Can't prove the supernatural God

[SteveII]

Let's face it, this works in reverse. People already believe in God, Jesus being magic, and supernatural events, before any sort of analysis even begins. I highly doubt anyone has ever simply examined the bible, and concluded that this is evidence of supernatural events, without already being Christian or receiving a lot of outside influence. [1] If they have, without it being in any way suggested to them by other people, then I'd expect them to believe every work of fiction is real. It would be someone who simply can't tell reality from fantasy. Not only that: they are willing to agree to the label "supernatural" as opposed to "unexplained", on the say so of the characters in the book! [2]

So before we start, they already believe these conclusions. This means that they have to reach them, by whatever means, during the discussion. So stopping at "unexplained" is not sufficient. Reasons must be found to validate genuinely categorising something as supernatural.

Yet there is no way. This is how previous biases force broken arguments; and that's even if we grant that everything in the bible happened exactly how it was written. It's just a series of unexplained events, which some people want to call supernatural. [3]

It's a diagnosis by elimination, and you also have to eliminate the possibility of there being no efficient cause at all. Just saying you can't believe there are any natural explanations, or that it could happen with no cause, is just an appeal to incredulity. It's not scientific. You don't have to convince us that you are convinced. We know you are, before we even began talking about it. [4]

1. You mentioned a lot of things together like they were a single thing. We have discussed before the people have a built in propensity to believe in the supernatural and therefore most do not dismiss the possibility. Since many people end up in other religions (or make up their own "spirituality"), I do not think that people start with Jesus is supernatural before any analysis begins. 

2. Not redoing the NT debate. But do you really think "why not every work of fiction" argument is a good one? 

3. If you "grant that everything in the bible happened exactly how it was written" and you still claim unexplained, then your reason is clearly that supernatural events cannot happen. You are arguing in a circle: they didn't happen because they cannot happen.

4. You should always apply the scientific method to an event. If it is determined that what we know about science cannot explain it, you are saying we are not justified in going further than that. But why not? Only a a priori belief that the supernatural does not exist stops you (see above #3 why that is a problem).  As we have been discussing, we can look for context to see what column we might put the event in. You are right, it's not scientific. By definition, it can't be.