Back to Supernaturalism VIII, part 8 of the series
But there is a realm that is immaterial and non-empirical!
Yes, I agree, and that might come as a surprise by now, I suppose.
The realm of numbers, ideas, concepts, abstractions, logic, etc. is immaterial and non-empirical. And we know a lot about this realm. In fact, this realm is fully covered and fully embraced in naturalism.
We know that this realm is static, timeless, unchangeable, and cannot create or cause anything in the empirical world. All laws of the empirical world are contained in this realm. It cannot cause anything because it does not contain energy. So if we encounter an unknown cause, we know that the static realm of ideas, etc., did not cause it.
If the supernatural realm is non-empirical, how would you know that this is something else?
There is an ongoing philosophical debate about whether numbers are real or not. Some naturalists like me are inclined to say they are real; some do not. I think that they are real entities that exist independent of empirical facts.
What is different from the realm of supernaturalism, though, is that we know some chunks of it and that it belongs to the realm of knowledge.
Methodological atheism
Most scientists embrace something called methodological atheism.
They don't invest time to think whether numbers are real or not. Some believe that philosophy is just superfluous. When you try to figure out how things work and why, you don't need philosophy, though I think that this is misleading.
Science started as a practice. We have practical problems to solve. Which is the best way to do it? When science started around 400 years ago with Galileo Galilei, the philosophical world was dominated by God-driven supernaturalism and philosophical Platonism. The question was this: how far can we come if we ignore supernaturalism and Platonism? How much of the material world can we investigate without supernaturalism? It was a time when no one thought that supernaturalism had nothing to do with the empirical world; the world was full of supernatural causes and agents. The distinction crucial to modern supernaturalism was not made yet. It had to be made later to immunize supernaturalism against science, leading to the logical circle I described.
Science was isolated from supernaturalism and was established separately from theology, philosophy, and all kinds of other supernatural beliefs. It asked practical questions and delivered practical answers. At first, the leaders of the Church would not allow it; they were afraid that the naturalistic approach could destroy supernaturalism. But they saw the practical uses of science as well.
In Catholicism, the dominant worldview at that time, though challenged by the emergence of Protestantism, lost its political power due to Protestantism. That was a window of opportunity to establish sciences besides theology and theology-dominated philosophy. In Islam, no such opportunity was realized, and the world of Islam lost all advantages in technology and science until today. No major modern technology advance came out of Islam.
Nowadays, even staunch believers in Christianity who work as scientists use methodological atheism. You can be a Christian believer and a scientist without being an atheist, though the majority of scientists are atheists. But when you work as a scientist, forget about your beliefs, act as if you are an atheist and a naturalist. Methodological atheism is even defended by Christian scientists against all objections. Science requires you to suspend your supernaturalistic beliefs as long as you work as a scientist.
Fundamentalism and naturalism
Another problem is fundamentalism. For reasons to be covered elsewhere, fundamentalism and science are natural enemies. If the Bible claims that the earth is flat and unmovable and the sun rotates around the earth, science proposes some tough challenges. Catholicism did not embrace a literal understanding of the Bible, so whether the earth revolves around the sun or the sun around the earth is of no relevance. It is a description made by unknowing people in ancient times and is more poetical than factual.
This is different in Islamic and Protestant fundamentalism; both are not well equipped against challenging their literal understanding of their holy books. There is one difference: the Quran claims to be the literal truth; the Bible does not. In Islam, all groups who tried to establish a non-literal reading of the Quran were annihilated or expelled from Islam. In Europe, that was not possible because the political power of the Church was severely crippled. Of course, before that time the Church killed all opposition (heretics) by force, a tradition maintained in Islam.
Some people think that the question of astronomy led to a conflict between the Catholic Church and Galileo Galilei. That is mistaken. The real conflict was that naturalism challenged supernaturalism. The solution to that problem was to immunize supernaturalism against critique and to let science retreat from the investigation of supernatural claims. A famous quote from Galileo Galilei reflects this:
The purpose of Scripture is to teach us how to get to heaven, not how heaven works.
This draws a distinctive line between science and theology.
Science cannot be established if the major theologians kill some people whose views challenge the literal understanding of their holy book. When Christianity started to dominate Europe and achieved political power (because its function was to establish political power), all technological, scientific, and philosophical advances that started in the pagan world were eliminated, and the knowledge was largely destroyed. In Christianity, there are no inherent ideas to gain political power. Jesus was supposed to have said, My kingdom is not of this world.
Christianity came to political power accidentally. In Islam, all theology is closely tied to political power. You can have Christianity without political power; you cannot have Islam without political power.
A famous example of a fundamentalist challenged by science, forcing him to abandon parts of his beliefs, can be found here: The story of Glen Morton Don't get me wrong, Glen Morton did not gave up his religious beliefs, he abandoned just his fundamentalist belief in a young earth by trying to consolidate this particular belief with the data he analyzed.
That is a very crude analysis that lacks any nuance, and it can and will be criticized for that reason. But the nuances are not relevant to this topic; I will return to them elsewhere.
The point is that the methodological naturalism/atheism of science replaced a big chunk of supernaturalism. Once gods were responsible for lightning, and science replaced that with a practical approach. Only political power, like in Islam, could stop that. The Quran is supposed to contain everything we need to know about the world, so science can contradict this and be dangerous, or science does not contradict these claims and is superfluous. There is a middle ground, as always, that tries to verify the Quran by claiming that the claims of the Quran correctly describe some major scientific claims. This is a dangerous path, because it presupposes the superiority of an ever-evolving science that might change its claims at any time. In that case, you have to come up with a different interpretation of the holy text. In opposition to this, science can be embraced by Christianity, just up to the point where supernatural claims are made. That's because Christianity is based on supernaturalism, like Islam, but does not inherently embrace a literal understanding of the Bible.
Luckily for Christianity, scientists are not inclined to use science as a weapon to challenge supernatural claims for most of its endeavors. That is something that atheists like me do. When science meets atheism, things change. But philosophical atheism is not limited to science or naturalism and can be established independently, like some ancient pagans (e.g., Epicurus) did. But if you attack science and education, like creationism does, even Christian scientists will rather group with outspoken atheists to defend science than to embrace creationism. This is a major difference between Christianity and Islam. You can challenge Christianity with science or philosophy or even theology without being afraid to get killed like the first heretics, like in ancient times. In Islam today, it is dangerous to even act like an atheist as required by science and defended by Christian scientists.
There is still some political-theological power left to handicap science, because science does not deal with morals, and morals are heavily influenced by theology. The morality of science is delegated to society.
Supernatural claims mean big business
Another problem I won't dive deep into is the fact that supernatural claims are part of a large business models. Rough estimates for the USA indicate that astrology alone yields a revenue of about 2 billion dollars. Add to that the digital services with around 1.26 billion dollars and an estimated profit of around 20% up to 70%, depending on the business model.
In the USA, the revenues of religious groups are estimated to be around 30 billion dollars, and they have around 90 billion dollars in assets. This is a low estimate because most churches are tax-exempt and do not appear in the data from the IRS. The real numbers will be much higher. The profits are much higher than with most other businesses. With these profits comes political power.
It is ironic that many Christians criticize corporate profits but fail to see the log in their own eye.
Supernaturalism can be used for profitable business models because it can exploit human weaknesses better than anything else. If you were mistaken, you'd never find out. If anyone scams you by natural means, you stand a chance to find out and learn from it. You cannot learn anything from supernaturalism. People are none the wiser if they embrace it. It is just a matter of trust in authorities who do not know more than you but can act as if they know. If that convinces you, that is your fault. Churches sell you a nonexistent product for high profits, and you won't notice. How can I know that? Everyone has high promises, and every hope is different, and no one can know which of them is true.