How can science accommodate the supernatural?

[Paul2]

The "supernatural" consists of all those things that are not explainable by laws. Spousal salinification is a supernatural phenomenon.

1. Your definition of supernatural is fundamentally flawed because all one has to do is to redfine the laws to account for that which is initially labelled as supernatural, so your definition is no definition at all.

2. A better definition that meets the objection in #1 is "The supernatural consists on one-time phenomena." But the big bang was a one-time phenomenon and there is plenty of scientific, natural law being theorized about that.

"Supernatural" is the same kind of flawed category as "alternative medicine" is. (As Dr. Dean Edell says, there are only 3 types of medicine: that which works, that which doesn't, and that which we aren't sure about.) The categories of the supernatural and alternative medicine mess up the underlying principles on which we should make categories in those disciplines.

 

[Meadmaker]

Then it isn't studying the affects of god, let alone god. You don't get to say you're studying the affects of a horse dropping dung on the ground if you aren't confident that it was a horse that done dropped it.

You're using "god" as a placeholder. It's silly.

~~ Paul

Let's just imagine, for the sake of argument, that one day you heard a voice inside your head telling you that the voice belongs to God, and you should leave town with your wife, and you should not look back. As you are leaving town, a rain of fire and brimstone smothers it. You look straight ahead, but your wife looks back, and suddenly, where your wife was, there is a pillar of salt.

I don't imagine that has ever happened, despite the Biblical account, but for the sake of argument, let's imagine it did.

Would you a) Say that it really doesn't matter what happened, because it could have actually been the Flying Spaghetti Monster and you can't really study it or b) ask the voice what it wanted you to do next?

The "supernatural" may not be a useful concept, because these days hardly anything happens that seems to need a supernatural explanation, but that is the definition whether or not it's useful.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Would you a) Say that it really doesn't matter what happened, because it could have actually been the Flying Spaghetti Monster and you can't really study it or b) ask the voice what it wanted you to do next?

I would ask the voice what it wanted me to do next, just to see if I got another response. If I did, I'd launch into a series of questions about what the voice was, where it was, how it performed the salt thing, etc. I might even think "Gee, this seems an awful lot like the Biblical God."

Nevertheless, experiencing the original events is not a study of the effects of God, nor of God Himself. And my series of questions to the voice does not require any change to scientific epistemology. There is nothing I have to do to science to enable it to study these purported "supernatural events."

Behe is just special pleading.

~~ Paul

 

[Meadmaker]

There is nothing I have to do to science to enable it to study these purported "supernatural events."

Behe is just special pleading.

~~ Paul

Is this a reference to Behe's request to "break the rules?"

But, are you saying that if the voice spoke, and your wife turned into a pillar of salt, that this wouldn't be "supernatural" or wouldn't be a violation of "natural law"?

If so, then the whole concept of natural law and the supernatural becomes vacuous. If it happens, it happens as a result of natural law.

Well, fine. Everything happens by natural law, then. By definition, there is no supernatural, so it can't be accommodated.

In that case, Intelligent Design can still be studied, because the actions of the Designer fall within the realm of natural law, and are obviously subject to scientific scrutiny. Likewise, when a creationist says that God created fish with fins out of nothing, there is no need to consider that a supernatural event or to ask how science can accommodate it. It's all part of science, becuase it happened, according to the theory, anyway.

And Goddidit is a perfectly valid theory. It has explanatory power about a real object, God. So is the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory. It's just difficult to find evidence that distinguishes the two.

But, in my mind, that isn't a very useful idea. In the end, I can't make any predictions, because I'm back to my asterisks. F=ma *

* unless goddidit.

The universe seems to operate pretty much like clockwork. F seems to equal ma all the time. I prefer to think of the rare moments when, hypothetically, F doesn't equal ma, even to approximations required to accomodate relativity or quantum mechanics, as violations of the law, rather than as special cases of the law. It says the same thing, but it just seems tidier to me.

 

[Melendwyr]

If so, then the whole concept of natural law and the supernatural becomes vacuous. If it happens, it happens as a result of natural law.

Bingo! That's precisely what science holds. The trick is determining what actually happens.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

But, are you saying that if the voice spoke, and your wife turned into a pillar of salt, that this wouldn't be "supernatural" or wouldn't be a violation of "natural law"?

It would be darn strange, but I wouldn't label it supernatural just because it happened.

If so, then the whole concept of natural law and the supernatural becomes vacuous. If it happens, it happens as a result of natural law.

I think so, yes.

In that case, Intelligent Design can still be studied, because the actions of the Designer fall within the realm of natural law, and are obviously subject to scientific scrutiny. Likewise, when a creationist says that God created fish with fins out of nothing, there is no need to consider that a supernatural event or to ask how science can accommodate it. It's all part of science, becuase it happened, according to the theory, anyway.

Anyone can propose any sort of whacky hypotheses and ask that science study them. The question is whether the hypotheses are inherently unscientific. If IDers cannot present a valid logical argument for ID; have no empirical evidence for ID; and continue to refuse to address questions of the identity, timing, and working methodology of the designer, then ID is not scientific.

And Goddidit is a perfectly valid theory. It has explanatory power about a real object, God. So is the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory. It's just difficult to find evidence that distinguishes the two.

Come on. Goddidit explains nothing about the event and nothing about God. You could take everything you label goddidit and label it snorkdidit and you would lose absolutely no explanatory power. You don't seem to know what explanatory power is.

~~ Paul

 

[Melendwyr]

Do not feed the trolls, Paul.

 

[BillHoyt]

Is this a reference to Behe's request to "break the rules?"

MyGod, man, study some logic.

In that case, Intelligent Design can still be studied, because the actions of the Designer fall within the realm of natural law, and are obviously subject to scientific scrutiny. Likewise, when a creationist says that God created fish with fins out of nothing, there is no need to consider that a supernatural event or to ask how science can accommodate it. It's all part of science, becuase it happened, according to the theory, anyway.

I've alluded to Occam before. Apparently that means nothing to you? ID cannot be studied for three basic reasons: a) we have no evidence for God b) ID assumes God c) the framework we have can easily be explained without hypothesizing God. Apply Occam, out goes ID. Period. Study some logic.

And Goddidit is a perfectly valid theory. It has explanatory power about a real object, God. So is the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory. It's just difficult to find evidence that distinguishes the two.

And, therefore, Goddidit is not worthy of consideration. Until and unless it has more explanatory power than the other hypotheses. This is Occam. Study it.

And, please, don't respond with the usual ID ruse that ID doesn't demand God be the designer. Any kind of little green man you might propse as the designer simply begs the question of who designed the little green man.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Do not feed the trolls, Paul.

This thread is becoming rather circulicious, I must say.

~~ Paul

 

[Meadmaker]

and continue to refuse to address questions of the identity, timing, and working methodology of the designer, then ID is not scientific.

By your analysis of the epistomology, they don't need to. If it happens, it's real. If your wife turns to a pillar of salt, that's a real thing. It happened by natural law.

What does timing, working, or methodology have to do with it? You can try to find out those questions if you think they are interesting, but what difference does it make?

What makes you think, even if everything does happen by natural law, that you will ever discover a concise description of that natural law that will enable you to make predictions?

 

[BillHoyt]

What makes you think, even if everything does happen by natural law, that you will ever discover a concise description of that natural law that will enable you to make predictions?

Somebody please tell me he didn't write this. Meadmaker, have you missed the last five centuries of science? Never mind, I already know the answer is affirmative.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

What does timing, working, or methodology have to do with it? You can try to find out those questions if you think they are interesting, but what difference does it make?

Same difference it makes if we say "evolution did it," but then don't bother trying to learn more about evolution. Makes everyone suspicious that you've just named a gap after your favorite blob of woo.

If IDers won't investigate those sort of questions, then they will never come up with any empirical evidence for the designer, assuming for the sake of argument that there is a designer. So, that leaves them with having to come up with a logical proof of the designer, which we all agree is never going to happen.

So they got nothing. Nor did they have anything the previous 20 times we've been through this same discussion.

~~ Paul

 

[Meadmaker]

The IDers are in a position where they have nothing, but their "theory" predicts nothing. They predict that it's outside of natural law, so they can't be expected to come up with a natural explanation.

(Some of them say that ID isn't supernatural, but they're lying, or they've defined supernatural in such a way to include everything.)

We all know you can't prove a negative, right? You can't prove that there are no unicorns, because there might be a unicorn hiding right behind the next tree. However, you can say that you have looked in all sorts of places where you would expect to find unicorns, and there were no unicorns. You can conclude, reasonably, that there are none, because if they had been there, you would expect to find them.

Apply that to ID and evolution. Evolution predicts that at some point we will be able to describe, in precise detail, a plausible description for the origin and development of life, based on chemical processes and natural law. Right now, we don't have that.

A decade or two ago, we had no evidence for planets around other stars. We thought that they were there, because the theory predicted them, but we didn't have any evidence. Today, we have lots of evidence that they are there.

So, the plausible description is something we are looking for. Which is a better analogy for it? Is it like planets around other stars a decade ago, or is it a unicorn? Have we not found it because we haven't looked in the right way with the right tools, or have we not found it because it isn't there?

But let's relate this to the OP. The OP asserts that everything follows natural law. OK, what does that mean? Most people think of "natural law" as a simple description of natural phenomena, like F=ma. Or, alternatively, as a complex description, but one which is bound. Molecules don't get to "choose" where they go. They go by natural law. People have free will, but actually that's just an illusion based on lots of molecular conditions.

ID asserts that molecules do not always follow any sort of natural law. ID asserts that God has free will, in a real and meaningful way, and that he moves molecules around in defiance of where those molecules would go according to "natural law". The scientific method is restricted to those things about which you can make predictions. That's natural law. You can't study the evolutionary "process" predicted by ID, because ID predicts that it is unpredictable. ID predicts that there are no natural laws.

If you could ever conclusively prove that there are no natural laws that govern movement of molecules within organisms, you could disprove evolution. That wouldn't mean you had proven ID, but it would leave you in a position not unlike you would be if you were looking at a pillar of salt where your wife used to be. You can't describe the nature of the molecular motion that caused organisms to exist, but you might just go along with your hunch that it might be God.

On the other hand, you can never actually prove that there are no natural laws that govern molecular movement, because that's proving a negative. Maybe the unicorn is behind the next tree? So, ID can never be proven.

But, if you look and look and look, and there are still no unicorns/plausible explanations for life and its characteristics, then you might decide that maybe there was something supernatural involved. Right now, I don't think we've looked under enough trees, but that's just me.

 

[Roboramma]

A decade or two ago, we had no evidence for planets around other stars. We thought that they were there, because the theory predicted them, but we didn't have any evidence. Today, we have lots of evidence that they are there.

Actually i wouldn't say that we had no evidence that they were there. The evidence is that the theory predicts them, and that the theory is well supported by evidence of it's own.

No one has ever dropped an apple on Mars, but that doesn't mean that we don't have evidence that it would fall. Or even that it would fall with a specific accelleration.

Planets staying in their orbits, apples falling out of trees on earth, astronauts landing on the moon, all of these things are evidence that that apple will fall on mars as well.
Of course, there was a lot less evidence for planets around other stars than for apples falling on mars, but it's the same kind of evidence - we have a theory that predicts something we haven't yet observed, but everything else about the theory is very well supported, which suggests that this prediction will come to pass. It may not, but we do have evidence that it will.

But to ID. What evidence is there that supports the theory?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

ID asserts that molecules do not always follow any sort of natural law. ID asserts that God has free will, in a real and meaningful way, and that he moves molecules around in defiance of where those molecules would go according to "natural law". The scientific method is restricted to those things about which you can make predictions. That's natural law. You can't study the evolutionary "process" predicted by ID, because ID predicts that it is unpredictable. ID predicts that there are no natural laws.

Did you get this from some ID tract somewhere? It is contradicted by the fact that Dembski et al claim they can determine which biological mechanisms are designed and which are not. If they really could, it would seem we'd have another natural law. Hang on! Dembski even named it the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics.

http://www.arn.org/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=185572&an=0&page=2

You don't seem to grasp what a convoluted hodge-podge ID is.

~~ Paul

 

[PixyMisa]

HA!

I love it.

Zeroth Law: There's only one game in town.
First Law: You can't win.
Second Law: You can't break even.
Third Law: You can't quit the game.
Fourth Law: The cards are marked.

 

[DreadNiK]

Bingo! That's precisely what science holds. The trick is determining what actually happens.

So for the term 'supernatural' to have any absolute rather than relative definition, this would have to not be true, it would have to be possible for anything at all to happen. But! I think then that would mean everything was chaos, literally. Which doesn't really make any sense.

 

[Meadmaker]

Of course, there was a lot less evidence for planets around other stars than for apples falling on mars, but it's the same kind of evidence - we have a theory that predicts something we haven't yet observed, but everything else about the theory is very well supported, which suggests that this prediction will come to pass. It may not, but we do have evidence that it will.

But to ID. What evidence is there that supports the theory?

I don't know of any. However, the "theory" predicts that there isn't any.



I put forth two possible analogies. The thing in question is a detailed description of the development of a complex biological system by natural causes. One possible analogy for that thing is the existence of planets around other stars. Another possible analogy is a unicorn. Your argument above explains why you think that the planet analogy is a good one. We have a theory that predicts that we will eventually find the detailed explanation we seek. It's a well supported theory, so we expect to find that detailed explanation someday, just as we expected to find, and eventually did find, planets on other stars.

However, let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that 100 years from now our descendants still haven't found a detailed explanation. Let us imagine that every attempt to create life in the lab has failed, and that every attempt at simulating life's origin has failed, and that every attempt, in labs or simulations, to demonstrate natural selection producing new complex structures has failed. At that point, the unicorn analogy would be better, because we would have looked everywhere we expected to find the explanations, and didn't find them. Maybe it's because they aren't there?

I think the planet analogy is a better one, but I can't prove that.

 

[Meadmaker]

Did you get this from some ID tract somewhere? It is contradicted by the fact that Dembski et al claim
.....

You don't seem to grasp what a convoluted hodge-podge ID is.

~~ Paul

I think I have a much better grasp on that than you do.

You seem to think that there is one thing out there that is called "ID", and that the contradictory statements by its supporters are proof that it is inherently illogical.

In fact, there are several very different theories (colloquial use) that are all called "ID". They have one, and only one, thing in common. They all say that evidence for design can be found in biological systems. Beyond that, they differ in many ways. So, if you try to read every different version and synthesize the grand theory of ID, you will indeed get a convoluted hodge-podge.

 

[Melendwyr]

Oh, will no one rid us of this troublesome Meadmaker?