How can science accommodate the supernatural?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The arguments in Stimpy's epistemology assert naturalism as an axiom. That's all well and good, I don't have any problem asserting it as an axiom, but there are an awful lot of people who don't accept that axiom, and there is no particular reason to accept it. If God can alter the real world, for example by striking me dead for eating pork, then he is real, but he doesn't operate by natural law.

But surely he operates by some laws, no? All the religious works of history claim that he does. He is lawful enough to interact with the world, which does follow laws. If he does not operate by laws, please explain how he does operate.

But sure, you could summarily reject Axiom 1. The question remains: How would science study god?

Divine intervention - intervention by the divine? Let me try something different. Divine intervention is the alteration of a physical object in a manner that is not describable in terms of natural law, but is in accordance with the will of a spiritual entity. Divine intervention always involves a violation of natural law. (Otherwise, there wouldn't be any "intervention" would there? If we had a deistic deity that created the world and then just let it run, things would happen according to divine will, but not by divine intervention.)

What stops us from rolling the "will of the spirit" in with the other natural laws? Explain how that will operates, if not by additional laws.

One way to answer how science can accommodate the supernatural would be to ask one Mr. James Randi under what circumstances he would give someone one million dollars. I contend that he is making a legitimate offer that is at least theoretically possible to win.

Are you suggesting that when someone finally comes forward who can consistently read my mind, we won't be able to tease out the new natural laws that govern this ability?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I don't really grasp what is being said here. I am interested but lacking in language skills to understand what is being proposed. Let me try to point out my perspective and someone try to figure out how to bring me up to speed. If there is a supernatural anything , in order for us to even suspect it , that supernatural force must cause changes that we can observe and test. If not there is no reason to suspect there is any supernatural forces. Did I miss anything?

I share some of your confusion. I think people are proposing that the supernatural entity could poke reality occasionally, in some subtle way that we would never detect. Even in the looooong run, these pokings would be too subtle to detect. But then, as you say, why would we suspect them at all?

However, the question "how can science study the supernatural" presupposes that we've detected something to study. So now there must be a purported supernatural affect that is noticable and consistent enough to consider studying. How that particular kind of affect could be completely unlawful I have no idea. What characteristics would it have that would make us say "It's supernatural, but let's study it"?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The short answer is that divine intervention, or any supernatural intervention, cannot be described by "laws". While it might follow trends, it cannot be predicted with certainty, because it is the result of intentional action, not "laws".

This sort of magical intentional action is the same thing as libertarian free will. Please explain how something can act with intention that is not the result of deterministic and/or random factors.

Science cannot find "laws" that will describe under exactly what circumstances spouses will become crystalline. However, science can analyse the effects of that intervention. You could see a before and after photograph that showed a normal female form, followed by a pillar of salt. You could use chemistry to determine the chemical composition of the salt. If you did all that, and convinced yourself that at one time there really was a normal human female present, and that a moment later, there really was a pillar of salt, you would have a very strong case that some sort of supernatural phenomenon had taken place.

But you could not study it with science, except to catalog some facts of the matter.

I still do not know how supernatural decisions are made, nor do I see how science could study them. So far, it appears that Kansas has done nothing other then allow themselves the usual goddidit escape from science. It makes no sense to say "We don't know how the supernatural works, in fact cannot know how it works, but surely we can study it with science!"

~~ Paul

 

[Melendwyr]

No it doesn't since then all you would find is that "did it work" is answered with a "no".

Being able to derive any kind of answer presupposes that the world is logical and consistent. Otherwise even the idea that you can determine something about the past is meaningless, and any results you could observe would be unconnected to the chosen strategies.

If you're going to continue to maintain such positions, I'm going to have to stop speaking with you. I have enough stupid to deal with already.

 

[Melendwyr]

I share some of your confusion. I think people are proposing that the supernatural entity could poke reality occasionally, in some subtle way that we would never detect. Even in the looooong run, these pokings would be too subtle to detect. But then, as you say, why would we suspect them at all?

You're still missing the most important point: because of the way science defines the word 'natural', no supernatural things exist.

A natural phenomenon could still exist and be hard to detect - but the harder it was to detect, the less important it would be to any model and the "closer" it comes to not existing. An undetectable thing wouldn't exist at all.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You're still missing the most important point: because of the way science defines the word 'natural', no supernatural things exist.

I agree. Note how I said "I think people are proposing ...".

Actually, let's be careful. The word real is defined to refer to anything that has an affect on anything else that is real. So there is no "unreal" thing that has an affect on the real and thus the supernatural (whatever that is) would be real.

Now, it is an axiom that everything real can be described according to laws. It is this axiom that people want to reject, so that there can be a supernatural entity that, although real, is not lawful, yet affects the lawful. It is this concept that some proponent needs to explain. I think there is no coherent explanation, and so I agree with you that no supernatural things exist.

But might we be wrong?

~~ Paul

 

[Darat]

Being able to derive any kind of answer presupposes that the world is logical and consistent.

No it doesn't. What you are doing is making an assumption that only an "answer" that is "logically right" can be a "good" answer. (I'm not arguing against that by the way only arguing that it is not neccessary for a system based on "Does it work".)

Otherwise even the idea that you can determine something about the past is meaningless, and any results you could observe would be unconnected to the chosen strategies.

Yes that could be the case but again you haven't proven or shown that is has to be the case.

If you're going to continue to maintain such positions, I'm going to have to stop speaking with you. I have enough stupid to deal with already.

If you recall just a few posts ago I mentioned that "I'm sorry but if you don't understand what "worked" means given my attempt to illustrate it in my little parable then I do not know how to communicate how I use the word to you. So we'll have to leave the point unsettled."

I am sorry you cannot understand my point so as I said we'll have to leave the point unsettled.

 

[Melendwyr]

No it doesn't.

You're now going to be one line above Interesting Ian. Congratulations, you've officially worn out my tolerance.

 

[drkitten]

Why does scientific practice follow methodological naturalism? Was it an arbitrary, random choice? Was it established by evil atheists who wanted to exclude the divine a priori from inquiry?

Of course not.

Of course not, but you're jumping too quickly to the end of the explanation.

We presume that any given phenomenon has causes that can be available for study because looking for such causes is the only way to find them/

... and the people who developed the scientific method did, in fact, look. Most of 16th and 17th century "science" was aimed, often explicitly, at the task of learning about God through an examination of His handiwork in the natural world. It turned out that what we learned about "His" handiwork didn't really tell us much about God -- it didn't even provide firm evidence of His existence.

The tradition of "methodological naturalism" grew out of these findings -- naturalistic explanations were usually more predictive than supernatural ones. But that, in itself, is a research finding, and one that an appropriate new set of experiments could overturn.

Not that I expect them to.

 

[Melendwyr]

Now, it is an axiom that everything real can be described according to laws.

Actually, I believe you are wrong. You're accepting this as an axiom, true, but it follows from even more basic principles. A law is just a description of the relationship between the cause and the effect.

If the thing cannot be described in language, and its effect cannot be described in language, there's nothing whatsoever about it that can be real - not just merely from our perspective, but from the universe's perspective. Language is about relationships, and what cannot be put into language cannot be a relation between one thing and another. Even though we can never create the statement that accurately describes the entire universe, as it's a Godel statement for the cosmos, such a statement can reasonably be said to be inherent in mathematics. If the thing isn't in that statement, it doesn't exist.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You're now going to be one line above Interesting Ian. Congratulations, you've officially worn out my tolerance.

Your tolerance level is quite low.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Actually, I believe you are wrong. You're accepting this as an axiom, true, but it follows from even more basic principles. A law is just a description of the relationship between the cause and the effect.

So what are the more fundamental axiom(s)? It can't just be a statement about cause and effect, can it?

~~ Paul

 

[Melendwyr]

Your tolerance level is quite low.

No, Darat's recent statements are just remarkably stupid. Either he doesn't understand what he's saying (the explanation I'm leaning towards) or he's deliberately pretending to violate the most basic precepts of logic in order to be offensive. One way or another, he's not fit to converse with.

It normally takes a great deal of stupidity for me to write someone off, but those statements condense so much into a few words that my tolerance is completely overwhelmed.

 

[drkitten]

Try me again.

No, thank you. Whether or not libertarian free will exists is not contingent on either my ability to explain, or on your ability to understand.

Are you really making the claim that anything you don't understand doesn't exist?

 

[Tricky]

You're now going to be one line above Interesting Ian. Congratulations, you've officially worn out my tolerance.

You know, Mel, you're a bright guy and can put together a convincing argument, but it seems that once a day you are welcoming someone to your ignore list or making some other declaration of how so-and-so is a troll and not worthy of attention. No matter how intelligent you are, this condescending attitude is interfering with your ability to get your points across because nobody wants to listen to someone who is persistently insulting. Now Darat, one of the most level-headed people here on the boards has "worn out your tolerance"? I see no evidence that you have any tolerance get worn out.

 

[Melendwyr]

So what are the more fundamental axiom(s)? It can't just be a statement about cause and effect, can it?

I think that the point comes directly from the nature of truth and falsehood. The assumption that statements can be made that correspond with and reflect the nature of the world is all you really need. That's not compatible with a real relationship that cannot be described.

 

[Melendwyr]

You know, Mel, you're a bright guy and can put together a convincing argument, but it seems that once a day you are welcoming someone to your ignore list or making some other declaration of how so-and-so is a troll and not worthy of attention. No matter how intelligent you are, this condescending attitude is interfering with your ability to get your points across because nobody wants to listen to someone who is persistently insulting.

Precisely. *I* don't want to listen to someone who is persistantly insulting, either. There are a class of arguments SO OBVIOUSLY wrong that they rise to the level of "breathtaking inanity", to borrow a phrase. Either the people making them are not bothering to think about what they're saying in even the most superficial way, in which case they are unintentionally insulting me and everyone else on the board by posting, or they are trying to insult me and everyone else on the board.

Now Darat, one of the most level-headed people here on the boards has "worn out your tolerance"? I see no evidence that you have any tolerance get worn out.

I corrected him several times. If I were concerned solely with behaving rationally, I would have written him off the first time he made the argument, but sometimes people can write something in error, or their thought processes can glitch, so it's often worth checking to see if it's just a minor aberration. In this case, it's not.

The same principles which cause me to overlook any number of honest mistakes force me to condemn true error.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

No, thank you. Whether or not libertarian free will exists is not contingent on either my ability to explain, or on your ability to understand.

Are you really making the claim that anything you don't understand doesn't exist?

No, but I see no reason simply to accept the concept. Are you really going to base your argument on this subject on a concept you cannot explain? I daresay you cannot even give a hand-wave about how some entity is making decisions that do not stem from deterministic and/or random factors and that is why you say "No, thank you."

~~ Paul

 

[drkitten]

Actually, I believe you are wrong. You're accepting this as an axiom, true, but it follows from even more basic principles. A law is just a description of the relationship between the cause and the effect.

A law is normally more than that. It's a predictive description of the relationship between the cause and effect, or alternatively, it's a description of the regularities between the cause and the effect.

A simple example : it's typically a "law" of urban planning (in much of the West, anyway), that house numbers form an increasing sequence along a given street. In Japan, my understanding is that houses are numbered in the order in which they are built, so a higher number indicates a newer house.

There is, however, no regular relationship between the number of a house and the color of it's door -- the best I could do would be to walk along the street for a few blocks and exhaustively catalogue each number and each door. Few would call this kind of catalogue a "law," unless there turned out to be some underlying regularity I have not previously suspected.

I can therefore produce a "Law of House Locations", but not a "Law of Door Colors." An irregular relationship is not a law.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I think that the point comes directly from the nature of truth and falsehood. The assumption that statements can be made that correspond with and reflect the nature of the world is all you really need. That's not compatible with a real relationship that cannot be described.

But that's just what a set of consistent logical rules is, don't you think?

~~ Paul