Supernatural isn't a useful concept

[robvalue]

[Rhizomorph13]

[Edwardo Piet]

Very interesting thoughts.

Is it really worthy of the label "supernatural" though? Maybe "transnatural" as in transcending or going beyond the way nature usually is?

I mean... because supposedly "supernatural" applies to that which is not part of nature...

...and I personally think that what you described is nature behaving extraordinarily idiosyncratically.

Moreover do we have at our disposal any natural means to determine whether any action whose cause isn't fully understood has an unknown and currently mysterious natural cause?  Unless we can make that determination, it doesn't seem possible to establish the existence of anything supernatural.  This assumes that those who use the term are thinking anywhere near as carefully about it as you and not just working to confirm pre-existing biases without even realizing it.  Seems like a huge shot in the dark to expend much time or concern over.

True. But I think Jor was speaking purely in principle rather than in practice.

I just think perhaps it would be nature behaving extra-ordinary or idiosyncratically rather than supernaturally.

It would be natural, and it would be super, but it wouldn't be supernatural. That's the way I see it.

Because supposedly supernaturalness isn't just naturalness that is super... it's supposedly entirely beyond the natural.

[Edwardo Piet]

[Whateverist]

[downbeatplumb]

Supernatural seems to be another word for magic.

[theologian]

I saw pool's post but didn't want to necro.

The definition of supernatural I would use would be a thing that doesn't follow natural laws. By that definition it would have to not exist because to exist it would be natural and therefore whatever characteristics define it would be natural.

example: Water that heals you instantly when you pour it on a wound! We know that isn't a thing but if it was a thing then it would be natural and we could study it to figure out the mechanism by which it does the seemingly supernatural thing.

This is why I find the idea of "supernatural evidence" so weird and a basically useless marrying of two words. Evidence is just some thing that indicates that something exists or works a certain way.

The "supernatural" concept has been used to seperate things from science through concepts like NOMA and models of the universe that have places of privilege like "outside" the physical universe or parallel dimensions.

Supernatural seems like a waste of time.

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.

[Gemini]

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.

[Sal]

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.

[Alex K]

I saw pool's post but didn't want to necro.

The definition of supernatural I would use would be a thing that doesn't follow natural laws. By that definition it would have to not exist because to exist it would be natural and therefore whatever characteristics define it would be natural.

example: Water that heals you instantly when you pour it on a wound! We know that isn't a thing but if it was a thing then it would be natural and we could study it to figure out the mechanism by which it does the seemingly supernatural thing.

This is why I find the idea of "supernatural evidence" so weird and a basically useless marrying of two words. Evidence is just some thing that indicates that something exists or works a certain way.

The "supernatural" concept has been used to seperate things from science through concepts like NOMA and models of the universe that have places of privilege like "outside" the physical universe or parallel dimensions.

Supernatural seems like a waste of time.

I agree completely. The best one could do is what Jörm mentions, to distinguish unpredictable "forces" from regular, to an extent predictable "forces" in nature.