Let's play with the concept of 'Supernatural'

[robvalue]

If something being "supernatural" depends somehow on our current level of knowledge and understanding, then I find it to be a useless woo-word. This means it could be supernatural today and natural tomorrow; or supernatural to us, but natural to a more advanced race elsewhere in the universe, at the same time. It's an attempt to make the unexplained sound more mysterious, and to equivocate with the person's own pet superstition.

If however "supernatural" refers to something that is impossible to detect/measure by anything or anyone in our reality, then it boxes itself into redundancy. It is unfalsifiable, by definition. Whether such things exist, or not, is purely a matter of speculation. It might be an empty set, or it might not be. We can't even determine this much. Even if we did assume it's a non-empty set, and we're trying to establish supernatural causation, this is what happens:

We observe an event. From our point of view, it looks exactly the same whether:

1) It was caused by a particular supernatural causation someone is claiming to be the case
2) It was caused by any other random supernatural explanation
3) It had no supernatural causation

If someone claims the above is not the case, then they have contradicted themselves. We literally cannot tell the difference.

Now, it would be consistent with reality that there is an element of supernatural causation for everything. In other words, there could be "invisible" processes going on that act on our reality, but cannot be detected. In other words, they are "one way". To make an analogy: if I run a computer program, and this manifests itself as a self-contained reality somehow, the program is constantly acting upon this reality. However, from inside the reality, this action is "invisible", and indistinguishable from a magic man in the sky; or indeed from nothing at all. So yeah, we could be a computer program, and the "supernatural forces" are the effects of the program on our reality. We can't possibly tell, because it all looks the same to us.

[ignoramus]

Remember Rob, everyone's got a exit code if you don't like your current reality program.

Kevin also told me the exit just removes you from the current live system.
Nothing else happens, you just cease to exist as a participating unique entity in the sim.
Other entities will appear to grieve for a little while and then the sim goes on as usual.

He doesn't understand why anybody would want to exit.
It's not as if we're really really real or anything!

[robvalue]

Good point, that's what makes the concept of an "afterlife" so fucking stupid. It would be like part of the manifestation of one of our computer programs coming out of the program and physically manifesting here, when it had run its course. I don't think people realize quite how ludicrous this is.

The only way it would make any sense is if we are in fact in another reality all along, and we've been hooked up to a VR simulation. Classic brain in a vat. Then it wouldn't be an afterlife, it would be returning to "real" life.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I exist in the natural world. My world is filled with computers, dog poo, telecommunications, shoes, leatherback turtles, bookends, curtains, coffee, bits of paper, squeaky chairs, onion soup, and so forth. Be definition, nothing that happens to me can possibly be considered 'super'natural.

'Unexplained' doesn't mean 'inexplicable'.

Boru