List of topics naturalists invoke the Supernatural

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Invoking the Supernatural

Alternative names for this page:
List of topics naturalists:
appeal to the supernatural
invoke miracles
appeal to miracles

What is Natural?

There are two mutually exclusive belief systems: naturalism and supernaturalism. These are sometimes also referred to as atheism and theism respectively. What is natural? There is no good definition on this. A naturalist may say "anything not originating from God" or "anything we can observe with our senses" these definitions do not work as a supernaturalist, for example a Christian will point out for the first definition all that exists is because of God and therefore everything is supernatural from our bodies to the wind blowing and for the second definition there are many times in the Bible as well as nonbiblical history that Jesus was witnessed with human senses and Jesus is God so the second definition renders God as not supernatural, a self-refuting definition. Because of this problem this list must allow for lenience. But we will orbit around the standard: if someone must appeal to the unobserved/outside the universe/or well outside of known/observed rates then this argument is appealing to something that is beyond what is considered natural, i.e., appealing to the supernatural.

Interpretations

When interpreting a piece of evidence the supernaturalist can allow for an explanation outside of what he considers natural because he believes in a Creator of the world. Supernaturalists have no philosophical error in appealing to the supernatural. The naturalist must instead find some method of explaining the evidence using only what is natural. If he appeals to the supernatural he is giving up on his naturalist belief. It should be pointed out the naturalist that appealing to or invoking the supernatural also steps outside the realm of science because we cannot make repeated observations of repeated tests based on the above definition. This is not to say that God cannot be observed as He has been as noted above this is just a getting back into the complexity of the definition of natural.

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List

• The origin of the universe is inherently supernatural and outside the realm of science. This is because no observations can be made outside of our universe and the laws of nature have never been shown to function outside the universe. Because of this, all questions on our universe's origins require faith. Contrary to popular belief, it is a myth that the inflationary Big Bang model deals with the origin of the universe. It does not touch the topic of the origin of space, time, matter, or energy but only attempts to explain what happened after all of these mythologically popped into existence on their own.

• Star formation has long been a problem for naturalists as their models predict stars should not exist and they openly admit to this. By this they confess natural processes alone cannot create stars and they must invoke the supernatural to explain them.

• Information additions to the genome have never been observed and there are no known mechanisms by which information could be added to the genome. Both Richard Dawkins and Bill Nye have been asked if they know of any method by which information can be added to the genome and both have answered in the negative. By this they confess we have never observed nor have we even hypothesized a way for natural processes alone to add genetic information. Any process that relies on the addition of information to the genome must appeal to the supernatural.

• With the recent discovery and confirmation of genetic entropy we can confirm that we observe a continual loss of genetic information over time. The naturalist book Crumbling Genome by Alexey Kondrashov confirms the theory of genetic entropy as both predicted and observed. So what is natural is the continual entropic decay of information over time. Alexey confirms we have not observed a method of stopping or even slowing this entropic decay: "Milder, but still substantial, negative effects of mutations are harder to detect, but are even more pervasive. As of now, we possess no means of reducing the rate at which mutations appear spontaneously." Despite the admission Dr. Kondrashov makes an appeal to the supernatural to continue believing in historical evolution: "In the course of the long evolution of life, natural selection eliminated deleterious mutations with cruel efficiency, establishing what is known as the mutation-selection equilibrium."

• Soft tissue in fossils is explained with appeals to the supernatural. Observed rates of decay necessitate that these tissues cannot last even 1 million years, much less than the claimed dozens of millions. Mary Shweitzer states “The presence of T. rex sequences indicates that their peptide bonds were remarkably stable.” Instead of accepting the obvious conclusion that the bonds have regular stability but are no more than a few thousand years old Dr. Shweitzer appeals to supernatural rates of stability to explain their preservation. In the same paper Dr. Shweitzer points to the actual rates of decay. These are what are natural. "...fossils has been hindered by protein concentrations below the limits of detection by most analytical methods, and by theoretical limits based on predicted rates of degradation (, )"

• Inflation is a hypothetical event invoked to solve the Big Bang's distant light travel problem. There is no known method known to create the inflation event. There is also no evidence the event ever occurred, only that without it the Big bang would not work. Inflation is appealing it a miracle to resolve a problem.

• Dark matter is a commonly used appeal to a substance never observed despite dozens of attempts to resolve problems in their models. To appeal to something never seen as a creator is an appeal to the supernatural.

• The Oort cloud is a hypothetical never observed cloud of objects that is invoked to solve the naturalist problem of comets appearing young in a solar system they claim is old. Appealing to a never observed system that is the creator of comets is appealing to the supernatural.

• The Kuiper Belt is a hypothetical system of objects that, like the Oort cloud is invoked in an attempt to explain short lived comets we observe in a solar system that is claimed to be very old. It has never been observed. Invoking a system that has never been observed as creator of comets is appealing to the supernatural.

• Nemesis is a hypothetical dwarf star that is invoked as a cause for disruption of the Oort cloud and Kuiper Belt to create the short-lived comets we see in our solar system. It has never been observed. Appealing to a never observed object as the creator of comets is appealing to the supernatural.