How do you separate religion and the supernatural?

[Lotan]

This question was originally brought up by RevJP on the "Why Attack Christianity?" thread. Is there a religion that doesn't include supernatural elements? Could there be, or would it be considered a 'philosophy' or something else?

And, while we're at it...

Some of you may be familiar with the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge offered by magician and professional skeptic James Randi. In my opinion though, real evidence for the supernatural shouldn't come cheap, so I am prepared to offer...{doing my best Dr. Evil impression}... One BILLION Dollars (!!!!!) for incontrovertible, hard evidence for the existence of the supernatural. Don't worry, I'm good for it!
Now for a billion bucks you'll have to come up with something pretty choice. Never mind your uncle's NDE or a cheesy shaped like Benny Hinn. I want something good, like a staff that turns into a snake, or maybe a live demon. Also please avoid any quantum physics weirdness or arguments about strange events or coincidences that must be supernatural unless they are presented by a talking donkey. Best of luck to all!

[Dilettante]

Lotan wrote:

Is there a religion that doesn't include supernatural elements? Could there be, or would it be considered a 'philosophy' or something else?

Does Spinozism count as a religion? The supernatural did not exist according to Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677),who believed God and Nature to be identical. Problem is, it's hard to decide whether he was deifying nature or naturalizing God. In other words, was he a pantheist or a materialist? Any Spinoza experts in this forum who can clear this up?

[otseng]

This line of thinking leads very quickly to any point the author would like to make.

I have presented a rational argument which leads to a logical conclusion. And this line of thinking quickly leads to any point one would like to make?

Lots of things are unrefuted otseng. This is only one possibility out of many.

Present other possibilities and we can argue them and see how plausible they are. If there are other logical explanations, then one does not have to accept my conclusion as the only possibility.

Beats me, but that's like saying that microorganisms weren't part of the natural world until the invention of the microscope.

I believe there is quite a difference in not being able to see something in our natural world because we don't have the technology and not being able to see something because it is in another dimension.

To answer the other part of this thread. I do believe it is possible to separate a religion from the supernatural. Michael Newdow is the self proclaimed minister of the First Amendmist Church of True Science. And I highly doubt he believes in the supernatural.

[Nyril]

This line of thinking leads very quickly to any point the author would like to make.

I have presented a rational argument which leads to a logical conclusion. And this line of thinking quickly leads to any point one would like to make?

No, your line of reasoning that since something cannot be refuted, it must be true was what I was referencing.

[wgreen]

The evidence for the big bang and the increasing rate of expansion of the universe is overwhelming. This would seem to indicate that if we trace back its expansion we find that it begins at a point. Of course, this point would also represent the beginning of time. Hawking has hypothesized that the universe may not have had a clear beginning--it may have originated in a quantum fluctuation, so that its "beginning" is smeared out by quantum uncertainty. This explanation is an attempt to "erase" the beginning. This would seem to be an attractive alternative to materialists, who would have a difficult time with the concept of an uncaused beginning. It is hoped that science will develop a complete picture of the universe as a closed loop of causality.

But this just shifts the problem to a new location. One can still ask the question of why there is any universe at all (or why all possible universes exist, if you prefer). Why are the physical laws such that allow this sort of universe? These are questions that lie outside the reach of science, and will forever. It is not a matter of science progressing (I've discussed this further on my "brute givens" and "what can science tell us" pages.

As far as proof of the supernatural: God does not do shows, and Jesus did not perform miracles for show or "on request."

I have to wonder, if He were to perform one of His miracles today, would people be able to explain them away and offer alternative explanations for them?

It turns out that He performed many miracles, most importantly His own resurrection, and we have ample historical evidence for this.

Thanks,

Bill Green

[bernee51]

It turns out that He performed many miracles, most importantly His own resurrection, and we have ample historical evidence for this.

There is no ample historical evidence of the existence of the man you call Jesus let alone historical evidence of the alledged resurrection.

If you wish to use the resurrection as a metaphor I have no issue - but to claim it as an historical fact cannot, as far as I am aware, be substantiated.

[Dilettante]

wgreen wrote:

It turns out that He performed many miracles, most importantly His own resurrection, and we have ample historical evidence for this.

bernee51 wrote:

There is no ample historical evidence of the existence of the man you call Jesus let alone historical evidence of the alledged resurrection.

I suspect wgreen is referring to Christian apologetic writings as "historical evidence", but I don't think a historian would accept that. Only a convergence of unrelated sources could have established it as historical fact. There is evidence that there were Christians, as Roman historians attest. But no direct evidence of Jesus or his resurrection. As anyone can read in other threads in this forum, the matter is still controversial.

Most historians, I'm sure, would consider the existence of Jesus highly likely although not 100% certain. At least not until some (authentic, not faked) artifacts are unearthed by archaeologists. As for the resurrection, that's a horse of a different color... To paraphrase Marcello Truzzi, such an extraordinary fact would call for extraordinary evidence.

[wgreen]

Extrabiblical writings such as Tactius, Thallus, Josephus and others attest to the historical Jesus. Though I don't believe their writings are necessary: the Biblical record is historically reliable. Evidence for the resurrection also lies in the Biblical record.

Of course, these are evidences, not proofs, but proof (2a. The validation of a proposition by application of specified rules, as of induction or deduction, to assumptions, axioms, and sequentially derived conclusions. ) cannot exist for historical events in the sense that we cannot establish their truth beyond any doubt. We can only build a convincing case for them.

Back to the origin of the Universe. It seems that modern science has realized that it did come (or comes) out of nothing, though materialistic science is looking for ways that it could have "bootstrapped itself into existence." The Bible attests to "out of nothing" creation, but contradicts the "bootstrap" principle:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible (Hebrews 11:1-3, NASB).

Bill Green

[QED]

But this just shifts the problem to a new location.

And so does invoking god to create the universe at this point. If I ask you to account for the presence of god at this point absolutely any answer you give could just as easily be applied to the universe itself. This would have the obvious advantage of offering us a somewhat "lighter" explanation.

[Lotan]

Hi otseng .
I’ve decided to revisit some of the points of our conversation…

The fact that we are all here demonstrates evidence for the supernatural.

So you’re saying that nature is a product of supernature?

The universe couldn't have just spontaneously popped into existence. That would violate the first law of thermo. So, it must've had a source outside the scope of our natural world. Therefore, the supernatural exists.

Doesn’t this require the assumption that the FLoT existed before the universe that it governs? That doesn’t seem right. In any case here is a quote from an astrophysicist who has a different opinion…

” The lesson of quantum physics is this: Something that "just happens" need not actually violate the laws of physics. The abrupt and uncaused appearance of something can occur within the scope of scientific law, once quantum laws have been taken into account. Nature apparently has the capacity for genuine spontaneity.
It is, of course, a big step from the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of a subatomic particle-something that is routinely observed in particle accelerators-to the spontaneous and uncaused appearance of the universe. But the loophole is there. If, as astronomers believe, the primeval universe was compressed to a very small size, then quantum effects must have once been important on a cosmic scale. Even if we don't have a precise idea of exactly what took place at the beginning, we can at least see that the origin of the universe from nothing need not be unlawful or unnatural or unscientific. In short, it need not have been a supernatural event.”

This is from What Happened Before the Big Bang by Paul Davies.

Until our understanding of physics changes, we cannot go by possible past or future possibilities.

And as long as we have insufficient data there’s no point claiming to have found proof of the supernatural.

It could very well involve natural phenomena that we are not aware of yet.

It certainly could. But this viewpoint is based on pure speculation instead of any substantive logic.

Not that pure. Compare our present knowledge of cosmology (and physics in general) with what was known a thousand years ago. There are new discoveries all the time. Is it logical to assume that we’ve reached our limit?

And since as you acknowledge that it is unrefuted, it is then the only rational position to take.

Nyril’s IPU is unrefuted too! As for yours being “theonly rational position to take” we have already seen one alternative. I have a hunch that you could find a few more here.

Present other possibilities and we can argue them and see how plausible they are. If there are other logical explanations, then one does not have to accept my conclusion as the only possibility.

Hopefully this has been addressed by the links that I’ve provided. I don’t have the chops to select one theory over another anyhow. The point is that although you may feel that your solution is the most plausible, it is hardly the only possibility nor is it necessarily the correct one.

I believe there is quite a difference in not being able to see something in our natural world because we don't have the technology and not being able to see something because it is in another dimension.

I’m not sure if that statement is correct or not. We may not be able to see other dimensions, but we can observe their effects on subatomic particles (at least, I think we can) This is the ‘quantum weirdness’ that I mentioned in my initial post. If these other dimensions can be shown to interact with our natural world then they’re not so ‘super’ after all. It just shows that our universe is more complicated than the dimensions that we do understand, in which case the issue of ‘natural’ or ‘supernatural’ is an exercise in semantics. It’s definitely not a talking donkey.

Since you didn’t seem too crazy about the Kewpie doll, I’ve got something else that I think you might really like – 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense from NewScientist.com. I hope you enjoy it.

[QED]

Lotan - I'm pleased you found this page: What Happened Before the Big Bang by Paul Davies:

The essence of the Hartle-Hawking idea is that the big bang was not the abrupt switching on of time at some singular first moment, but the emergence of time from space in an ultrarapid but nevertheless continuous manner. On a human time scale, the big bang was very much a sudden, explosive origin of space, time, and matter. But look very, very closely at that first tiny fraction of a second and you find that there was no precise and sudden beginning at all. So here we have a theory of the origin of the universe that seems to say two contradictory things: First, time did not always exist; and second, there was no first moment of time. Such are the oddities of quantum physics.

The problem we face with all this scientific hand-waving is that our human intuitions are insufficient to prepare us for the concepts of quantum cosmology. But of all the findings the one feature that really shouts out for attention and can be readily understood is the Casimir effect predicted by the Dutch physicist Hendrick Casimir in 1948 and measured in 1997 by Steven Lamoreaux.

New information like this is bound to take a time to sink into our phyche's but isn't it remarkable that we've just come to know in the last eight years that there can indeed be "something for nothing".