Supernatural [W:1230] (1 Viewer)

[Lethargic Aptitude]

A child uses their imagination to hide their imaginary friend. When a adult is zeroing in on a childs imaginary friend with questions. The child will then make up something new that is seemingly untouchable. If it turns out there was a route around the new imagined circumstance then the child moves the goalposts again.

The supernatural is nothing more than the moving of goalposts. When one wants their claims to be untouchable, they use the supernatural notion to hide their claims in it.

You cannot find my god because it resides in a place that you cannot investigate.

Once the supernatural is invoked the conversation is over. Just as when talking to a child about their imaginary friend and they become defensive, and put up a even bigger smokescreen. You disengage so that the child doesnt become offended or embarrassed. And the child is just playing so no need to expose them as frauds. The kid knows that they are playing and just making crap up.

But adults who invoke the supernatural, do they know that they are just playing and making crap up?

 

[shagg]

A child uses their imagination to hide their imaginary friend. When a adult is zeroing in on a childs imaginary friend with questions. The child will then make up something new that is seemingly untouchable. If it turns out there was a route around the new imagined circumstance then the child moves the goalposts again.

The supernatural is nothing more than the moving of goalposts. When one wants their claims to be untouchable, they use the supernatural notion to hide their claims in it.

You cannot find my god because it resides in a place that you cannot investigate.

Once the supernatural is invoked the conversation is over. Just as when talking to a child about their imaginary friend and they become defensive, and put up a even bigger smokescreen. You disengage so that the child doesnt become offended or embarrassed. And the child is just playing so no need to expose them as frauds. The kid knows that they are playing and just making crap up.

But adults who invoke the supernatural, do they know that they are just playing and making crap up?

Prove it.

But honestly, if that's your position, that this is all meaningless made up stuff, why do you feel the need to heavily involve yourself in these debates?

 

[Lethargic Aptitude]

Prove it.

You cannot know anything about the supernatural, so therefor whoever invokes the supernatural is making it up.

But honestly, if that's your position, that this is all meaningless made up stuff, why do you feel the need to heavily involve yourself in these debates?

I suspect that I know where you are headed with that. But I could be wrong.

 

[Mr Person]

But adults who invoke the supernatural, do they know that they are just playing and making crap up?

Given the lengths some people go to in the service of religion, it would actually be a miracle if they WERE making it up.

Plenty of people genuinely believe. Plenty of people need to believe.


But there are certainly many people throughout history who have pretended to believe for one purpose or another, be it ruling over others or to avoid death at the hands of a ruler.

 

[humbolt]

Hey, it's super, AND natural. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean I don't. I dunno. Maybe you're not looking hard enough. OTOH, maybe you're looking too hard. In any case, I suggest you relax, and not get all riled up about it. Just let it happen, captain.

 

[joG]

A child uses their imagination to hide their imaginary friend. When a adult is zeroing in on a childs imaginary friend with questions. The child will then make up something new that is seemingly untouchable. If it turns out there was a route around the new imagined circumstance then the child moves the goalposts again.

The supernatural is nothing more than the moving of goalposts. When one wants their claims to be untouchable, they use the supernatural notion to hide their claims in it.

You cannot find my god because it resides in a place that you cannot investigate.

Once the supernatural is invoked the conversation is over. Just as when talking to a child about their imaginary friend and they become defensive, and put up a even bigger smokescreen. You disengage so that the child doesnt become offended or embarrassed. And the child is just playing so no need to expose them as frauds. The kid knows that they are playing and just making crap up.

But adults who invoke the supernatural, do they know that they are just playing and making crap up?

If you brought a man from the 6th century to ours, they would see magic and witchcraft everywhere.

 

[Lethargic Aptitude]

Given the lengths some people go to in the service of religion, it would actually be a miracle if they WERE making it up.

Plenty of people genuinely believe. Plenty of people need to believe.


But there are certainly many people throughout history who have pretended to believe for one purpose or another, be it ruling over others or to avoid death at the hands of a ruler.

But still the supernatural being that it is supposed to be outside of the natural, is unknowable. it doesnt matter what you believe about gods, ESP or whatever, you can know nothing about the supernatural. So invoking the supernatural is meaningless and nothing more than a logical fallacy.

 

[Lethargic Aptitude]

If you brought a man from the 6th century to ours, they would see magic and witchcraft everywhere.

Which they would be wrong.

 

[Tigerace117]

A child uses their imagination to hide their imaginary friend. When a adult is zeroing in on a childs imaginary friend with questions. The child will then make up something new that is seemingly untouchable. If it turns out there was a route around the new imagined circumstance then the child moves the goalposts again.

The supernatural is nothing more than the moving of goalposts. When one wants their claims to be untouchable, they use the supernatural notion to hide their claims in it.

You cannot find my god because it resides in a place that you cannot investigate.

Once the supernatural is invoked the conversation is over. Just as when talking to a child about their imaginary friend and they become defensive, and put up a even bigger smokescreen. You disengage so that the child doesnt become offended or embarrassed. And the child is just playing so no need to expose them as frauds. The kid knows that they are playing and just making crap up.

But adults who invoke the supernatural, do they know that they are just playing and making crap up?

And how exactly do you know people are making stuff up?

 

[WCH]

I have complete faith in our Creator. I have seen and continue to see his miracles everyday.

 

[Frank Apisa]

A child uses their imagination to hide their imaginary friend. When a adult is zeroing in on a childs imaginary friend with questions. The child will then make up something new that is seemingly untouchable. If it turns out there was a route around the new imagined circumstance then the child moves the goalposts again.

The supernatural is nothing more than the moving of goalposts. When one wants their claims to be untouchable, they use the supernatural notion to hide their claims in it.

You cannot find my god because it resides in a place that you cannot investigate.

Once the supernatural is invoked the conversation is over. Just as when talking to a child about their imaginary friend and they become defensive, and put up a even bigger smokescreen. You disengage so that the child doesnt become offended or embarrassed. And the child is just playing so no need to expose them as frauds. The kid knows that they are playing and just making crap up.

But adults who invoke the supernatural, do they know that they are just playing and making crap up?

This is a "belief" bias at work.

You are convinced there are no gods...so you work out wording that seems to corroborate your bias.

As you pointed out, theists often do that same thing.

I looks just as fishy when you are doing it...as when they are.

But...as to the "supernatural" aspect.

If there are gods...if there are invisible beings...if there are beings existing on different planes/dimensions...

...THEN THEY ARE PART OF NATURE.

They are not "supernatural."

The major problem with your exposition is that you are assuming we humans KNOW all that is nature...and what CAN BE natural.

I doubt seriously that we do.

There may be aspects of nature that DEMAND gods of some fashion.

I just wish hard theists and hard atheists would open their minds and acknowledge the "I do not know" aspect...and abandon their blind guesses for or against while discussing the topic.

 

[Gaugingcatenate]

You cannot know anything about the supernatural, so therefor whoever invokes the supernatural is making it up.

I suspect that I know where you are headed with that. But I could be wrong.

Who is it that says you cannot know ANYTHING about the supernatural? One may not be able to understand it, but to know nothing about it? That is quite a stretch you are making there.

 

[humbolt]

This is a "belief" bias at work.

You are convinced there are no gods...so you work out wording that seems to corroborate your bias.

As you pointed out, theists often do that same thing.

I looks just as fishy when you are doing it...as when they are.

But...as to the "supernatural" aspect.

If there are gods...if there are invisible beings...if there are beings existing on different planes/dimensions...

...THEN THEY ARE PART OF NATURE.

They are not "supernatural."

The major problem with your exposition is that you are assuming we humans KNOW all that is nature...and what CAN BE natural.

I doubt seriously that we do.

There may be aspects of nature that DEMAND gods of some fashion.

I just wish hard theists and hard atheists would open their minds and acknowledge the "I do not know" aspect...and abandon their blind guesses for or against while discussing the topic.

A simple admission that there are things we cannot know, events we cannot witness, and powers at work we cannot understand, would help. That includes the future, and the hope that the light of reason, the beauty of math, and the reach of physics will expose it all. That's a very shaky proposition. It's shakiness doesn't mean we shouldn't do it - it is after all what we do - but to expect a grand conclusion is a bit much. There simply may not be one available to us.

 

[Ikari]

A child uses their imagination to hide their imaginary friend. When a adult is zeroing in on a childs imaginary friend with questions. The child will then make up something new that is seemingly untouchable. If it turns out there was a route around the new imagined circumstance then the child moves the goalposts again.

The supernatural is nothing more than the moving of goalposts. When one wants their claims to be untouchable, they use the supernatural notion to hide their claims in it.

You cannot find my god because it resides in a place that you cannot investigate.

Once the supernatural is invoked the conversation is over. Just as when talking to a child about their imaginary friend and they become defensive, and put up a even bigger smokescreen. You disengage so that the child doesnt become offended or embarrassed. And the child is just playing so no need to expose them as frauds. The kid knows that they are playing and just making crap up.

But adults who invoke the supernatural, do they know that they are just playing and making crap up?

There are people who genuinely believe. There are also those who just go through the motions for various reasons.

 

[Mr Person]

But still the supernatural being that it is supposed to be outside of the natural, is unknowable. it doesnt matter what you believe about gods, ESP or whatever, you can know nothing about the supernatural. So invoking the supernatural is meaningless and nothing more than a logical fallacy.

Well, my position is that both belief and disbelief in a deity are logical errors because the concept of an omnipresent/omnipotent deity is necessarily beyond empirical proof or disproof.

See post 409:

http://www.debatepolitics.com/philosophical-discussions/255126-you-sure-there-no-god-w-352-a-41.html



You asked how others know that adults who invoke the supernatural aren't just making things up. Well, in the strict sense of the term "know", I suppose nobody knows that other than the persons invoking the supernatural. One person cannot truly know another person. No how matter close one is to a spouse (or would like to believe), I think it is necessarily true that there is always some part that is unknowable. If anything, this derives from the fact that everyone's brain is different. Despite the fact that we haven't the slightest clue how energy moving through matter produces consciousness, which does not appear subject to the laws of physics, time included*, I think it's a completely safe bet that one consciousness cannot know (or intuit, or grok) another consciousness entirely. Hell, I can't even be sure that red looks the same to me as it does to anyone else. All I can be sure of is that non-colorblind persons agree with me about the wavelengths of light to which the term "red" refers. That says nothing of the subjective experience. So how on Earth could one possibly expect to truly know someone's core being? I think it's a fair bet to say that pretty much none of us truly understands every last aspect of ourselves.

So while I suppose I can't truly know that someone else truly believes their religious or supernatural claims, I'm willing to bet I'm at least a B-grade judge of their sincerity in their belief. People believe all sorts of things, and quite a few have taken actions that do a tad more than merely suggesting belief.

I doubt that Jews died on the inquisition's rack because they didn't believe. I doubt that Christians died on a pyre as part of an elaborate fraud. Etc. Etc. And etc.



___________
*Consider the difference in perception of time in different situations and mental states. Now consider what it would be like if your spatial perception varied so greatly.

*Further, consider that different psychotropic drugs effect different people in markedly different ways. I may become more talkative when I drink, while someone else maybe become an intolerable idiot, and yet another person might tend to start fights. Yet, alcohol has precisely the same effects physically speaking (taking into account differences in weight and the like).

 

[Logicman]

But adults who invoke the supernatural, do they know that they are just playing and making crap up?

Try to bust the resurrection of Christ. For some 2,000 years, you people talk about that being nonsense but you are never able to put the first dent in the historical accounts from eyewitnesses, etc.

And for the record, contemporary miracles have been documented. Of course you won't study up on it because then you might have to actually face the facts.

https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525

 

[Mr Person]

You cannot know anything about the supernatural, so therefor whoever invokes the supernatural is making it up.

Who is it that says you cannot know ANYTHING about the supernatural? One may not be able to understand it, but to know nothing about it? That is quite a stretch you are making there.

I think the point is this: super-natural means beyond-nature or outside-nature. Therefore, someone who is restricted by nature's bounds has no logical basis for saying what is and is not within nature's bounds. This is because their view is restricted to things that are, in fact, in nature's bounds. Such a one is restricted to empirical fact. One would have to be an objective observer, outside of nature's bounds, outside of empirical reality, to be able to rely on one's sense impressions and judgment to determine what is and is not within nature's bounds.

I can put it another way. Intelligent Design proponents profess to be able to determine what is and what is not the result of natural evolution. In other words, what is and is not caused by the supernatural. This is arrogance. Only one who is part of the supernatural could know what is and is not supernatural, and even then, they too would be restricted to judgement of those portions of the supernatural included in their own ambit.

So, in short, you cannot know anything about the supernatural because you do not have standing to determine what is or is not supernatural. The same applies to potential supernaturals who are similarly unable to rule out the possibility of higher planes of supernaturality beyond the ambit of their sense impressions, scientific investigations, and so on.



But.....we can go further down the rabbit hole....


The only conceptual entity that is unrestricted is the monotheistic God proposed by certain religions: an all-powerful, all-present, and all-knowing deity, in the literal maximum sense of the term "all". Only such an entity could say what is and is not. It would, quite literally, be what is not, because it would simultaneously both be and un-be, and all unreal states between, all things and all unthings (and everything between them). Put another way, "all" in its maximum sense is bigger than "is" is. It is beyond reality. It is beyond language, beyond concept. It is beyond itself.

Infinity is big, is what I'm trying to say.


Where I differ from FreedomForAll is in the statement about judging the veracity of whether some other person is "making it up", meaning their belief in the supernatural. See my earlier post #15 on that point.

 

[Mr Person]

Try to bust the resurrection of Christ. For some 2,000 years, you people talk about that being nonsense but you are never able to put the first dent in the historical accounts from eyewitnesses, etc.

Eyewitness accounts?

Ok.

1. Eyewitness testimony in criminal trials is the least reliable evidence of all despite its common use. It's even more useless than "forensic sciences" now proven to be garbage, such as fingerprint ID, CAB analysis, Striation analysis, etc.

2. The only way you know what is said in this bible you've studied for 40 years is "eyewitness testimony" is because somebody wrote it down 1800-4000 years ago. Then somebody else wrote down that what the first guy wrote down was true.

I'm not even going to bother with points 3-300 because there's no way some people can be convinced, if they think words in a book or proof. Look, you may choose to believe in God and that's your business, but it's no more valid than me choosing to believe in Morgoth after reading The Simarillion. Can YOU prove that he isn't lurking in the void? The other Valar opened a can or two on his ***, well, if you believe what Tolkein wrote. Even cut his feet off, would you believe.



If I see the hand of "God" reaching down from the sky, I'll first get my blood tested for all known hallucinogenic substances. Then I'll get my head checked. Then I'll ask what everyone else saw. Then I'll have a good long think. But in this day in age, we can't even trust a video, let alone a photograph, and certainly not a gaggle of ***holes (or is it a "flock"? Herd?) claiming to have seen the same thing.

Have you heard of weird claims, like a mass hysteria affecting certain SE asian populations in which males earnestly claim that their genitals have been "stolen" by supernatural means, invoked by other persons, meanwhile the doctor sees that their genitals are still very much there? Etc. I advise that you put down the bible study for a bit and do some serious research into peer-reviewed articles on the fallibility of human memory. Basically, the general outline of our memories is probably valid, but the details are generally wrong. Especially about our own past.

In short, taking a logical approach to life means being comfortable with several metric ****-tons of uncertainty, to the Nth power. Eyewitness accounts deserve the most scrutiny of all.

 

[Mr Person]

[deleted for repetition]

 

[Lethargic Aptitude]

Try to bust the resurrection of Christ. For some 2,000 years, you people talk about that being nonsense but you are never able to put the first dent in the historical accounts from eyewitnesses, etc.

And for the record, contemporary miracles have been documented. Of course you won't study up on it because then you might have to actually face the facts.

https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Credibility-New-Testament-Accounts/dp/0801039525

Start another thread and talk about it there.

 

[Lethargic Aptitude]

Who is it that says you cannot know ANYTHING about the supernatural? One may not be able to understand it, but to know nothing about it? That is quite a stretch you are making there.

The supernatural is fantasy, so you will find it hard to know anything about it.

 

[Lethargic Aptitude]

And how exactly do you know people are making stuff up?

The same way that one can deduce a lie. Or how us adults know that a imaginary friend is imaginary. Claims of the ridiculous. unbelievable stories.

 

[Tigerace117]

The same way that one can deduce a lie. Or how us adults know that a imaginary friend is imaginary. Claims of the ridiculous. unbelievable stories.

Lots of things that would be considering ridiculous by any other standard have proven to be true.

 

[Lethargic Aptitude]

Well, my position is that both belief and disbelief in a deity are logical errors because the concept of an omnipresent/omnipotent deity is necessarily beyond empirical proof or disproof.

See post 409:

http://www.debatepolitics.com/philosophical-discussions/255126-you-sure-there-no-god-w-352-a-41.html



You asked how others know that adults who invoke the supernatural aren't just making things up. Well, in the strict sense of the term "know", I suppose nobody knows that other than the persons invoking the supernatural. One person cannot truly know another person. No how matter close one is to a spouse (or would like to believe), I think it is necessarily true that there is always some part that is unknowable. If anything, this derives from the fact that everyone's brain is different. Despite the fact that we haven't the slightest clue how energy moving through matter produces consciousness, which does not appear subject to the laws of physics, time included*, I think it's a completely safe bet that one consciousness cannot know (or intuit, or grok) another consciousness entirely. Hell, I can't even be sure that red looks the same to me as it does to anyone else. All I can be sure of is that non-colorblind persons agree with me about the wavelengths of light to which the term "red" refers. That says nothing of the subjective experience. So how on Earth could one possibly expect to truly know someone's core being? I think it's a fair bet to say that pretty much none of us truly understands every last aspect of ourselves.

So while I suppose I can't truly know that someone else truly believes their religious or supernatural claims, I'm willing to bet I'm at least a B-grade judge of their sincerity in their belief. People believe all sorts of things, and quite a few have taken actions that do a tad more than merely suggesting belief.

I doubt that Jews died on the inquisition's rack because they didn't believe. I doubt that Christians died on a pyre as part of an elaborate fraud. Etc. Etc. And etc.



___________
*Consider the difference in perception of time in different situations and mental states. Now consider what it would be like if your spatial perception varied so greatly.

*Further, consider that different psychotropic drugs effect different people in markedly different ways. I may become more talkative when I drink, while someone else maybe become an intolerable idiot, and yet another person might tend to start fights. Yet, alcohol has precisely the same effects physically speaking (taking into account differences in weight and the like).

Actually I asked if those that invoke the supernatural to back up their claim, if they realize its all just make believe. Most probably do not since they do not think that its make believe. Of course they had to create it anyways even if it was just parroting.

 

[Gaugingcatenate]

The supernatural is fantasy, so you will find it hard to know anything about it.

Hard to know and cannot know are not the same. I am not religious, I belong to no specific faith, but most certainly believe in a creator. That there might be something grander out there, and probably is, that we might know of but cannot understand is completely possible.

I have two cats, one is definitely smarter than the other... but even the smarter one cannot ever know many things that I know and can learn. It is very possible we are at a level where we can only comprehend so much of a bigger reality. That in no way infers that the bigger reality is not there.