I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity

That this is just another thread to point out another apparent error in the Genesis story.

The clear answer is that there is no evidence whatsoever for GOD, as there is no evidence for any other thing believed to be supernatural.

That's nonsense.Science puts no limits on its explanations. If it can be measured, it can be explained.Often the explanation starts out being simple: "X exists/happens".More measuring might get a better explanation (if one exists), but even a simple explanation is an explanation.

Unless one's intent on not understanding it.

Fixed.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Fixed again.Reality, of course, is that which is realempirical or not.If the phenomenon you seek to investigate is wholly and entirely non-empirical, then trying to determine whether it is real or not by applying empirical standards is crappy investigatingor simply dishonest.You can't use a ruler to measure the brightness of the Sun.

How could this be? How could this ever possibly be? What kind of an honest person, let alone a good scientist, would look at a confirmed event that happening in front of their very eyes and declare it "impossible"?Absolute crap.And when has any scientific investigation conducted on a new phenomenon ever concluded that the phenomenon was "supernatural"?Has it ever happened? Ever? If it did, would you consider this an example of science concluding "supernatural" or an example of shit science? Why must our understanding of the world boil down into a set of unbreakable universal laws? That's how we see the world now, but shouldn't an event completely out of the ordinary, instead of making us conclude "supernatural", lead us to conclude that "oh, I guess the world doesn't run on a strict set of universal laws, but on a set of conditional ... etc."?I may believe that a lake turning to wine is "supernatural"it'd certainly make me a happy young manbut as an honest and reasoning empiricist (i.e., a scientist) I would never, under any circumstance of which I can currently conceive, declare the event "supernatural" as a matter of fact.Are you saying you would?

If we lived in the world of Harry Potter, I think I'd be even less like to conclude that something strange were "supernatural" than I am now. Science, by it's very definition, studies the natural world. It is an empirical system of investigation. Anything studiable by science is, by definition, natural.This is evidenced by the fact that science has never concluded anythingever, like never everto be "supernatural", and that no one has ever put forth a method whereby it can do so. Including you. Real funny. You are conflating acknowledgement of the event and acknowledgement of its status as "supernatural". I am perfectly okay with admitting that certain interesting things have happened without having to conclude that they are "supernatural", because, you know, that's not what scientists do.Why?Because calling something "supernatural" is shit science.

It would lead us the same way it has always led us when we deal with "magical acts". We will investigate them, figure out what's up, and then declare them "natural"; or investigate them, remain stumped, and declare them "cause unknown". Definitions matter: Sapir-Worf. Been done; repeatedly. Of all the magic ever seen, no scientific investigation has ever concluded any of it to be supernatural. It should be obvious. "Fire-streak" means the thing we call lightening. "Evolution" means the thing we call evolution. "Supernatural" does not mean the thing we'd call a wine river.If you want "supernatural" to mean 'wine river', that's fine. But it won't help your argument. How do you distinguish the natural and the supernatural?

Equivocating gets you nowhere.

What would you do upon observation of matter being created from nothing?Would you declare the event supernatural? Would you modify your law?Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

How would we distinguish a supernatural hypothesis from a natural one?

I didn't ask about testing. I asked about distinguishing. How are these methods different than the methods used for natural phenomena?What makes communicating with GOD different than communicating with Kubo the jungle savage?And, again, just what is a supernatural hypothesis?

You're just equivocating again.It is clear to everyone else what is meant by "natural" in this discussion."Supernatural" is not used in the same context as "artificial".

And, of course, that is the only definition applicable when discussing the philosophy of science.

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Wikipedia on Nature:

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The word nature is derived from the Latin word natura, or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". Natura was a Latin translation of the Greek word physis (φύσις ), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics that plants, animals, and other features of the world develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socratic philosophers, and has steadily gained currency ever since. This usage was confirmed during the advent of modern scientific method in the last several centuries.

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Wikipedia on Science:

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The scientific method seeks to explain the events of nature in a reproducible way.

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There is only one sense for the word "nature" in a discussion of science, and that is the sense that everyone in this thread (aside from yourself) has been using.Your introduction of the lay sense of the term is an equivocation:Yet entirely misses the mark in a discussion on the philosophy of science.Edited by Jon, : No reason given.