Against the supernatural as a profound idea--Part 3

Attempts to Define the Boundary

"Natural" things are possible and "supernatural" things are impossible

This must be one of the most absurd ways of trying to define the boundary. If this definition applies then supernatural things cannot happen as they are impossible. The definition would therefore uselessly describe a type of event that never happens.

An event may have seemed impossible before it happened, and could have been classified, at this stage, as being supernatural, but when it happens we have to accept the event as possible and re-classify it as natural, according to this definition of the "supernatural."

Some people might say that I misunderstand here -- that what they really mean by the word "supernatural" is that it is the cause of any event that would be impossible, if it were not for the supernatural. As an example, the alleged resurrection of Jesus might be supernatural because it could not happen without the supernatural. This is a meaningless definition, as it still does not tell us what the supernatural is, or what a supernaturally caused event is. It does not tell us why supernatural events are special.

Some people might explain that they do not mean really impossible: they just mean that it seems impossible, it is usually regarded as impossible, or it is "scientifically" impossible. It is their fault for using vague language which makes their statements sound absurd. Even when they explain what they mean it does not get any better, as we will now see.

"Natural" things are considered possible and "supernatural" things are considered impossible

This definition, if made a bit less vague, might define the boundary reasonably. We might need to explain who is supposed to be doing the considering. This would be useless, however, if we want any profound idea of the "supernatural" because the boundary definition would be trivial.

If an event happens then it cannot really be impossible. It must have been possible all along: anyone who considered it impossible was wrong. This boundary is trivial because it says nothing about the supposedly supernatural things themselves, but about what people think. People might consider many things impossible now, but if any of them happened it would be trivial to say that these things are supernatural merely due to human psychology or lack of knowledge.

As an example, the idea of humans travelling to the moon may have once been the sort of idea that most people would regard as impossible, yet it has happened now (unless you are a lunar landing conspiracy theorist). Does this make the moon landings supernatural? If it does then it should be clear that this is not a "profound" sort of supernatural.

Natural things are scientifically possible and supernatural things are scientifically impossible

"Scientifically possible" only means anything with reference to the current laws of science. If something happened outside these laws then it would mean that these laws would not be describing everything that exists and would not be ultimate laws. A thing would not be "supernatural" in any sense by being outside the scope of the known laws of science as this would be more about limitations in human knowledge than the thing itself. None of this would make the "supernatural" a profound thing: it would be all about limitations in the current state of human knowledge.

If scientists observed something that was clearly "scientifically impossible" they would recognize the currently known laws of science to be limited and modify them to allow it to be possible. They might not be able to find out how to do this in any detail immediately, so for a while they may need to just to declare that there is an exception to the known scientific laws. One way of looking at this, however, is that a statement of the existing scientific laws with a statement of the exception included actually forms a new, valid set of scientific laws which are, for the time being, merely vaguer than desired, most obviously with how they deal with the exception.

As an example:

Our current understanding of science is that no object moves through space faster than the speed of light.

Suppose something -- let us call it X -- was found to be moving through space faster than the speed of light -- and if you are familiar with the theory of relativity try to ignore the implausibility of this. This would mean that our idea that nothing moves faster than the speed of light is incorrect. It would not mean that it was useless: it would still tell us what to expect in many situations, but not this one. We could make a new law, including the exception, that stated "No object moves through space faster than the speed of light except X." That law might be vague, with regard to how it describes X, but our knowledge is always limited in some way. It may hint at a new layer of reality beyond our current understanding, but our current statement would correctly describe what we knew at that time. There would be no sense in declaring X "scientifically impossible." Science is merely a methodology used to describe reality. Saying that something is "scientifically impossible" is effectively saying that it is impossible to describe it, which should make it difficult to express the claim that it exists.

Natural things are within nature and supernatural things are outside nature

There is a clear boundary issue here that some people seem unable to grasp. Where is nature supposed to end and "outside nature" start? How is the boundary between "inside nature" and "outside nature" defined? Simply describing the boundary in terms of "inside nature" and "outside nature" does nothing to describe the boundary, but just gives it a name.

Some people believe that "nature" is a small part of reality that is apparent to us, and that it is not even the "true" reality -- that instead there is a more expansive, true reality, possibly with higher laws of which "our" laws are merely a shadow. You may be surprised to know that I am not going to argue with this main idea: it is actually true. What I do disagree with is the semantics of calling it "supernatural." This idea of there being a "true reality," beyond this one, of which our world is merely a shadow has been around for a long time. It was discussed by Plato, without supernatural terminology, and it is apparent in modern science, again without the supernatural terminology.

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