Talk:Supernatural/Archive 4

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How is the presumption in this article that science and the scientific method have the absolute last word on things NPOV? --Daniel C. Boyer

In many articles, that presumption is very appropriate, especially when discussing scientific endeavors. In articles that compare or contrast science or empiricism with other belief systems, it seems to me that it would be inappropriate to let either belief system be presumed correct. It should be enough to document the sources of various claims, so that the reader who *does* think science should have the last word, will not be misled by this article. That's what I have tried to do here.

Incidentally, I deleted the words "and logic" from the opening paragraph because many supernatural phenomena can be explained in way whose logic is internally consistent, even if there is no external scientific evidence to corroborate it. Wesley

Frankly, I don't see where the current article claims that the scientific method has the last word on all things. Daniel, could you be a bit more specific on why you think this is so? -- Jan Hidders 12:40 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Wesley, how do you think a religious view like that of Unificationism can be accomodated in an encyclopidia article on supernatural and natural phenomena? I think my church would like to see science expand the scope of its inquiries to include supernatural phenomena. Is there any prominent spokesman, such as a Nobel-prize winner or at least an author or professor, who has discussed applying scientific techniques of inquiry to phenomena which are not necessarily part of the observable physical world?

Is Raymond Moody being scientific (in any reasonable sense of the word) when he studies Near death experiences? Ed Poor 12:17 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

It's not the phenomenon itself that is either scientific or not, but the theories that are put forward to explain them. So it depends on what theories Raymond Moody is researching and whether he uses Occam's razor, i.e., does not assume anything supernatural. Perhaps the wording of the last sentence should be adapted a little. -- Jan Hidders 12:40 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Perhaps I was not clear. I am asking whether the possibility that something supernatural could be involved in near death experiences, could be the topic of a scientific investigation, i.e., does not assume that the natural world is all there is. Ed Poor 12:46 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

The scientific method does not assume that the natural world is all there is. All it says is that you should investigate first the more natural explanations before you move on to the less natural explanations. -- Jan Hidders 13:01 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

I don't think the scientific method is capable of demonstrating positively that something supernatural has taken place. It can either offer a natural explanation, or say it has no explanation. By definition, supernatural phenomena allegedly operate outside the normal natural laws. For example, what experiment could hypothetically prove that Extra-Sensory Perception was taking place, when science relies on observations made through the senses? At best, it could verify that other methods of perception were most likely not being employed. Wesley

If there is no way of showing that ESP is a real effect, in what sense could it be a real effect? GrahamN

Hypothetically speaking, ESP could be a real effect if it were real, but required some sort of "sixth sense" or other special ability to perceive it. In other words, it could be a real if there is a reality beyond that perceived by the standard five senses. I think that is what is implied by the term "extra-sensory perception". ;-) Wesley

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Wesley, what I'm trying to find out has to do with the self-imposed limits of science. If science by definition explores only physical phenomena, then I guess supernatural phenomena are strictly "out" (literally out of bounds). On the other hand, if scientists want to explore possible supernatural phenomena using the same methods they use to study physical phenomena, that would extend the scope of science. Either that, or I've watched too many movies like The Matrix, Vanilla Sky and Minority Report lately :-) Ed Poor

Strictly speaking there are no self-imposed limits. It is only a matter of prioritizing which theories should be researched first. -- Jan Hidders 13:41 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Jan, are you suggesting that science does not confine itself to what can be learned through the five senses, as described in the empiricism article? Wesley

I wouldn't dare. :-) Scientific theories have to make verifiable predictions and how else can we verify these then by our senses? This is not a matter of a chosen self-restriction but rather an inherent restriction in the method itself. Note, by the way, that the empiricism doesn't specify which senses we can or cannot use, it just talks about "experiences". -- Jan Hidders 14:07 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

Where I'm going with this, Jan and Wesley, is my attempt to figure out how to categorize various reports about the possible existence of a spiritual world observable with five "spiritual senses". Ed Poor

It is all dependent upon what these reports claim, which theories they propose as explanations, and how they investigate these theories. There's nothing unscientific about making reports of observations that have been made that way, although strictly speaking you should be careful about assuming that people actually experienced what they said they experienced. The big problems start when you make up theories to explain these observations; what is causing these observations? The theories that assume existence of supernatural entities or phenomena are almost by definition not the most simple ones, and should therefore be researched last. Another problem is that they rarely make specific predictions and are consequently very hard to falsify. The combination of these two problems makes such theories usually very unscientific. -- Jan Hidders 14:48 Jul 24, 2002 (PDT)

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I have serious doubts about the recent addition about Skinner and the Bible. I want to allow for some discussion before I delete it. If I do delete it, it would be for these reasons: 1) I have no objection to mentioning Skinner as presenting one explanation for ritual, but I wouldn't make too much of it -- it is a big jump from pigeons to people,

I knew you were going to say that. We've learnt a lot about human beings from nematodes and bacteria, and that's an even bigger jump. Jacquerie27 15:17 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

and there are many more sophisticated explanations for ritual,

What matters is if they're better explanations, not that they're more "sophisticated". This is supposed to be psychology, not haute couture. Jacquerie27 15:17 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

some of which are not inconsistent with Skinner's point (e.g. Rappaport), but which do have the virtue of being based on empirical evidence from studies of people.

You're anthropocentric as well as logocentric. Jacquerie27 15:17 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

2) Skinner is presenting an explanation for ritual, not for myth (in this case, the Biblical history)

3) did Skinner actually make this argument to explain the Hebrew myths? If so, a citation would be useful. If not, who did? If no one did, it shouldn't be in an encyclopedia article. Slrubenstein

Please delete the Bible quotes whenever you like, because I didn't expect them to last long, but I think the Skinner experiment should stay. Jacquerie27 15:17 May 14, 2003 (UTC)

Obviously I think Rappaport's theory is better than Skinner's. But I have no intention of deleting Skinner's theory. My only objection was to presenting it as if it were explaining things that it does not explain. Slrubenstein

I agree that Skinner appears to be explaining ritual, not myth or belief in the supernatural.

<groan> I don't want to get involved in arguments about all this again but I can't agree with that. Ritual among human beings generally requires a belief in the supernatural and Skinner tried to explain ritual among human beings using a psychological mechanism that seems to be at work among pigeons too. Jacquerie27 08:21 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Sooo... it would appear that what Skinner has demonstrated is that it's possible for pigeons, and perhaps for people as well, to develop rituals for psychological reasons, without belief in the supernatural. Lots of human rituals are based on sheer force of habit, or a vague notion of what the proper way to do something is, or social politeness, rather than any belief in the supernatural. Take the British tea-time ceremony for example, or the Latin American ritual of taking a siesta. Wesley 14:38 22 May 2003 (UTC)

There is nothing in his experiment to suggest the pigeons believed there was a supernatural force involved.

The pigeons might have had no conscious belief at all about anything, even if you can apply a concept like "belief" to avian psychology, but human beings who behave in analogous ways (crossing their fingers, praying, etc) do have conscious beliefs about the supernatural. E.g., there's no known natural mechanism by which a rain-dance can affect the weather, so you have to believe in the supernatural to perform one. And they very often work too, if you keep them up long enough.

Some factory workers perform maintenance jobs or push and pull certain levers out of a sense of ritual, because that's how it's always been done, but not because of a belief in the supernatural. They may continue to perform certain tasks even if a change in machinery or procedure makes the reason for them obsolete, just because they never knew what the reason was in the first place. Then there's the story of the woman who always cut the end off the Christmas ham and put it on top of the ham when she baked it, because her mother had always done that. Her mother had had a roasting pan that was too small to hold an entire ham unless the end was cut off, but her daughter repeated the ritual without knowing why, even though her roasting pan was large enough to hold the ham. Ritual is often based in belief in the supernatural, but certainly not always. Wesley 14:38 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Thus the Skinner experiment looks like it should be moved, perhaps to Ritual or even behavioural psychology. Something about the cargo cults in the South Pacific might be interesting, though, and relevant to the subject at hand.

Cargo-cults would be very interesting, but they seem to involve the same mechanism as pigeon "rituals".

Very similar in some respects, but with the advantage that they concern actual people instead of birds, and it's quite a bit easier to determine how they perceive their actions and the reasons for them. Wesley 14:38 22 May 2003 (UTC)

You've also added this and I'm not sure about the wording:

"Other modern skeptical readers of the Bible assert the opposite: that the earliest Christians believed in a strictly supernatural Jesus, and that the historical Jesus did not exist until he was invented by the authors of Gospels late in the first century"

Could you give a quote for this? I don't understand what you mean by "a strictly supernatural Jesus" or why a strictly supernatural Jesus has to be distinct from a historical Jesus, and I'm puzzled if you think being strictly supernatural means not being historical. The traditional Christian etc understanding is that strictly supernatural beings, i.e. immaterial spirits, have definitely been part of human history: angels, demons, visions of the Virgin Mary, etc. Jesus could have been a strictly supernatural immaterial spirit and still "walked" among men in the real Holy Land (see docetism). Some skeptics think Jesus was originally symbolic or literary, like a pagan god, before being re-invented as a historical figure, but they wouldn't say that meant he was "strictly supernatural". Cf. the way some Xtians think the book of Genesis is symbolic and not literal history and some think it's a literal history of supernatural events. Jacquerie27 08:21 22 May 2003 (UTC)

I had in mind Earl Doherty's book The Jesus Puzzle. He suggests that Paul thought Jesus did what he did in some sort of supernatural plane without ever being born on Earth in Bethlehem or walking around the Holy Land, in any sense of the word "walk". He believes the historical Jesus was later invented by the Gospel writers and associated with what Paul wrote, but this would be a subsequent development in Christianity, as Doherty sees it. That's why I used the words "strictly supernatural"; perhaps there's a better choice of words to express this. Wesley \

As an aside, could I ask you to put your replies completely after the post you're responding to, rather than interspersing your replies with the original statement? What you're doing often works well in emails, but on these discussion pages it often makes it very difficult to come to the page later and see who said what. It also completely disrupts the flow and thought process of the person you're replying to when you break up their sentences and paragraphs that way. Wesley 14:38 22 May 2003 (UTC)

I apologize. Disrupting your thought process is the last thing I wanted to do. "Some factory workers perform maintenance jobs or push and pull certain levers out of a sense of ritual". If they think that doing it a different way would be unlucky, I would call it ritual. If they don't think that, I wouldn't call it ritual, I would call it habit.

You are missing a central point: This is not the encyclopedia of what Jack thinks. We are writing articles about knowledge that is "out there." We can and should have a good article on how different people use the term "ritual" and another on "habit" (Bourdieu would be worth exploring) -- but not on how Wesley, Slr, or Jacquerie use the terms. Slrubenstein

I'm afraid I'm making a habit of missing central points. Or should that be a ritual? I was expressing an opinion as a native speaker of English. This is not an encyclopedia of what Jack thinks, but it is written in English and words of English are not 'out there', they are social constructs. Jacquerie27 10:49 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Rituals are designed to have some effect well beyond the simple actions involved: pigeons bowing to get food; human beings whistling for a wind. If you whistle just because you like the tune, that's not a ritual.

If the theory is that Jesus did what he did on a supernatural plane, it's not just Jesus who was "strictly supernatural", it's the entire Xtian story. I think you should describe that particular theory in more detail rather than leave it as it is.

"Very similar in some respects, but with the advantage that they concern actual people instead of birds, and it's quite a bit easier to determine how they perceive their actions and the reasons for them." And with the disadvantage that the variables are impossible to control and to record in detail and analyze statistically. The pigeon experiment illuminates human behavior, it doesn't explain it fully. I like it as a starting point and as an example of how science can make unexpected connections. Jacquerie27 17:59 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, you make a number of good points. Should we just move all the Skinner stuff to a page on "ritual" or "theories of ritual?" It really seems irrelevant to this page. Slrubenstein

Skinner was trying to explain superstitious ritual, not all ritual, and superstition involves the supernatural. But if I'm outvoted, no problem. Vox populi, vox Dei. Jacquerie27 17:59 22 May 2003 (UTC)

I think our difference of opinion is in whether "ritual" necessarily implies belief in the supernatural, or merely implies a mistaken understanding of cause and effect whereby certain actions are believed to cause different or greater effects than they actually do. If we use the former definition, than the pigeon experiment gets thrown right out unless Skinner claimed that the pigeons believed in supernatural causes. If the latter, then the entire discussion of ritual has nothing to do with the supernatural. In the case of the factory workers, suppose they were told that certain parts of a machine needed to be oiled at certain intervals in order for it to function properly. They did so regularly. The machine was replaced with an upgrade that looked similar but did not require oiling at the same places, but they continued to follow the old routine. Thus these hypothetical workers had a mistaken belief in cause and effect, much like the pigeons, but without believing in "luck" or the supernatural; they just thought that applying oil was necessary for the machine's proper functioning when it no longer was. To me at least, this seems much more analogous to the pigeons' behaviour. With regard to common usage, many people speak of having a ritual cup of coffee in the morning, or the like. And does superstition necessarily involve the supernatural? What about people who take Murphy's Law seriously? Murphy's Law doesn't posit the existence of any supernatural forces per se, but applying it universally does look like a sort of superstitious pessimism. And sometimes ritual and ceremony can almost be used interchangably, like comparing a high school or graduation ceremony with a coming of age ritual. In any case, the ritual article is rather sparse, and I think it would benefit from having this material at least copied there, if not moved there completely. Wesley 18:40 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Wesley, I did some NPOVing of the intro -- could you review it. I am still inclined to delete the stuff on supernaturalization which still seems to reflect one person's POV rather than any body of scholarship. Also, IF we keep this article, how do we distinguish it from the (far more scholarly) article on Western theology? It seems to me that there are really four topics here and I am trying to figure out how best to sort them out in different articles:

1. the concept of the supernatural in monotheistic religions (currently in the Western theology article)
2. the concept of the supernatural in comparative religion (see the article for "God?" From this perspective, perhaps this article should start with four sections -- animism, animatism, polytheism, and monotheism?)
3. the sociological uses of "the supernatural"
4. the relationship between religion, magic, and science (currently discussed in the anthropology of religion article)

What do you think? I just think we need to start discussing what belongs in one article or another... Slrubenstein

Well, for my two cents, when all kinds of supernaturalism are lumped together as though they are the same thing, it betrays a lack of seriousness or even hostility to the subject. Your plan addresses that problem of antithetical notions being conflated into one. Mkmcconn 21:11 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Amen to that!

And Hallelujah! I don't think we need keep the article and I apologize for missing that central point, for claiming that ritual necessarily involves the supernatural, and for conflating all those antithetical notions of the supernatural into one. I'm afraid I'm making a habit of this sort of thing. Or should that be ritual? Jacquerie27 10:49 23 May 2003 (UTC)

Jacquerie27, I removed this paragraph:

• Because the truth of supernatural claims cannot be objectively tested, disputes about them often lead to schism, war, and persecution. For example, disputes among members of the Christian supernaturalist community resulted in the Great Schisms, the Thirty Years War, and the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, and disputes between members of the Jewish and Christian supernaturalist communities resulted in many centuries of hatred and violence (see Christian anti-Semitism and Persecution of Christians). This kind of hatred and violence does not occur among members of the scientific community, because the truth of opposing claims can, at least in principle, be objectively tested in science. Naturalistic science has also been far more successful and far more widely accepted than any particular form of supernaturalism.

Although I'm sure that anti-supernaturalists are distinctive for their confidence that scientific objectivity will end every reason for disagreement that can exist among men, this little sermon doesn't belong here; heck - it's not even "scientific". "Secular", "naturalistic" and "scientific" assumptions have been responsible for hatred and violence on a massive scale, even an unprecedented scale. In addition, there are issues which divide people, which "naturalistic science" claims no ability to resolve: issues of ancestral guilt and right, rights of nations, and other disputes of property and justice. No standard, non-controversial scientific approach to such issues has ever been settled upon, and for that reason no scientific answer has ever been provided by which all disputes can be ended. The claims made in your paragraph are superstitiously overconfident in the ability of science to solve the ills of the world. Mkmcconn 22:23 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

And this isn't a sermon? Where was the claim that scientific objectivity will end every reason for disagreement among men? Where was the claim that science can solve all problems facing the human race? What I pointed out was that supernaturalists go to war about supernaturalism, because there are no objective ways of resolving their disputes, but scientists do not go to war about science, because there are objective ways of resolving their disputes. As a supernaturalist, you might find those facts uncomfortable, but you can't deny them -- which is why you have to set up so many straw-men. I said nothing about "secularism" or "materialism" (many scientists are neither secularist nor materialist), nor did I claim science will ever solve the "ills of the world". I don't believe it will -- on the contrary, it will make things worse, partly because it will give supernaturalists like Osama bin Laden greater powers of violence. Jacquerie27 22:54 17 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Think through the paragraph, J.

• Notable religious conflicts in history are listed.
• A contrast is made, with how the scientific community is not similarly afflicted with violence and hatred: as though the two approaches (religious and scientific) overlap in the same domain.
• A claim is made for Naturalism (anti-supernaturalism?), that it is "far more successful and far more widely accepted than any particular form of supernaturalism" again, as though they overlap the same domain.

If there is no implication that science substituted for religion could have averted these conflicts, then the comparison is irrelevant and the reason for including the paragraph is disputable. Mkmcconn

• The comparison is between an epistemology that has an objective means of verifying its claims and resolving its disputes, namely naturalistic science, and an epistemology that has no objective means of verifying its claims and resolving its disputes, namely supernaturalism. It is a legitimate criticism of supernaturalism to say that supernaturalists fail to recognize that their claims were subjective and to admit the possibility of error, which is why they have fought each other for so many centuries. The supernaturalist Muslim Osama bin Laden (to take one example) does not recognize that his claims are subjective or admit the possibility of error.

I can see that this is what you intend to compare, but you are not successful. There are many things that cannot be objectively verified (if reference to authority is now redefined as "subjective"); and while it is true that these are often the cause of disputes (because not all authorities are universally recognized), most of them have nothing to do with what you've called supernaturalism. Most of human existence is made up of these things, in fact - religion among them, along with many other things (like borders, tariffs, language and customs, loyalties, history, etc.) It's on such things that religion may have direct bearing, and accordingly may become insinuated into a fight over borders and loyalties. Someone may point out that while the Catholics fought Protestants in the Thirty Years War they did not fight over the molecular composition of water, but that's irrelevant. However, this appears to be what you want to do. Mkmcconn \

Regarding Osama and Ghandi and people of their ilk, you are lumping so many things together when you talk about supernaturalism, that it's quite pointless. You want to call them all subjective, somehow in the same sense. What you mean by this, in reference to no one in particular, is entirely unclear. Is Osama an subjective engineer? And yet, he is a Muslim engineer. The alternative to his religion is not his science. They do not deal with the same things; and in those things for which he relies on religion, his science is irrelevant. Mkmcconn 13:15 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

• A claim is made for naturalistic science, not anti-supernaturalism -- many famous scientists have been supernaturalists. Naturalistic science and its technological byproducts have been adopted by adherents of all forms of supernaturalism all over the world. IOW, naturalistic science has been far more successful and far more widely accepted than any particular form of supernaturalism.

This is why the paragraph I deleted was so uninformative. It makes a comparison, but not concerning the same domain of issues. Religion has caused wars, because in the past (for example) religion was intimately tied to fortunes, allegiances and practical ideologies. Although the issues over which religion causes wars are not solved in the slightest degree by a non-religious approach instead - fortunes, allegiances and ideologies continue to conflict - this is not the point of your comparison. Instead, you want to say that naturalistic science deals with other issues, irrelevant to the conflicts which religion failed to prevent. There is no point to the comparison, in other words. It's like saying "In the United States, English has been more successful than Christianity". Mkmcconn 13:15 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

• Supernaturalism and science overlap in all sorts of ways: see for example creationism and free will. Supernaturalism retreats as science advances, as other paras in the article point out: what was once explained supernaturally (disease, etc) is now explained naturalistically. Jacquerie27 09:29 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

What you want to call "supernaturalism" is not a single thing, and neither is the relation of "it" to science all of one kind. Mkmcconn 13:15 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

And where do I say supernaturalism is all one thing and the relation of it to science all of one kind? "It makes a comparison, but not concerning the same domain of issues." The whole point of my comparison is that the domain of supernaturalism is subjective and the domain of science objective. That is why supernaturalism causes hatred and violence and naturalistic science does not. That is also why the domain of supernaturalism has shrunk, because what was once a matter of subjective opinion -- the causes of disease, etc -- is now, thanks to science, a matter of objective fact. I repeat what I said and what you have not denied: it is a legitimate criticism of supernaturalism to say that supernaturalists fail to recognize that their claims were subjective and to admit the possibility of error.

Regarding Osama and Ghandi and people of their ilk, you are lumping so many things together when you talk about supernaturalism, that it's quite pointless.

The mysterious appearance of Gandhi makes me think you're trying to muddy the water, and your claim that he is of Bin Laden's "ilk" makes me think you don't properly understand what you're talking about. Gandhi was a Hindu who believed in ahimsa or non-violence, and if more people had thought like him Partition wouldn't have been so murderously vicious. Partition is another good example of supernaturalism causing conflict (subjective supernaturalist Islam vs subjective supernaturalist Hinduism).

You want to call them all subjective, somehow in the same sense. What you mean by this, in reference to no one in particular, is entirely unclear. Is Osama an subjective engineer? And yet, he is a Muslim engineer.

Supernaturalists are all subjective in one sense, i.e., that they have no objective means of verifying their claims about the supernatural. And I've given you "someone in particular": Osama bin Laden, who is subjective in his supernatural claims. However, he is not subjective in his engineering, just as Einstein and Newton, who were both supernaturalists, were not subjective in their physics.

There are many things that cannot be objectively verified (if reference to authority is now redefined as "subjective"); and while it is true that these are often the cause of disputes (because not all authorities are universally recognized),

Two points. One: Supernatural authorities, such as the Bible or Koran, are not universally recognized because there is no objective means of proving the truth of these supernatural authorities. Two: the authority of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible is universally recognized among conservative Jews and Christians. However, conservative Jews and conservative Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians disagree fundamentally (and sometimes murderously) with each other about the interpretation of this universally recognized authority. Why? Because there is no objective means of proving which interpretation of the Bible is correct. IOW, supernatural authorities are subjective. Why? Because they're supernatural. Unlike naturalistic science, supernaturalism is subjective -- that's the point I was trying to make in the paragraph you've deleted and that you have so far failed to disprove, or even deny without disproof.

most of them have nothing to do with what you've called supernaturalism.

Your argument seems to be: because supernaturalism is not wholly responsible for conflicts among human beings, we shouldn't point out it's responsible for any conflicts at all. In an article on the supernatural, it's legitimate to contrast supernaturalism with naturalism in the form of science and point out that subjective supernaturalism, unlike objective science, has been directly responsible for many conflicts and has exacerbated and prolonged many others.

Someone may point out that while the Catholics fought Protestants in the Thirty Years War they did not fight over the molecular composition of water, but that's irrelevant. However, this appears to be what you want to do.

It's not irrelevant at all. If the two opposing sides during the Thirty Years War had been interested beforehand in the molecular composition of water and not in the supernatural composition of the Eucharist, would they have needed to go to war to settle any dispute that arose? If they wouldn't, why not?

Instead, you want to say that naturalistic science deals with other issues, irrelevant to the conflicts which religion failed to prevent. There is no point to the comparison, in other words. It's like saying "In the United States, English has been more successful than Christianity".

English, unlike supernaturalism or science, is not an epistemology. The point to the comparison is that while science and supernaturalism are both epistemologies claiming to explain the universe, science deals with what is objective and supernaturalism with what is subjective. If you can't disprove that -- please do so if you can -- the comparison is legitimate.

One last important point:

...irrelevant to the conflicts which religion failed to prevent.

I am not criticizing religion, I am criticizing supernaturalism. This is not an article on religion, it is an article on the supernatural. Not all religious claims are subjective or unverifiable, not all forms of supernaturalism involve religion, and religions themselves vary hugely in their degree of supernaturalism: compare Unitarianism with Voodoo or Santeria. The fact that you're conflating religion with supernaturalism suggests to me your pro-religious bias is interfering with your ability to understand the topic. Jacquerie27 22:42 18 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Jacquerie27, sometimes you can be one of the sharper folks around here, but in this case you just aren't following the bouncing ball.

It's a bit annoying to be patronized by someone who thought the pacifist Gandhi was of the mass-murdering Osama bin Laden's "ilk", you know. And who kept referring to religion when the criticism was of supernaturalism.

If you won't follow the point, you won't make your point. I'm not trying to provoke you toward anything but more careful thought. Mkmcconn

The paragraph should not go back in, unless or until it is re-written to say to its readers what you intend it to mean; and right now, it does not do that. I am trying to prompt you to reconstruct the paragraph to illustrate the comparison you are trying to make in more clear terms. Demonstrate that the conflicts mentioned are due to a "subjective" or "supernatural" epistemology, rather than the elusiveness or complexity of the issues.

"Elusiveness" is just a casuistical way of saying "subjectivity". But okay, so your reasoning is: elusive and complex "issues" lead to schism, persecution, and war. Let's take science and mathematics. There are some extremely elusive and complex "issues" in science and mathematics, but there have been no schisms, persecutions, and wars about them*. Now let's take theology. There are some extremely "elusive" and "complex" "issues" in theology... and there have been thousands of years of schisms, persecutions, and wars about them. Therefore it is not the elusiveness or complexity of "issues" that leads to schism, persecution, and war, it is whether one possesses an objective means of resolving these elusive and complex "issues". QED. If you disagree, let's see your objective means of resolving theological disputes.

• Except when subjective politics gets involved: see Lysenko. And note also: in general supernaturalists would not agree that the issues they fight over are elusive or complex -- that's a very liberal POV. Christians haven't persecuted Jews for 2000 years because they think it's hard to understand the issues or to prove that Christianity is right, and Jews didn't persecute Christians at the beginning because they thought it was hard to prove Christianity was wrong.

It's still a puzzle to me, what you think the argument is about, J (although it's evident that you're getting a bit perturbed).

I would say frustrated.

I don't question that (1) religion is the cause of hatred and wars. You say that it's an issue of epistemology, and you attempt to illustrate this, claiming that (2) the alternative epistemology (naturalism) does not fall to such shameful behavior. I'm still scratching my head over what you mean, in terms of the facts, with regard to that second point. Mkmcconn \

Look: the comparison is not between religion and naturalism or between supernaturalism and naturalism in general, but between supernaturalism and that naturalistic epistemology known as science. That's why the paragraph used the word "science" and not the word "naturalism". Naturalism, as a complete philosophy, rejects the supernatural completely. Science does not. A naturalist would reject a supernatural virgin birth, but that's a subjective opinion and we have no objective means of verifying it. A scientist, qua scientist, would say there are not enough data to pronounce scientifically, but might nevertheless accept the virgin birth as supernatural: some scientists are also Christian. When you can't objectively verify your beliefs and have no foreseeable way of doing so, you're outside the realm of science and (potentially) in the realm of politics.

Let's see ... wasn't it once considered an objective scientific fact, that the Jews are an inferior race? That did seem to result in the death of a lot of them. Mkmcconn 22:59 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Yes, I think some scientists considered it an objective scientific fact that Jews were an inferior race. However, those scientists who disagreed with them were not persecuted except under the Nazis, and Nazism was an anti-rationalist, supernaturalist movement whose anti-Semitism came at least in part from Christianity. Today some scientists would say Ashkenazi Jews are a superior race, at least in intelligence (e.g. see [1]), and in principle we can objectively verify that. OTOH, we can't objectively verify whether Jews are under a supernatural curse for murdering their Messiah, as Christianity taught for nearly 2000 years (and still teaches, in some cases).

If you intend to show that a supernatural epistemology is the cause of the Thirty Years War, show how naturalistic epistemology would have avoided that conflict. I don't see how that can be done, or I would attempt to write it myself. Good luck. Mkmcconn 01:13 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

You don't understand elementary logic either. From "if X, then Y" it does not follow "if ~X, then ~Y" (~X = not-X, btw). I asked a couple of questions above and you haven't answered them. If the two opposing sides during the Thirty Years War had been interested beforehand in the molecular composition of water and not in the supernatural composition of the Eucharist, would they have needed to go to war to settle any dispute that arose? If they wouldn't, why not? But I expect I'll get more casuistry. 213.122.170.125 20:17 19 Jun 2003 (UTC)

This is a very effective goad, but I'm going to stick to the point.

But you weren't going to answer the questions...

Show that epistemology is the cause of wars. This was your claim, so prove it. Discuss naturalism in the realm of politics, in order to make the comparison to supernaturalism relevant. Mkmcconn \

Look: scientists -- not naturalists -- do not need to resort to politics to settle their disputes. People in dispute about the supernatural do. Atheism in its standard forms is naturalistic, but not scientific, because it is not scientific to say there is no God: it's only scientific to say we do not need to invoke God in our explanation of a particular phenomenon. If atheists wanted to settle their dispute with theists, they would have to resort to politics, i.e. gain power and use it to silence theists by force. (And some would say that's what atheists did e.g. in communist Albania. I think it wasn't atheism as such, it was communism as a competing religion, so what happened was really like Christianity silencing paganism in the 300s.)

If this cannot be done, then drop the comparison and illustrate your point by citing instances of religious tensions and wars. No one would debate you, if your point is only that religion is blamed for a lot of trouble in the world. That's not what's silly. It's your comparison to naturalism that doesn't work. Mkmcconn

I hope you realize by now that I am not comparing religion (ideology) with naturalism (ideology) but supernaturalism (epistemology) with science (epistemology). Buddhism is a religion but has not caused as much (obvious) trouble as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, partly because it is not as supernaturalist.

With all due respect, in these last two paragraphs I think both of you are missing the point. It does not matter how clear or convincing Jacquerie's arguments about "supernaturalism" are, because no Wikipedia article should be about the views of wikipedians. J has every right to criticize supernaturalism on these talk pages, but not in the article itself. The article should provide a critical account of popular and scholarly discussions, not the views of the authors. Slrubenstein

Am I crazy? J's views are not the issue at all, SR. The deleted paragraph makes two claims. The first is that "supernaturalism" (as an epistemology) has been the cause of wars. The second is that "Naturalism" (as an epistemology) has not been the cause of wars.

I'm still having to correct your misreading. The claim was that the naturalistic epistemology of science hasn't been the cause of wars, because scientists don't need to go to war to settle their disputes. Supernaturalists do.

The paragraph does not demonstrate this claim. It does not illustrate anything. Mkmcconn \

If J can show the relevance of a naturalistic epistemology to political issues, then the comparison made in the paragraph would be relevant. Otherwise, there is no comparison -- geologists don't claim to provide political answers based on "objective science".