What is supernatural? I mean seriously, what does the word mean?

(June 12, 2015 at 1:49 am)Minimalist Wrote: Ludwig Buchner....sounds like a crackpot.

The first thing, and as it turns out only thing I did in this thread, was looking him up too. Even if he wasn't a crackpot, he was a man of the 19th century and therefore only had access to 19th century knowledge.

Every quote screams 19th century even without looking him up. Everything is mechanical or connected to a material substrate, and forces are acting on this. Anyone looking at my LHC thread will see how outdated these notions are...

The definition is supernatural is up to the person starting the conversation to define, really. I go with the natural world being everything that can be tested or measured in some way, regardless of whether we currently have the ability to do so. Supernatural is everything else, if anything.

Just entering this thread, so sorry if I missed anyone's killer points.

Harris, you are conflating many different definitions of "miracle." Specifically, you are confusing "miracle" with "brute fact." But a miracle isn't just something which is unexplained, or which follows rules we do not understand. It is something which goes AGAINST the rules of the universe.

For example, it is a rule that people cannot jump 100 meters up into the air. We have lots of experience jumping, and we've never jumped that high. We also understand various physical rules, and can explain WHY people can't jump that high. If someone jumped 100 meters up in the air unassisted, we would therefore call it a miracle. Someone is doing something that goes against everything we know about people and about physics.

But we don't HAVE rules about the Big Bang drawn from our experience of Big Bangs. We don't HAVE reliable rules for ways in which universes can/can't come into existence. The Big Bang doesn't violate our understanding-- it just reveals that there are things we don't understand. Unless ignorance is a miracle, then discovering our ignorance confirms our experiences about gaining and lacking knowledge, and it also conforms to our further understanding of how the brain, light, etc. work. The mystery of many things CONFORMS to our view of the universe, and so the things you have called miracles are in fact nothing of the sort.

Quote:9. Skin a Pain Receptor

“Those who reject our Signs, We shall soon cast into the Fire: as often as their skins are roasted through, We shall change them for fresh skins, that they may taste the penalty: for Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise.”
An Nisaa (4)
-Verse 56-

 Wait a minute...... when you burn your skin it causes pain?  That's a pretty bold scientific discovery.  How did they figure that one out?  I normally feel quite relaxed when I hold my hand over a candle and watch the skin blister and burn.
Sorry I just don't believe that it's true that burning your skin causes pain, but if it is true then that's a huge scientific miracle that the quran had it figured out, definitely converting to Islam.

(June 12, 2015 at 3:28 am)Alex K Wrote: What is supernatural? I mean seriously, what does the word mean?

Untestable, unverifiable, unfalsifiable, nonsensical, made up, inexistent.

At least that's the definition I've been using

(June 12, 2015 at 9:00 am)Neimenovic Wrote:

(June 12, 2015 at 3:28 am)Alex K Wrote: What is supernatural? I mean seriously, what does the word mean?

Untestable, unverifiable, unfalsifiable, nonsensical, made up, inexistent.

At least that's the definition I've been using

I thought it was the name of one of my favourite TV series. And I think most of those words describe that series too., weird huh!

Quote:I have deliberately selected these nine purely scientific concepts to demonstrate that in today’s hyperactive scientific world miracle is not only possible but also actual and existent.

Well, fuck, that's disappointing. What happened to turning the Nile into blood, Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, Elijah calling fire from heaven, and Jesus raising dead people back to life?

And you call those miracles? The bar has lowered a bit, huh?

Quote:There are too many scientific accuracies in Quran, which cannot be taken as a mere chance.

Lol... No. It wasn't mere chance that Aristotle confirmed the spherical shape of the Earth by looking at lunar eclipses and that Eratosthenes came damn close to figuring out it's circumference either. I didn't see anything on your list that was very impressive or unlikely for an Arab living 1,000 years after the golden age of Greece to have been able to learn.