Back to topic: Supernaturalism III (Chapter 3)
Supernaturalists respond to the claim that their worldview cannot be falsified with the counter-claim that naturalism, too, cannot be falsified.
I'm afraid that's not right. There are multiple ways to falsify naturalism.
Finding non-physical causes
Find a non-physical cause that cannot be explained by measurement errors, unknown physical processes, or statistical artifacts.
Measurement errors occur in all measurements, but this can be explained purely in naturalistic terms. According to naturalism, measurement errors must even occur. If there are no measurement errors, that could even falsify naturalism.
Unknown physical processes include, among others, gravity. There is no explanation for it; we do not know how it works. However, we can measure its effects, and it fits within the framework of general physical principles.
A widely recognized problem is that the descriptions of gravity in the theory of relativity (TR) and quantum mechanics (QM) logically contradict each other. According to TR, gravity is continuous; according to QM, it is quantized. However, there are several naturalistic theories that explain this, such as the quantum loop theory of gravity. All logical contradictions are an indicator of serious difficulties for any theory, including naturalism.
The issue is that the predictions of the two theories fall within the margin of measurement error. Therefore, it has not yet been possible to determine which of them is correct.
Naturalism claims that all causal processes are physical in nature. Show one example that contradicts this claim within available data. Again, as always, measurement errors or statistical artifacts do not count.
When we find that in our current measurements there is no way to explain the cause within the natural framework, naturalism would be falsified.
Notice that naturalism makes predictions that can be measured (proven). Supernaturalism does not make any provable predictions that cannot be explained by naturalism. It often does not make predictions at all, because that is risky business. One way for supernaturalism to demonstrate that it has an acceptable methodology is to use the supernatural framework and show that it is possible to make logically coherent predictions that can be measured. This hasn't been done yet because there is no epistemology, no logic, and no methods to make predictions that are different from guesswork. Naturalism predicts that these kinds of predictions will be as good as any random guesses within a statistical margin. It was never shown to be otherwise; all attempts have failed. What supernaturalists never fail to provide are lame excuses, sometimes even ridiculous excuses, why they have failed—again.
Example: regrowing limbs
For example, if it could be demonstrated that by praying to a supernatural agent, a severed limb grows back, naturalism would be falsified. Otherwise, all reported miracles of curing can be explained by the ability of our bodies to cure themselves. The growing back of limbs, however, cannot be explained by naturalism.
We know, for example, that spontaneous remissions in cancer occur with a certain statistical frequency. Some mechanisms by which the immune system fights cancer cells are already known. Efforts are currently underway to stimulate these mechanisms to combat cancer. Spontaneous remissions occurring within the expected statistical range are therefore no reason to reject naturalism. Did you know, for example, that there are fewer spontaneous remissions in Lourdes than would be expected based on statistics for any hospital in the world?
Because some spontaneous remissions are to be expected due to known mechanisms in our immune system, anecdotal evidence of some remissions of cancer could not be counted. It would be odd if these did not occur frequently, within the frequencies shown by statistics.
But regrowth of limbs or organs does not fit in naturalism and would refute naturalism.
In general, any cause that could be shown to be non-physical, even if you allow for unknown parameters, new types of fields, or measurement errors, that cannot be explained by naturalism would refute naturalism. Someone walking on water would be another example. But be careful; ancient reports of miracles are not observed miracles and cannot count. The famous magician David Blaine and others have walked on water, shown on film. However, these are clever tricks, not real magic. Be aware that most magic tricks can fool you into thinking that they violate the laws of nature. When you know how David Blaine walked on water or how Uri Geller does his spoon bending, you know that no physical laws were violated.
Violation of the law of the conservation of energy
The violation of the law of conservation of energy would refute naturalism, too. If energy appears out of nowhere or the effect of an impulse vanishes, naturalism must be rejected. Note, though, that QM does allow short violations of these laws (quantum fluctuations). But these do not survive decoherence. In the end, all of these imbalances must disappear.
Some supernaturalists claim that the energy of the universe cannot be explained by naturalism. The fact is that the energy within the universe does not violate any natural law, because the negative energy of masses cancels all the positive energy we find. The universe does not contain energy, plus/minus the amount of one quantum fluctuation. This is considered one of many possible explanations of the existence of the universe because it is predicted by QM. Like nearly all physical laws, this is counterintuitive. Because our intuition fails in the realm of QM badly, this is exploited by some supernaturalists. Never let your intuition guide you when examining physical processes in the area of QM or TR. This guidance will nearly almost fail. QM and TR cannot be understood by intuition. Our intuition was built for the survival of our ancestors in the realm between small scale (microcosm, QM) and large scale (macrocosm, TR), not for knowing what really happens. That realm between the microcosm and macrocosm is called the mesocosm. Richard Dawkins coined the nice termMiddle Earthfor mesocosm, taken from the novel
Lord of the Rings.
If, when measuring in a closed system:
- energy appears out of nowhere, or
- momentum disappears without a physical cause,
And if this were reproducible and controlled and could not be explained by the instruments, then that would be direct evidence of non-physical causality.
Example of the violation of the law
Example: A perfectly isolated system exhibits systematic increases in energy that cannot be attributed to measurement errors, heat leakage, or quantum fluctuations. In any of these cases, naturalism must be refuted.
The construction of a perpetuum mobile would refute naturalism. This has been tried very regularly, unsuccessfully.
Information without a physical basis
If information arises that:
- cannot be derived from prior physical information,
- cannot be explained by chance (e.g., beyond Landauer limits),
- and has no physical source,
Then this would be an indication of non-physical sources of information.
This relates to current discussions about measurement limits and falsifiability in biological systems. Scientists discuss ideas to reject naturalism daily.
If it can be shown that:
- A conscious mental state causes a physical event,
- But there is no neural, electromagnetic, or quantum-physical process that mediates this effect.
Then that would be a direct violation of naturalism.
Example for a violation of the physical base of information
Example: A subject influences a physical system (e.g., a random number generator) without any measurable physical activity occurring in the brain.
If you have an experiment that:
- is perfectly controlled,
- allows for no unknown variables,
- and yet systematically produces results that cannot be explained by chance,
and if these results can be explained only by assuming non-physical causes.
This would be a kind of parapsychological falsification.
Strict conditions must be applied; otherwise, magicians could fool you.
Notice that sometimes supernaturalists claim they have refuted naturalism, but they seldom present data. They are dancing around with some dubious arguments with questionable premises they take for granted. And even their logic is seldom valid and never solid. Naturalism developed for purely practical reasons and has a lot of practical experience accumulated over time. That experience can't be denied just by some handwaving from an armchair perspective.
The problem of refuting naturalism is that it is a framework, not a theory. And the framework of naturalism is flexible and adaptive. There are plenty of examples from the past where even scientists believed that naturalism had to be rejected. Later, errors in methodology were found and corrected, and naturalism was established again. This will happen again once in a while; you do not need to be a prophet to predict that.
Hard work is required to refute naturalism. Interestingly, no supernaturalist risks investing in such hard labor. They always think that they can explain the world from their armchair, without labor, without taking a close look at the world. Supernaturalism is a worldview that does not view the world. For that reason, we must rely on scientists to refute naturalism.
People have, over time, found so many ways to err.Back to topic: Supernaturalism III Back to start: Supernaturalism I
—Volker Dittmar