Why be good?

[Jenny A]

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Not really.  The point that many of us have said over and over and over in one way or another is that no written or oral eyewitness account alone is sufficient to prove the supernatural.  Full stop, no more is necessary.  

However, some of us for one reason or another have read a lot scripture, not to mention theology.  And it doesn't take much looking to find contradictions, anachronisms, and portions that contradict what we do know about the Biblical period.

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Just out of curiosity, what proof of the supernatural WOULD be sufficient, and how would or could it be provided?

That's a complex question, and the answer would depend on the supernatural claim.  For example, if I claimed that there is a dragon in my living room proof ought to be pretty easy, come and see.  But if I then stipulated that it was invisible, untouchable, can't be heard, and can't be smelt, or x-rayed, or detected with any equipment, my dragon would appear to be both unfalsifiable and unprovable.   It wouldn't help you if I added that you have to be open to the dragon to see it and that knowing it was in my living room made me feel better.  Adding that my brother sees the dragon too, still wouldn't make the dragon provable.  You see unless there is something different about my living room with the dragon in it then without the dragon that can be independently verified by anyone with the proper senses or equipment, then the dragon is not provable.

Obviously a more simple claim like the ability to levitate objects is much more easily proven or dis-proven.  That is why charlatans always equivocate when making such claims.  Adding stipulations about feeling just right, and there being no unbelievers in the room etc.  What they are doing is making their claims unfalsifiable.
Many ghosts sighting, esp claims, claims concerning talking to the dead, and god, fit the general description of my dragon and are unfalsifiable.  Such things are not provable.

So step one in proving the supernatural would be to define it in a falsifiable way.  So, if I told you my dragon does communicate with me and he reads minds,  I could prove at a minimum the mind reading part, by simple replicable experiment.  The problem would be in showing that it was the dragon and not me that read minds.  If others could also read minds in the presence of the dragon, but not elsewhere, it would be helpful.

I might also, if special sight were necessary to see the dragon, claim that all those who see the dragon will be able to describe it in the same way regardless of cultural background, or their knowledge of whether there was supposed to be a dragon in the room.  This second idea would require a great deal more effort, as demonstrating the neutrality of the witnesses would be difficult and a great number of witnesses would be necessary.  But if the people with this "extra" sight all walked into the room and said, ah hah, a red dragon of about ten feet in length who breaths steam but not fire and has eight toes on each front leg and six and each back leg, the consistency of such sighting would eventually constitute proof.   And perhaps they should be walked through living rooms with and without claimed dragons to observe the variation in reaction.But someone besides me had better be walking people through the living room and it would be better if that person also didn't know which rooms contained dragons, and I had better not be around to signal either of them in anyway. And finally, the experiment should work if a whole new group of testers designed and carried out a similar experiment from scratch.

So in short, to prove the supernatural you must describe it in a falsifiable way, and then prove it by replicable experiment.