Christian

Starboy,

Or the supernatural is knowable. Very imperfectly at the moment (through a mirror darkly, you might say). But more knowable in the next life.

Respectfully,

Christian

lpetrich

Comparing the angel and mouse hypotheses for the sabotage of Sennacherib's army, I find the mouse hypothesis to be more likely.

Mice are much better-observed than angels. Where is the evidence for the existence and properties of angels that is comparable to the evidence for the existence and properties of mice? I don't know of any.

Mice are also a more falsifiable hypothesis than angels, because if it can be shown that nibbling on bows is not within the range of known mouse behavior, then that hypothesis is falsified, while it would be difficult to falsify similar hypotheses of angel capabilities. How does one work out what an angel would be incapable of doing?

And let's apply similar reasoning to other allegedly-supernatural phenomena.

Imagine that you hear a lot of creaking in your home. Do you conclude that a ghost is haunting it and teasing you with its noisemaking? Or do you conclude that it has a lot of loose parts that are made to creak by wind and the like?

Do you conclude that it was haunted by a ghost because ghosts are more powerful than wind?

Or do you conclude that it was a result of wind, because there is much more direct evidence of the existence and properties of wind than of ghosts?

Christian

Lpetrich,

You commit the logical fallacy of "begging the question." You assume that angels don't exist because they are not well observed. But the case at hand is about precisely that thing ... an alleged observation of angels.

It's circular. Why do you assume that angels don't exist? Because all alleged sightings of angels are false. Why is this alleged sighting of angels false? Because angels don't exist. Why don't angels exist? .....

Your implied premise that angels don't exist assumed your conclusion. That's faulty logic.

I would conclude wind because there is nothing intrensically improbable about wind causing creaking in a home. And there is no reason to suspect that any supernatural agent has an interest in creaking the floors in my home.

I reach the conclusion you suggest without begging the question . Starting off with the unprovable assumption that the super-physical does not exist would be begging the question.

Your statements are just a less obvious way of sneaking in the assumption that the supernatural does not exist.

I submit that my approach is more logically sound than yours.

Respectfully,

Christian

Volker.Doormann

Without to argue what is not part of reality this claim means nothing.

Thank you for conversation.

Volker

Starboy

If the supernatural is knowable in any way such as dark mirrors, by way of the mind or whatever then it becomes natural. The only way to make a distinction that something is supernatural from the phenomenon that we currently understand to be natural is to have a test for the supernatural. Since no test that provides a relevant distinction has been forthcoming from those that insist there is a supernatural, the existence of the supernatural is moot. Christian, this doesn’t mean you are wrong, but such claims are not examined by science because there is nothing to investigate. Science limits itself to only talking about things in terms of what it can demonstrate that it knows. Religion and philosophy have no such limitations. Enjoy your faith.

Starboy

lpetrich

However, Christian's reasons for preferring wind to ghosts could easily be extended to preferring mice to angels.

And his waving the Bible could easily be extended to ghosts, because in I Samuel 28, King Saul has the witch of Endor call up the ghost of the prophet Samuel.

That supports spiritualist mediums and channelers rather than haunted houses, but the principle is the same.

Walross

Hi Christian,

You wrote:

No problems. Like I said, I didn’t mean to be picky, but…

I’ve never heard of a point at which mathematicians deem something “impossible” though I suppose I could have missed that day in class. Even so, you still have a problem in that you have no way of knowing that the event of unknown probability doesn’t also fall in to the category of “impossible”. Like I said, it’s probability is unknown. It could be anything, including zero.

In my response to my incredulity about you having some way of quantifying the probabilities of supernatural events, you wrote:

First off, I’m sorry Christian, but I'm not terribly impressed with the accuracy of the bible's claims about the natural world, why should I have any reason to believe it’s more accurate in it’s claims about the supernatural one? You’ll have to do better than that if you’re going to convince a skeptical person that you have a reliable guide to quantitatively evaluating probabilities of supernatural claims. Regards,

Walross