samedi 25 février 2017

If science proved a supernatural phenomenon to exist, would that make it "natural"?

The article Testing the Supernatural deals with the question of whether "supernatural" is just a label for a phenomenon that we haven't been able to explain using our scientific understanding of the world:
Quote:

I refer to the term "supernatural" as a label-of-the-gaps...

One way of thinking about it is with an analogy to Dark Matter. In astronomy it was observed that galaxies rotated more rapidly than expected. Using the light emitted from the galaxy, you can estimate the amount of material needed to emit that light, and use that to determine rotation speeds. The amount of mass estimated from the light emitted is far less than the amount of mass estimated from the rotation speeds - somehow there is a large amount of mass unaccounted for. Astronomers named this extra mass "Dark Matter". Notice, that this is not an explanation for the extra mass, but a label for "something I don't know is causing this effect".

In this way, the term "supernatural" may be a label for "something I don't know is causing this effect", where the effect may be a miracle claim, prayers answered, origin of the universe, origin of life, etc... Thus, the phrase "supernatural explanation" is a meaningless phrase - there can be no supernatural explanation, just as Dark Matter is not an explanation. However, as Fishman uses in his title, one could test "supernatural worldviews" - those constructions that use the label to suggest some unknown (and possibly unknowable) agency at work.
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One might think that a scientific theory can't have anything like this in it, but that is not correct. For example, consider the wavefunction in quantum mechanics. Here we have an entity in a theory which is not directly observable - even in principle - yet the theory makes very specific predictions. It is possible to have such entities in a scientific theory, and we accept such entities in so far as the predictions which come from them are observed.

...science ... can test specific predictions that incorporate unknown, and possibly unknowable, entities that have direct physical effects.
http://ift.tt/2lV9rDR

So if God exists and prayer worked with God using a divine willpower to enact His will, would that be "supernatural"? Maybe, tot he extent that the Lord would be a "supernatural" being. What if the human was given a divine ability like prophecy? Would that be "supernatural", or would the explanation for the phenomenon make it "natural"?


via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2laW79Z

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