nogods4me

The same reason I assume that a miniature, invisible, weightless, fuchsia elephant is not sitting on my left shoulder: there is no evidence to the contrary. extraordinary claims, require extraordinary evidence, and not only is the evidence for the "supernatural" not extraordinary, it is non-existent.

Godless Dave

1. Love, freedom, ethical questions, policy-making decisions, etc. are concepts that exist only within human minds, which are in turn within space and time. Those concepts can be communicated to other humans so that they exist in many minds instead of just one, but I don't see how you can assert that they are not within space and time. They are only relevant to the human experience and the effects that experience has on our physical environment, which is but a tiny, tiny part of the natural universe.

2. We can't observe them directly, but we can observe the effects they have on human behavior, so no, they should not be dismissed.

Autonemesis

Well that's what art, government, philosophy and politics are concerned with, among many other variously overlapping disciplines and areas of interest, religion included. Religion's distinguishing characteristic seems to be that it wants to overlap everything.

Devilnaut

I'm still wondering why theists live in denial of the super-SUPER-natural world. That is, the world which influences the supernatural world in mysterious ways. What is their evidence for rejection of this plane?

Devilnaut

Wait a sec... what about the super-super-SUPER-natural realm?!

Jamie_L

bailsongsong:

Why should I assume there is anything other than the natural world? I have no reliable evidence that there is more than the natural world. There are many things I do not believe in only because I have no good reason to do so, not because I have concrete evidence of their non-existence.

This seems much more reasonable to me than doing the opposite: believing everything that I can conceive of until I have good evidence not to.

Jamie

Tom Sawyer

balisongsong,

The distinction that I make in this case is one between science and philosphy. In order for something to be a scientific "truth" (inasmuch as something can be called that), it has to be based on observable, verifiable data. If the thing cannot be observed itself, then its effects can be observed, or at least postulated what those effects would be.

I'm not saying that there's not more to the world than that; there very well could be. I have not seen any examples of any supernatural phenomenon that cannot be explained by natural phenomenon. That does not mean that they don't exist, it just means that I have no reason to believe that they do. I'm open to any evidence to the contrary, but until that evidence comes up, why should I choose any one of the thousands of supernatural explanations over the others?

No. The fact that I have not observed something doesn't make that thing untrue; the universe exists independantly from my impressions of it. But also, the fact that something could possibly be true does not make me close-minded for not giving a lot of credence to that possibility without anything to support it.

Pretty much everything is worth looking into. The universe is a big, complex place and we are only just beginning to understand how it works. The reason we have the understanding that we do, though, is because we've used scientific standards of evidence to advance our knowledge.

One person said that the Sun revolved around the Earth, a second said it was the other way around. The second developed mathematical models to show why his view was correct and our knowledge of the universe increased as a result. Eventually, we were able to travel outside the Earth and take a look for ourselves to confirm that he was right with our own eyes.

One person said that a disease could be cured by praying to [insert random cosmic entity here]. A second said that a disease could be cured by using drugs to treat the infection. The patients of the first person died; the patients of the second person got better. Our knowledge of how diseases work and can be overcome increased as a result.

There's nothing wrong with believing in a supernatural world based on the possibility that there might be one. It is however, in my opinion, largely an armchair exercise with no practical benefits and potentially harmful side effects. Using the scientific method to observe the universe and figure out how it works and why is much of the time an armchair exercise with no practical benefits and potentially harmful side effects. However, some of the time it gives positive benefits that advance our understanding of the world and the universe and advance us as a species.

The fact that it gives successes from time to time is why using a testable, scientific method is a better tool for finding out the truth than sitting around dreaming up potential ideas for what the truth might be. Granted, it's often hard to know in advance which lines of inquiry will give any kind of success, which is why all lines of inquiry are valid. However, if you don't decide ahead of time what the standards will be be for finding out the truth, or even getting to a closer approximation of the truth, be that truth empirical or otherwise, how would you know that truth when you arrive at it?

That's why I favour using observable data as the criteria. There just isn't any better method out there. That doesn't rule out the fact, however, that there couldn't potentially be one.

Keith Russell

2. Are we to dismiss these because we cant observe them.

Yes. It's not rational to believe in something without evidence, and evidence can only be provided by the senses, by observation.

Things exist before they're observed. But, we should not believe that they exist, until we observe the evidence which supports the claim that they exist.

Keith.

echidna

I’m still going with this one.

All good mission statements should be vacuous. It’s sorta like corporate cold-reading.

galiel

Of course, there is still no accounting for Michael Jackson.