Subject: Re: definitions of god, atheism, etc. Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 01:19:49 -0700 From: "Brian Holtz" To: "Brian Holtz" "Paul Filseth" wrote: > a perfectly clear notion, but doesn't refer to the same > things people commonly use "supernatural" for. While people often use 'supernatural' to mean merely paranormal, I think my definition captures the relevant (and more precise) notion used in metaphysics and theology. Acquinas defined 'miracle' as things "done by divine agency beyond the order commonly observed in nature". (And no, his definition is not circular, for while the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy here translates "in rebus" as "in nature", a more precise translation would be "in things".) I also note that Merriam-Webster's two definitions both (in their special cases) resonate with mine. > By "natural" I mean pd-natural -- I'm just working > from the definitions you posted. [..] > "The world follows natural law" is a tautology because the > world follows all laws governing the world My definition is now: "egregiously violative of the regularities that are usually observed in the material world, while also consistent with the expressed will of some agency." The relevant tautology from my definition would be: "the world exhibits the regularities that are usually observed in it". This does not exclude the possibility that the world can exhibit supernatural irregularities. > "All events > follow natural law" isn't a tautology, because for all we know, there > might be something besides the world for events to happen to. By my definitions, nothing exists outside the world (i.e. universe). > There's no reason there couldn't be parallel universes, > astral planes, the IPU (bbhh), What's "the IPU (bbhh)"? Do you mean my LPU? > and any number of other existing things that don't causally > interact with the world. Things that have no causal relationship with the universe do not, by my definition, exist. As I say in section 1.1.1. (Ontology) of my book: "The universe is the maximal set of circumstances that includes this statement and no subset of which is causally unrelated to the remainder. To exist is to have a causal relationship with the rest of the universe." > you proposed the phrase "law-like regularities that > seem to govern" as a substitute for "laws governing", so I took that > and ran with it. If you didn't intend "law-like" to mean "as regular > as a law" If I had intended "as regular as a law", I obviously would have stuck with my original "laws governing" formulation. :-) > can you explain how you distinguish "regular enough to > count as a regularity" from "irregular"? Fundamentally, no (though I suspect you know quite well how one distinguishes between regularity and irregularity :-). If I could fully explain a general method for distinguishing all regularity from all irregularity, I'd be filing my patent instead of debating with you. :-) > All the laws that seem to be basic or > irreducible are as far as we know _always_ followed. Right -- which is why I don't believe in alleged supernatural phenomena. But we have no evidence for saying that an irreducible law *cannot* be violated -- unless you just want to define it that way. But doing so does not constitute an argument that the alleged phenomena in question cannot occur, or would be irrelevant to the theist/atheist debate if they did. > Finding an exception like an anomalous planet orbit is a > major clue that the rule isn't basic. Yes, when I said "basic or irreducible in some sense", I meant more of "irreducible" than "basic". > then conservation of energy _wouldn't be basic > or irreducible_. It would be a mere special case > [..] of the more general, basic, > irreducible law: "What God wills to happen happens." Energy conservation would still be irreducible in the sense that it cannot be derived deterministically or probabilistically from any other more-fundamental regularity. Do the following statements accurately represent your position? * The concept of miracles is metaphysically confused and, when properly understood, metaphysically uninteresting. * If (what people commonly consider) miracles started happening then the physicists would treat it as just another Newtonian-to-Relativistic or classical-to-quantum paradigm generalization, and there would be no metaphysical implications. * If my hypothetical priestly energy non-conservation happened, people wouldn't be justified in saying that the centuries-old naturalism-vs-supernaturalism debate had been settled in favor of supernaturalism. > In the hypothetical world you've described, _so are crucifixes > that appear out of thin air_. That world has different irreducible > patterns from the ones that appear to obtain in our universe. Are you saying that mass-energy conservation in that universe could not be considered irreducible in any sense? Are you saying that people would say that its physics is as reducible to theology precisely as our chemistry is reducible to physics? > Excluding [souls] from the concepts of "physical" > and "material" would be an exercise in making a distinction without > a difference. So if souls and gods and miracles were shown to exist, you would just say that a) we merely had been deficient in our census of the "natural"; b) the "supernatural" is still oxymoronical and/or non-existent. > Can you give examples of what would be an egregious or > an unegregious willed violation of some pattern that's basic and > irreducible, yet only usually followed? Egregious: a priest at will violates mass-energy conservation. Unegregious: a priest prays to win a lottery (decided by a quantum decay event) and does. > I expect vampires' lack of reflections was called > "supernatural". Yes, in the sense of Merriam-Webster definition 2a ("departing from what is usual or normal..") , but not 2b ("attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit)"). > But suppose the property _did_ depend on the nature > of vampires' souls. How would that make a difference? It's still > not a matter of will. By "dependent on e.g. the nature of vampires' souls", I particularly meant e.g. the property of having decided to drink human blood (which might make a soul vampiric) as opposed to accidentally swallowing trace amounts (which might not). It's a minor point... > Can I assume then that > "paranormal" is simply a broader category, and if a "paranormal" event > is willed then you'll call it "supernatural"? Wow, we're actually communicating! :-) > By the way, in the last couple of years evidence for antigravity > has turned up, so you might want to take it off your list. Vacuum energy is not what I mean by antigravity. By antigravity I mean a way to repel matter by virtue of its mass, and in my book (5.7.2. Improbable Advances) I predict that antigravity will not happen. To be repulsive (according to the standard model), a force's gauge boson must (like photons for electromagnetism) have odd spin, while bosons with even spin mediate vector fields that are only attractive. The graviton is hypothesized to have spin ±2. I'm not sure how the expansive effect of vacuum energy relates to gauge bosons, but I don't think the recent findings have overturned this part of the standard model. > when you included "free energy", you didn't mean what physicists > mean; so what did you mean? I mean nonsense like http://www.viking-z.org/d12c.htm. -- Brian.Holtz@sun.com Knowledge is dangerous. Take a risk: http://humanknowledge.net