Supernatural isn't a useful concept

[Brian37]

Gods/deities/spirits/ghosts/lucky horseshoes or lucky jockstraps, all are born out of ignorance and at best are placebos. It is our species gap filling and flawed perceptions to lead people to bad conclusions as to the nature of reality.

[Edwardo Piet]

W00T Gemini is here. I missed her to fuck.

[Doubting Thomas]

My take on supernatural is that when you start invoking magic, that is, phenomena which doesn't play by natural rules, then it's basically useless because if it's not going to conform to known laws of science then it can't be measured or tested in any way, shape, or form. So it basically becomes useless and nothing more than wishful thinking. I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this lately, but the more you have to invoke magic to support your argument, the less likely that argument is to be true.

[Rhizomorph13]

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?

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.

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.

[Gemini]

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.

Sure, given how you defined it, it's useless. I suppose I'm audacious enough to redefine useless words to suit my purposes. Seems like a waste of a good listeme to do otherwise.

[Edwardo Piet]

You're badass. You're awesome the way you are.

[Soldat Du Christ]

Why couldn't there be a trancedent source that has the ability of intervening with our universe? Trying to say it's impossible because we've never empericaly tested an event of this kind (I'm confident we have at least observed) is an argument from silence.

[downbeatplumb]

Why couldn't there be a trancedent source that has the ability of intervening with our universe? Trying to say it's impossible because we've never empericaly tested an event of this kind (I'm confident we have at least observed) is an argument from silence.

Now explain to me how one of these "sources" exists what its made of how it created the universe?
On its own the idea has nothing going for it, you need more than the extremely vague idea you have presented.
Its like saying the universe was farted out by a giant space goat and leaving it at that.

[Rhizomorph13]

Why couldn't there be a trancedent source that has the ability of intervening with our universe? Trying to say it's impossible because we've never empericaly tested an event of this kind (I'm confident we have at least observed) is an argument from silence.

I don't think that is what I've said at all. If there was a (whatever you want to call it) source that intervened with the universe, it would be natural even if it doesn't follow the laws as we know them now. Also, if a thing has an effect within the universe, that effect would be testable. For example (assuming that the Christian God exists), if prayer was effective then you would be able to see a statistically significant variance between Christians and non-Christians.

[theologian]

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.

Aside from particles, we see many other things which its cause can't be determine immediately like crime scenes etc. Does it follow that crime scenes like the particles doesn't have any cause too? Did we really found something such as particles to be without cause other than God Whom is an Uncaused Cause OR we just don't know yet? After all, particles are defined as particles. Where does its limited form came from? The crime scene is also limited in form, for there are scene that are not crime scene and we know that crime must be caused.

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?

I think this is a good time for Atheists to recognize that correct theistic argument for God's existence doesn't argue from the premise that everything has a cause and so be reluctant next time to commit straw man argument fallacy repeatedly. If you want to be free from that fallacy here, you may want to point out that what I really said is that only those which has manner of being has a cause. So, everything that has a cause, has a manner of being. But God doesn't have a manner of being. Therefore God must be Uncaused. Isn't it funny that when atheist is asking "what caused God?", they are asking an absurd question which is "what caused the Uncaused?"? It's like asking: what have you done that you haven't?

So, if the invocation of the atheist of the proposition that everything has a cause is a straw man, then pointing that "if God doesn't have cause, then nothing will have a cause" will be missing the point too.