Back to Supernaturalism VII, part 7 of the series
Why to prefer supernaturalism
I have to admit that you might prefer supernaturalism if you favor comforting lies and fallacies and falsehood above knowing the truth. Supernaturalism adds nothing to knowledge except that we now know that some people prefer comforting falsehoods over real knowledge. If you know a bit of psychology, this does not come as a surprise.
I prefer the truth, even if it is not comforting and is harsh or even brutal at times. I live in the real world and have to deal with real-world problems, not a fantasy world, no matter how much I would prefer the latter. Of course, in a fantasy world, God is always what you wish for. In the real world, there might be a God; I even concede that, but the probability that He is like you wish Him to be is so close to zero that it makes no difference whether He exists or not.
Supernaturalism is the base for monotheism, which means every failure of supernaturalism directly reflects back to monotheism. Paganism, on the other hand, does not rely on supernaturalism but on pure naturalism, which means if you search for a rational religion, you might start your search there and abandon supernaturalistic monotheism. I never understood how people came to think that monotheism is superior to paganism when the opposite is true.
Defining naturalism
But how do we define naturalism? I left this question for the finish, and yes, it will finish supernaturalism.
The natural world is the sum of all that is the case. It is the sum of all existing facts, and naturalism tries to eliminate all that is not the case (which is why it is an enemy of supernaturalism). Whatever is outside the natural world might exist as an idea, but without evidence, you never know if it is a fact. On a linguistic level, or analytical philosophical level, something existing is either a fact of the natural world or does not exist. The opposite of natural is cultural, the realm of all things manufactured or manipulated by humans. Gods clearly belong to the realm of cultural ideas. Ideas can be seen as existing, like feelings, thoughts, perceptions etc.
Apologists often misrepresent this. They say that naturalism claims that the natural world is all that exists. But it is the other way around: all that exists, and especially all that can be proven to exist, belongs to the natural world. Because if something exists, it can act causally with other things that exist. If we are in this chain of causality, we can perceive, observe, and measure it. Whatever can act causally in the world, which we can observe and measure, can be shown to exist. For everything else existence claims are dubious.
Naturalism is not materialism
Materialism, also known as physicalism, claims that the material world is all that exists. Naturalism deals with the non-material world of ideas as well and therefore should not be confused with materialism/physicalism. Some strands of naturalism embrace the idea of metaphysics as well; for example, Sir Raimund Popper did it when arguing against positivism. This is the philosophical metaphysical position of critical rationalism. I'm a proponent of this philosophy, known as evolutionary epistemology, which explores the evolutionary traits of our thinking and the limits of our ideas.
What supernaturalists never explain or specify, though they like to act as if they can explain everything, is the way the nonmaterial world interacts with the material world, though that is crucial for their standpoint. We know that material objects can causally interact with other physical objects. All perception, all observation, and all measurement are based on this. And we know that nonmaterial things like ideas cannot interact with the material world. Ideas cannot even interact with other ideas without a material brain.
Non-material is the same as static, unchangeable
The nonmaterial world consists of ideas, numbers, and abstractions, and this is a static world without any causality. It does not influence the material world. If you imagine that God is something nonmaterial or immaterial, for all we know, he is static and cannot interact with the world, like it is the case with all ideas, abstractions, etc. All information processing in the brain is correlated with material interactions, and that is the only way we know that can change information.
Some supernaturalists point vaguely to quantum superposition. This has numerous problems: first, you have to use a specific interpretation of quantum physics, and there are lots of them, because we do not know how we can translate the events in the quantum world to our understanding except by invoking a purely mathematical understanding. Second, quantum superposition is a one-time event: you create a superposition, and when you access the information, the superposition immediately ceases to exist. Third, superpositions get annihilated through decoherence when we have to deal with larger, composite objects, like brain cells. Not everything is connected to everything else; this is an esoteric and false claim.
We are left with the claim that the immaterial world somehow, in an unknown and unknowable way, magically interacts with the material world. Whenever supernaturalists run out of explanations, magical thinking is employed. Because no one really understands quantum physics, you can always invoke some quantum hocus-pocus to seemingly explain to something you do not understand. As the physicist Feynman said, if you pretend that you have understood quantum physics, this proves that you haven't understood it.
The phrases outside of space and time
or not belonging to the natural world
mean semantically the same as not existing.
Whatever is not a fact does not exist as part of the natural world. If the existence of God is a fact, God exists in the natural world or does not exist at all. Being natural means having real-world properties that make a difference for the world.
Ideas, abstractions etc. do not belong to the material natural world, but to the static world that does not causally interact with the material world.
That you cannot explain an event within a worldview is not an argument against that view. Because no worldview can be complete and explain everything, unless you count fake explanations as successful. If you only consider real explanations, not any worldview can explain everything. To explain everything, you must know everything, and that is logically impossible. Because that would include that you know what you don't know, and that is logically impossible.
Despite this, the argument against naturalism is very popular among apologists. You cannot explain phenomena X; therefore, your worldview is completely false. Does that mean that Christianity is false because it cannot explain gravity or how to fill out your tax forms? Of course not. Some go so far as to claim that if you cannot explain X, God exists. That is sheer nonsense and exploits the fact that it appears as if God can explain anything when it really explains nothing. Lack of knowledge cannot be used as an argument in any case.
The Mumbo-Jumbo with explanations
Basically, any good explanation builds on things we know. There are two types of false explanations:
- Explain one unknown thing with some other unknown thing. This creates the illusion of knowledge.
- Explain to known things with something unknown. This is even worse than the first option. It makes something known to us unknown.
Notice that supernaturalists try to exploit the unknown for their purposes again. This shows in all supernatural explanations.
This all uses magic to explain how information is transferred from nonmaterial ideas to material objects like our brain. It's like coming up with information out of nowhere, whereas all information processes in the brain use causal interaction and symmetrical energy transfer. If something immaterial could influence or interact with the material world, this means energy and information from nothing, every time. And isn't it the case that supernaturalists insist that nothing can come from nothing? Well, they have to violate their law every time they invoke supernaturalism!