(May 25, 2020 at 4:08 pm)Belacqua Wrote:(May 25, 2020 at 10:13 am)Rhizomorph13 Wrote: so it is a definitions game.
The term "supernatural" is notoriously hard to define. So if we're going to talk about it, it makes sense to have some notion of what we're discussing, and I offered a traditional definition. But if you'd prefer a different one, I'm willing to work with it.
Quote: I would counter with my definition of natural which would be whatever is observed (Not necessarily with eyes or ears) is natural.
Does this mean that everything that hasn't been observed isn't natural? That seems problematic to me. It would mean that for a very long time the H. pylori in people's stomachs wasn't natural, and then it became natural when we observed it. There are a lot of rocks on Mars that haven't been observed yet, but I don't believe that they are supernatural.
If you want to say that anything which has been or could be observed is natural, I think that's just a fancy way to say that everything is natural and nothing is supernatural, by definition. So you've defined it out of existence. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.
Quote:So if a frog threw its asshole against the wall and jumped through it to another dimension and I saw it happen I would say we have a lot to learn about the true nature of frogs!
As I've said more than once now, if we could explain something like that through science and the nature of frogs, the explanation wouldn't be supernatural.
Quote:If a thing is, then it is natural. If God exists it is natural, I would argue that it would constitute the anchor point of all of nature from most definitions of god that I know.
OK, this is clear. You're saying that by definition that there's no such thing as the supernatural.
Christians who hold to the definition of supernatural I gave earlier agree with you that God is natural.
Bingo except for one quibbling detail; if something hasn't been observed in some way I would say it just hasn't been observed, there is no need to define unobserved things.
