Lets take a little break from politics and have us a real atheist conversation.
Personally, I’m open to the idea of the existence of supernatural phenomena, and I believe mainstream religions are actually complicated incomplete stories full of misinterpretations, misunderstandings, and half-truths.
Basically, I think that these stories are not as simple and straightforward as they seem to be to religious people. I feel like there is a lot more to them. Concluding that all these stories are just made up or came out of nowhere is kind of hard for me.
Paraphrasing I believe — Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
No nothing is “supernatural “. We may not yet know what we’re seeing or exactly what happened… we simply don’t understand it yet.
Yet is relevant point there IMHO. We will.
and not understanding how something functions isnt a reason to assign intent or awareness to the thing.
But there is also a possibility that what we don’t understand transcends the laws of nature. That’s what supernatural means. A possibility that our universe is also governed by supernatural forces, as much as it is governed by natural forces.
Er um— no.
There is nothing that is “supernatural “
There is nothing that is proven and repeated not beholden to the laws of nature.
Yes it is possible, but there isn’t any proof of anything transcending nature. You’re making a “god of the gaps” argument. It is illogical to assume that god or anything supernatural keeps getting smaller and smaller so as to hide in those ever shrinking gaps.
But we need a name to describe such extraordinary events. If you erase it, what do we call such phenomena? There’s a reason why the word exists. Also, saying that I’m making a god of the gaps argument would also mean that you are making a science of the gaps argument, where you assume that science will always have an answer, and that it is the only truth. It’s why I believe that it’s best to sit on the fence on this topic, your mind being open to ideas of supernatural phenomena, as you still consider rational scientific explanations.
This “then why do we have a word for that” is such a a strange argument
We also have a word for elves, doesn’t mean they exist
It’s the same logic I see people applying to Korean, with arguments like “they have no word for depression, therefore they’re happier”, completely ignoring the fact that they have a bridge called “suicide bridge” (guess why)
If you think the word supernatural is so unneeded, you can petition for it to be taken out of dictionaries and Wikipedia.
If something can “transcend” the laws of nature, then the ability to do that is part of the laws of nature, and thus it transcends nothing. We just didn’t know all of the rules.
If ghosts are real, then they aren’t breaking the rules of nature because clearly the rules of nature allow for ghosts, we just don’t understand how yet, but then ghosts are natural.
By definition, anything real is natural, and anything supernatural is not.
That’s just a weak reformulation of the “God of the gaps” fallacy.
Saying that I’m making a god of the gaps argument would also mean that you are making a science of the gaps argument.
Except, when you fill the gaps with science, you have evidence and proof. Not superstition and ancient myth.
But you’re still leading yourself into a fallacious argument. It’s not any better.
It’s only a fallacious argument if you don’t say “we can’t answer that yet” and maybe add, “but here are some theories…”
“I don’t know” does not mean “therefore the supernatural is real.”
But we still need the word “supernatural” to describe such things. Otherwise, what do we call the phenomena?
Fictional
If it can be oberved and explained then it isn’t supernatural. Therefore nothing can be supernatural.
A ton of real things would fit in with all the supernatural stereotypes if we didn’t already accept them due to science.
I disagree. You seem to be unfamiliar with the definition of supernatural. Supernatural is anything that transcends the laws of nature. Not things that can’t be observed or explained. Something that defies the laws of nature is not natural now, is it?
Just because we do not know all the laws dosen’t mean something dosen’t have an explanation. The universe is under no obligation to make sense.
But what do we call the phenomena then, if I can’t call it supernatural?
Supernatural phenomena do not actually exist as far as I can tell. There’s no actual evidence to my knowledge, and plenty of evidence that humans are not particularly good at perceiving or interpreting the universe around us as it actually is. Our brains are not a reliable narrator, supernatural phenomena are most likely a consequence of this rather than anything genuinely supernatural.
This argument is a very common one. It’s only valid at a scientific standpoint, since you can’t really scientifically prove something that transcends the laws of nature. However, at a historical standpoint, the existence of supernatural phenomena can be considered. There is also no evidence that supernatural phenomena does not exist.
I’m not sure what you mean about a historical standpoint. I don’t think there’s anything in the historical record that could be considered actual evidence of supernatural phenomena. History as an academic discipline is a kind of science and generally approaches the subject matter with the scientific method.
What? Supernatural stuff has been talked about throughout history.
Any non-falsifiable theory is only worth so much.
And can still be considered.
Not really, because every non-falsifiable theory is true at the same time. I mean, I can’t forbid anyone from considering.
And that’s what I’m advocating. For people to sit on the fence, instead of leaning hard-science, or hard-supernatural.
You may have misunderstood me - supernatural theories are worthless because they are non-falsifiable.
That doesn’t make them worthless. Have you ever listened to stories that may involve potential supernatural forces?
I do not currently believe in any supernatural anything, for the exact same reasons I do not believe in gods.
- There is no persuasive evidence of anything supernatural
- Many supernatural phenomena were discovered to have naturalistic explanations
- The only evidence provided for supernatural phenomena is anecdotal
It’s entirely possible for there to be supernatural stuff, but the time to believe it is when it is demonstrated.
One point that I don’t see raised a lot is that otherwise perfectly mentally healthy people can experience hallucinations. They may even find them comforting, and some even then do not believe the visions are real. I have a suspicion that a lot of ghost sightings, etc, might be such hallucinations. But I can’t demonstrate that, and I’m honestly not sure how we could, unless we can find a way to trigger such hallucinations on purpose.
There hasn’t been any proof in all of history that any supernatural phenomenon was real.
Until there is, my thoughts on it are: not real, never happened.There also hasn’t been any proof that supernatural phenomena doesn’t exist. It’s why I choose to keep an open mind about it. It’s a subject that suffers a lot of stigma in the science-centric world we live in, and thus few people talk about it.
It rightly suffers stigma because it does not follow the scientific method, but claims to have scientific merit.
Supernatural phenomena does not claim to have scientific merit. You are also assuming that science will eventually explain everything about everything. That it is the only existing truth. This is called scientism, and it oversteps science’s proper boundaries.
Um… no? Not what I said and not what I believe.
To quote professor Farnsworth: “The pursuit of knowledge is hopeless and eternal. HOORAY!”
We’re always going to have things we don’t know. The point is to build on the knowledge we do have and to slowly get better. What the belief in the supernatural does is actually the shortcut to “being able to explain everything about everything”, because you’re presupposing the answer without any proof or testing done. Sure, those things might be possible, but so might be waking up in the Pokemon universe tomorrow.
Until there’s proof, I have no reason to act like there is. It’s a fun game to think about, but it shouldn’t hold any weight in how you see the universe we actually live in.
Also, the natural universe is weird enough already. Have you heard of the fine structure constant? Basically, we found this one constant number within all of these different fundamental formulas for how the universe behaves, but it doesn’t have a unit associated. So, we know that it exists and can calculate it, but no one knows WHY it exists. We think it’s a constant, but it might have changed over time, so we’re trying to find ways to test that. We might never know, but those questions are far more interesting to me than “maybe aliens”.
Yes, there’s going to be stuff we don’t know about. That’s why I’m advocating for open-mindedness to supernatural phenomena. That’s my goal.
There also hasn’t been any proof that supernatural phenomena doesn’t exist.
You can play that game all day with anything. It’s not a valid argument.
Exactly. There’s no definitive proof that winged monkeys won’t fly out of my asshole five minutes from now, but I’m not making plans that assume they will.
Why is it not a valid argument?
That’s already been explained to you by others here.
I want to hear your opinion. That’s the point of this post. It’s how we have healthy debates.
I’ve already started my opinion.
All you’re doing is telling people no. That’s not a debate.You haven’t really said anything. You just said that my argument isn’t valid, refused to elaborate why, and when asked to do so, you said that others have told me why, when I’m getting completely different opinions from multiple people. Also, disagreeing with people is literally what makes a debate a debate. What do you want me to do? Agree with everyone even if I don’t? That’s not how a genuine conversation works.
There also hasn’t been any proof that supernatural phenomena doesn’t exist
You can’t prove a negative. Which is why in the scientific method, the onus is on the person making the claim to provide the proof, not the other way around. That’s why we rarely engage in debates with people who don’t grasp that concept, because for the most part they’re argument comes down to “You can’t prove it doesn’t exist, so therefore I’m right.”
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/718/
Basically, it’s not that hard to believe there are so many stories.
While James Randi was alive, he offered $1,000,000 for proof of the supernatural. He never got that proof. I think that’s pretty telling.
There’s stuff I’ve experienced that I can’t understand or explain. Certainly, I trust other’s witnesses of their own experiences, even if they seem supernatural to me. But, I don’t consider that good enough evidence to believe in the supernatural.
Unexplained does not mean unexplainable nor supernatural.
There are all kinds of things in my life I have experienced that I cannot explain. For one thing, I am not an expert on everything. For another, I am a prisoner inside a skull that has to rely on not especially precise equipment in terms of sensory input. In other words, the meat sacks in our heads cannot be trusted. In fact, going back to Randi, if they could be trusted, Randi and other magicians would never have a job.
None of that is evidence for the supernatural.
I think it’s highly unlikely and the universe is amazing and bizarre enough without us imagining outside forces acting on it.
“Fifty thousand years ago there were these three guys spread out across the plain and they each heard something rustling in the grass. The first one thought it was a tiger, and he ran like hell, and it was a tiger but the guy got away. The second one thought the rustling was a tiger and he ran like hell, but it was only the wind and his friends all laughed at him for being such a chickenshit. But the third guy thought it was only the wind, so he shrugged it off and the tiger had him for dinner. And the same thing happened a million times across ten thousand generations - and after a while everyone was seeing tigers in the grass even when there were`t any tigers, because even chickenshits have more kids than corpses do. And from those humble beginnings we learn to see faces in the clouds and portents in the stars, to see agency in randomness, because natural selection favours the paranoid. Even here in the 21st century we can make people more honest just by scribbling a pair of eyes on the wall with a Sharpie. Even now we are wired to believe that unseen things are watching us.”
― Peter Watts, Echopraxia
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60% the person experiencing it misunderstood or misinterpreted what they were looking at because they were stupid and gullible, but not maliciously making things up.
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35% completely fabricated and never happened and created to legitimately defraud or troll others.
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5% something scientific that we simply don’t understand yet.
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0% actual supernatural occurrences.
That 5% is the most exciting thing in the world.
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I’m fully atheist, but I have seen ghosts in front of me, clear as day, while completely sober, during the daylight.
You probably need to check the mushrooms you were eating.
You are one of the reasons why people don’t report such things. You just went straight to ridiculing him without even knowing the context.
I have too, in company no less and we both saw the same thing. It’s disheartening to see such ready dismissal of what I saw by others though lol
I don’t believe in “supernatural phenomena” either. If they’d exist, we’d actually have prove of their existence. There’s about 8 billion people on this planet and for some reason all the “recorded” phenomena date back to before everyone had an easy to record device in their pockets. They’ve all gone down to 0 for some odd reason, even though it is as easy as ever to actually provide literal proof - if they existed in the first place.
People who experience supernatural phenomena are experiencing either natural phenomena they are too stupid to understand, are fooled by man made things, or are hallucinating for whatever reason.
The reason why you don’t see in supernatural phenomena is because those who experience it don’t report it, because of the stigmatization surrounding the subject. If you say you saw something supernatural and reported it, people will ridicule you, or call you crazy. If video evidence is provided, it’s fake or edited. There are however videos featuring things that cannot be explained rationally, opening the door to potential supernatural explanations.
“let’s talk about a topic. But I’m gonna tell you you’re wrong with no evidence”
Weird way to spend your time, but hey, at least you got a hobby. I’m just an idiot replying to a reply of a weird hobby.
I don’t see where I told him that he’s wrong. I just told him why you won’t really hear about supernatural stuff. We’re having a conversation. I don’t know what you want me to do.
There are like 9 ghost hunting TV shows on Hulu, probably. Belief in the supernatural isn’t some underground fringe theory that will get you shunned or locked up. There are oodles of people out there that earnestly believe in spirits and psychics and auras and reincarnation and witchcraft and whatever the fuck else people can come up with to either
a.) make sense of a world they don’t understand or b.) help them feel like they have more control in a world that makes them feel powerless
And each of them would be absolutely thrilled if there was some incontrovertible proof of their particular flavor of magic, but there isn’t, and those people are suckers. If you’re willing to believe that there’s any amount of paranormal shit going on in the world, despite having no proof of it, you might want to reevaluate your position as an atheist. I know I would.
There are however videos featuring things that cannot be explained rationally
You can – quite literally – create any effect on video. You should go watch that guy that debunks YouTube videos for a living. He shows you exactly how the effects were created, etc.
There are however videos featuring things that cannot be explained rationally
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_effect
Also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_(illusion)
I saw David Copperfield walk through the Great Wall of China on live TV. I don’t think he actually walked through the Great Wall of China. I also don’t think he made the Statue of Liberty disappear.
I also saw Teller of Penn and Teller drown in a water tank with my own eyes at a live show and he stayed there, dead and unmoving, for the entire intermission. Then he was back on stage a few minutes later.
I do not think Teller drowned and came back from the dead even though that is exactly what I saw.
Yeah, most unexplained videos go through verifications to make sure it’s not FX, and when it’s not, it’s how they end up unexplained. This is especially common in the UFO community.
Verification by whom? Why should that person or people be trusted? Do they already have a bias towards believing in the supernatural?
The Pentagon.
Now you’re just lying. The Pentagon has done no such thing. The closest they have even come to what you are claiming is saying they can’t explain it.
Yes, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Unexplained. That means that The Pentagon has tried to figure out what they were looking at, but they left it as unexplained. We’ve also had many UAP hearings in congress where they disclosed a bunch of UFOs, and alien stuff. Anyway, yeah. The US govt is embracing the possible existence of extraterrestrial life running around here on Earth.
It’s entirely possible that supernatural phenomena exist. It’s also possible that what we call “supernatural” is merely science we don’t understand yet. After all, things like lightning and disease used to be attributed to gods, evil spirits, witchcraft, etc. I guess I’d call myself an open-minded skeptic, if that makes any sense.
The point of “super” natural is that it CAN’T be explained using the rules of our universe. Unexplained things that COULD be explained aren’t super. They’re just natural.
Wait, is this a depiction of the flat earth dome cutting someone in half?
You look at it too literally, but yes, that’s what it looks like. It’s actually a symbolic painting supposed to represent the pursuit for mystical knowledge.
It’s a bad Victorian picture of their defective understanding of the medieval mystical world view.
I’ll believe anything you tell me, including gods and magic, as long as you can present evidence appropriate to your claim. Anyone who wants me to believe what they’re saying about anything divine or supernatural had better be able to back it up, or else I’m going to laugh in their face.
An interesting case for you to dive into: The Skinwalker Ranch.
I was quite interested in Snikwalker ranch for a hot second like 2 years ago, and what I can say is: There’s no real evidence of anything supernatural, most of the claims are unverifiable and made by people who wanna believe in the first place, the previous owner of the ranch claimed they made up the supernatural bits to sell it, and every popular bit of information about is coded in scary music and spooky effects on TV programmes. I’d actually like to see if you got any like, scientific articles about it, because I never went that far with my interest. Just seems like a ranch with weird radio interference on Tuesdays. I’m open to accepting the existence of supernatural stuff, but evidence wise, I’ve never seen anything conclusive.
Why would I be interested in alien ghost stories? Cattle mutilation and alien abduction aren’t credible examples of the supernatural.
You’re reluctant for some reason. If you don’t challenge your beliefs, how do you expect to grow? There’s more to it than just cattle mutilations and alien abductions.
Okay, I’m listening. Show me the evidence. Explain the supernatural to me.
Definition. I’ve already given you something to dive into. The Skinwalker Ranch. You can listen to the story on this channel. Great voice, and visuals.
