Supernatural and Atheism

[LadyForCamus]

What is the supernatural?

Nice to see you again! I expect you've had some eventful times recently. I hope that you and yours are all doing well.

Not supernaturally well -- just, you know, as well as can be expected. 

I think I've been through this before, but let me type it out here now in a simple way, on the off chance that it might tighten up definitions.

Everything has a nature. The nature of the thing is what it's made of, how it's put together, what its potentials are, what it can do, what's likely to happen to it. All natural stuff. 

So there's a badger in my garden. It has the nature of a badger. It does badger stuff. Digs, eats, makes little badgers. It goes crazy for cat food. A zoologist could tell us more -- badgers differ from raccoons in this and that quality, etc. etc. Science tells us what the badger nature is like. 

Everything with a nature has things it can't do. The badger can't fly. It can't eat molten lead. It can't write lengthy treatises on early Latin literature. If it did any of these things, those things would be above and beyond its nature. In a word: supernatural. 

So "supernatural" means: when a thing does something beyond what its nature is capable of doing. 

We are all good scientists who severely doubt that a badger could ever do something supernatural. Therefore we doubt that the supernatural is possible. If we did hear a report of a badger typing out a treatise on early Latin literature on its little laptop, we would almost certainly reject this. It must be a lie, a drug hallucination, etc. Because our way of understanding the world rejects the idea that anything can act in a way over and above its nature, and our beliefs about the nature of things come from accumulations of centuries of scientific observations.

I am not arguing that the supernatural is possible. I am saying that this is the ancient definition of the word, and is still the only one I know which makes sense.

Hiya Bel! Thanks for asking! Things are definitely super-busy for sure! But the kids are loving their baby sister so it’s all gravy. 🙂

I think this definition is potentially problematic. Let’s say tomorrow scientists discover a new species of badger that has wings. The ‘flying tree badger’ would be as much a natural phenomenon as any other creature in the natural world, right? We simply didn’t have enough information before that discovery to know a flying badger was possible. Now, if someone asserts that “badgers can fly,” we’re rationally justified in dismissing that claim and withholding belief in flying badgers (as you mentioned) until sufficient evidence of a badger with the ability to fly has been demonstrated. But to assert that ‘the attribute of flight is not part of a badger’s nature, therefore a flying badger must be a supernatural thing,’ is circular, and it relies on an argument from ignorance. I know you aren’t personally making any arguments here one way or the other; I’m just not sure that’s a logically bullet proof definition of the supernatural.