In reading this essay, I notice that when I come to the word "supernatural" in
item A., no definition has been given for that term. I can understand the
distinction that was made in the SC2 item between events at least partly caused
by intelligent activity and those that are not ( even though in a particular
case, I may not be able to tell the difference ). Is "supernatural" a special
kind of intelligent activity such as that caused by "God"? I have a hard time
understanding the utility of making a division of events between natural and
supernatural. I would tend toward considering all tangible events as natural,
i.e., if it happened in "nature", it is natural. That God may interact with
nature in ways that are foreign to me seems no more reason to separate these
actions as not natural any more than for a humans interaction with the rest of
nature.
I might find greater utility, myself, in the the following two dimensional
classification of events. The first dimension might be:
1. Events not directly resulting from the action of any intelligent
being
2. Events resulting ( at least partly ) from the action of a well known
type of being, i.e., man or beast
3. Events resulting ( at least partly ) from the action of a less
directly observable type of being, e.g., a "deity", an "angel" or an "alien".
A second dimension of classification might be:
A. Events explainable in terms of direct causes or mechanisms which are
presently well understood or at least well described processes, i.e., we think
we understand the physics
B. Events not presently explainable in terms of direct causes or
mechanisms which we understand
Note that this last partition is in terms of whether the event is explainable,
rather than whether that explaination is in fact correct. For example, that
some lights in the night sky might be explainable in terms of swamp gas does not
in itself preclude the possibility that they might in fact be caused by some
alien craft.
The cross classification then gives 6 catagories - 1A, 1B, 2A,....
Contention often arises over whether set 3 is empty. Those not prone to believe
in deity argue that an event in set B is not necessarily a member of set 3.
Those more prone to belief in deity argue that an event in set A is not
necessarily in sets 1 or 2. It seems to me to be an important point that both
are correct. It seems to me that rational people should be able to agree on to
which one or more of the six sets in this cross classification, a given event to
our present knowledge could belong. It seems that rational people can be
expected to agree on a rational description of a situation.
Now the subjective probabilities associated with events, or beliefs about events
which are still possible members of more than one of the six sets, is quite
another matter. Beliefs can be as much the result of action or decision as they
are the the result of an objective calculation. While beliefs are interesting
to discuss, there is little reason to expect that even rational people will
agree. It seems to me that much of the hostility that is sometimes present in
discussions of origins could be avoided if folk would keep a clear distinction
between the rational description of a situation on the one hand and beliefs
arising from that description on the other hand.
Norm Smith
74532,66@compuserve.com