(June 3, 2016 at 11:26 am)robvalue Wrote: Unless we can actually learn anything about the supernatural, I don't see what relevance it has.

We don't know what it wants, if anything. We don't know how to communicate with it. We can't stop it doing things. We can't do anything to it.

Until we learn something about it, it's a ghostly background figure that we just have to accept is there (or not). When we do learn something about it, hey presto, it's not supernatural anymore. And so it goes on.

Waving about a storybook does not count as "knowing about the supernatural". It counts as a story with magical sounding elements.

But you dismiss anything that might help you understand all those questions. Dismissing the NT as false is a choice based on opinion of evidence. The consequence of that choice is effectively removing any chance to answer the questions you raise. So really your complaint is without some sort of revelation, we can't learn anything about the supernatural. We agree!

You are left with the conclusion you identified: the supernatural, if it exists, is not relevant to you. Realize this is a conclusion based on your opinions and not necessarily facts.

As Ignorant suggested, if our universe is, say, a simulation; then the programmer would be 'exonatural' in relation to us. That word avoids such questions as whether we ought to call a geek who pressed 'run universe', God.

Maybe a distinction between exonatural and supernatural might be that an exonatural entity must conform to the laws of their 'native reality' while a supernatural entity can defy physical laws, period. After all, is God considered to be bound by the physical laws of whatever realm it is that God is supposed to exist in?

The NT doesn't tell us anything about what is supernatural. It relates a series of unusual, unexplained events. Even if I believed they happened, the mechanism by which they happened is unknown.

I don't believe the word "supernatural" appears in the NT, does it? Even if it did, it's the author's opinion about the mechanism, and nothing more.

I can't stop people labeling things supernatural of course. Fill your boots. I'm just pointing out that it achieves nothing relating to reality.

SteveII Wrote:

robvalue Wrote:Unless we can actually learn anything about the supernatural, I don't see what relevance it has.

We don't know what it wants, if anything. We don't know how to communicate with it. We can't stop it doing things. We can't do anything to it.

Until we learn something about it, it's a ghostly background figure that we just have to accept is there (or not). When we do learn something about it, hey presto, it's not supernatural anymore. And so it goes on.

Waving about a storybook does not count as "knowing about the supernatural". It counts as a story with magical sounding elements.

But you dismiss anything that might help you understand all those questions. Dismissing the NT as false is a choice based on opinion of evidence. The consequence of that choice is effectively removing any chance to answer the questions you raise. So really your complaint is without some sort of revelation, we can't learn anything about the supernatural. We agree!

You are left with the conclusion you identified: the supernatural, if it exists, is not relevant to you. Realize this is a conclusion based on your opinions and not necessarily facts.

It's the same standard we apply to everything else, and you do, too. But when it comes to your scriptures, unlike us, you start using a different standard. We dismiss every First Century story of messiahs, miracles, and apocalypses as currently impossible to verify even if true, and strongly suspect because hearsay is unreliable and we can't even verify a miracle today. You agree with us except for the one set of First Century stories your religion is based on. Which is the reason you treat them differently. And that's fine, but it makes you look like an ass when you try to turn it around on us like if we were just reasonable, we would show your particular set of stories special deference and lower our standards of evidence for them the way you do.

In other words, lecturing us on our conclusions being based on opinions and not necessarily facts is pretty rich, coming from you.

(June 3, 2016 at 11:19 am)SteveII Wrote:

(June 2, 2016 at 4:51 pm)madog Wrote:  

I really don't know what your first paragraph is referring to.
There are many references that talk about God before time began or timeless. 
For a start, you can click here: http://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/God,-The-Eternal
There are many references talking about God creating the heavens and the earth (a Hebrew phrase meaning everything). 
For a start you can click here: http://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/God,-The-Creator
The set of supernatural things would contain God, but there are other things (angelic beings, places, people's souls--both past and present, etc.) so you cannot use them interchangeably. Also, even if Christianity was completely wrong, it still would not rule out the supernatural.

You are not really answering my question .... unnatural is is something that doesn't conform to what we presently know

I would argue supernatural is something that doesn't conform to what we presently know, but can never be known. 

The point is I don't accredit deism with being supernatural, religion does and then goes on to argue it can be known?

Dog.

(June 3, 2016 at 12:19 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote:

SteveII Wrote:But you dismiss anything that might help you understand all those questions. Dismissing the NT as false is a choice based on opinion of evidence. The consequence of that choice is effectively removing any chance to answer the questions you raise. So really your complaint is without some sort of revelation, we can't learn anything about the supernatural. We agree!

You are left with the conclusion you identified: the supernatural, if it exists, is not relevant to you. Realize this is a conclusion based on your opinions and not necessarily facts.

It's the same standard we apply to everything else, and you do, too. But when it comes to your scriptures, unlike us, you start using a different standard. We dismiss every First Century story of messiahs, miracles, and apocalypses as currently impossible to verify even if true, and strongly suspect because hearsay is unreliable and we can't even verify a miracle today. You agree with us except for the one set of First Century stories your religion is based on. Which is the reason you treat them differently. And that's fine, but it makes you look like an ass when you try to turn it around on us like if we were just reasonable, we would show your particular set of stories special deference and lower our standards of evidence for them the way you do.

In other words, lecturing us on our conclusions being based on opinions and not necessarily facts is pretty rich, coming from you.

I never said he did not have reasons to disbelieve the NT. I was simply pointing out the consequences of that belief was the questions he was raising. 

Regarding NT as fact. Everything in it could be a fact. Or some of it. Or none of it. Deciding which is an opinion.

(June 2, 2016 at 7:05 am)SteveII Wrote: The very definition of a supernatural event make detecting and investigating the cause logically impossible. So we are only left with the result and the context. 

Continuing to ignore the validity of the events for the purposes of a philosophical discussion...

Perhaps you are right for one event. If there were hundreds of similar events and other events that illustrated power over matter, life and death, knowledge that should not have been available, etc., the contextual interpretation becomes become stronger and the probability increases that supernatural forces are at play. This would all be in addition to the fact that Jesus clearly explained the source of this power--which at the very least lends additional context clues.

I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong here: increasing the number of events in which a given cause is asserted in no way influences what the cause of those events actually is. Allow me to demonstrate: here's a magician, and he says he's doing magic. Do you believe him? He just sawed that woman in half!

Okay, now let me take you to this magician's convention. There's hundreds of magicians, and they all claim to be doing magic! Whoa, that guy just uncoupled those rings! Are you inclined to increase the probability of magic now? After all, the criteria are exactly the same as your Jesus analogy: you can't personally explain the events, there's an asserted cause that seems to align with the event, and hundreds of similar events are happening, each of them clearly explained to you as magic... so is it magic? Has the fact that hundreds of people are saying it was magic somehow improved the odds in an objective sense?

And if that's not good enough for you, I've got the proprietor of this nice pyramid scheme you should look into, who swears he has thousands of satisfied business partners...

I mean, hell, my time traveler idea fits just as well into your fallacious reasoning too: of course there are hundreds of examples of miracles, the time traveler has gone back in time to fill the role of Jesus in a closed time loop, thus making his religion seem more true so his bible company gets more business! My question remains unanswered: how do you ascribe a higher probability to a cause you cannot detect or even show is possible, over those other ones? Thus far, all you've done is appeal to taking the assertions of the narrative seriously because they were asserted, and that's simply ridiculous.

That's true of any random stuff anyone ever writes: it could all be fact, it could be partly fact, it could be garbage.

Text cannot confirm supernatural causation, even if it explicitly says it. That's just an appeal to authority (the author).

(June 3, 2016 at 12:37 pm)SteveII Wrote: I never said he did not have reasons to disbelieve the NT. I was simply pointing out the consequences of that belief was the questions he was raising. 

Regarding NT as fact. Everything in it could be a fact. Or some of it. Or none of it. Deciding which is an opinion.

Ah yes, the christian fallback position: when pushed into a corner, you resort to solipsism to attempt to make every position just as good as any other.

(June 3, 2016 at 12:32 pm)madog Wrote:

(June 3, 2016 at 11:19 am)SteveII Wrote: I really don't know what your first paragraph is referring to.
There are many references that talk about God before time began or timeless. 
For a start, you can click here: http://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/God,-The-Eternal
There are many references talking about God creating the heavens and the earth (a Hebrew phrase meaning everything). 
For a start you can click here: http://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/God,-The-Creator
The set of supernatural things would contain God, but there are other things (angelic beings, places, people's souls--both past and present, etc.) so you cannot use them interchangeably. Also, even if Christianity was completely wrong, it still would not rule out the supernatural.

You are not really answering my question .... unnatural is is something that doesn't conform to what we presently know

I would argue supernatural is something that doesn't conform to what we presently know, but can never be known. 

The point is I don't accredit deism with being supernatural, religion does and then goes on to argue it can be known?

Dog.

Logically, if a supernatural being does not interact with our universe, we cannot know anything at all about it. However, if it does, we can logically both infer information and deduce information from its effects on our universe.