SeorHunger writes:
want anyone who accuses scientists of a 'naturalistic bias' to tell us whether supernatural mechanisms exist, and whether science has ever benefitted from acknowledging them.
The problem with anything "supernatural" (as I understand its meaning) is that it refuses to conform to any sort of repetitively testable behavior.
Say we observe some supernatural behavior in reality. We cannot predict that we will observe the same behavior again given identical circumstances. The behavior might be completely different the next time around. So any claims to knowledge about supernatural forces is purely speculative and without observational grounding since we cannot reliably predict future observations from our present ones.If this supposedly supernatural behavior
were consistent and repetitively testable, it would enter the domain of naturalism and cease to be supernatural.
In addition, supernatural behavior is almost always associated with the intentional activity of a supernaturally able entity. To suppose that our observations accurately reflect what actually transpired in reality begs the question of the honesty of the supernatural entity. Since our observations are dependant upon naturalistic processes, to suppose that our observations of some supernatural phenomena accurately reflect reality arbitrarily supposes that none of the naturalistic processes that connect our observational faculties with reality were altered unbeknownst to us. To illustrate:
Suppose we believe we have observed water transformed into wine. The reliability of that observation requires that none of the photons that traveled from the water-wine into our visual cortex were altered mid-way so as to merely create the
illusion of a water-to-wine transformation. All of the multitude of interactions that link our visual processing centers to the supposed event are presupposed to be
absent of supernatural interference.
If we think we have observed some supernatural event, we cannot rule out that any of those interactions were the one(s) altered, so any claim to knowledge about a
specific supernatural event begs the question. All we might possibly say is that we have observed some supernatural event, but we are not certain what that event was.
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