observations about this previously unexplored region of the Universe? Wouldn't we try to figure out how Yahweh has been around so long, what his real relationship is to the biological life we're used to here on Earth? Wouldn't we try to figure out which aspects of the Bible are really based on reality and which were distortions or additions, and what may have been subtracted and lost?Imagine we were able to run tests, and make observations, and develop hypotheses and test those as well. Imagine that we were able to develop a reasonably accurate model of how Yahweh interacts with the rest of the Universe, in effect explaining his "powers." And what if there were others of his species...or what if the entity Yahweh is actually a collective consciousness made up of countless individual non-sapient members of his etheric species? What if other "gods" previously did exist as their own collective consciousnesses, and Yahweh is the result of an eventual merger of all of the "old" deities into a singular mind (there's a bad science fiction novel in here somewhere, I'd bet)?It would almost certainly require an entirely new branch of physics, and certainly a new field of biology.But as our understanding grows...would we still consider Yahweh to be "supernatural?"I don't think so. I think we'd regard him as something like an alien - a nonhuman, sapient entity whose biology is wholly different from humanity, sharing no common ancestor or common point of origin, whose existence occupies dimensional regions of the Universe that humans and other Earth-grown organisms do not experience normally.I think, like lightning, we might look back at the old myths in light of our new knowledge, and chuckle a bit at the old theologies on "God," or at those who didn't think such things could exist.I think we might just accept Yahweh and his newly discovered species as another part of nature, simply one we were ignorant of in the past...and stop using the "supernatural" descriptor as he becomes less and less mysterious, just as we did with lightning.Do you disagree? Why, or why not? But this is a shift in the goalposts. We observe no hammer, no man in the sky. We can generate lightning on our own, artificially, on demand, without asking Thor to help. The model works perfectly well without adding Thor...and in fact it works less well if we do add him, only because then we have to explain why Thor conveniently creates lightning for us when we use a Tesla coil or one of the other methods we have, but not when we just ask nicely or leave out a part. But this is the reasoning of the "God of the Gaps." As more knowledge is gained, a previously embraced hypothesis must be abandoned in favor of what evidence shows to be more likely. Yet rather than abandoning the hypothesis, the previous explanation is simply moved to another point of ignorance, a part of the phenomenon that is still mysterious, pushed into hiding in the ever smaller and smaller gaps in our understanding of the Universe.Worse, it signifies the acceptance of the hypothesis regardless of the experimental result. Every result is taken as additional evidence in favor of the original hypothesis, whether the result was originally predicted by the hypothesis or not. If not observing a hammer or a man in the sky or needing Thor's permission to create lightning is evidence in support of Thor just as observing those things would be...then you may as well not even bother making observations at all. Your mind is already then made up; you've written the conclusion, "...and therefore Thor is real," before you even looked at the evidence.Let me relate a brief story from World War 2. The United States was extremely concerned about sabotage and other covert enemy action within its borders. You have hopefully heard of the Japanese internment camps set up in California to imprison those of Asian heritage on the sole basis of their ethnicity, because they were all suspected as "spies."Then-California-Governor Earl Warren was called to testify before Congress in 1942 regarding the threat of a so-called Japanese "Fifth Column" of saboteurs. One questioner pointed out that no sabotage had actually occurred, and there was no evidence of any kind relating to any other kind of espionage. Warren's response:

quote:

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"I take the view that this lack [of subversive activity] is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. It convinces me more than perhaps any other factor that the sabotage we are to get, the Fifth Column activities are to get, are timed just like Pearl Harbor was timed... I believe we are just being lulled into a false sense of security."

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Governor warren took the absence of evidence of a Japanese "Fifth Column" to be evidence that such a thing did actually exist!If sabotage occurs, then there are saboteurs. If no sabotage occurs, this is even stronger evidence that there are saboteurs, just lying in wait!If we observe a hammer striking in the sky when lightning flashes, then Thor exists. If we do not see the expected hammer, this is even stronger evidence that Thor is the one causing the lightning, and our explanation is simply the mechanism that takes effect after Thor strikes his hammer.Do you see the problem?You've written your conclusion in your mind before examining the evidence. Regardless of the outcome, the final sentence is "...and therefore what I already believed is true." It's not just about unfalisifiability, about a claim that is set up to be impossible to test - it's about taking even negative results as positive evidence when a test is actually made.This is why scientists write down their predictions before conducting an experiment. If a hypothesis actually explains something, then you can use that hypothesis to predict a result. If the result is too different from the prediction, the hypothesis is inaccurate, flawed, or just outright wrong. Yet nobody claims that Nature is random. Chemistry, for instance, is not random. Which atoms can bond to form molecules, the physical structure of proteins, the color of the light generated from burning an element, all are dictated by the structure of Nature itself, the laws that we seek to uncover through scientific inquiry.Lightning doesn't strike at random. It strikes when there is a specific buildup of charge, when the difference in charge is great enough to overcome the resistance of air. It takes the specific path of least resistance...which is why now we use lightning rods to prevent fires from lightning strikes. It's not random at all - it's so predictable that we can actually take steps to redirect it.And we can predict the behavior of lightning because we investigated a "supernatural" phenomenon. We observed it. We developed hypotheses, and created the tools to test them, and observed the results. And now, we understand lightning so well...that we've stopped calling it "supernatural" at all, without at any point disproving that the phenomenon actually occurs.

Chuck, I'm sorry but I don;t think you understand what "moving the goalposts" is.A thousand years ago, if I asked a Christian what caused lightning, they'd tell me that God caused it directly.Now, when I ask the same question of a Christian, I'll get the scientific answer. If I ask "where's god," they'll tell me that he designed lightning.God's place has moved from "direct causation" to "prime mover," because our ignorance (which allows us to believe virtually any hypothesis) has been replaced by knowledge of the mechanism.The goalposts for "finding god" have moved.I won't bother with discussing your evolutionary example, except to say that your analogy is unfortunately so far off from the actual definitions of "common ancestor" and "abiogenesis" that the analogy doesn't even make sense.If you think I've moved the goal posts at any point during this debate, please specifically point it out and describe why you think I've done so. If I have not...then apparently I'm not being unfair at all. Perhaps you should revisit the topic, Chuck. This isn't a thread specifically about origins or even electricity - it's about studying the supernatural. Lightning was used only as a singular example of one phenomenon that was once regarded as supernatural, and which today is largely not. Beliefs are irrelevant to this thread, Chuck. It's not about proving whether your deity exists. The thread is about whether we can study the supernatural at all. The supernatural may include some of your beliefs, but certainly there are phenomenon labelled supernatural that you don;t believe in - such as Thor or Zeus causing lightning.We aren;t discussing which specific supernatural entities may or may not exist. We're discussing whether anything supernatural at all can ever be studied. Indeed cell phones have been designed.Here's the thing though, Chuck - we're talking about whether the supernatural can be studied, not about whether this or that was designed.But let's roll with your tangent for just a moment. You propose that lightning (as just one example) was designed by a supernatural agent, specifically the Christian deity. Correct?Can we differenciate between those things that have been designed and those things that have not? For example, has a random rock picked up on a mountain been designed, just as a random part picked off of a car has been designed?If we can;t tell the difference, then the term "designed" seems to be rather useless, since it would apply to literally everything.If we can tell the difference...then the criteria we use, whatever they are, are a way for us to examine which things were designed and which were not. As we exclude all of the things that we know were designed by human beings, we can then identify those things that have been designed by an external agent......and we've just identified one way in which we would then be able to study the supernatural.In other words, if you claim that we can identify some things as being designed by a supernatural agent, then you have just agreed that we can study the supernatural. If we cannot study the supernatural, then there would be no way to identify something as having been designed by a supernatural agent. Indeed people do come up with all manner of "crazy things," but I think you'll find what one person believes is "crazy," another person believes is the absolute truth.Personally, that's why I try to rely on facts and what evidence compells me to believe, rather than believing unevidenced hypotheses.What happened over the last few hundred years? We don't consider lightning to be "supernatural" any more, or even all that mysterious! I think the F-22 Raptor is amazing and cool. That it was designed doesn;t detract from that...and neother do I think it has anything to do with the supernatural.I don't find lightning to be mysterious, but I too find it to be, well...really freaking cool. My one major regret for living where I do now is that I very rarely get to see a good lightning storm. Whose? What aspects? How many "aspects" does a given phenomenon have? How do we know? Why do you think so? Simply: Because A AND B is always, always equal to or less likely than A OR B.The probability that two things are simultaneously true is equal to their probabilities multipled, all things being equal (as in, without further information to alter those probabilities). The probability that Leslie is a girl is greater than the probability that Leslie is a girl and has blonde hair, which itself is more likely than Leslie being a blond girl from Topeka, Kansas. We can change those probabilities with observations (observing that Leslie is a blonde girl increases the probabilities of those two factors to ~100% by excluding the other possibilities), but generally speaking, every time you tack on an additional claim (ie, a designer) without a specific observation to alter the probabilities, your hypothesis becomes less likely to be true. "Thor" and "Zeus" were given as specific explanations as to the mechanism of lightning. Either Thor's hammer causes thunder and lightning, OR lightning is a natural electrical atmospheric phenomenon that doesn't involve any hammers. It can't be both. The two hypotheses are mutually exclusive.In order to place the supernatural explanation in a place that avoids that mutual exclusivity, you moved it to the "designer of lightning" so that there is no conflict. That means you moved the goalposts, and then added an unevidenced hypothesis to the scientifically accepted explanation.But again - what does this have to do with wheter or not we can study the supernatural? Why? We're the ones who make up categories to help us communicate specifically what we're talking about. The only thing that determines how we categorize a thing are the rules we make up to determine what goes where. In other words, it depends on what your definition of "supernatural" is. What's yours, Chuck? If I have two phenomenon, without knowing what they are or anything about them, what rules would you use to determine which one is the supernatural phenomenon, and which one is natural? It is?How do you know that?Why do you think so?Be specific. What is the supernatural? What differenciates it from the natural? I'm not laughing, Chuck. But I am wondering where you get your beliefs. I'm a former Christian, I've read the Bible. It doesn't say God is in a "different dimension." And even if it did......why are different dimensions fundamentally exempt from the remaining rules of the Universe?Why wouldn;t the discovery of additional dimensions simply let us better describe the real rules of the Universe, by letting us observe something we were previously unaware of?Before telescopes, space may as well have been a "different dimension." We couldn;t make any but the most crude observations. With the development of better and better tools, we've been able to make astounding observations that have let us discover more and more and more of the rules that govern the Universe - how galaxies form, how the Universe is expanding, etc. Why would the discovery of an additional dimension be any different? Why would we still call it "supernatural?"What differenciates "supernatural" from "natural?" How do we tell the difference? What consistent rules can we use to tell whether a newly observed phenomenon is supernatural or natural? What do you see? What observations do you make that should change my mind? Why do you believe what you believe? How do you think you know it? Come now, Chuck. Non-random doesn't mean I have all of the variables available to me to make a prediction. But knowing the rules that lightning obeys lets us create a circumstance where lightning is more likely to strike certain places and less likely to strike others by changing those variables we are able to control. For example, setting up a lightning rod so that lightning will strike a predetermined conductor rather than a person or setting fire to a building.I don't need to be able to predict every bolt to know that I shouldn't stick around a flagpole in a lightning storm. Rationality. And that's pretty important to me.I have a better question, Chuck. You seem pretty convinced that something supernatural exists.Being convinced means that you've drawn a conclusion.To draw a conclusion, you must have examined some evidence, and from there chosen what you felt to be the most likely hypothesis to explain that evidence.In other words...you seem to have investigated the supernatural. The conclusion itself (whether you believe something supernatural does or not exist) is irrelevant to this topic. But since you must have investigated something supernatural in order to come up with a belief about it...what convinced you, and why should I find that same thing convincing?

But this is absolutely and undeniable false, Chuck.Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.What goes around does not come around. Giving generously to charity will not protect me from being laid off. Feeding the hungry will not protect me from an earthquake, or a tornado.Suggesting that "what goes around comes around" means that, when something bad happens, that person deserved it because of some prior wickedness. But we know that people are murdered, people die or are horribly maimed in car accidents, people get cancer, loved ones are taken, and natural disasters happen every single day. What horrible wickedness did the victims of Hurricane Katrina or the 2008 tsunami commit to deserve such a fate? All of them deserved it? What terrible act "came around" for the victims of the Haiti earthquake?What of the architects of the Great Recession, the banking executives and managers who orchestrated the subprime lending crisis and scammed the entire economic system with their designed-to-fail derivatives? Not a single one of them is in jail, none of them have been struck by lightning, and most of them have continued to receive multi-million-dollar bonuses as their victims reap the consequences in their stead.What misfortune befell the Bush and Obama administration officials who authorized, committed, and continued institutionalized torture and indefinite imprisonment? What "came around" to those who lied to perpetrate the war in Iraq, who are responsible for thousands of innocent Iraqi dead?What terrible retribution has been handed out for the Catholic pedophile priests, who molested and raped children in their care and were protected from prosecution by the Church, who are even now still avoiding prosecution in most cases?The concept of "karma" is a myth, Chuck.Or do you claim instead that all accounts will be settled in the afterlife, where conveniently we cannot check?