Ojuice5001

Metaphysical naturalists generally say that there is not only no need to postulate supernatural gods, but there is little or no room for them in the correct view of the universe. This post is an attempt to refute that claim. Obviously, the truth of this claim depends on what a "supernatural" explanation is, so let's first ask what a supernaturalistic universe looks like.

Suppose supernaturalism is true, but methodological naturalism is the right way for science to proceed. In that case, there would be two categories of events. One category of events would be the events that can be fully understood by confining your attention to natural factors. The other category of events--let's call it category C--would always remain partly unpredictable by science. Category C would not be defined in a merely negative way (the events that are not predicable by science); it would have its own characteristics. Category C events might well be an important part of everyday life, and it would be much more convenient to live your life as if category C events were real. Science probably couldn't prove for sure that C is a real category of events, but the general course of scientific thought would be in favor of Category C events existing. Science could also tell us which events are category C, though once an event was in category C there would no longer be naturalistic explanations of it. If category C events were common enough, it might be necessary to take steps to ensure that a science experiment was uninfluenced by category C factors, and many experiments would be considered invalid because they are too affected by category C factors. If the world looks like this, we can be justified in affirming supernaturalism.

Now, all defenses of supernaturalism try to prove that this situation is actual. They have various strategies, however, and not all are equally promising. Let's look at the five most important.

1. The creation of the universe According to this paradigm, the universe can function reasonably well without God or the gods, but God was necessary to start the process.

2. God of the Gaps This is a kind of argument where a natural phenomenon seems very puzzling, and it is concluded that "goddidit." It is a logically weak way of thinking, yet it does play all too important a role in the supernaturalism debate.

Many metaphysical naturalists say or imply that these forms of supernaturalism are all God of the gaps, but I think this is a mistake, for two reasons.

First, God of the gaps has no actual criterion for deciding which events are supernatural. It just says "Wow, that's really hard to explain." This criterion is hopelessly subjective, and whatever are the problems with the other views, their criteria are objective ways to categorize the world.

Second, God of the gaps, and the naturalists who argue against it, asssumes that natural and supernatural explanations are mutually exclusive. We know this is so because, when a new natural explanation comes into existence, the God of the gaps proponents will eventually stop claiming the phenomenon is supernatural. Although some of these approaches share this assumption, others do not.
3. Miracles Most God of the gaps arguments are trying to prove miracles. This approach assumes that nature is regular, but can be overridden by the gods. For instance, normally Jesus would get soaked if he stepped off a boat, but a miracle enabled him to walk across the water.

4. Souls It is hard to define what a soul is, but basically it is a supernatural aspect to the identity of the mind (could be only the human mind, could be the mind of all warm-blooded animals, etc.). That's a good enough definition for this post

5. Directed-chance supernaturalism

This approach observes that there are some events that (confining attention to the natural) probably could happen in any of several ways, such as the weather, political events, dice, a less-than-reliable car, and the path of a panicked horse. This approach decides it makes sense to say that those events are influenced by supernatural factors.

Now, let's look at how well naturalism has refuted these ideas. If any of them aren't refuted, then there is room for the supernatural.

1. Whether this argument has been refuted depends on if you think arguments like fine-tuning and first cause are good ones. I won't offer a defense of these arguments, because I don't want this thread to be about them. Directed-chance supernaturalism is the important one.

2. God of the gaps has been pretty thoroughly refuted. After all, in the past it said that supernatural events were the sole cause of (not merely factors in) disease, astronomical events, etc. Besides, it has no way to distinguish between a puzzling natural phenomenon and a supernatural one, even though we should all agree that the former exists.

3. If miracles are real, why haven't secular historians concluded that they exist? After all, miracles would be a good way to actually influence the course of history, and yet, no historical event (excluding religous ones) has been traced to a miracle. Also, most alleged miracles are either poorly documented, or don't really transcend God of the gaps (e.g., faith healing).

4. I have no qualms about consigning miracles and God of the gaps to the eleventh century, but I would like to do otherwise with the idea of a soul. Still, there is no way to claim that science has confirmed that there really is a soul. After all, naturalistic psychology has been a success. I think the idea of a soul can be saved, but only by combining it with directed-chance ideas of how it relates to the body.

5. See the second paragraph in this post. Our knowledge of the natural world has confirmed the existence of chance, and therefore there is room for the supernatural. Of course, I realize that most metaphysical naturalists won't give up that easily, so I will address the possible objections that I can think of.

There are only three possibilities: The weather is determined by natural factors alone, or by supernatural factors as well, or is partly indeterminate. First, why can't the weather be determined by natural factors alone?

Because we know what happens when an event is determined by natural factors alone. Once you have good knowledge of the causes, and the laws that govern the phenomenon, you can have good knowledge of the end result. But that is not the case, and probably never will be, with the weather and other random events.

So maybe random events are just that, rather than being determined in any way. To answer this objection, I say that a rational person should assume that the unknown is consistent with the known. What we know is that there is a natural world where events happen predictably, and some events cause others. Now, supernatural causes and laws are conceptually similar to natural causes and laws, much more so than the idea that God really does play dice with the universe. So what is the determinant of chance events? We've ruled out natural causes as the sole contributor, and true randomness is utterly unlike the rest of our knowledge, so supernatural explanations are the best way to go. QED.

Thomas Metcalf

Well, we don't really have a good understanding of indeterministic events, true. But I don't know what it would mean to say a cause is supernatural. Also, you seem to be arguing against methodological naturalism, not against metaphysical naturalism. Why wouldn't supernatural causes and laws just be a subspecies of natural causes and laws, de facto? I have a problem with the assumption that the unknown is consistent with the known, or at least, your use of it. With indeterministic events, we're not really dealing with the "unknown," per se. It's counter-intuitive, but these events really are indeterministic. Finally, I have a problem with the idea that supernatural causes are conceptually similar to natural causes. Indeterministic events are taken to be naturalistic, so they've already fallen on the side of naturalism. It will take some argumentation to dislodge them and replace them with supernatural causes as natural causes' new neighbors.

seanie

So when your car keeps breaking down what do you do?

I take it to a garage where a mechanic uses methodological naturalism to identify the cause and fix it.

That usually works for me.

Ab_Normal

I don't understand how is this different from "goddidit". "A supernatural force affected the course of the hurricane" is to me identical to "<deity> affected the course of the hurricane". Maybe I'm missing something.

Dr S

(OJ) Suppose supernaturalism is true, but methodological naturalism is the right way for science to proceed.
(S) Science doesn't ignore the supernatural because of some strange political / philosophical position that scientists hold.
It isn't studied because there isn't a supernatural. There's no there there.

Mageth

Because we know what happens when an event is determined by natural factors alone. Once you have good knowledge of the causes, and the laws that govern the phenomenon, you can have good knowledge of the end result. But that is not the case, and probably never will be, with the weather and other random events.

So you're saying that weather etc., because they are too complex for us to predict, may have supernatural causes? (Actually, we can make predictions on weather; ever watch the 11 o'clock news or the Weather Channel? It's just that weather is too complex for us to predict very far into the future, or to make precice predictions even in the near term.)

This lack of predictive ability is due to the complexity of the systems (perhaps mixed in with a bit of quantum uncertainty). No supernatural attributes are necessary to explain it.

Ojuice5001

But there are scientists who believe in a supernatural god. Why do they use the same procedures as the metaphysical-naturalist scientists?

Ojuice5001

Thomas Metcalf,

So you're saying that because supernatural entities and causal processes are so different from natural ones, they are less like natural causation than actual indeterminacy? Why?

I don't think the supernatural world is different enough that someone can say that. Take the laws of sympathetic magic. (You are familiar with Frazier's The Golden Bough, right?) The laws of similarity and contagion are like the laws of physics without being the laws of physics. Processes using these laws are more like physical processes than they are like randomness.

Mageth

But there are scientists who believe in a supernatural god. Why do they use the same procedures as the metaphysical-naturalist scientists?

Um, perhaps because they work?

Dr S

And yet they never incorporate miracles into their formulas. Except in that famous cartoon
Because they are the only ones that actually work.
Saddleing scientists with the title "metaphysical-naturalist" fails to make them seem goofy. But speaks it poorly of your understanding of reality.