Do You Believe In Miracles and/or The Supernatural?
Simple question. So let's go. Maybe before that, a quick definition of the two keywords:
Miracle: An event that either makes an exception of one or more of the known laws of nature or otherwise is unexplainable. For example, this definition includes things like me telling you I will flip this coin and get tails 20 times in a row, and I get it, and you and others are not capable to reproduce the event within a reasonable timeframe using the same coin.
Supernatural: That which exceeds the powers and capacities of the created world.
Miracle: An event that either makes an exception of one or more of the known laws of nature or otherwise is unexplainable. For example, this definition includes things like me telling you I will flip this coin and get tails 20 times in a row, and I get it, and you and others are not capable to reproduce the event within a reasonable timeframe using the same coin.
Supernatural: That which exceeds the powers and capacities of the created world.
Comments (102)
That definition would seem to include good magic tricks.
Let's exclude those and other things that can be determined as fakery.
OK, well, no, and I expect this to end up about 80% no. What's your prediction?
60-70% No, I would say.
But there's a lot more believers and conservatives around here than old PF, this is a more balanced community. You probably voted no - why?
I don't have any reason to believe the laws of physics admit of exceptions.
This is ambiguous. By "laws of physics" do you mean "the way nature behaves" or "the way we believe nature behaves"? If the former than it's a truism that the laws of physics are always obeyed, and if the latter then there are exceptions, as current theory cannot explain all phenomena.
...Reflecting the fact that the concepts of "miracles" and the "supernatural" are somewhat incoherent. And the only way they can be rendered coherent, and get us beyond the truism, is to posit something above and beyond nature and nature's laws. That's where the "no" comes in.
I think the supernatural plays a much larger role even in day-to-day life than most people care to admit (I will not even mention guiding the evolution of history).
Miracles no, “supernatural”... I don’t like the word, but something along the lines of metanatural, or “spirit”, “fundamental being”. Of course those terms are all loaded as well...
Why not?
I’ve never experienced one. But the fact that I don’t believe in them doesn’t mean my mind can’t be changed in the future.
Contemporary physics, particularly at the extreme micro- and macro- levels is a much richer source of novelty and strangeness than the impoverished narratives of "miracles" and "the supernatural", which are fuelled largely by superstition and parochialism rather than the more hard-earned aspects of the imaginative life associated with the former, which are borne of a combination of real intellectual work and theoretical courage. So, anything of "miracles" or the "supernatural" that can't be at least potentially distilled into theoretical physics can be confidently flushed from consciousness as superfluous to understanding and most probably detrimental to it.
That is not the definition of miracle, nor coherent with your first sentence.
Your definitions are shoddy, there are already well-defined terms by others that most of us would accept.
Anyway, I voted no.
(lazy copy paste): Hume defines a miracle as ‘a violation of the laws of nature’, or more fully, ‘a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity’ (p. 173)
Learn to read kid.
Contemporary physics exists with one end in mind, which structures the entire enterprise. I am of course speaking about what Nietzsche called the "will-to-power" or Freud called the "death drive" - in its essence science is man's attempt to force nature to do his bidding. And how is this achieved? It is achieved by destroying matter and turning it into energy, and then rechanneling that energy according to man's will. That's what you do when you burn gas to cook your meal, when you burn petrol to drive your car, or when you use nuclear fission to power your home. The whole enterprise is the exact opposite of a creative endeavour - it kills, in the attempt to control. To understand the flower, science breaks it up - into this and that part, and then proposes a theory to explain how the parts fit together. But once broken, the parts cannot be put back together. The divisive nature of physics obscures - and completely misses - the creative and unitive nature of existence - indeed that which makes physics itself possible in the first place.
So science is useful to calculate - it is useful to mechanise existence - to transform existence into a mechanism, where if you do this, then that will happen, and so on so on. That is, to kill existence. It encourages calculation, but not understanding. Science misses the essence of life. Indeed, modern-day philosophers even admit this, with pride, if one may say so. Just take a cursory glance at Ray Brassier for example. He tells us that "we are already dead" and that "thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of living; indeed, they can and have been pitted against the latter". But Brassier has of course not discovered anything new, despite his firm conviction that he has. All that he has done is merely put into words what already existed, a priori, in man's collective unconscious - that which has been and continues to be repressed, and emerges every now and again - in Nietzsche's "will-to-power", Freud's "death drive", Heidegger's "nihilism", Brassier's "death" and also more concretely in the tremendous destruction that we have just emerged from in the 20th century, today's extreme forms of decadence and promiscuity, rampant environmental destruction and so on. The modern philosopher does not have the intelligence and tremendous energy - the life - to discover anything new - to create - he, like the scientists, can only speak about what is already there.
Remember the story of the Garden of Eden? The two trees? The Tree of Knowledge and The Tree of Life? The Tree of Knowledge is that which brings death, and the Tree of Life is guarded by the Cherubim with the flaming sword, who guards the Tree of Life from every direction such that the one who has Knowledge cannot reach it.
Paradoxically, it is only today that the meaning of Genesis becomes clearer and clearer. Science is the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge - that appealing fruit which appears to make one like God, but actually kills them. Indeed, we have reached the point where the death of man is already prefigured by Brassier. Nietzsche prefigured the death of God 150 years ago - now it is the time of man to die. Now, there is no God to protect us or to die for us. Science has killed God, it is only a matter of time before it kills man as well. Because that is its nature - that is the nature of technicality, of calculation - to kill and to destroy in order to control. And science itself blinds man from Life.
Just look at it - open your eyes. It is your life too after all. What is happening? A tremendous lameness, weakness, fatigue has fallen over Western culture. A tremendous lack of bearings, lack of motivation, lack of goals. We can do anything, but paradoxically, that's exactly why we can't do anything. Because we don't know what to do. We lack the courage. We know how to do very well - but what use is that when you don't know what to do? And of course I don't mean you in particular, but we as a culture, as a people.
To create, to live - that takes great energy, tremendous energy. We lack the energy today. Where could we get it from? Today, we just have energy to go to work and slave away for others (usually), then come home, eat, at night be dead tired, can't even have sex with our wives, we have to ask them to get on top and do it... and even when we do, we are tired, sick of it almost. That is why we need to have a golden shower from time to time, to try another woman, to masturbate in public, to have an orgy, to mix alcohol with benzodiazepines, smoke some weed, take some crack - at least, for a few moments we can feel a little bit more alive, a little bit more free. This is who we have become...
With no energy for authentic living, only the inauthentic remains. And science cannot show us the way to reawakening this energy. Science cannot guide us on how to live - it can only close down possibilities. Science has created the atomic bomb, which can cause untold outer destruction. Where is that inner "atomic bomb", which does not destroy, but makes one's soul blossom with life, energy, vigor, strength, confidence, hope, love, etc.?
Quoting Baden
On the contrary, science has done such great damage to man's collective psyche over the past 400 years, that if this continues, soon there will be no man left. We have greater technical power than ever today, but much less wisdom. We have utterly explored the outer world, but continue to be completely ignorant of the inner world. In fact, science itself has obscured the inner world in its blind quest for power. It has called the inner "subjective" - an epiphenomenon at most - while only the outer is real, fundamental and true. Science itself has attempted and continues to attempt to reduce and force the inner - that epiphenomenon - to be subservient to the outer. You feel depressed? Where is your Prozac? In other words, do not let this inner crap control you - you are the master, just like you are the master of the external world, and you will force it to be as you want it to be, you have control over it. Of course, I forgot to mention that you are also no one, just check out Metzinger's Being No One.
Are you sure?
A miracle is very difficult to define - alas, I am not much interested in definitions.
The problem with Hume's definitions is that "laws of nature" do not really mean anything. Whatsoever we call a law of nature is just a regularity we have observed. For all intents and purposes, those regularities can change over time. There are no laws of nature above and beyond the regularities themselves. So if the regularities change, that would, according to Hume, be a miracle. Quite a strange definition I think.
It is not, read Hume.
Quoting Agustino
Christ almighty for the love of God, read some Hume. This discussion is older than your dead granny.
Hume's take down on miracle still stands today. If you somehow find it incoherent, please share with us why.
But that's just question-begging. The whole point of supernatural hypotheses is to explain something about the world that seemingly cannot be explained through a naturalistic theory.
Typically the more serious and respectable philosophical theories about the supernatural are not about ghosts, unicorns, or any childhood fantasy but rather something totally and wholly other-than-Being. Something above-and-beyond the normal, physical, "natural" state of affairs. A transcendence beyond the immanent reality we live in.
I think it's useful to distinguish between the largely religiously-inspired concepts of "miracles" and "the supernatural" as boring and unsophisticated tropes that offer little of interest in terms of our knowledge of the universe, and physics, as a set of rich and imaginative theories, especially at the cutting edge, of how reality works. I haven't made a broader metaphysical point than that.
Quoting Mr Phil O'Sophy
Like what?
OK, this is a nice word-wall critique of science that I have some sympathy with. My point was more specific though and related to the relatively impoverished imaginative basis of miracles, the supernatural and so on—i.e. the subject of the discussion, as compared to contemporary physical theories. Science isn't the be-all and end-all of life etc, I know. I'd personally rather create art than anything scientific, but it's still a hell of a lot more interesting than magic virgins, ghosts and oddly behaving wafers etc.
Where you go wrong is add your own (strange at best, trying to be charitable) definition in the mix -- equivocate -- then fall over and blame me ( or Hume).
Again, to you as well, read some Hume kiddo.
Quoting Mr Phil O'Sophy
I doubt that, for your own sake, lmao.
Physical theories and calculations rely on mathematics, sure. As for physics relying on mathematics taken to mean the ultimate reality of nature is mathematical rather than physical, you might find some that agree with you on that too, but you'll have to flesh out exactly what you mean by that. And until you do I'll presume it's nothing "miraculous".
I don't believe that just because there is science, all and everything can be explained by it. I think the modern ignorance stems precisely from the lack of humbleness in approaching our own experience of the world. If we don't understand something, we figure that there must be some scientific explanation for it. Why? That's the same as saying that there must be some mystical explanation for what has happened. We replaced our potential for wisdom for ignorance. We are led down the path of 'psychic laziness'. We do not investigate via our experience - we deconstruct, and destroy. As if we wish to 'outsource' our knowledge to someone else. This time to scientists who will baffle and mesmerise us with their explanations of the world. Do these scientists even know what they are doing? Or is it the same as with the robot?
Poor Freud. Blamed for shoveling phallic symbols to the faces of others, yet I can't help myself but to think that most of the scientists just try to manifest their neurosis and complexes in their specific field. It's not about discovery or about creating something useful for humanity. No, just sublimation of their bitterness. This is more of a reference to the book I linked before.
You could possibly argue for the supernatural on the grounds of some other kind of reality or what does it mean to exist. But since I presuppose one reality, one universe, I'll stick to all things that are in existence are "natural" in the sense that they obey the laws of nature. Natural things do not have to comply to our current understanding of the laws of nature, because we understand (or ought to) that our grasp on these is incomplete and still an area of scientific exploration. If a ghost existed, for instance, it would force us to redefine some of our laws of nature, but it would still be natural since it exists naturally in the world. Think about it, the natural course of life would be for one to be born, live, die, and part of oneself to become a ghost. It would merely be an unexplained phenomenon, not supernatural.
Please explain how I am committing the fallacy of begging the question? I fail to see it.
where you go wrong -- for the life of me, I do not now why you keep doing it, there is no emotional attachment to this discussion as far as I am concerned, we are not debating your dick size -- you mix your own incoherent definition, namely:
Quoting Mr Phil O'Sophy
Hume defines miracle as either "violation" or "transgression" of the laws of nature. You then continue to ignore Hume's definition, make up your own definition that goes straight against Hume's definitions, then go back to Hume and claim his definition is poor.
This comic illustrates you:
What are the "laws of nature"? What does "law of nature" mean?
So anything that is a "transgression" of our scientific understanding of the world is a miracle. Then I guess light bending around the sun was a miracle the first time it was observed, since it was a transgression of our scientific understanding of the world at the time.
Quoting Kitty
seriously though, read Hume, lol.
edit: okay I am done with this discussion, there is no fruitful debate here. Just me teaching you some basic philosophy.
None of you actually studied philosophy, am I to presume?
Funnily enough, that's what Marx also remarked in Das Kapital: "they do not know it, but they are doing it". For example, people go to school thinking they're building a great future for themselves, but all they're actually doing is making themselves into good workers that can then be enslaved, thus perpetuating a bad future. Marx thought that capitalism is characterised by this "false consciousness" where the participants do not know what they are doing. They think they are doing what's best for them, but actually, they merely contribute to the continuation of their oppression. Science operates much along the same lines. You say:
Quoting Coldlight
So the scientist takes the miracle of generation - of the sperm and the ovum going from a single cell into an organism with different kinds of cells, which do different kind of jobs, and tells us that the DNA contains the information that makes this generative process possible. Then the scientist tells us that the phenomenon is explained. As if I'm more enlightened if I use more technical jargon to describe what we observe... As if that makes it less of a mystery somehow. It is in this sense that the scientist does not know what he is doing. He fails to see that he has, as it were, merely explained the same phenomenon using different words, and has not rendered it any less mysterious, just shifted the mystery. I no longer wonder why the cells split and change function as they do, I now wonder how and why the DNA allows such changes to occur.
Yeah, I agree. I would like to see more humbleness in that regard, too. Firstly, there is a certain limit of our understanding, and secondly, I think there needs to be a conversion in our beliefs and approach to experience sooner or later. Otherwise, we are just committing the same mistake, psychically.
Well you have told me quite a few times to read Hume, but I'm more interested to have a discussion with you. If you want to base your points on what Hume is saying, fine, I have no issue with that.
I asked you:
Quoting Agustino
You said:
Quoting Kitty
Quoting Kitty
So naturally, I respond with:
Quoting Agustino
All I did was replace "laws of nature" with "our scientific understanding of the world".
Now you tell me that that is wrong, and actually laws of nature cannot mean "our scientific understanding of the world". So I will ask you again - what do you (or Hume) believe "laws of nature" to mean? What are "laws of nature"? The bit you referenced makes no mention of such a definition and merely takes it for granted that we know what they are.
My philosophy professors would agree with your sentiment privately about the limitations of a lack of formal training, but publicly shake their heads at your condescending tone towards people at least trying to get involved in interesting discussions. They might also point out to you that claiming to have superior knowledge or being right in this instance purely on the basis of your credentials without explicit reference to the actual arguments being made is a fallacy: appeal to authority. Even if you were Hume himself, that doesn't necessarily mean you're right!
Word to the wise (?), for your own sake, you'll do just fine around here if you cut the ad homs and provide real arguments.
It pretty much seems that way too many classes of people don't know what they're doing. Science is an example of that, too. I think this is where the 'progress' (as much as I dislike the word) doesn't exist. We - psychically - keep committing the same mistakes we were committing centuries, maybe even thousands of years ago.
Quoting Agustino
Yeah. It's the same as if it was explained in a poem using colourful language and all sorts of metaphors. It wouldn't shed any more light on the subject.
I think that "reality" is much more complicated than how we normally experience it. At the same time however I do not believe in a Creator. Hence for me the "supernatural" is the part of reality that (normally) is not accessible to us (and because of this "miracles" are possible).
Indeed. Some people, like Zizek, would say that this sort of "blindness" is constitutive of our (social) reality. For example, the commodity exchange is only possible if we act as if coins really had an intrinsic worth that is different than their physical bodies - but paradoxically, it is our acting so that makes them have such an intrinsic worth in the first place. Because we all - without knowing it - agree that money is valuable and has such and such a worth - that's what actually gives it that worth. Bitcoin illustrates this very well - there is no paper there. Just the tacit social agreement that it is worth this much.
Quoting Coldlight
Yes - that's why I think that mystery, miracles and the supernatural are always within life. The difference is that some sorts of language make us aware that they are mysteries, miracles and supernatural and others conceal this fact from us, and give us the false impression that we understand them.
To go even deeper into this, I have grown quite convinced that the important movements in history have been spiritually driven from the very beginning. Even science itself is ultimately a spiritual force - destructive as it is. And some people have historically tried to take advantage of occult powers - for example, the Nazi's connection with the occult is well-known. Many historians have argued at length that the focus on the Occult was central to the growth & decline of the Nazi regime. Communism is another example of what is ultimately a spiritual ideology - indeed, it is the spiritual roots of communism that allowed it to grow, expand and flourish.
No -- I am not going to indulge you in this, sorry mate.
I will tell you why. It is the same reason why I dislike the new Atheist-movement. Take Sam Harris for example, he debated (and wrote a book about) moral philosophy with zero interest to address the arguments for or against by major moral philosophers in history. No way I am going to debate people like Harris with that kind of laziness. I don't even care whether I agree with the conclusions. It is so intellectually lazy and dishonest, it is not a debate worth having.
Debates like these are old. There are many arguments in favour and many arguments against. The least one should do is explore the basic (or most famous) arguments, and respond to them.
This is basic in philosophy class. You're interested in topic X? Read some basics on topic X that many great philosophers have already addressed.If you still disagree, then address those weaknesses. Write an elaboration with your own arguments to support your conclusion. Ta-da!
Okay, I might agree with regards to the philosophy class, but we're not in a philosophy class here. We're actually in the Lounge of a philosophy forum. I don't mean to continue the discussion if it's not in your interest to have a discussion on this. I don't mind that you want to bring in existing philosophical arguments that have been made by other philosophers - feel absolutely free to respond with exactly what Hume said. What did Hume say that "laws of nature" are? I am ignorant of what he said, so please enlighten me. I'm not interested in his take on miracles, so I'm not going to read the whole essay. Just point me to the part where "laws of nature" are defined, and I will read that please.
Quoting Agustino
... and all you did was ignore what I quoted... The fact that you did that replacement showed that.
"our scientific understanding of the world" a.k.a. "laws of nature" could be wrong... Namely our subjective understanding of the objective world could be wrong.
edit: so I was a bit shoddy -- cold hands and lack of engagement -- with my phrasing.
Laws of nature is basically how the world works (objectively), and our understanding of it is through scientific endeavour.
Literally that piece I took a screen shot of, just for you darling.
So is it your claim that laws of nature can be wrong?
If laws of nature can be wrong, then how is it possible for miracles to be unreasonable, when miracles are precisely violations of laws of nature (ie, when they are wrong)?
If laws of nature cannot be wrong, then you're talking of two things. One is our understanding of laws of nature, and the other is the laws of nature themselves. So "our scientific understanding of the world" goes with the former, clearly. As far as I see, "laws of nature" still remain undefined.
Quoting Kitty
I don't see a definition of laws of nature here. I merely see the term being used without any definition whatsoever. But this is what I want to know - I want to know what "laws of nature" mean - what they are, and what we're referring to through that word. Clearly, we're not referring to our scientific understanding of the world, since our scientific understanding of the world could be wrong, as we just established. So what are we referring to when we use the term "law of nature"? What is that?
I have read Hume, and the thing with Hume is that he uses many terms without ever defining what those terms mean, as if they are self-evident. But it's not at all self-evident what a law of nature is. I proposed it's merely a regularity. A regularity can always cease to hold, there are always circumstances where it is different, we have to decide what counts as different, etc. etc. So if a law of nature is merely a regularity, then we have definitely observed miracles.
My view, of course, is that there are no laws of nature whatsoever - and we're dealing merely with an antiquated and incoherent concept. You yourself have not shown the capacity to make heads or tails of this concept - you cannot even define it in fact. So defining miracles in terms of an incoherent concept is a no-go.
Where’s the smack down emoji?
Yeah, and that 'acting' hasn't changed in the slightest, which is why I am against the notion that there is any real progress.
Quoting Agustino
I agree with mysteries and miracles being always within life. After recognising that fact, it is more about working with one's own unconscious mind. Specific language use can also help with that, but generally things like dreams, visions, intuition have the possibility of uncovering what was unseen for us before. The experience is very individual, which is why it requires individual effort and insight.
Quoting Agustino
To use a Freudian framework, it might be that that's where the unconscious mind was directed, and so that became the centre of the spiritual. To me, unconscious and spiritual are closely linked. To relate it to the important movements in history, it could well be the case that the collective unconscious worked in that well and was directed by the spiritual. It is difficult to imagine any big movement without a 'spiritual cause'. If there was none, there wouldn't be such conviction and fervor in their acts.
I generally dislike that spiritual, mystical, and supernatural are often portrayed as some sort of medieval magic, and then dismissed right away. I also disagree with views that don't take into account the hidden, incoherent depths of unconsciousness. I'm not up for explaining anything just for the sake of seeming to have an answer.
When you say:
Quoting NKBJ
The (serious) arguments for supernatural "entities" call this into question. Of course anything and everything is natural if you already assume everything that exists must obey the "laws of nature" (whatever those actually are).
Supernatural, transcendent things are not bound by these "laws" precisely because they are transcendent. You seem to be getting stuck with the idea that supernatural things are still immanent in the "physical", "natural" world. They're not, at least not the serious ones. Serious attempts at demonstrating the existence of a supernatural being (such as God) basically always aim to show that God is transcendent upon the immanent material reality. Or at least is not bound by the so-called "laws of nature".
I do not.
But not believing in miracles and/or the supernatural doesn't mean living in a world which is not quite amazing.
If the cosmology of the big bang, 13.x billion years of time, a dust cloud that formed in this galaxy and produced this star, this solar system, this planet, this life is at least reasonably accurate, then our existence without miracles and the supernatural is still full of amazement.
Matter in its manifold complexity comprising all aspects of the physical world, including billions of minds, is not "mere". Looking for miracles in this world is "gilding the lily; it is adding cheap glitter to a sublimely complex, awful, wondrous, terrible, beautiful, beneficent, and even cruel and appalling reality. Existence is "super natural". There was once no existence; there was just matter.
That matter became life, without divine assistance, and evolved into the many beings of earth, is almost infinitely improbable, and one need look no further for miracles.
I used to be a believer and engaged in talk of the spiritual, mystical, and supernatural. I never did, and I don't think of it as "medieval"--more like "normal". This thing, "spirit" and the quality of "spiritual" have an earth bound reality, at least the way I like to use the term. (And "spirit" has a long string of meanings, associations, and loose usages that can make the concept pretty much meaningless.) It is a feature of our minds that we can have experiences we call spiritual, mystical, and supernatural. Our mystical mind-bending experiences are cooked up somewhere in what you call "the hidden, incoherent depths of unconsciousness". It's where we live. Imagining God, creating God, striving to fulfill divine commands and follow the paths of Buddha or Christ or... are all profound creative acts. It is human. It is one of the things we do.
One has to decide how much reality one's God has. For billions of people, God is real, and since God isn't on hand to contradict our various, quite contradictory and highly inconsistent imaginations, the trick works. Imagining God doesn't make the deity a "fraud". (The charge of fraud, if warranted, will be laid against the creators, not the creation.)
What does "nature" mean?
Quoting Bitter Crank
These two statements seem to be contradictory. You also seem to agree with my basic position, that life itself is suffused with miracles and the supernatural - at least the active principle of life is.
...asked the philosopher.
I think it is a very important question because it is in that word that the obfuscation lies - that which gives us the idea that we understand what miracles are.
Which question are you referring to?
True - I would say that in terms of the collective, there is virtually no progress in the long run. In the short term, we do sometimes see progress from one historical era to another, but that progress does not last, and is ultimately erased. We also see regress - it is like a pendulum swinging back and forth around the same point of equilibrium.
But I do think that progress is possible for individuals. It is possible for an individual to make progress and become outstanding. That way is always open, but it is not historical.
Quoting Coldlight
I agree with you, this is an individual journey that no one else can make for you. Exploring the unconscious, bringing the light of consciousness into that realm is absolutely necessary in order to achieve spiritual growth. As Jung said, the roots of the tree must reach to the depths of hell for the trunk to reach to the heavens. It is not possible to grow spiritually without undoing the mechanism - and it is a mechanism, that's what the unconscious is - that we are subject to.
Quoting Coldlight
I would say that the unconscious is created by ourselves, through the act of repression. When something gets repressed, it gets thrown under the rug of consciousness. But the repression is never complete, that is why what was thrown in the depths of consciousness reemerges in various forms, and uncannily makes itself felt, whether it is through dreams, visions, or otherwise. Man tries to escape from his darkness by repressing it and pretending it does not exist, but this is no escape, it merely makes the process more hidden, and lodges it deeper within oneself.
Anything can get repressed into the unconscious - it is a spiritual process in nature. But once something is repressed into the unconscious, it ceases to be spiritual, and becomes a mechanism. Doing over and over the same thing, without knowing that you are doing it - that is the unconscious. It is actually the same as being a robot - really a mechanism. The unconscious is what usually pulls people's strings, and they think they are free.
Quoting Coldlight
To a certain extent I agree with this, but I would say that the unconscious and the spiritual are not the same thing. If I may say so, the unconscious is the mechanisation of the spiritual, when the spiritual turns into a mere shadow of its former self, and loses its life & vitality.
Quoting Coldlight
Yes, I agree with this. Historical movements are either consciously driven, in which case the ones responsible for it are aware of what they are doing (at least to some extent) and are consciously looking to influence and guide the collective unconscious or in an era of darkness, it is completely unconsciously driven, such that even the leaders know not what they are doing (like today). For example, take the Nazi's - the reason they were so successful is because they tapped into the collective unconscious of the Germans and permitted free expression to it - and they did so consciously. What the Germans were afraid to express, because it was not nice, because it wasn't good & decent, etc. the Nazi's awakened and gave it permission, encouraged it, to make itself felt. Any world-historical movement must be in line with the unconscious because it requires the mass movement and action of vast numbers of people. And remember, the unconscious drives most people without their knowledge. So it is virtually impossible to get masses to act by appealing merely to their consciousness - to reach into their depths, one must appeal to what they have repressed, to what they keep hidden, to their own repressed spirituality. Then the masses are literarily transformed into puppets.
It is one reason why scientism in a way is a blessing in disguise. To go back to the Biblical analogy, the Tree of Knowledge leads to death, and the ones who have Knowledge will be prevented by the Cherubim with the flaming sword from reaching the Tree of Life. And this is for their own sake, for if they reached it, all chaos would break loose.
Quoting Coldlight
Hence the dismissal of the spiritual is a form of protection in an age lacking wisdom.
It is Augustine's saying that is the obfuscation. He is hiding the obfuscation in the word "nature", which remains undefined, and almost impossible to clearly articulate.
Accordingly, in looking at the past, one is looking at nature, and in noticing regularities one is calling them laws. So in noticing irregularities in the past one says, either there is a regularity that we haven't penetrated yet because it is complicated, or else that there is no regularity, and we have randomness.
As to the future, there is nothing that can possibly be a violation of the laws of nature because there is no law (derived from the past) that can tell us that the future will be like the past.
And as to the past, there is nothing that can possibly be a violation of nature, because if there is a violation, then that is not the law as the regularity is not regular.
None of which is to deny that weird shit might have happened, and weird shit might happen in the future. So it's not, as it turns out very helpful, because in ruling out miracles, nothing whatsoever is ruled out.
In order to be saying something more than 'I don't want to use that word', one has to give 'miracle' a meaning such that it is not ruled out a priori, but is the kind of thing that there could be as a logical possibility, but that there isn't (or is) as a matter of fact.
However, one can take another view, and find another definition. Let us say instead, that the laws of nature describe the orderly succession of events, such that the present is conditioned by the past. Now if the laws of nature are complete, and the succession is entirely orderly, then if, the big bang then I write this post. That is, initial conditions + physics determine history.
But that is an old-fashioned notion, because randomness seems to be built in. And randomness in radioactive decay, for example, seems to be unconditioned by the past.
But there is a logical possibility, I think, of something that is unconditioned by the past and non-random, and that would be a reasonable definition of a miracle, I think. It is difficult, because if it is not conditioned by the past, it would appear to be random - I'm not entirely sure if there is a way of telling, and if there is in principle no way of our distinguishing the non-random unconditioned event from the random event, then there is no way of answering the question of whether there are miracles or not. Nevertheless, I think the definition gets close to what folks want to mean by a miracle, and if it still leaves it open as to whether they happen or not, that is in accordance with the fact that fairly sensible people can disagree about it.
I think, finally, that if there is any criterion for distinguishing the random from the miraculous, it must lie in the meaning/significance of the event. But that is a can of worms for another day, or another poster.
When you talk about miracles and the supernatural, aren't you references the actions of God? I am not. Chemicals, physics, and time produced life, and in time, intelligent beings, and at some point, just a few seconds ago in geologic time, God.
A theist could say that God brought all things into being through physical and chemical processes, and that the principle of life is the hand of God at work. If that's what you mean, fine; but that's not what I am saying. I am saying there was no directive hand, and that the processes of chemistry and physics could have ended up producing only rock.
The cosmos is a cold, frightful place, and we have found it a comfort to suppose that God is here (if not throughout an expanding universe). I believe God is our creation, brought into being to explain that which is intolerable to leave unexplained. That we are here is one of those things that requires a good explanation, and God does the trick for many. "In the beginning..."
I am quite sure that your use of the words "miracle" and "supernatural" does not signify the same thing that my use of the same words signifies.
This isn't criticism, just clarification.
Yes, exactly. This was precisely my point but you have phrased it much more clearly than I was able to, so thank you for that. The problem is precisely that both Hume and St. Augustine (through the quotes posted in this thread) were obfuscating the issue by not properly defining their terms, such as in effect, they weren't saying anything at all.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes, I agree. The miraculous and supernatural represent precisely the entrance of the unconditioned as seen within the realm of the conditioned, the realm of time and space. The created world seems to represent the unity of the unconditioned through the forms of space and time. Analogically, as things are at the macro scale, so are they at the micro. And as things are in the past, so are they in the future.
Quoting unenlightened
Yes - as Blaise Pascal said, there is sufficient light for those who wish to believe, and sufficient darkness for those who wish to disbelieve. I will say this though - the untrained eye is not capable to distinguish with certainty a miracle from a random event. If I say I'm going to flip a coin 20 times and 20 times in a row get tails, and I do it, someone could always claim that it was random if they so wish. The possibility is always there. One requires understanding in order to truly discern this matter.
It's a one in a million chance, give or take. So the circumstances matter. If you were doing that twenty times a day for ten years and getting it wrong every other time, I'd think you got lucky; or if it was a craze that millions of people were doing, then again I'd think you got lucky, in the same way as I'm not surprised when someone wins the lottery. OTOH, if you could do it on a regular basis, I'd think it was conditioned by your skill in flipping, or in some sleight of hand.
For me to want to declare a miracle, not only would these things have to be ruled out, but also there would have to be some other circumstance that made the occurrence morally significant. Turning water into wine down the pub on Saturday night to impress your mates doesn't count as a miracle merely as inexplicable, but doing it at a wedding feast in the moment of crisis does.
But even if we take a more hospitable approach by assuming the reality of the laws of nature, we then have to tackle those. What is a law of nature? It can't just be a precise specification of what actually happens, because no matter what happens, it could be specified, and that specification could be said to be a law. Thus, any purported miracle could be accommodated in a law that makes room for that miracle.
Quoting unenlightened
It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to establish, just from observations and scientific models, whether there is "ontological" randomness in the world - or what that even means. Quantum mechanics, for example, has both indeterministic and deterministic interpretations.
Quoting unenlightened
I think I'll follow you a little down this lane. I don't think that what is commonly thought of as miracles can be objectively, impersonally defined. The popular idea of a miracle is bound up with the idea of a miracle-maker. Hume wisely included God in his definition, though it could be any "miracle man." But man it has to be. Miracles are intentional and meaningful - that's the only way to understand them (quite apart from whether or not one believes in them).
* There is actually quite a broad and contradictory spectrum of views on Hume, for all his seeming clarity, but I don't want to get into exegesis.
Sure.
Quoting unenlightened
What if I could, on a regular basis, cure certain forms of cancer just using my mind? Would you call that a miracle?
Quoting unenlightened
Why do you think moral significance is important for something to count as a miracle? Maybe I just walk on water to impress my friends, is that any less miraculous than if I, say, walked on water to save someone from drowning? If so, how come?
In other words, nothing whatsoever could count as a miracle for Hume. Even if I raised people from the dead, it would be taken as the world being irregular.
Quoting SophistiCat
Exactly, which is one reason why "laws of nature" are an incoherent concept, as I've previously argued.
I was thinking about miracle cures myself in the meantime. I think if you could do it on a regular* basis, and the placebo effect couldn't account for it, I would have to take it seriously as either a miracle or some unknown process of telekinesis or something. The problem with such miracles is that what is actually done on a regular basis does not seem to be anything inexplicable. I'd be much more impressed if you could restore lost limbs, but that doesn't happen at Lourdes, or at any faith healer's session I've heard of.
Quoting Agustino
I don't have a good explanation for thinking that at the moment; perhaps it's a little miracle.
* 'regular' is an arguable ambiguity here.
Where I think there is something much more interesting than all these 'what ifs' is in subjectivity itself; arguably, the everyday miracle is the (potential) freedom of the human spirit from its own conditioning.
In what sense? Curing illnesses that are for the most part statistically incurable on a regular basis would certainly count as inexplicable, wouldn't it?
Also, what we call "the placebo effect" is also really the power of the mind no? I mean if you have an illness, and you can't get any real medicine, it's certainly preferable to get the placebo over getting nothing, no?
Quoting unenlightened
That is not an everyday miracle, very few people reach the point where they can do that. It is a potential as you say, but not an actuality for most. And I agree about counting that as miraculous.
Quoting Bitter Crank
This is precisely the problem. The Universe is suffused with creative energies. Chemicals, forces of physics, etc. - merely labels. This is a tremendous creative force at play, regardless of how you call it, whether you speak of it in poetic or scientific terms, etc.
All of our minds consist of a collection of internetworked neurons programmed by the limited experiences in our lives. Learning is nothing more than bringing the unexplainable into one's knowledge, bringing the patterns in our brains closer to reality. Everyone moves from states of unawareness to understanding. As our understanding can never reach a perfect correlation with reality, we must always experience miracles in our lives.
There is a universal example that falls in this category you call a "miracle". That is human consciousness. We all experience it every day, and yet none of us knows why that thing you call yourself is attached specifically to your body. Our consciousness has a definite location and perception in this world. For whatever reason, we lack the capacity to fully understand this relationship of our thoughts to the physical world, and because of that it can never be known. Consciousness is an example of a miracle that everyone that can think experiences.
So the answer to the question of whether there are miracles must be "yes". That is not because we are experiencing something beyond natural law, but because it conflicts with our present understanding of it.
I don't think the unconscious is 'created'. I find that in the same way that our conscious mind works as a mechanism, our unconscious mind works as a mechanism, too. It is there prior to the psychic material being put in there.
This unconscious mind retains psychic symptoms of its own and is, by definition of life, forced to react and adapt to the environment.
Quoting Agustino
I think there arises a problem of how much of a spiritual is internal and external. I would say that the spiritual that is within is, at the first stage, dependent on the external circumstances. There is something to be reacted to. At the second stage, it is the question of how the unconscious mechanism grasps it and turns it into the spiritual energy within oneself. This the continuation of why I argue that the unconscious is a mechanism which exists prior to the first psychic material being repressed.
Quoting Agustino
I agree that the spiritual is not the same as the unconscious and also that there is a certain 'mechanisation'. It is open to question as to how much of the raw, pure spirituality can be retained after going through the process of unconscious processing.
Quoting Agustino
Wouldn't undoing the mechanism lead to the crippling of our ability to experience the spiritual? I find that it is the struggle, the battle that is to be held in the unconscious which can lead to the spiritual growth if taken carefully.
Do you mean that the spiritual does not exists and that there is only our unconscious processes that we call spiritual? Wouldn't that be completely fooling ourselves into creating a construct that is fundamentally non-existent? I would argue that spiritual, mystical, and supernatural may be founded in the phenomena existing independent of us and our unconscious minds. Our unconscious minds may react to them and interpret them in various way, but the starting point is the spiritual existing outside of our experience as well.
Quoting Bitter Crank
How does one go about deciding on such a thing? I think there is a tendency of some to attribute almost any external phenomena to the unconscious which can lead to a solipsism of sorts. I don't know if that is your case, but what I would like to get at is the question of why certain phenomena and possible existences are attributed purely to the unconscious independent of the external material?
This perforce is false since the "world" is not created, nor can it be said to have 'powers', and that would involve some sort of volition.
Big Bang denier?
Quoting charleton
So water having the power to become ice involves volition? You're so scared of God that even little things which may indicate the possibility threaten you. Why not address this anxiety? If you don't believe in God fine, but at least be emotionally open, and tackle it head on, not by hiding, repressing etc.
The Big Bang is not an example of creation.
Why not address your subjective assumptions?
In this sense of the word then I think it quite plausible to believe in miracles. The miraculous is something similar to the wounderous or that which inspires awe.
But I did vote "no", because there are other senses of the word. Rather than what is awe-inspiring miracles are acts of magic. Magic inspires awe, but so do non-magical events. Magic is a very interesting topic, in my opinion. Understanding magic is a way at understanding our collective sense of the world -- I won't marry a Pisces, because people born under that star sign have such and such qualities. I will fight this fight because I feel that fate is on my side tonight. I will work hard because it will pay off in the long run.
These are magical beliefs -- beliefs which have no reason outside of themselves. We can build large scaffolds of justification to hide the tenuous relationship to reality that they have -- look at astrology. But, at bottom, there is no factual reason to the belief. It can be based on any number of things -- feelings, traditions, preternatural knowledge, intuition, and so forth -- but these are all just names for beliefs without a factual basis. They are magic, where the words we repeat become and create the world.
I tried very hard to avoid anything religious in this definition. While the religious and the magical often do have an interconnection of sorts, I don't think that interconnection is necessary. I am an atheist, but I've known believers who were believers not because of magical thinking. I hope to lay all that aside for the purposes of your query.
And I haven't lain out sufficient and necessary conditions, exactly. My hope is that by way of example we can have a better understanding than the usual route wherein counter-examples are easy to come by.
And in this sense of the magical, rather than the wounderous or awe-inspiring, I'd have to say that I do not believe in miracles. I believe that the miraculous, in this particular sense, is the result of psychological phenomena -- mistaken beliefs and desire being the primary culprits of said psychological phenomena.
That's not an example. What law (or laws) of nature do you think that that would be an exception to? Why don't you think that that could be explained? There's no law of nature which rules out that possibility. It would just be an unlikely event: a coincide, not a miracle.
Well said.
Ha!
Quoting Agustino
You've got to be kidding me. My reply was based on your own opening post which depended on that very concept in order to define miracles. I haven't read the entire discussion - not all eight pages of it. We haven't all got the time or the inclination to drudge through all of that, especially not on a topic such as this. If you've abandoned this concept and you want to avoid replies like this, then you should update your opening post.
I'm actually sceptical, along Humean lines, of one common way of understanding what laws of nature are.
Yeah, Hume's position is what was discredited in this thread. When you contribute, you should at least make an effort to read what has gone before, or if you haven't at least state so openly.
Quoting Sapientia
Yep, and just a few posts afterwards, I claim that the definitions are inadequate and I'm not interested in definitions.
So you say...
Quoting Agustino
No, I'm going to stand my ground here. The opening post is what's central. I did read through some of the discussion, but if you expect everyone to read the whole darn thing then you should lower your expectations or accept the consequences. If you're going to abandon your initial position, then do us a favour and let us know by updating the opening post.
Quoting Agustino
Well, I must have missed that. What a waste of time. The mods should just delete this sorry thread.
If definitions are inadequate, how the fuck are we supposed to figure out what miracles are?
Bro: "Do you like cheese?"
Dude: "I'm not sure, what is cheese?"
Bro: "I can't tell you, and there's no point in telling you what cheese is."
Dude: ".............."
A recipe for disaster.
What you're getting at here is creation within creation. TBBT doesn't, and can't, account for creation's creator, which is why astrophysicists have either tried to build upon TBBT or conclude that, somehow, existence becomes from nothing. Perhaps charle's point is that creation isn't itself the creator, so suggesting that TBBT is creative in and of itself would be a grave mix-up.
Exactly. And the funny thing is, Agustino prolly doesn't even realize that he's employing a deconstructionist defense here, which as we all know is an integral part of conservative and theistic apologetics....wait....... :brow:
I see, and I had a sense that this is how we've talked past each other. However, my intention here has just been to distinguish between creator > TBB > creation, and not to conflate TBB with the creator.
Quoting Mr Phil O'Sophy
"Just" that TBBT is understood in relation to creation and not the creator. If you attempt to place TBBT in a metaphysical territory that is more grounded in notions of a creator than the created, then you've in essence made the instance of TBB outside of the creation it helps, as vehicle, to create. Instead of creator > TBB > creation, the series follows more like creator ? TBB > creation. I'm unsure if I've made myself clear, and I apologize if I haven't. I just wanted to reemphasize the struggle many intellectuals have with TBBT when the idea of a creator is thrown into the mix. I think most astrophysicists realize that there's more to creation than just the TBB, but science cannot go beyond the confines of creation in its quest to understand creation. This limitation has obviously bothered many popularizers of science who hate how they can't touch theology and much of philosophy, but it remains true that science can only answer so much - TBBT can only answer so much.
To that end, and to actually answer the OP, I still don't believe in miracles. I suppose that I must allow for them being possible, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to throw out what conclusive science already exists and say I believe in them. I don't, and I won't until I'm convinced that they do.
Creation is what god did, init? The Big Bang was a spontaneous natural event.
Definition...
The action or process of bringing something into existence.
"creation of a coalition government"
synonyms: design, formation, forming, modelling, putting together, setting up, making, construction, constructing, fabrication, fabricating, fashioning, building, erection, erecting; More
2.
the creating of the universe, especially when regarded as an act of God.
"the big bang was the moment of the Creation, and therefore the work of God"
The Universe was not "BROUGHT" in to existence.
There was no one to bring it.
Is a false statement.
This is a false statement.