Supernatural

{{magic}}
''Not to be confused with'' ''{{wpl|Supernatural (American TV series)|the show of the same name}}'' 
{{cquote|Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.|||{{wpl|Edward Abbey}}<ref>[http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/supernatural_2.html QuotationsBook]</ref>}}

{{cquote|To the scientist the word "supernatural" is a contradiction. Everything that is in the universe is natural; the supernatural is the natural not yet understood. And that which is called the supernatural is often the figment of a disordered, undisciplined or undeveloped imagination.|||Elbert Hubbard (1905), ''Little Journeys to Homes of Great Scientists''}}

{{cquote|Anyone who can tap into the fourth spatial dimension (or what is today called the fifth dimension, with time being the fourth dimension) can indeed become invisible, and can even assume the powers normally ascribed to ghosts and gods.|||{{wpl|Michio Kaku}}<ref>Parallel Worlds (2006) pg 142</ref>}}

'''Supernatural''' is 
a TV show that aired on CW
 
a word to describe the traits of certain characters in their fictional universes
 an adjective which can refer to events, entities, or explanations, or to powers claimed to be possessed by certain individuals.  What all these have in common is that is that they do not conform to a [[Philosophical naturalism | naturalistic]] worldview.

Alleged supernatural events would include interventions by [[poltergeist]]s or a [[God]], [[virgin birth]]s, or miraculous [[healing]]s. Injuries or illnesses of unknown origin may be blamed on supernatural causes, or [[curse]]s. 

Supernatural beings include gods, [[Fun:Fairies|fairies]], [[ghost]]s, [[spirits]], and suchlike. Supernatural things include magic rings, witch's brooms, and [[Ouija board]]s. Supernatural substances include ectoplasm and ambrosia. Supernatural places include [[Heaven]], [[Hell]], and Valhalla; supernatural times include [[Friday 13th]], [[Christmas]], and [[Leap year#Superstition|February 29th]]; supernatural forces include animal magnetism. 

Supernatural explanations often entail the interference of an alleged supernatural being to explain a real-world event. For example, the suggestion that the Christian God sent [[Hurricane Katrina]] [[Divine retribution|to punish the US for something or other]]. But supernatural explanations may involve impersonal influences: astrological aspect, pyramid power, aura, hot hand. Sometimes the distinction is difficult to draw, as with Lady Luck. Sometimes scientific concepts are borrowed in the service of the supernatural: Law of Averages, Information, quantum.

Supernatural powers are those claimed to be held by people such as [[psychic]]s, [[Fortune-telling|fortune tellers]], [[dowsing|dowsers]], etc. As with all claimed supernatural activity, these powers have not been (properly) demonstrated.

==History of supernatural belief==

Supernatural beliefs may have arisen due to a variety of factors, such as the human tendency to seek explanation, [[pareidolia]], and [[pattern recognition]].<ref>Justin L. Barrett. [http://www.cog.jhu.edu/courses/112/readings/Barrett.pdf Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion.] ''Trends in Cognitive Sciences'' – Vol. 4, No. 1, January 2000</ref> A strain of prey species whose [[Signal detection theory|threat detection system]] does a good job of spotting potential predators in the background clutter, but with some false alarms, survives better than a strain which does not startle easily, but occasionally misses a leopard in the trees. In other words, we were bred to be spooked by shadows. The inducement of altered states of consciousness may also have played a part.<ref name="williams">J. David Lewis-Williams. (2010) [http://books.google.com/books/about/Conceiving_God.html?id=Zkt2PgAACAAJ ''Conceiving God: The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion''.] Thames & Hudson, London.</ref> 

Although the precise nature of the earliest supernatural beliefs remains hazy and the particular contents of the earliest religions have proven elusive, archaeological remains allow us to to make some general speculations.

One of the earliest pieces of evidence for supernatural beliefs is the first known ceremonial burial at the Qafzeh Cave in Israel, dating to about 92,000 years ago.<ref>Ofer Bar-Yosef et al. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248408002340 Shells and ochre in Middle Paleolithic Qafzeh Cave, Israel: indications for modern behavior.] ''Journal of Human Evolution'' Volume 56, Issue 3, March 2009, Pages 307–314</ref> Ceremonial burial presumably indicates that early humans had some concept of the [[afterlife]] and may also suggest some kind of ancestor worship.

Ceremonial burials such as the ones at Qafzeh, along with cave paintings and artefacts such as statuettes, have been taken to imply that the earliest forms of religion were [[animism|animistic]] in nature.<ref name="williams"/> Specific gods, goddesses, and other supernatural entities are apparent in the mythology of early civilizations such as the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks.

Today, [[science]] has provided answers to the origin of volcanoes, earthquakes, and the rain, thus leaving the supernatural to find refuge in [[god of the gaps]] type ideas, the argument being that if science has not yet provided an answer, then supernatural explanations are justified.

===Origin and history of the term===

The term "supernatural" itself did not come to be used until the 15th century and means, when translated literally from the [[Latin]] roots, "above nature". 

In the original sense of the coinage, though, it had the connotation of something that was "of or given by [[god]]". By the 19th century, its usage had expanded to include other non-material mythical beings such as ghosts, demons, etc.<ref>[http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=supernatural Supernatural in the Online Etymological Dictionary]</ref> It is, however, worth noting that the natural/supernatural distinction is not universal. Some cultures — such as the Nayaka (of India) and the Ojibwe — do not (currently) have a concept of the supernatural.<ref>
Nurit Bird-David. [http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2012_08.dir/pdfFNa83UDbvD.pdf "Animism" Revisited.] ''Current Anthropology''
Vol. 40, No. S1, Special Issue Culture—A Second Chance? (February 1999), pp. S67-S91
</ref>
And Westerners once paid a certain amount of attention to the '''preternatural''' as well, often defining magic and witchcraft (which most would now call supernatural) under this term. Some, such as [[Thomas Aquinas]], defined it as unusual things which still happened because of a created being's actions (i.e. not God's actions), to distinguish them from [[miracle]]s. After the Scientific Revolution, the term increasingly came to be used for abnormal phenomena that were still natural, before fading away entirely in common parlance.

==Modern supernatural beliefs==

Notwithstanding the advances of modern science and [[rationality]], a vast number of supernatural beliefs remain, including such traditional ideas as the belief in gods, [[ghosts]], and [[spiritualism]]. Furthermore, vendors of traditional supernatural services, such as [[tarot]]-card readers, [[psychics]], and [[astrology|astrologists]], still do good [[business]].     

Nevertheless, although many traditional religious/supernatural beliefs are on the wane{{fact}}, they seem to be being replaced by new ideas about "spirituality" which may be linked to ideas such as [[magical thinking]], the power of [[crystals]], the mysterious messages of [[pyramid]]s, or anything [[quantum woo|"quantum"]].

As a consequence, it may sometimes become difficult to draw a hard-and-fast line between the supernatural and full-on [[pseudoscience]].

The difference can usually be found in the claimed agency. While truly supernatural believers will usually attribute the mysterious to hidden supernatural intelligence (a god, [[daemon]], or spirit), pseudoscience practitioners, on the other hand, maintain that if only the scientific community<ref>{{wpa|scientific community}}</ref> would open its eyes to their wonderful knowledge, then their work should rapidly be accepted as no more than [[Scientific consensus|standard science]]. Nevertheless, the overlap remains.

==Can science test the supernatural?==
A common line of thought is that science cannot test the supernatural. This is usually based on the reification of [[methodological naturalism]] and ignorance of [[philosophical naturalism]]. Methodological naturalism is the exclusion of supernatural explanations during scientific investigation. 

In a report on [[creationism]], the National Academies of Science affirm this view:

{{cquote|In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world.... Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science.<ref>National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine. [http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11876&page=12 Science, Evolution, and Creationism.] Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2008.</ref>}}

Contrary to this [[NOMA]] [[Accommodationism|accommodationist]] nonsense, [http://www.naturalism.org/sites/naturalism.org/files/Can%20Science%20Test%20Supernatural%20Worldviews%20Final%20Author%20Copy%20%28Fishman%202007%29.pdf Fishman's "Can Science Test Supernatural Worldviews?" paper argues that the supernatural could be discovered and tested by science] just like anything else.<ref>Yonatan I. Fishman, PhD. [http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11191-007-9108-4] Springer Netherlands, 2007.</ref> Prominent outspoken atheists, such as [[Richard Carrier]] ([http://richardcarrier.blogspot.ca/2007/01/defining-supernatural.html article here]) and [[Victor Stenger]] ([http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Super.pdf lecture slides here]), have made similar points against the above quote.

However, in his 1905 book ''Little Journeys to Homes of Great Scientists'', Elbert Hubbard stated "To the scientist the word "supernatural" is a contradiction. Everything that is in the universe is natural; '''the supernatural is the natural not yet understood.''' And that which is called the supernatural is often the figment of a disordered, undisciplined or undeveloped imagination."

Elbert Hubbard's view of the supernatural was supported by Horace Mitchell Miner's darkly [[Satire|satirical]] 1956 paper "Body Ritual among the Nacirema"<ref>[http://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacirema.pdf Body Ritual among the Nacirema] by Horace Miner, ''American Anthropologist'', 1956, 58(3), 503-507.</ref>, which took the then common methodology of looking at "primitive" peoples and casually dismissing their ways as "[[magic]]" and belief in the "supernatural" and turned it on the then-current 1950s [[United States]].

The result showed that with this mindset, even the most scientifically-based technological advanced society could be portrayed as believers in magic and the supernatural:

* [[Water chlorination|Chlorination of water]] to prevent disease is reduced to "the Water Temple of the community, where the [[priest]]s conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure."
* The hospital with all its hard-learned scientific advances is reduced to a temple which "is where you go to die" with the nurses now "vestal maidens" and the doctors now "medicine men".
* Scientific [[medicine]] itself is reduced to "ceremonies" of "discomfort and torture" with "magic wands" (thermometers) and "magically treated needles" (antibiotics and medicines).

After this, Horace Miner's fellow [[anthropologist|anthropologists]] got the hint and actually looked at [[magic]]. They discovered that the only real differences between the magical worldview and science was that magic didn't have a self-correcting mechanic nor a set procedure for determining which concept best fit what was being observed.

It should be mentioned that there were sciences that dealt with the supernatural and magic that have eventually gone ad hoc in their theories or fell apart when they encountered observations that could not be explained. These include [[alchemy]], [[astrology]], and thaumatology (which originally was the study of miracles, but has been expanded to mean science of magic itself, a.k.a. thaumaturgy<ref>Bonewits, Isaac (1971) ''Real Magic''; (2005) ''Authentic Thaumaturgy''</ref>).

All these sciences made testable, empirical claims. Ghosts, for one, are sometimes said to excrete [[ectoplasm]] and were suggested to be 4th dimensional beings by Cambridge Platonist Henry Moore in the 17th century.<ref>Per the print copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos pg 219 - "If a fourth-dimension creature existed it could, in our three-dimensional universe, appear and dematerialize at will, change shape remarkably, pluck us out of locked rooms, and make us appear from nowhere."</ref> [[Astrology]] makes predictions about the alignment of the planets, personality, and the future, albeit often [[forer effect|deliberately vague]]. The force of [[psi]] alleged by [[parapsychology|parapsychologists]] is often conceived of as being a non-natural force. Indeed, the entire field of parapsychology is predicated on studying non-natural or supernatural forces in a supposedly "scientific" manner.<ref>George R. Price. [http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/HomePage/Class/Psy391P/Price.pdf Science and the Supernatural.] ''Science'' 26 August 1955: Vol. 122 no. 3165 pp. 359-367</ref>

By certain criteria of [[demarcation problem|demarcation]], such as [[Karl Popper]]'s [[falsifiability]], the above examples would qualify as science. Bad science, but science nonetheless. However, certain other formulations of the supernatural that evade being testable, such as [[Last Thursdayism]] or [[Theism|theistic]] [[idealism]], would fall outside of science by this criterion. Similarly, believers in [[miracle]]s or the power of [[prayer]] may evade testability. They can easily claim that God simply chose not to answer the prayers, or that testing God scientifically would be arrogant and that God would not respond in such a situation.<ref>[[Massimo Pigliucci]]. [http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2013/07/testing-supernatural.html Testing the Supernatural]. ''Rationally Speaking'', Jul. 19, 2013.</ref> Similar claims are often made by [[psychic]]s, who claim that [[skeptic]]s give off "bad vibes" or "negative energy" that dampens their psychic powers when they are in a [[million-dollar challenge|controlled experimental situation]]. These types of claims easily [[escape hatch|evade being disproven]] by scientific means.

Returning to creationism, it makes both testable and untestable claims. Clearly the former can be tested by science. Larry Laudan made this argument in his criticism of the logic behind the ruling of [[McLean v. Arkansas]]. He argues that the question of whether creationism is scientific or not is a [[red herring]], as there is no clear [[demarcation problem|demarcation criteria]]. As Laudan writes:

{{cquote|Rather than taking on the creationists obliquely in wholesale fashion by suggesting that what they are doing is "unscientific" tout court (which is doubly silly because few authors can even agree on what makes an activity scientific), we should confront their claims directly and in piecemeal fashion by asking what evidence and arguments can be marshaled for and against each of them. The core issue is not whether Creationism satisfies some undemanding and highly controversial definitions of what is scientific; the real question is whether the existing evidence provides stronger arguments for evolutionary theory than for Creationism. Once that question is settled, we will know what belongs in the classroom and what does not. Debating the scientific status of Creationism (especially when "science" is construed in such an unfortunate manner) is a red herring that diverts attention away from the issues that should concern us.<ref>Larry Laudan. [http://faculty.washington.edu/lynnhank/Laudan.pdf Commentary: Science at the Bar-Causes for Concern.] ''Science, Technology, & Human Values''
Vol. 7, No. 41 (Autumn, 1982), pp. 16-19</ref>}}

Richard Carrier argues supernatural should not be defined as "untestable" and "unexplained" as some have done. He instead advocates that it be the "irreducibly mental", to encompass [[Dualism|bodiless minds]], ghosts, [[psychic powers]], magic, miracles, gods, etc. and that there could be (or have been) testable claims of this kind. The issue in his view is therefore that claims such as creationism, rather than simply getting dismissed for being "supernatural", ''don't'' make testable claims, so they can't be called science (avoiding the philosophical wrangles about how to define this).<ref>[https://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/01/defining-supernatural.html Defining the Supernatural]</ref>

==See also==
*[[Astrology]]
*[[Dualism]]
*[[Fun:Evidence for the existence of the supernatural Bingo]]
*[[Magic]]
*[[Paranormal]]
*[[Religion]]
*[[Superstition]]
*[[Wishful thinking]]

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

[[Category:Magic]]
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Woo]]

Categories: Magic, Religion, Woo