Any time a claim is made about the universe that is not supported by evidence (This doesn't mean that there is necessarily evidence against it, just that there is no evidence FOR it), that is superfluous to our knowledge and understanding of the universe, that takes advantage of vague terms such as "energy" being used in the wrong manner, or that violates a known law of physics without offering a modification to our understanding of that law, it can be called "supernatural".
The moment a person describes their own claim as supernatural, they have show it is false already. Where "super" means "beyond", and natural means "what occurs in the universe as a normal part of operation", anything which can be said to happen, such as a person's consciousness living on after their bodily death as a ghost, is not beyond the natural, it is natural. If it is possible for a dying person to exert will and prevent their "soul" from leaving the "world of the living", then it must be a natural part of the world order. Babies are born, humans digest food, rocks fall when thrown into the air, and dead people's souls can be ghosts. Just another day at the office.
At the core of most supernatural claims is some superfluous something. The soul is an example: we see that humans operate, we see that people are regularly born and function in very similar ways to each other, and we understand that conscious thought is the result of extremely complex interactions between nerve cells in our brains. When you say that there is also this magic copy of our memories and thoughts and personalities that resides inside ourselves and serves only as a back-up of ourselves for when we die that will be able to allow us to live forever, you haven't done anything to explain the world. (I won't go into more detail about souls here, that's a subject for a different post)
Another superfluous claim is that of a deistic god. Instead of starting at what we know (the universe exists) and working backwards to how it got here by learning more, there are those that assume that because we don't have an explanation for the existence of the universe that the first one that is offered must be correct. Occum's Razor quickly disposes of this.
For those that aren't familiar with this term, I'll fill you in. Occum's Razor is a principle of science and philosophy that states "All things being equal, the simplest explanation is usually the right one". In practice, this means stripping superfluous aspects of an explanation, because that which is superfluous has no explaining power. For example, when we are investigating a murder, and it is shown that the murder weapon was a .44 Caliber pistol, it would not help to also state that your uncle had a wart on his left big toe that planted the idea in there murderer's head to use the pistol. It is normal for a person to use a .44 Caliber pistol at hand to be chosen as a murder weapon, and as such it is normal for a murderer to think of such a weapon. It does not help to state that the idea came from the magic wart on your uncle's left big toe, and going out of their way to arrest this wart would be a serious misallocation of government funds. Is it possible that the wart is magic? Sure, I'd say so. But until we find some reason to assume that this is the case, or that this explanation would help progress the investigation, it does not help, and must be discarded as explanation. Its just not practical to lend credence to every claim someone makes when they offer no evidence and the claim doesn't help to explain anything.
So what about if a person decides to spend their own hard-earned money on investigating the properties of telepathic murder-weapon-expert warts? If that is the case, they do have that right. But is it a good thing? Well obviously investigating something like that can be called a waste of money, but after all, it's their money, right? Well yes, and I would never suggest that this should be illegal. However, if I were to walk into a popular bookstore chain and see that the books on Magic Wart Weaponselectionology outnumber books on Criminal Psychology by a 3 to 1 ratio, I would become concerned.
But this is not just some hypothetical scenario. A visit to a Barnes and Noble revealed exactly this in regards to the ratio of Astrology books against Astronomy. This is because there are more people who actually believe that astrology is a science and who are willing to buy books on it than there are people willing to buy books on astronomy. The laws of supply and demand reveal the beliefs of the region, it seems.
I propose that this sort of thing has a majorly ill effect on people. We have, for thousands of years, been developing a reliable standard for determining what we should spend time investigating. We have come to the point quite recently where we first have to establish the testability of a claim before investigating. This is a way to make sure that we don't waste time on hundreds of thousands of possible untestable hypotheses.
Many people who believe in certain supernatural claims call this closed mindedness. But, it was our open-mindedness that led us to come to the point where we realized that we had to filter our hypotheses.
Carl Sagan described the issue the best:
"It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas … If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you … On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones."
In short, it's good to be open minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out.
god made science
ReplyDeleteWhat does that even mean? You mean that God made the process of skeptical inquiry? Could you please support that statement with some form of evidence? Or anything more than a bald assertion? You don't wanna look like an asshat, do you?
ReplyDelete