(November 3, 2016 at 4:22 am)theologian Wrote: Let's see whether all that exist are natural. I agree with you that to be the natural is to be the way things be, to have a definition and to have a definite form. Now, suppose all that exist are natural. Therefore, all things has its own manner of being or permanent way to be or way to exist, just as if we die, we don't turn into gold or paper, but always rot. Now, we know that every determined things must have a cause, just as the principle of sufficient reason tells us. If something happen like someone falling from the roof of our house, we all agree that that has a cause. That scenario is also determined and is defined. For, instead of floating, that someone falls. So with the way or the manner the things are. So, we can see that the way the things must have a cause, something or someone who give us that way. Now, either that something or someone has way of being too and therefore limited and therefore is caused; or it is not. If that something or someone has a manner of being too, then that something or someone must have a caused too. But, this cannot go on. There must be a sufficient reason. Otherwise, we must not exist. But, we do and the natural things around us exist. So, there must be a being Whom doesn't have a manner of being, a Pure Act of Being, so to explain the existence of natural things which is equivalent to answering the question why is there something instead of nothing. That Being understood by people to be God Whom is above-natural or in other words, Supernatural.
No, none of this, we HAVE observed particles springing into being with no cause or predictable pattern. What you are doing is called special pleading. If EVERYTHING has a cause then God needs a cause. If it doesn't need a cause then nothing needs a cause. dismissed. Oh, and what about supergod? the mover of the unmoved mover?
(November 3, 2016 at 6:48 am)Gemini Wrote: Whether the concept of the supernatural is useful depends on how it's defined, and I think it's one of those words that people conceptualize in different ways. I think both "natural" and "supernatural" are inelegant family resemblance concepts that can't be distilled down to a set of necessary and sufficient sufficient conditions. Maybe "natural" could, if we had a final theory of physics, but for the time being it has to do our current understanding of fundamental physics, the expectation that entropy will continue to obtain in future theories, and that things like agent causation and retro-causality won't.
I think the concept of the supernatural is useful, but only because humans seem to start out with tendencies for irrational patterns of thought, like promiscuous teleology. It's helpful to label ways of modeling the world that don't correspond to anything real.
You see how I defined it though and I think that, as a philosophical concept, natural pertains to things that exist so even if we don't understand something or we get the math wrong, we can say that any thing is natural that exists without too much trouble. No need for a set of things that are supernatural just because we don't understand them yet. Who would control that line in any meaningful way? We fly through the air in giant metal tubes! How is that "Natural"? Would you consider it supernatural? I wouldn't.
(November 3, 2016 at 7:21 am)Sal Wrote: Supernatural is natural phenomena that hasn't been explained yet, or lack evidence to be explained coherently.
"I saw a ghost!" Any number of natural explanations would render such a supernatural anecdote to banal & trivial phenomena; "it was the wind", or the personal "you're just mistaken wind and light artification." Which, for the supernaturally explanation inclined, are unsatisfactory explanations.
No, that isn't the most useful definition for supernatural because then supernatural would differ from person to person based on their understanding of science. It even does right now but that is why I challenge the usefulness of the word; why bother if it is based on understanding? I think things are either real or not real and if they are real they are also within nature. Now that I think about it "natural" then becomes a useless word.
