How unlikely is the supernatural?

[Mithrae]

I've been intrigued by the opinions a few folk have expressed regarding the supernatural lately. To begin with, here's a few points which I suspect nearly all folk on the forum should more or less agree with:

- Our minds and imaginations can often play tricks on us
- People have been known to lie or deceive regarding supernatural claims
- Much that was previously explained by or considered as supernatural has since been naturally explained
- We routinely dismiss many supernatural claims without any specific investigation (eg. primitive myths)
- No supernatural claim has been proven beyond doubt to the modern world*

(*Note that this doesn't preclude general evidence for the supernatural, which some folk would argue, and we can't claim that no supernatural thing has been conclusively proven to individuals.)



Notachance argues that we should hold the same standard when considering supernatural claims as we do when a person's future (and perhaps their very life) is in question - that of proof beyond reasonable doubt.

Going even further, Furrowed Brow likens the probability of the supernatural to one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent, and says that he'd accept far-fetched conspiracy theories rather than a supernatural claim.

Personally I'd try to weigh the evidence for any given supernatural claim as best I can and judge it on it's own merits. I'd require a higher standard of evidence before 'believing' the claim than I would of naturalistic phenomena, but I don't believe we know enough about the nature of the universe to designate anything as super-natural and intrinsically implausible.



So what about everyone else? How unlikely do you consider the supernatural? How would you approach new supernatural claims? And why?

[Flail]

Hi McCulloch,

Jesus Christ, himself, pointed out this phenomenon. He called it hypocrisy. All punishment breeds hypocrisy by perverting our motives. Many people don't do bad things merely because the consequences would not please them. Many people do good things only to be seen by others. Isn't it obvious how hollow such existences are? Good done for any other reason than its own sake ceases to be good. This is because good must be unattached and selfless, an offering to the One who inspires all beings to a greater purpose than themselves.

Christian belief in a punishing god is puzzling. A god who punishes evil and rewards good is not an idea from Jesus Christ who said God to "rain on the just and unjust alike."

What you say here has been my 'take' on the Parable of the Good Samaritan, wherein Jesus seems to be making a point that , to 'God', doing good for religious purposes (as done by the Levite and the Priest) gets trumped every time by doing good altruistically (as done by the non-religious Samaritan). There are other examples in the NT where Jesus rails against the religiosity that has become Christianity. In my view, whatever 'Heaven' might turn out to be, if anything at all, one could achieve it despite being a Christian, but never because of it.

[joncash]

Hi Flail,

I never thought of the Parable of the Good Samaritan in that way. It does fit.

I do wonder if any of the other philosophers had anything to say on the subject of racism, as I believe that is the topic with which this parable deals with most directly.

[Flail]

Hi Flail,

I never thought of the Parable of the Good Samaritan in that way. It does fit.

I do wonder if any of the other philosophers had anything to say on the subject of racism, as I believe that is the topic with which this parable deals with most directly.

I think the parable has to do with both racism and the self centeredness of religion, as if Jesus foresaw the evil that would one day become Christianity as we know it, serving God for ones self rather than finding God in the needs of others regardless of any indoctrinated notion of who is saved and who is not.

[joncash]

Hi Flail,

I would presume Jesus did not need to foresee anything. He was talking about types of people that existed in his own time. Apparently, not much really changes.

[Flail]

Hi Flail,

I would presume Jesus did not need to foresee anything. He was talking about types of people that existed in his own time. Apparently, not much really changes.

Agreed. To clarify, I was referring to Jesus' common sense in foreseeing that the selfish aspects of human nature when it came to religion would not change. The whole of Christian dogma relates back to the 'self'; whereas the whole of Jesus' teachings relate back to 'others'; but I find nothing whatever mystical or divine as relating to Jesus.

[arian]

In my view, what are frequently referred to as morals are simply codifications of implicit social contracts that have developed and evolved over time between members of societies and different societies for the purpose of survival and social order. They don't require a God, they require a human author(s).

In other words (if I understand you correctly) if someone desires to do such things and has the skill to do it undetected there would be nothing wrong with it.

Good question. In my view, we are all imbued with common sense, which, of course could come from something supernatural..or not...impossible to tell. Such 'intuition' or 'common sense' would seem to be at the basis of the age old doctrine of ethical reciprocity (co-opted after the fact by Christianity as the Golden Rule). Common sense dictates that doing something that would be harmful or painful if done to you, would be something you likewise should not do to another. Such behavior has been observed in monkeys.

So a good example of this would be the TV show "Biggest Loser", torture like that should not be done to anyone, .. right? Common sense.

Co-opted by that magician with all the tricks Jesus, and those up to no good followers of his? I guess we should de-volve back to the morality portrayed by Darwin, .. 'animal-instinct', after all, it has worked fine for billions of years, monkeys never nuked each other, ..

[arian]

Common sense dictates that doing something that would be harmful or painful if done to you, would be something you likewise should not do to another.

That does not work, you cant say...

IS harmful or painful therefore OUGHT not do it.

You can't derive an ought from an is.


But this is the basic difference between atheism and Christianity, in atheism all things are permitted but in Christianity one will be judged for every act committed and every word uttered.

I am not an atheist (one claims that 'God' does not exist); I am a secular humanist and a skeptic and an Ignostic(one who claims we cannot possibly know what a 'God' would be). As such, I agree that often strong atheism and theism are unfairly judged upon different standards. To me, both atheism and theism fail by reason of their unsubstantiated, unverifiable and meaningless clams that either 'God exists' or 'God does not exist'.

As I stated, I do not 'know' from whence our intuition or common sense emanates, very possibly it has evolved from trial and error since pre-history, perhaps it was imbued by something supernatural, but I refuse to attribute such things to 'ultimate' notions as particularly peculiar as BibleGod.

Possibly and could be.. but is it? Does your assumptions satisfy your questions regarding morality?

Trial and error, you mean like when apes tried eating dirt for a few hundred thousand years, then rocks, then gold which they were actually able to consume, .. and finally, by no apparent reason they stumbled upon a banana tree?

Perhaps and possibly (the story of evolution and the big bang theory) the idea of 'evolution' was imbued by something 'supernatural', have you ever thought of that?

Naw... 'perhaps' there is too much proof of the already created which is physically evidenced to change your mind, right? Besides, .. look how much work went into, and is going into the theory of evolution. We make cars, planes and watches, those other complicated thing just evolved... you can 'imagine' that can't you?

You said; an Ignostic (one who claims we cannot possibly know what a 'God' would be).

Hmm.. so we 'cannot possibly know what a 'God' would be', there is just no way, since the instruction book the Bible cannot be trusted. But how big and how old the universe is, gosh, .. that's easy, as long as we ignostics agree on the 'Assumption of strong priors'.

The age of the universe is 13.7 ± 0.13 billion years since the Big Bang (433.6 x 1015 seconds in SI units, or 13.75 Gigayears) within the Lambda-CDM concordance model.
It is not known if something existed before the singularity that we call Big Bang (necause that would be like saying God is a possibility, so the words; 'we don't know' in this case, is scientifically acceptable)
nor if time is linear, since the expansion estimated by Hubble's law assumed a linear expansion, and later work indicates there may have been variations. The estimated changes in expansion are calculated to be both positive and negative, so Hubble and later estimates broadly agree.

The uncertainty range for the age of the universe has been obtained by the agreement of a number of scientific research projects.

It's like the old 'getting away with murder' story. Two people 'agree' to kill someone, and then they 'agree' on a lie as an alibi. Only problem is, the lie is NOT the truth, and sooner or later falls apart, unlike the truth which is 'absolute'. The Word of God shall never pass-away, no matter how many people agree on the assumptions of evolution.

[arian]

Hi McCulloch,

Jesus Christ, himself, pointed out this phenomenon. He called it hypocrisy. All punishment breeds hypocrisy by perverting our motives.

Many people don't do bad things merely because the consequences would not please them.

Unless (as olasvisjo pointed out) they 'believe' they can get away with it. Our president Clinton made that clear when he was accused of having sex with Monica Lewinsky; "What is TRUTH?" he said under oath, ... and now he is the biggest advocate of the Venus Project.

Many people do good things only to be seen by others. Isn't it obvious how hollow such existences are? Good done for any other reason than its own sake ceases to be good. This is because good must be unattached and selfless, an offering to the One who inspires all beings to a greater purpose than themselves.

Who is this, ... One?

Christian belief in a punishing god is puzzling. A god who punishes evil and rewards good is not an idea from Jesus Christ who said God to "rain on the just and unjust alike."

There, .. you just said it, and that IS our God, a loving just Creator who shows His love by "bringing the rain and the sun on both the just AND the unjust". Those other god and gods are made up by mans 'ignoramus maximus'.

A good image is what we do for and to our kids, including when they deliberately break all our rules. When they grow up and should 'know better', we let them taste of their wicked ways, hoping and waiting for them to return to their senses (that narrow path).

Why does the world 'enforce' the laws?
Do you think it would be a good idea for the world to just abolish all the laws and allow some 'unknown higher source' dictate right and wrong on 'individual basis' other than our God described in the Bible?

Jesus came to do just that, taken the 'written law' and put it into our hearts, souls and minds, where our love for the Lawgiver which we show by our love of our neighbor is manifested. Not for selfish reasons, nor for some 'fear of punishment', but out of love.

[Mithrae]

If y'all will pardon me bumping my own thread, it's only occurred to me over the past few days that an argument made elsewhere actually fits quite well into this thread. At some point (depending on how lazy I am) I intend to start a thread on the book of Daniel, which will necessarily require some groundwork as to the extent to which the 'supernatural' can legitimately figure as a premise in discussion or reasoning. In the hopes of shortening that a little, I figure posting this is worthwhile.

• Mithrae wrote:

  
  I don't think any reasonable person could legitimately maintain an absolute conviction that God was born a virgin and rose from the dead based upon solely on the word of 1st or 2nd century writings.

  Can a reasonable person legitimately maintain an absolute conviction that this did not happen?
  
  Both the thread title and the quote from Starboard in the OP say 'reasonable.' But like Tired it seems you prefer to speak about absolutes. This is safe ground; it's easy to argue that Jesus' alleged resurrection is not undeniable or unavoidable, as Tired says, or a matter of absolute conviction in your words.
  
  If y'all will pardon my rambling, I've just finished re-reading Thief of Time by comic fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett. Fantastic author. It occurs to me that aside from that which implies a logical contradiction, anything is possible. It's possible that I am a lone human mind bombarded with innumerable false perceptions, the plaything of Descartes' evil demon. It's possible that our fundamental perception of reality is accurate, but the biological and socio-political development of the human race is ultimately under the covert control of a rather advanced alien species (a la Zechariah Sitchin).
  
  But the things which don't imply a logical contradiction are infinite. Even causation is debatable as a logical principle, rather than a by-product of observation. That I have been touched by His Noodly Appendage is certainly a possibility. That I have been touched by Her Noodly Appendage is possible too. Or that I have been touched by It's Noodly Appendage. Or His Kind-Of-Cylindrical-Lasagne-Like Appendage.
  
  Compared to infinity, what do my perceptions mean? What do the things I've seen and the knowledge I've managed to acquire mean? Compared with the whole, I know virtually nothing even about the accepted facts of 21st-century Earth to date! Of course, I'm no expert on the matter of 21st-century Earth to date, but I suspect that the experts know virtually nothing about my life, or the lives of my friends (about whom I know little) or the lives of those reading this. How much might we imagine an 'expert' in 21st-century Earth to date actually knows? Is there really a significant difference between my 1-in-a-trillion and their (assuming they exist) 3-in-a-trillion?
  
  It seems to me, and I think this deserves to be emphasised, that for all intents and purposes if anything is possible then everything is equally probable.
  
  A person observes reality like the leaf observes the forest. But since we need the illusion of choice, of decisions, of free will, we need the illusion of knowledge and beliefs on which to base them. Our knowledge and beliefs are based partly on observation, partly on habit, partly on desire, partly on communication - and quite possibly on other things also - but as far as 'absolute conviction' goes, I rather suspect that they will all always fall woefully short in any objective sense of the term.
  
  This is not to say that I necessarily disagree with the positions which Flail and Tired are expressing. What I object to is using absolute terms in the discussion of ancient history when they're conspicuously absent in the thread title and OP. The question is whether belief in the alleged resurrection of Jesus is 'reasonable.' I do not see any explicit consequences claimed in the OP, nor any definite consequences following logically from the question. Comparing an alleged factoid of ancient history connected to a religious teacher with throwing baseballs into orbit or the American Civil War are not, in my opinion, particularly sound analogies.
  
  If we're concerned about the 'supernatural' element involved in the alleged event, on a personal level that's all well and good and to no small extent I would agree. But as far as the thread title and OP go, I do feel obliged to re-state and request disproof of this before such distinctions are again raised as a form of 'debate':
  If anything is possible then everything is equally probable