The "Supernatural": Burden of Proof?

[boatsnguitars]

Question:
Why should the burden of proof be placed on Supernaturalists (those who believe in the supernatural) to demonstrate the existence, qualities, and capabilities of the supernatural, rather than on Materialists to disprove it, as in "Materialists have to explain why the supernatural can't be the explanation"?

Argument:

Placing the burden of proof on Supernaturalists to demonstrate the existence, qualities, and capabilities of the supernatural is a logical and epistemologically sound approach. This perspective aligns with the principles of evidence-based reasoning, the scientific method, and critical thinking. Several key reasons support this stance.

Default Position of Skepticism: In debates about the supernatural, it is rational to start from a position of skepticism. This is in line with the philosophical principle of "nullius in verba" (take nobody's word for it) and the scientific principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Therefore, the burden of proof should fall on those making the extraordinary claim of the existence of the supernatural.

Presumption of Naturalism: Throughout the history of scientific inquiry, the default assumption has been naturalism. Naturalism posits that the universe and its phenomena can be explained by natural laws and processes without invoking supernatural entities or forces. This presumption is based on the consistent success of naturalistic explanations in understanding the world around us. After all, since both the Naturalist and Supernaturalist believe the Natural exists, we only need to establish the existence of the Supernatural (or, whatever someone decides to posit beyond the Natural.)

Absence of Empirical Evidence: The supernatural, by its very nature, is often described as beyond the realm of empirical observation and measurement. Claims related to the supernatural, such as deities, spirits, or paranormal phenomena, typically lack concrete, testable evidence. Therefore, it is incumbent upon those advocating for the supernatural to provide compelling and verifiable evidence to support their claims.

Problem of Unfalsifiability: Many supernatural claims are unfalsifiable: they cannot be tested or disproven. This raises significant epistemological challenges. Demanding that Materialists disprove unfalsifiable supernatural claims places an unreasonable burden on them. Instead, it is more reasonable to require Supernaturalists to provide testable claims and evidence.

In conclusion, the burden of proof should rest on Supernaturalists to provide convincing and verifiable evidence for the existence, qualities, and capabilities of the supernatural. This approach respects the principles of skepticism, scientific inquiry, and parsimonious reasoning, ultimately fostering a more rational and evidence-based discussion of the supernatural in the context of understanding our world and its mysteries.

If they can't provide evidence of the supernatural, then there is no reason for Naturalists to take their claims seriously: Any of their claims that include the supernatural. That includes all religious claims that involve supernatural claims.

I challenge Supernaturalists to defend the single most important aspect at the core of their belief. We all know they can't (they would have by now), but the burden is on them, and it's high time they at least give an honest effort.

Please note: Arguments from Ignorance will be summarily dismissed.

[Purple Knight]

No, the basis isn’t just that natural things that begin to exist must have causes, but all things that exist. It’s not natural, but logical. That means it’s not just anyone’s guess.

What do you mean by ‘universe’ because I mean all of spatio-temporal matter/energy. It had to begin. The thing that caused that could not be natural. Logically could not in any way. Do you agree?

It depends on how you define natural. You assume things don't pop into being (in other words, they are not uncaused) but maybe they are uncaused. In fact, you assume that at least some things must be causeless when you say God is causeless. Why this means God has to be supernatural is purely a matter of defining the First Cause that way.

Space does not have a cause. I'm talking, empty space. And we say it is natural, don't we? Now I admit I've pulled a bit of a fast one, but it's the exact same fast one the Kalam pulls. I've defined empty space as something that exists, when it is essentially nothing and you might not say it exists. In the same way, the Kalam just assumes an uncaused thing at the beginning and calls it supernatural, when I might not call it supernatural and William definitively calls it natural.

Self-causation (if you mean that) is logically impossible. A thing would have to exist before it existed in order to cause itself, which is logical nonsense. You probably mean uncaused, though. If so, it’s analogical to believing that it is just as likely (or moreso) for magic to occur without a magician as it is with a magician. There is absolutely no reason to believe that things can begin to exist uncaused. All experience we’ve ever had shows this isn’t the case.

But you reason beyond that experience and say there's a point at which time started turning forward. In that timeless state, we don't know something cannot be its own cause. Now you may say, that's not how a cause is defined, and fair enough, but it's the same problem we suffer when we apply reason and experience to an argument that serves to reject that reason and experience. For example, that things can be created without the matter and energy to start with. Reason and experience say no to that, too.

I don't agree that simplicity points to something singular when we're talking about something that, because it is supernatural, does not have to have a cause. If I find one watch on the ground, I'm not going to paw through nearby bushes looking for more, because a watch is difficult to make. It requires effort to come into being. If I find a certain kind of plant, I might root around for more because I know plants of a certain kind make more of that kind. And if I find a discarded soul, which needs no cause at all, and may never have come into being, there's absolutely no reason to prefer either assumption. One, or more than one, are equally likely without more information.

Scientific theories that posit less unknown entities to make sense of the observed phenomena are preferred, unless there is evidence to the contrary, which is what your analogies show. What we know about watches and how they are used leads you to this conclusion. What we know about plants leads you to that conclusion. With the cause of the natural universe, it would be added assumptions that need explaining (which there isn’t for them) to say a thousand supernatural beings are responsible for different parts of it versus just one. It could be the case, but there is no reason to prefer that and there is simplicity to prefer the other.

Simplicity of that variety prefers there not being a creator at all. But I reject that and grant that there could be one. The reason we prefer simplicity is that we exist in a universe where complex things are rare and simple things are common. You are positing that what is there at the beginning is already complex. You have thrown out the simplicity assumption already. And I'm not blasting you for it, because there's no reason to prefer simplicity before the universe started up that shows us that simplicity is common and extreme complexity, rare. I grant that without more information, it is just as likely that something complex is there at the beginning, as that there is something simple, or that there is nothing.

Complexity is a totally contrived word (but, it is useful to us, inside this universe - the usefulness of the concept before the universe began probably disappears). And it doesn't apply to "one thing" versus "more than one thing" anyway.

If the universe at the beginning contained 500 electrons and none of anything else, that's arguably simpler than if it contained exactly one of every elementary particle and there were 500 kinds. When we say complex, we how different components are ordered, and it doesn't mean anything about the numbers of each component. If you add more of something complex (like a computer processor) I admit that complexity increases, because order increases. But that is only because the component is complex to begin with. There is no information to say that about First Causes. We would need to know whether they are easy or difficult to come by in a vacuum, and we can't know that.

And if I find a discarded soul, which needs no cause at all, and may never have come into being, there's absolutely no reason to prefer either assumption. One, or more than one, are equally likely without more information.

But we do have more information and that's that souls are supposedly eternal. That implies not having an end, but it also implies not having a beginning. Any one soul that says it created and has righteous dominion over all the rest, in a cosmology with eternal souls, is just a liar.

Why do you think souls are eternal in the sense that they’ve always existed? If they are, then you’ve got to explain why our souls don’t have a memory of what precedes birth in our bodies. It’s much simpler that we don’t have such memories because we began to exist at some point.

It's Christians talking about immortal souls, not me. But there's no contradiction in souls not having memories as such. Maybe they do have them and our minds can't access them. Maybe my soul is thinking, right now, "If only this sap body would think before it posts, ARG!!!" because it has some knowledge that my brain does not.

There's no begging the question in establishing a definition. And I don't mean for supernatural and unknown to be synonyms. I mean for supernatural to be a distinct category that we would have to add to our understanding of how nature works, to explain. In other words, something that can't be explained by our current understanding of natural law.

If we are asking what category X fits into, we can say it is in category A, category non-A, or it is unknown. It sounds like you are saying that if it is unknown to be in category A (i.e., ‘natural), then we put it in category non-A (i.e., ‘supernatural’). Why not in the category ‘unknown’? That is why it looks to me like you are treating ‘supernatural’ and ‘unknown’ as synonyms.

Not at all. Unknown and supernatural overlap in my definition scheme, but are not identical. Nor is one a subcategory of the other. Here A is meant to be known, and B is meant to be supernatural.

1) Both A and B
If something is known to occur, but can't be explained with only the natural laws we know now, then it is known and supernatural. Something that might be in this category permanently is reincarnation. Somebody might prove it happens (Arguably Dorothy Edy did) and we might never know how it happens.

2) ~A, but yes B
If something is not known to occur, and nobody has any proof of it occurring, and we couldn't explain it if it did occur, that thing is unknown and supernatural. Ghosts and psychic powers check this box. God might, too.

3) A, but ~B
If something is proven to occur, and we can explain it, and it fits into our box of understood natural phenomena perfectly, then it is mundane, in other words, it is natural and known. Rain evaporating, forming clouds, and falling back to earth is mundane.

4) Neither A nor B
If we do not have any proof that something occurs, but our natural laws explain it or even call for it, it can be unknown and natural. There's no reason whales or something similar couldn't evolve to fly, on a planet with a dense enough atmosphere. We don't know if such things exist or not, but they're totally natural.

Most things we deal with are in category 3, or mundane.

I mean, accepted and proven laws of the universe.

But do you mean natural laws of the universe? If so, they would be assuming there is a natural explanation that we just haven’t found yet. I’d question why they assume that because the question is whether there even could be a natural explanation. Logically, there can’t be a natural explanation of something non-natural. That doesn’t mean the non-natural exists, I’m not saying that, but just trying to understand your point.

I agree with that for non-natural, but not supernatural. Think about fish and frog rain. It was once painted with the same brush as ghosts and psychic powers and the stuff in the X-Files. People would talk about fish raining from the sky as a supernatural phenomenon. We still don't know how the fish and frogs get up there, but they do. Now, this might be non-natural in that there is not a natural explanation. But there probably is one, we just haven't discovered it yet.

People might also have psychic powers and if tomorrow, a supervillain appears and there are multiple videos from multiple angles of him wearing some ridiculous get-up and levitating people's cars off the road, my go-to is going to be, there is probably a natural explanation. The reason I'm going to concede it's supernatural is that I'm not going to turn to people who told me psychic powers existed yesterday, and say they were wrong because they believed in the supernatural, but because this has now been proven, it is now natural and actually they were wrong. Definitions must be fair to both sides. They cannot define people who believe in the supernatural, nor people who do not, into wrongness. Neither side is really that sure what it's saying does, or does not exist, but just by making each side theoretically* falsifiable, I have arrived at a fair definition (*because you can never really prove a negative). If psychic powers or ghosts turn up, then the supernatural believer is right. If nothing like that ever turns up, which we cannot explain with only the natural laws we have, then the supernatural denier is right.

Everyone is agnostic in the way you make that case. It's just, some people tend to think one or the other is more probably true. Unless they'd bet their lives (and only crazy people would) they don't fit into the categories you define as illogical.

I’m sorry for this confusion, because that is not what I meant at all. I completely agree with you here. I was saying ghosts:

(1) aren’t supernatural because we don’t have a natural explanation for them yet and I want to fit my supernaturalism in somewhere (that’s akin to God-of-the gaps, which I don’t think is a rational move)

Or (2) natural because everything has to have a natural answer (that’s begging the question, which I don’t think is a rational move)

But that one needs rational reasons to be a naturalist, supernaturalist, or an agnostic.

The rational reason to be a supernatural denier is that people see no reason to assume there are things out there we can't explain. The rational reason to be a believer is that they have, as they see it, ample reason to suspect some phenomenon they know very probably occurs, cannot be explained by any natural law yet known to us.

I don't really like to admit it because I consider myself rational, but I guess I fit into the believer category because I think Dorothy Eady probably did have access to someone else's memories. I see no reason to write off the entire affair as everyone lying, including the museum people who verified that she knew where certain artworks were positioned in the temple. Could it be a big scam? Sure. And people do scam just to scam, with no benefit to themselves. Crop circles were one such example. But I see no reason to assume that. I judge the bigger reach to be museum curators going along with this girl and propping up her lies for publicity.

I'm not saying it's definitely not a scam. But I am on a side. And for now that's Dorothy Eady's side.

[alexxcJRO]

Nor has it been established that if God exists, he's supernatural. The only way you can get God to definitely be supernatural is to define him that way, as the Kalam does. The reason the Kalam works so well is that it simply defines a supernatural First Cause into being. It's also arguing from a contradiction if you look closely.

First it says Nature must have started. It can't have existed forever. So be it. This is an assumption we grant for the purposes of the argument. But when it then starts talking about things not popping into being, it's contradicting that initial assumption and arguing from a contradiction.

I can define God into non-existence.
Playing with words its easy.

God in the Christian tradition has been defined as the Maximally Great Being (MGB):

Perfections:
Omnipotent: All powerful
Omniscient: All knowing
Omnipresent: Active and in control everywhere at all times
Eternal: Having no beginning, or end, not depending on anything for its existence.


Omnipresence->Maximally Visible, Maximally proven.

Maximally Visible and Maximally Proven are perfections, maximally great attributes. (it's greater to be Maximally Visible then Partially Visible or Invisible; to be Maximally Proven then Partially Proven or Unproven;

P1. God is MGB. MGB contains all perfections, maximally great attributes. Therefore Maximally Visible, Maximally Proven are checked too.
P2. People who have a genuine disbelief in God's existence, exist.

C: Therefore God-MGB does not exists.

[The Tanager]

Q: Can you point were it says Adam and Eve, original sin are not taken literally?
Quote only the significant part.

First, the doctrine we know of as original sin didn’t come into Christian thought until Augustine in the 4th century, but perhaps you just mean that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree. If so, Origen definitely disagreed with that because he said on one should think it was an actual tree God planted. The direct quote of that from the link I gave:

"And who is found so ignorant as to suppose that God, as if He had been a husbandman, planted trees in paradise, in Eden towards the east, and a tree of life in it, i.e., a visible and palpable tree of wood, so that anyone eating of it with bodily teeth should obtain life, and, eating again of another tree, should come to the knowledge of good and evil?" (4.16).

Second, I didn’t claim Origen didn’t believe Adam and Eve were actual people. My claim was that some people in the Judeo-Christian tradition don’t read many parts of Genesis literally. You seemed to think there was no such thing. I gave an example of two Christians that did: Augustine and Origen, who had great influence on later Christians. I could have also pointed to the Jewish philosopher Philo, who had a wide influence on Jewish and Christian thought. You can read some of Philo here: https://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/tex ... book2.html. His whole take is allegorical. Here is a part about Adam being an allegory for the mind rather than a historical person:

XXX. (92) It is therefore very natural that Adam, that is to say the mind, when he was giving names to and displaying his comprehension of the other animals, did not give a name to himself, because he was ignorant of himself and of his own nature. A command indeed is given to man, but not to the man created according to the image and idea of God; for that being is possessed of virtue without any need of exhortation, by his own instinctive nature, but this other would not have wisdom if it had not been taught to him: (93) and these three things are different, command, prohibition, and recommendation.

Noah would have been included in allegorical approaches like Philo’s and those he influenced. I’m sure some people would have extended an allegorical approach to the rest, Philo would be a good candidate for that although I haven’t looked into his view of every story. But I wasn’t claiming all of those stories should be taken non-literally, either.

Sir we are talking of the expansion of the universe.
That's what prompted this kind of argument: KALAM.
"Our universe" could be just a part of a bigger reality, a part of a bigger natural world.
Like people in the ancient times believed that the flat earth and the dome encompassed all the natural world.
Go figures they were wrong. There is huge part of the natural world beyond that.

Observation: Please don't bore me with equivocation tactics.

You stated all religious claims are wrong. The Kalam is a religious claim. It’s not just about the expansion of the universe, but about the creation of all space-time matter/energy. It’s not just about “our universe”, but all of the natural world that has ever existed in whatever forms, multiverse or no.

And you noted the 5 premises Craig uses, which talks about the nature of the cause of the universe. So no tactics from me. One of those points in the second half of those 5 premises, which is what we got to talking about, was why this cause must be personal. If you want to back up your claim that religionists are wrong about a personal cause of matter/energy, then address those 3 arguments.

"all of ‘nature’" aka "our universe" maybe its not all nature.

No, “all of nature” is all nature, not just its existence since the Big Bang if it existed prior to that, but in any form it has ever existed.

You need explanation why punishing the blameless, the innocent is wrong or illogical.
You need explanation why punishing a person that cannot choose to not do a wrong action X in an instant Y is wrong or illogical.
Q: WTF?
This forum is gold for comedy.
Q: You need explanation why I cannot both exist and not exist?

Yes, in rational discussion it is required that people actually support their claims. Why is harming one you think is blameless morally wrong or illogical? Sure, you aren’t punishing them for being blameless, but why can’t you harm them just because you think it benefits you somehow? Now, of course, I don’t think one should and I have reasons that I think ground that objectively, but we are talking about how you ground that as an objective morality since you claim it is.

[The Tanager]

1 - is incorrect, because it assumes the universe is natural while asserting it was created by a supernatural being.

No, it builds on the first 3 premises, where one has shown that the cause of the natural universe must be non-natural. That is not assumption. You might disagree with the first 3 premises, but that doesn’t mean this argument assumes this.

IF the uncaused is natural (as it must be since it was not caused) THEN anything arising from the natural would have to be regarded as a natural extension of a natural thing.

In other words, if the cause of the universe is considered to be uncaused or self-existent, it would be more accurate to characterize it as a natural entity, and anything emanating from it would also be part of that natural order.

Why must things that are not caused be natural, i.e., made of natural 'stuff' like atoms and the like?

2 - also attempts to separate numbers and minds from being natural but if all comes from a mindful uncaused being, then numbers and minds must also be fundamental to the fabric of all that exists and traceable to the uncaused mind.

Being fundamental to what exists and traceable to the uncaused mind doesn’t mean it must be natural, though. Natural things can have non-natural effects, logically speaking. It may be the case that all their effects are natural, but it isn’t a logical necessity, unless you have an actual argument that shows that.

3 - adds to the assertion for an uncaused cause, but in no way supports the assumptions of 1 and 2 (that the uncaused mind is separate from/supernatural to its creation.
It does not matter that the universe may be a temporal creation, as this in itself does not imply that there have not been an eternity of such creations beginning, existing and eventually ceasing because the "stuff" which makes up the objects which are temporal, would have to be regarded as eternal and thus "of the uncaused" (natural).

Argument 3 is separate from 1 and 2; they don’t build on each other. But, again, it does build on premises 1-3 of the Kalam, where it is shown that the uncaused cause of the natural universe must be non-natural. So, if you have a problem with that, you’ll have to critique those premises, not accuse this argument of assuming something when it doesn’t assume it.

You also misunderstand the scope of the Kalam. It is not just about this current form of spatio-temporal matter/energy, but the entirety of it. The natural world cannot be eternal. That’s what is argued for, not assumed. If you disagree, critique that part of the argument.

[The Tanager]

It depends on how you define natural. You assume things don't pop into being (in other words, they are not uncaused) but maybe they are uncaused. In fact, you assume that at least some things must be causeless when you say God is causeless. Why this means God has to be supernatural is purely a matter of defining the First Cause that way.

No, these are not assumptions, they are conclusions of arguments. I reason that things don’t pop into being uncaused.

First, something cannot come from nothing. Analogically, this is worse than magic. At least there you have a magician and a hat from whence to do magic and create a rabbit. To deny this first premise of the Kalam, you’ve got to think that matter/energy just appeared at some point in the past for no reason whatever.

Second, if something could come into being from nothing, why doesn’t it happen today? Matter/energy never pops into being today, so why think it did 14 billion years ago and then stopped doing that sort of thing? Is there some characteristic of nothingness that favors the beginning of universes popping into existence over fully formed root beer popping into existence? There logically can’t be anything about nothingness that leads us to think this does happen because nothingness doesn’t have properties and there is nothing to constrain nothingness because there is nothing there to constrain.

Third, all of our common experience and scientific evidence backs this up, that there are causal conditions to the origin of matter/energy. There are no examples of matter/energy popping into existence uncaused.

Now, is this 100% certainty? No, but we agree that isn’t the rational standard, right? This premise is much more plausibly true than false.

Space does not have a cause. I'm talking, empty space. And we say it is natural, don't we? Now I admit I've pulled a bit of a fast one, but it's the exact same fast one the Kalam pulls. I've defined empty space as something that exists, when it is essentially nothing and you might not say it exists. In the same way, the Kalam just assumes an uncaused thing at the beginning and calls it supernatural, when I might not call it supernatural and William definitively calls it natural.

If space is emptiness, it isn’t anything and, therefore, doesn’t have a cause, but then it also doesn’t exist. To say it exists, but is actually nothingness is a logical contradiction. I would consider space as part of the spatial-temporal natural world that is currently expanding. As such, it has to have a beginning and, therefore, a cause of its’ beginning.

But you reason beyond that experience and say there's a point at which time started turning forward. In that timeless state, we don't know something cannot be its own cause.

No, I don’t believe there is this thing called time that existed and then started turning forward. Time is the turning forward.

Things that are eternal (which is what I think you mean by “in that timeless state”) don’t have causes, because they don’t begin to exist; they just exist.

Now you may say, that's not how a cause is defined, and fair enough, but it's the same problem we suffer when we apply reason and experience to an argument that serves to reject that reason and experience. For example, that things can be created without the matter and energy to start with. Reason and experience say no to that, too.

I’m not following. Are you saying that I’m claiming material things are created without matter and energy?

Simplicity of that variety prefers there not being a creator at all. But I reject that and grant that there could be one. The reason we prefer simplicity is that we exist in a universe where complex things are rare and simple things are common. You are positing that what is there at the beginning is already complex. You have thrown out the simplicity assumption already. And I'm not blasting you for it, because there's no reason to prefer simplicity before the universe started up that shows us that simplicity is common and extreme complexity, rare. I grant that without more information, it is just as likely that something complex is there at the beginning, as that there is something simple, or that there is nothing.

Complexity is a totally contrived word (but, it is useful to us, inside this universe - the usefulness of the concept before the universe began probably disappears). And it doesn't apply to "one thing" versus "more than one thing" anyway.

If the universe at the beginning contained 500 electrons and none of anything else, that's arguably simpler than if it contained exactly one of every elementary particle and there were 500 kinds. When we say complex, we how different components are ordered, and it doesn't mean anything about the numbers of each component. If you add more of something complex (like a computer processor) I admit that complexity increases, because order increases. But that is only because the component is complex to begin with. There is no information to say that about First Causes. We would need to know whether they are easy or difficult to come by in a vacuum, and we can't know that.

First, I don’t agree that simplicity is preferred because simple explanations are more rare then complex interpretations. It has to do with explanations that have less loose ends, so to speak. To have more assumptions that go unexplained (complexity) means there is more unexplained stuff for you to be wrong about, therefore, calling into question the probability of your theory being true over the one with less unexplained stuff. I think this applies regardless of the state of nature. In other words, it doesn’t get thrown out when applied to reality before the universe started up.

This isn’t about the number of stuff, but about how many unexplained assumptions are in the theory. For instance, from what I understand, from every physical vantage point in our universe, it would look like you are in the center of the universe with the universe expanding in every direction equally from that point (and really beyond our ability to perceive). What explains that?

Option 1: There is no actual center of the universe (it is infinite), so it looks like we are at the center but no points actually are

Option 2: There is an actual center (it isn’t infinite), but space is expanding like a balloon, where the various points are like buttons that are expanding away from each other equidistantly, making it so it looks like every point is the center

Zero center is less than one center, but I think these are equally simple options, both with one unsupported assumption (no center, yes center) that can explain why it looks like we are in the center of the universe.

But with atheism vs. theism (i.e., observable reality plus 0 versus observable reality plus 1), I think simplicity alone would point to atheism because theism is positing an assumption (God’s existence) in addition to all the assumptions they can agree on. But remember I said simplicity is preferred unless there is evidence to the contrary. Thoughtful theists believe that evidence overrides this simplicity. What evidence overrides the simplicity of one creator to get us to multiple creators?

It's Christians talking about immortal souls, not me. But there's no contradiction in souls not having memories as such. Maybe they do have them and our minds can't access them. Maybe my soul is thinking, right now, "If only this sap body would think before it posts, ARG!!!" because it has some knowledge that my brain does not.

Okay, but most Christians think our souls began to exist, being created by God. They may continue to exist forever, but they haven’t always existed.

As to our souls having memories our minds can’t access, while that is logically possible, we are talking about what is most rational to believe. A lost-memory or cut-off-memory adds an assumption that gives the theory more loose ends (makes it more complex) and is, therefore, less probably true. If there is evidence for it, it’s no longer an assumption and becomes the rational belief.

1) Both A and B
If something is known to occur, but can't be explained with only the natural laws we know now, then it is known and supernatural. Something that might be in this category permanently is reincarnation. Somebody might prove it happens (Arguably Dorothy Edy did) and we might never know how it happens.

2) ~A, but yes B
If something is not known to occur, and nobody has any proof of it occurring, and we couldn't explain it if it did occur, that thing is unknown and supernatural. Ghosts and psychic powers check this box. God might, too.

So if ‘natural’ means known and explained by natural laws, and ‘supernatural’ means known and not currently explained by natural laws, what is your term for something that is known and unexplainable by natural laws? You don’t have to believe anything is in that category, but the category logically exists, right? That isn’t covered by (2) because (2) is about things unknown. Is it ‘non-natural’?

I agree with that for non-natural, but not supernatural. Think about fish and frog rain. It was once painted with the same brush as ghosts and psychic powers and the stuff in the X-Files. People would talk about fish raining from the sky as a supernatural phenomenon. We still don't know how the fish and frogs get up there, but they do. Now, this might be non-natural in that there is not a natural explanation. But there probably is one, we just haven't discovered it yet.

If your term is ‘non-natural’ for the above question I posed, then we can drop ‘supernatural’ and just use ‘non-natural’; I don’t care about terms as long as they are used consistently. For theists, God would be your ‘non-natural’ and not your ‘supernatural’.

[William]

[Replying to The Tanager in post #134]

No, it builds on the first 3 premises, where one has shown that the cause of the natural universe must be non-natural.

The first 3 premises being these?
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its beginning.

If so, then this has not shown that the cause of the universe is unnatural.. There is no "natural universe" mentioned in the premises and adding the word "natural" only serves to promote an incorrect assumption that such a thing as "supernatural" exists.

Lets change those premises to better reflect what it is you are doing re your argument for supernaturalism.

1. Whatever naturally begins to exist has a cause of its beginning.

2. The natural universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the natural universe has a supernatural cause of its beginning.

Can you (the reader) see how arguing for a supernatural uncaused being requires a different set of premises to "build on" while claiming to build on the original premises?

They are different premises, leading to different conclusions.

Why must things that are not caused be natural, i.e., made of natural 'stuff' like atoms and the like?

This has been explained. In short, it must be the case that the stuff of the universe we know about (atoms and the like) derive from the uncaused being, have always existed and - in the case of our current universe - are organized (mindfully) to create those particular forms and related function of said universe.

The material doesn't "disappear" at the conclusion of a universe. It is reconstituted and from that stuff, another universe is created.

Natural things can have non-natural effects, logically speaking.

No. To remain true to logic, all things are logically natural re their relationship with other things.

There is nothing a human being has created, which can be argued to being super-to-nature (supernatural) . This makes it a fallacy one is engaging with - similar to the one materialists use in the following example.

"The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

In both case, human beings (re mindfulness) have to be excluded from "the properties" in order for the arguments to appear sound/logical.

To explain in more detail, the assumption-statement that "Natural things can have non-natural effects" can not be supported by any actual example of any such phenomena observed to exist as real and no one can offer an example because of this.

For example, one might argue that "guns are not natural because the universe does not naturally produce them" but the argument would be false because quite clearly, the universe contains as part of its overall make-up - human beings, and so (on the notion that without human beings, guns would not otherwise naturally be created) in order for one to argue that anything human beings might create, "should" be regarded as "unnatural", one has to remove human being from also being natural to the universe.

You also misunderstand the scope of the Kalam. It is not just about this current form of spatio-temporal matter/energy, but the entirety of it. The natural world cannot be eternal. That’s what is argued for, not assumed. If you disagree, critique that part of the argument.

This has been explained.
(That "the cause must be personal", does not take away from this observation as we simply have to include mindfulness as part of that overall nature of the uncaused.
With this view, consciousness/mindfulness would not be something separate or supernatural but rather an inherent aspect included in the fundamental nature of existence.)
I have further critiqued this, in blue above.

A temporal universe is designed, built and maintained through the stuff which is eternal which is what the uncaused being consists of. The stuff, not what temporal things the uncaused being is able to create from the stuff - through itself.

The nature of the stuff has always been physical and mindful and eternal. The mind of the uncaused being is physical. That is where the material is sourced in order that it can create any temporal universe.

[alexxcJRO]

First, the doctrine we know of as original sin didn’t come into Christian thought until Augustine in the 4th century, but perhaps you just mean that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree. If so, Origen definitely disagreed with that because he said on one should think it was an actual tree God planted. The direct quote of that from the link I gave:
"And who is found so ignorant as to suppose that God, as if He had been a husbandman, planted trees in paradise, in Eden towards the east, and a tree of life in it, i.e., a visible and palpable tree of wood, so that anyone eating of it with bodily teeth should obtain life, and, eating again of another tree, should come to the knowledge of good and evil?" (4.16).
Second, I didn’t claim Origen didn’t believe Adam and Eve were actual people. My claim was that some people in the Judeo-Christian tradition don’t read many parts of Genesis literally. You seemed to think there was no such thing. I gave an example of two Christians that did: Augustine and Origen, who had great influence on later Christians. I could have also pointed to the Jewish philosopher Philo, who had a wide influence on Jewish and Christian thought. You can read some of Philo here: https://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/tex ... book2.html. His whole take is allegorical. Here is a part about Adam being an allegory for the mind rather than a historical person:
XXX. (92) It is therefore very natural that Adam, that is to say the mind, when he was giving names to and displaying his comprehension of the other animals, did not give a name to himself, because he was ignorant of himself and of his own nature. A command indeed is given to man, but not to the man created according to the image and idea of God; for that being is possessed of virtue without any need of exhortation, by his own instinctive nature, but this other would not have wisdom if it had not been taught to him: (93) and these three things are different, command, prohibition, and recommendation.
Noah would have been included in allegorical approaches like Philo’s and those he influenced. I’m sure some people would have extended an allegorical approach to the rest, Philo would be a good candidate for that although I haven’t looked into his view of every story. But I wasn’t claiming all of those stories should be taken non-literally, either.

So you have not really debunked almost anything I said.
1.
I clearly said: "the magical Adam and Eve story which is disproven by Evolution" in post #78.
My point was about humanity starting from two people Adam and Eve.
The rest of things i mentioned you have not touched.

2.
My point still stands also because:
Even if two or 3 people used the dishonest mechanism of cherry-picking and metaphorical metamorphosis earlier then most people, the overwhelmigly majority of people from the ancient times and medieval times somehow missed these literal devices(metaphorical). Showing its not really about objective analysing of the text, about objective recognizing the literal style but its about saving what cannot be saved. A failed hypothesis.

You stated all religious claims are wrong. The Kalam is a religious claim. It’s not just about the expansion of the universe, but about the creation of all space-time matter/energy. It’s not just about “our universe”, but all of the natural world that has ever existed in whatever forms, multiverse or no.
And you noted the 5 premises Craig uses, which talks about the nature of the cause of the universe. So no tactics from me. One of those points in the second half of those 5 premises, which is what we got to talking about, was why this cause must be personal. If you want to back up your claim that religionists are wrong about a personal cause of matter/energy, then address those 3 arguments.

Nonsensical ramblings devoid of any accuracy.

Correction:
1. I stated all major, general past religious hypothesis are wrong.

2. WLC KALAM is about the expansion of the universe.

"The universe began to exist". The expansion proves something began.

"The standard Big Bang model thus predicts an absolute beginning of the universe. If this model is correct, then we have amazing scientific confirmation of the second premise of the kalam cosmological argument.
So is the model correct, or, more importantly, is it correct in predicting a beginning of the universe? Despite its empirical confimation, the standard Big Bang model will need to be modified in various ways. The model is based, as we’ve seen, on Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. But Einstein’s theory breaks down when space is shrunk down to sub-atomic proportions. We’ll need to introduce sub-atomic physics at that point, and no one is sure how this is to be done. Moreover, the expansion of the universe is probably not constant, as in the standard model. It’s probably accelerating and may have had a brief moment of super-rapid expansion in the past.
But none of these adjustments need affect the fundamental prediction of the absolute beginning of the universe. Indeed, physicists have proposed scores of alternative models over the decades since Friedman and LeMaître’s work, and those that do not have an absolute beginning have been repeatedly shown to be unworkable. Put more positively, the only viable non-standard models have been those that involve an absolute beginning to the universe. That beginning may or may not involve a beginning point. But on theories (such as Stephen Hawking’s “no boundary” proposal) that do not have a point-like beginning, the past is still finite, not infinite. The universe has not existed forever according to such theories but came into existence, even if it didn’t do so at a sharply defined point.
In a sense, the history of twentieth century cosmology can be seen as a series of one failed attempt after another to avoid the absolute beginning predicted by the standard Big Bang model. That prediction has now stood for nearly 100 years, during a period of enormous advances in observational astronomy and creative theoretical work in astrophysics."
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writing ... l-argument

Yes, in rational discussion it is required that people actually support their claims. Why is harming one you think is blameless morally wrong or illogical? Sure, you aren’t punishing them for being blameless, but why can’t you harm them just because you think it benefits you somehow? Now, of course, I don’t think one should and I have reasons that I think ground that objectively, but we are talking about how you ground that as an objective morality since you claim it is.

Comedy.
Punishing the innocent is illogical because punishing means "to cause someone who has done something wrong or committed a crime to suffer". And innocent means not guilty of a crime or offence.
You are both saying someone X "who has done something wrong or committed a crime " and the same X is "not guilty of a crime or offence".
Breaking the law of non-contradiction.

[Purple Knight]

It depends on how you define natural. You assume things don't pop into being (in other words, they are not uncaused) but maybe they are uncaused. In fact, you assume that at least some things must be causeless when you say God is causeless. Why this means God has to be supernatural is purely a matter of defining the First Cause that way.

No, these are not assumptions, they are conclusions of arguments. I reason that things don’t pop into being uncaused.

Why? We don't see anything pop into being, we just see things that are already in being, changing. We have no evidence to suggest that if things pop into being, they must have a cause, because we have never seen anything pop into being. When things change it has a cause. When things begin to exist, perhaps not.

Here's where it gets definitional. You say, our natural world must have a First Cause and call it God. What if the universe is God? What if we're living inside the First Cause? Then you're saying, God must have a cause. The Kalam still applies. All of this must have a First Cause. It can't have come into being from nothing - that's worse than magic. And we also assume, it can't always have existed. If we apply those things to God we just get turtles all the way down again. Saying God is supernatural is a dodge. The universe might be supernatural. You yourself say it has supernatural things in it.

Second, if something could come into being from nothing, why doesn’t it happen today?

Let me reverse the second question: If a universe could come into being from God, why doesn't it happen today? It's the same set of answers. It's the same set of objections.

Space does not have a cause. I'm talking, empty space. And we say it is natural, don't we? Now I admit I've pulled a bit of a fast one, but it's the exact same fast one the Kalam pulls. I've defined empty space as something that exists, when it is essentially nothing and you might not say it exists. In the same way, the Kalam just assumes an uncaused thing at the beginning and calls it supernatural, when I might not call it supernatural and William definitively calls it natural.

If space is emptiness, it isn’t anything and, therefore, doesn’t have a cause, but then it also doesn’t exist. To say it exists, but is actually nothingness is a logical contradiction. I would consider space as part of the spatial-temporal natural world that is currently expanding. As such, it has to have a beginning and, therefore, a cause of its’ beginning.

You think God made everything natural. Does that mean he made the emptiness between stars? But wait... Wouldn't the Nothing we're to assume ought to exist if God never did anything, just look like empty space? If you were to put on a space suit and ask God to delete everything but you, and he did it, I don't know how you could say you floating there would be any different than floating in space now. If space is expanding but there's nothing in it, you wouldn't know and indeed it would be meaningless to say it was expanding, or was not expanding.

But you reason beyond that experience and say there's a point at which time started turning forward. In that timeless state, we don't know something cannot be its own cause.

No, I don’t believe there is this thing called time that existed and then started turning forward. Time is the turning forward.

Things that are eternal (which is what I think you mean by “in that timeless state”) don’t have causes, because they don’t begin to exist; they just exist.

The universe seems to be eternal. It is, if you nail it down to what we can observe today. Things don't pop into being, but they don't wink out, either.

Now you may say, that's not how a cause is defined, and fair enough, but it's the same problem we suffer when we apply reason and experience to an argument that serves to reject that reason and experience. For example, that things can be created without the matter and energy to start with. Reason and experience say no to that, too.

I’m not following. Are you saying that I’m claiming material things are created without matter and energy?

If you're not, then God had the matter and energy to start with, the universe was already present, and it doesn't really matter whether he was a building, organising force, or not.

First, I don’t agree that simplicity is preferred because simple explanations are more rare then complex interpretations. It has to do with explanations that have less loose ends, so to speak. To have more assumptions that go unexplained (complexity) means there is more unexplained stuff for you to be wrong about, therefore, calling into question the probability of your theory being true over the one with less unexplained stuff. I think this applies regardless of the state of nature. In other words, it doesn’t get thrown out when applied to reality before the universe started up.

This isn’t about the number of stuff, but about how many unexplained assumptions are in the theory. For instance, from what I understand, from every physical vantage point in our universe, it would look like you are in the center of the universe with the universe expanding in every direction equally from that point (and really beyond our ability to perceive). What explains that?

But with atheism vs. theism (i.e., observable reality plus 0 versus observable reality plus 1), I think simplicity alone would point to atheism because theism is positing an assumption (God’s existence) in addition to all the assumptions they can agree on. But remember I said simplicity is preferred unless there is evidence to the contrary. Thoughtful theists believe that evidence overrides this simplicity. What evidence overrides the simplicity of one creator to get us to multiple creators?

Either way it's zero loose ends. Zero things are unexplained. If we're rolling the universe back to one unexplained thing, that's just passing the buck on being unable to explain the universe, isn't it? It serves as no explanation at all, because we started with one unexplained thing (why there is something, rather than nothing) and ended with one unexplained thing, about which we ought to ask, at the dawn of time, why is there God, rather than nothing?

The idea that there is a possible uncaused cause, is an explanation. But there may as well be a dozen or a million. Because once we're saying that's possible, it's possible, and if anything we need an explanation for why there was only one. It's also a little naive. Imagine being an embryo in a womb, which is all you know, and wondering why there is only one womb, and only one of you. Wow, you must be special. The idea that there are things outside our understanding is already necessary for God, so if we're to believe in God, we must get rid of the naive universe altogether.

Besides, it's not like the evidence does not point to this anyway. We already have these multiple supernatural things called souls. The idea that one soul is superior and created the rest - that they have different origins - is more complex than the idea that they are all the same. This is textbook simple versus complicated by the way: One process, versus two.

Okay, but most Christians think our souls began to exist, being created by God. They may continue to exist forever, but they haven’t always existed.

If things even can be forward-eternal but not backward-eternal, that conflicts with the assumption that one implies the other, and God might have started to exist, too.

As to our souls having memories our minds can’t access, while that is logically possible, we are talking about what is most rational to believe. A lost-memory or cut-off-memory adds an assumption that gives the theory more loose ends (makes it more complex) and is, therefore, less probably true. If there is evidence for it, it’s no longer an assumption and becomes the rational belief.

Not by default, no, but if you're already believing in souls, there's absolutely no reason why not. Besides, we forget things. We sometimes then remember what we forgot. No new processes or assumptions are added in the theory that if we have souls at all, they might have separate memories. Nothing new is assumed to be possible that we don't already know is possible. Assuming we can fully access our souls, when we can't even fully access what happened to us on our 4th birthdays, is probably the greater assumption.

1) Both A and B
If something is known to occur, but can't be explained with only the natural laws we know now, then it is known and supernatural. Something that might be in this category permanently is reincarnation. Somebody might prove it happens (Arguably Dorothy Edy did) and we might never know how it happens.

2) ~A, but yes B
If something is not known to occur, and nobody has any proof of it occurring, and we couldn't explain it if it did occur, that thing is unknown and supernatural. Ghosts and psychic powers check this box. God might, too.

3) A, but ~B
If something is proven to occur, and we can explain it, and it fits into our box of understood natural phenomena perfectly, then it is mundane, in other words, it is natural and known. Rain evaporating, forming clouds, and falling back to earth is mundane.

4) Neither A nor B
If we do not have any proof that something occurs, but our natural laws explain it or even call for it, it can be unknown and natural. There's no reason whales or something similar couldn't evolve to fly, on a planet with a dense enough atmosphere. We don't know if such things exist or not, but they're totally natural.

So if ‘natural’ means known and explained by natural laws, and ‘supernatural’ means known and not currently explained by natural laws, what is your term for something that is known and unexplainable by natural laws? You don’t have to believe anything is in that category, but the category logically exists, right? That isn’t covered by (2) because (2) is about things unknown. Is it ‘non-natural’?

Known and supernatural. It would be category 1. What happened to Dorothy Eady is an example. Saying she was lying and all the museum people went with her and lied and made up more things to help her lie, is a conspiracy theory by definition. It really might all be made up. Conspiracies do happen. But the going rate is, conspiracy ought not be the assumption. There are times when I will say someone must have lied. But "because I don't want to believe in X" is not a viable reason for a logical person.

If your term is ‘non-natural’ for the above question I posed, then we can drop ‘supernatural’ and just use ‘non-natural’; I don’t care about terms as long as they are used consistently. For theists, God would be your ‘non-natural’ and not your ‘supernatural’.

I think non-natural is a better term for things we can't explain by adding any number of natural laws. But I think supernatural has its place, too. God would be both supernatural and non-natural. Dorothy Eady's experience would be supernatural, potentially coming into the realm of the natural if we figure out memories are not stored in the brain and dissect whatever part of her brain was mashed-up and gave her access to somebody else's memories. But maybe we never figure out how it happens, we just figure out that it does.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to William in post #136]

No, your formulation of what I’m arguing is not accurate. The first 3 premises of what I am arguing truly are:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its beginning
2. The universe (i.e., all spatio-temporal matter/energy) began to exist
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its beginning.

So, if you want to disagree with me, you have to disagree with those premises, not the ones you offered as what I’m arguing.

You are correct that the non-natural nature of this cause isn’t in the first 3 premises. It does come prior to arguments for the personal nature of that cause, but for some reason in my head I formulated that as coming in the first 3 premises. That was wrong. However, it’s still not an assumption, but logical analysis. The cause of all natural things logically cannot be natural itself because self-causation is logically impossible.

As to your explanation of why uncaused things must themselves be natural, you are just explaining what your conclusion is, not explaining the reasoning that gets one to that conclusion.

As to your explanation of why natural things can’t have non-natural effects (or vice versa), your reasoning simply isn’t good. Your statement that human beings have no non-natural effects, even if true, doesn’t prove this because there could be non-human natural things that could have non-natural effects. Analogically…not an example of natural things having non-natural effects, but an example of one kind of X not doing Y doesn’t necessarily mean anything about other kinds of X doing or not doing Y)...just because one kind of bird (say, penguins) can’t fly, that doesn’t mean all birds can’t fly.

Now, of course, this isn’t an argument for natural things definitely being able to have non-natural effects (or vice versa), but that doesn’t mean the default is that they don’t. To shift the burden on your opponent to prove your view wrong is just that: shifting the burden, which is fallacious reasoning. You have claimed that the effect must be the same ‘stuff’ as the cause. Support that positive claim.

[The Tanager]

So you have not really debunked almost anything I said.
1.
I clearly said: "the magical Adam and Eve story which is disproven by Evolution" in post #78.
My point was about humanity starting from two people Adam and Eve.
The rest of things i mentioned you have not touched.

Yes, what you clearly said was very vague and what you have now clarified you meant wasn’t what I originally talked about, to which you were responding to. So, it looks like we’ve talked past each other a bit. I’ve already shared how my understanding of the Adam and Eve story is not committed to an historical pair from which we all descended.

2.
My point still stands also because:
Even if two or 3 people used the dishonest mechanism of cherry-picking and metaphorical metamorphosis earlier then most people, the overwhelmigly majority of people from the ancient times and medieval times somehow missed these literal devices(metaphorical). Showing its not really about objective analysing of the text, about objective recognizing the literal style but its about saving what cannot be saved. A failed hypothesis.

We were discussing what the interpretation should be, not what the majority view was. Majority view is not a good test of truth.

Correction:
1. I stated all major, general past religious hypothesis are wrong.

Is the Kalam, as I’ve been talking about it, not part of that?

2. WLC KALAM is about the expansion of the universe.

No, it’s not. Craig doesn’t even put the emphasis for the rationality of the Kalam on the scientific evidence. He thinks the philosophical arguments for the beginning of the universe are the stronger line. He does realize many people discount overt philosophy and will only consider the science (unaware of the subvert philosophy going on, but I digress) and appeals to scientific confirmation of the philosophical conclusions. But even there he doesn’t stop at current versions of the standard model, reasoning about various cosmological models, if they end up being true.

Punishing the innocent is illogical because punishing means "to cause someone who has done something wrong or committed a crime to suffer". And innocent means not guilty of a crime or offence.
You are both saying someone X "who has done something wrong or committed a crime " and the same X is "not guilty of a crime or offence".
Breaking the law of non-contradiction.

I apologize for glossing over the term being used; we were talking past each other here as well (and this one was completely my fault). I agree it is illogical to punish an innocent person. So, going back to Pete (was it?), he doesn’t think he is punishing an innocent person, but he does think it is okay for him to harm that innocent person. Is he objectively wrong? If so, why?