barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (08/26/86)
From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen): >>>What IS a miracle? The definition describes an event >>>ASSUMED to be of "supernatural" (could someone PLEASE, for the last time, >>>define the difference between natural and supernatural without playing >>>anthropocentric word games?) origin solely because WE don't understand its >>>nature. [ROSEN] Sure. Here's one possible definition: something is "supernatural" when it does not obey any physical law. Not just outside *known* physical law, mind you, but a truly lawless event. >> One part of the idea of a miracle is a boundary between >> the reality we are in, and another reality. > >Are these "boundaries" and "sides" any more than our own attempts to pigeon- >hole and categorize for our own convenience, based on what we do and don't >understand? Are things we don't understand necessarily different than those >things we do understand? Are they of some different sphere of reality simply >because we don't understand them? Maybe, no, and no, respectively. Hey, I don't believe in supernatural events, either, I'm just trying to define what they might be, *if* they existed. I think that events which we do not yet understand will turn out to be, without exception, either due to physical principles we have not yet discovered, or due to principles we know, only we haven't yet figured out the connection. But, we *could* be wrong about this, Rich. We can't logically exclude the possibility that some Agency is able to cause things to happen just by wishing it so, without regard to whether that event is possible under the laws of physics. The hidden premise I see in your reasoning is that physical law is absolute and inviolable. But suppose it isn't? As long as physical law works as we expect when it's not overridden, that is, almost all the time, then our teakettles and toasters will continue to work as expected. As an example (and note this is an *analogy*, *not* an attempt to equate quantum mechanics with the supernatural), current theory suggests that it's possible for the water in your teakettle to freeze instead of boil, but it also says that such a thing is so collosally unlikely that it'll almost certainly never happen, anywhere in the universe, no matter how many billions of years you wait. So we can safely ignore this when boiling water. In the same way, the apparent absolute reliability of physical law doesn't *prove* it can't be overridden, it only shows that such overriding must be at best a rare event. >When we talk about the universe at large, is it really >"divided" into "supernatural" and "natural" realms, or the former only a >separate "realm" in terms of its classification by us on the basis of our >lack of knowledge about it? It's *probably* lack of knowledge, but we can't *exclude* the supernatural as a logical impossibility. The most we can say is that it seems unlikely, and that there's no decent evidence of supernatural events. And it may be impossible to ever know, which makes supernatural agency a pretty useless hypothesis. As you point out, the explanation for any event might always be just over the next scientific horizon; but, as you also pointed out, "we don't know" means just that, we really don't know. Until we find an explanation for a given phenomenon, we can't actually exclude the possibility that it was an example of genuinely unlawful behavior, rather than of unknown laws. We don't know. - From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry NASA-Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ELECTRIC AVENUE: {ihnp4,vortex,dual,nsc,hao,hplabs}!ames!barry
gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith) (08/28/86)
In article <1629@ames.UUCP> barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) writes: >From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen): >>>>What IS a miracle? The definition describes an event >>>>ASSUMED to be of "supernatural" (could someone PLEASE, for the last time, >>>>define the difference between natural and supernatural without playing >>>>anthropocentric word games?) origin solely because WE don't understand its >>>>nature. [ROSEN] > Sure. Here's one possible definition: something is "supernatural" >when it does not obey any physical law. Not just outside *known* physical >law, mind you, but a truly lawless event. Considering the discussion over on net.philosophy a while back (in which Rich took part) this is not a very responsive answer, since the distinction between physical and non-physical is assumed. Moreover, you seem to be supposing that physical events in general are lawful. But what is 'lawful'? The usual interpretations of QM are probabilistic, which means that the particular events that happen are in some sense truly lawless events, even though the probability of this or that event happening is lawful. Moreover, statistically speaking an event which we would perceive and label as miraculous might in fact be possible but very unlikely when considered via *known* physical laws, like your teakettle which freezes from reverse entropy. If you assume there is a God who created the "natural world" (the world with computer terminals, etc. in it) then it makes some kind of sense to draw a distinction of category between God as being "supernatural" -- literally meaning "above nature" -- and this natural world. If we also assume the world was created with certain laws which God sometimes violates then calling these violation events supernatural or miraculous also seems reasonable. I suspect it was this kind of thinking which lead to the introduction of the concept of supernatural. What Otto called the "numinous" (in 'The Idea of the Holy') probably also plays a part. ucbvax!brahms!gsmith Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720 This posting was made possible by a grant from the Mobil Corporation
ins_akaa@jhunix.UUCP (Ken Arromdee) (09/02/86)
>It doesn't matter if we have equations to describe it; it's still >miraculous. The very fact that there seems to be a universe and we seem >to be sentient beings in it is about as supernatural as you're going >to get. We shouldn't be fooled into thinking that just because we >see something happen again and again it's less miraculous than a >one shot deal. A sunset is a miraculous, beautiful part of the world. This argument has always astonished me. If you decide that such things are "miracles", then why aren't plagues, earthquakes, etc... also considered to be miracles? -- Super-villain rule 647: NEVER tell a superhero you aren't a living being. Kenneth Arromdee BITNET: G46I4701 at JHUVM and INS_AKAA at JHUVMS CSNET: ins_akaa@jhunix.CSNET ARPA: ins_akaa%jhunix@hopkins.ARPA UUCP: {allegra!hopkins, seismo!umcp-cs, ihnp4!whuxcc} !jhunix!ins_akaa