(December 22, 2016 at 2:05 pm)robvalue Wrote:(December 22, 2016 at 12:14 pm)SteveII Wrote: Supernatural is anything not part of the natural universe. As such, not constrained by our observable framework (perhaps constrained by another framework). That is not to say it cannot interact with our natural universe (causation).
On what basis do you make the philosophical statement that "If something is defined to be unfalsifiable, it can be safely ignored"?
What is the natural universe? Since universe generally means everything that exists, there's a language problem already. Our observable framework? I assume you must be referring to our attempts to model the framework; here is the equivocation. Our models are not the framework. We don't have access to the rules of the framework, so we cannot know if something isn't constrained by it. We can just have the as-yet unexplained.
I explain in the video why it can be ignored. If it makes no discernible difference to anything, then things are the same whether the thing is real or not. It only exists by assumption, because there can be no evidence for or against it.
If God is "doing something", then no one can differentiate it from him not doing anything. I'm doing pretty well so far ignoring all unfalsifiable phenomenon.
No, the word 'universe' has never meant everything that exists. When I said 'framework', I was distinguishing between a natural set of laws not binding the supernatural as a further way to define the word 'supernatural'.
The supernatural may be meaningless to us until there are supernatural causes in the natural world. I would argue there is evidence of supernatural causation--certainly enough evidence to have a discussion about it where we understand each other and therefore containing 'meaning'.
You seem to equate 'Unfalsifiable' with 'not meaningful'. Is that the case?
