The "supernatural" and modern physics

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

This topic I think belongs here, although it is more meta-religion than religion per se. What I want to talk about is supernaturalism as a metaphysical idea, and the intellectual relationship among supernaturalism, classical materialism, and modern physics. I have two contentions here:

  1. Supernaturalism is logically dependent on classical materialism, and starts by accepting the depiction of the natural world used in classical materialism before adding a supernatural layer to it; and

  2. Classical materialism is dependent on Newtonian physics, and incompatible with physics as it exists today. By extension, so is supernaturalism.

What do I mean by “supernaturalism”? I mean a belief that there exist phenomena in the world that transcend the laws of nature. This may refer to God, to gods and goddesses, to human psychic powers, or to phenomena such as ghosts and poltergeists – BUT a belief in God, in gods and goddesses, in human psychic powers, or in ghosts and poltergeists does NOT imply supernaturalism. One may believe in all these things, but unless one also believes that they transcend the laws of nature, one is not a supernaturalist.

Supernaturalism is comparatively modern. The ancient world did not distinguish between the natural and the supernatural; the gods (later, God) were considered part of (or the author of) the natural world, and what was understood as “the laws of nature” at that time included their actions. Thus, the Catholic Church could include Aristotelian natural philosophy in its doctrine, and give it a theistic interpretation that Aristotle did not but that was fully compatible with his thinking.

Supernaturalism implies an understanding of what “the laws of nature” are that precludes the existence of things the supernaturalist believes exist. Only when one believes, first, that the “laws of nature” are known, and, second, that they leave no room for God, gods, psychic powers, etc., does anyone wish to introduce a concept of something beyond those laws. And that was not a position anyone could hold until the scientific revolution, nor could it be held with any confidence until the publication of Newton’s Principia Mathematica.

Which brings me to classical materialism. What do I mean by that? I mean a belief that, first, the material world is all that exists, and second, the material world has certain characteristics compatible with Newton’s theories, if not logically arising from them.

According to classical materialist belief, the material world is a deterministic one, completely described by the laws of motion at the particle level. A famous statement of this idea is that, given knowledge of the position and momentum of every particle in the present, it would be possible to predict the entire course of the future with perfect accuracy and precision.

All phenomena, to a classical materialist, can be described and explained in terms of matter, motion, and thermodynamics. In such a world, there is no room for God, the gods, angels or devils, human psychic powers, ghosts, or poltergeists. There is also no room for free will, or for emotion except as a subjective add-on without impact on events. Such is classical materialism.

Supernaturalism is an accommodation to classical materialism. Such was the power and influence of Newton’s physics on all educated people that classical materialism became the accepted view of nature among the educated, and so if one desired to preserve God, free will, etc., one had to resort to the claim that this natural world was impacted by powers from outside of it.

Today’s physics is, of course, completely different from Newton’s, but the implications of it for classical materialism have not been generally recognized except by physicists themselves, and not by all of them. The world described by relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos – the 20th century’s three-part scientific revolution – is an indeterminate one. That famous statement about knowing the position and momentum of every particle and being able to predict the future breaks down, because we now know that it is impossible to know the position and momentum even of one particle, let alone all of them. And this indeterminacy leaves plenty of room for acts of God, or of the gods, etc., without any need to step outside our understanding of nature’s laws or claim that they have been violated. Plus, there are other characteristics about the world we live in that lend themselves to either an organic or a hologrammic metaphor better than to the old clockwork that Newton’s ideas suggested.

It takes time for ideas to percolate through educated circles. But eventually, the new physics is going to generate a new materialism – what might be called modern or nonclassical materialism – in which the first component of classical materialism (that the material universe is the whole of reality) is retained, but the second component (that the material universe is compatible with Newton’s theories, is deterministic, is like a clockwork, etc.) is abandoned. Since religious, spiritual, and psychic ideas are compatible with the new materialism, there will no longer be a need for supernaturalism, and that, too, will go.

2

Very impressive. I was particularily pleased with your distinction between supernaturalism and ancient spirituality. Whereas the later comes about as a crude explaination for the unseen laws of existence, the former is based on an understanding of reality tied to an irrational devotion to bygone spirituality.

3

Well, except that it was actually a MISunderstanding of reality, and the devotion to spirituality, while nonrational, is not IRrational (which implies that it is a product of bad reasoning).

4

It should be noted that many of the explanations turned out not to be so crude after all. For instance it’s been hypothesized that the Egyptians were playing around with harmonics and forces of sound – especially when considering the pyramids.

There are -some- forces discovered long ago which are vastly ignored by much of the public scientific community. Not because of their lack of explanatory potential but because of how it doesn’t fit into the current system.

Google: Orgone, Townsend T. Brown, Tesla, etc.

5

Supernaturalism will go too? I think not. :unamused:

All ancient art from the cave paintings forward, and all the ancient religions, were based upon what the initiate, high priest, medicine man, shaman, call him what you will discovered during trance. :astonished:

The paintings detail the process and the experience whilst the religions are a codified version of what they discovered, and accepted as fact, during the course of repeated ‘travels’ to ‘other realities’. :evilfun:

Interestingly enough, people under the influence of modern drugs, and not so modern halucinogenics still report exactly the same things. The only difference is that now it is usually illegal rather than state sanctioned. :confused:

The interpretation, of course, is different. What used to be gods, and in the middle ages became fairies, is now categorised as aliens. The descriptions are, however, very similar. As are all the stages involved. Geometric figures, weird creatures, part human, part animal, and the feeling that one is being ‘taught’. :angry:

Who knows what branches of what we now call science were discovered in the ancient world. Who knows how much of what we now call science has been discovered in trance or dream. Francis Crick certainly had the idea for DNA whilst under the influence of LSD. 8-[

6

Some postulate that these visitations may be products of the personality. Not necessarily archetypes as Jung suggests, but distortion of the brain. Schizophrenics often have similair experiences but it is due primarily to a loss of recognition as an individual self or the division of the personality (as often seen in multiple personality disorders) or the occurence of other people or voices that are not physically present. The difference is that the normal person in such experiences perceives such visitations as out of unreal or weird and distinguishes them from a lucid or subjective experience. I don’t think these are products of supernatural events at all but are different aspects of the mind and I think most logical people would consider it as such. Many thinkers employed drugs to further their thinking. I believe it was Beethoven who composed while he was high.

True. They may have discovered things while making up spiritual explainations for things they couldn’t explain. For instance, alchemists made groundbreaking discoveries that would lead to modern chemistry, but many of the positions they held on the elements were based on all sorts of nonsense like angelic magic and transmutation. In a way this isn’t so different from many thinkers who still live today. For instance, doesn’t the big bang theory smack of creationism? There is not an overwhelming amount of proof for the theory but its more comfortable than saying “I just don’t know”. I think all of us have a need and a personal image as to how the universe works even if we can’t know. Deep down inside we’ve already made up our mind. My personal belief is that there is no god, the universe is eternal and atemporal. I have no proof for all of these claims but I hold it as my image of existence.

Orgone was Wilhem Reich’s idea right? It was sort of a middle ground between materialism and vitalism. Tesla had all sorts of eccentric theories on electricity but I’ve never seen any of these so-called secrets tested with success.

skepdic.com

7

Nothing that you described is intrinsically “supernatural.”

Supernaturalism is not defined by its subject matter. It is defined by how one regards that subject matter, namely as something outside the laws of nature. But our understanding of nature and nature’s laws having profoundly changed, there is really no need to regard them that way any longer. That need existed only in the context of Newtonian physics and the classical materialist world view it engendered.

8

A miracle or the supernatural is only based on what our mind is used to seeing. If we lived in a world where items popped up out of nowhere constantly, then our smooth linear world would look like a miracle. And in fact at the quantum mechanical level, virtual particles pop into existence and vanish constantly.

Then, a miracle is something that can’t be reproduced, a one shot, one time event, like NATURAL EVOLUTION, something that cannot be analyzed with the scientific method since it can’t be reproduced. The first living cell can be seen as a miraculous appearance. Then the supernatural is also something we perceive, feel, an aesthetic feeling on some item of the universe. But everyhnig could be seen as a miracle, since even any change in mass-energy just occurs for no reason at all. It is always a miracle, absolutely impossible to understand. If we follow each event down to the 10 to the minus 1000 seconds, we will finally reach events that just instantantenously change from point to point. Therefore a real miracle, a real supernatural event.

from:

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=150714

"
Evolution breakthrough: There are ONLY Miracles!

Just like we humans cannot perceive and distinguish events occuring at nansecond intervals without the help of machines then:

Consider a mind from a parallel universe that perceives our universe only in time increments of 5 billion years. While observing our earth it first sees only stones then a moment later it sees humans. For this mind the humans popped out of nowhere already completely “evolved” since it cannot perceive the cause and effects occuring at smaller time intervals. Hence for this mind a miracle occured, or maybe it would consider anything that pops out of nowhere, no matter how complex as the normal way of things of our universe.

Now we can imagine other similar minds having a perception and being able to distinguish only intervals of 100 years or 10,000 years or anything you want. In this case it would always see other items pop out of nowhere like cars and computers etc. These minds could not distinguish each segment of cause and effects, the chain that brought forth a new item.

But we ourselves are actually in this same situation. We cannot distinguish events at 10 to the minus 50 seconds, we can perceive naturally at most a few hundred microseconds 10 to the minus 5 seconds. So then if physics is performing complex processes at the 10 to the minus 50 seconds time interval, we could not distinguish them or follow the chain of cause and effects. The end results would be a change of a physical system from state A to state B in a moment without any cause, a CAUSELESS EFFECT for all we can perceive. But this in fact is the reality since any change from state A to state B must occur in some time interval, but the interval must end somewhere. Wherever it ends, even if 10 to the minus 1000 seconds, then the change from A to B is a sudden jump, a sudden change without no further cause, A CAUSELESS EFFECT! This is in fact A MIRACLE.

Now if the change is from any state A to any other, no matter how complex, it will always be a jump, a MIRACLE ASSIGNMENT. In fact there could not be AN INFINITE CHAIN OF CAUSES AND EFFECTS SINCE THERE WOULD NEVER BE ENOUGH TIME TO EXECUTE THEM ALL, THERE MUST BE A FINITE NUMBER OF CAUSE AND EFFECTS AND WHERE THE INTERVALS OF TIME CAN NO LONGER BE DECREASED YOU HAVE THE REIGN OF MIRACLES. It matters not what state a physical system changes from A and into B no matter how complex, it is a miraculous jump just like a complex mass-energy configuration that pops out of nowhere.

It is an aesthetic perception that a simple change like a small movement is more or less miraculous than a complex change like a particle becoming a butterfly. At the ultimate time interval both changes are acceptable and possible since reductionism is not even operating anymore, there are no longer any causes and chains of cause and effects, just miraculous transitions between different states of a physical system, just like the mind that perceives intervals of billions of years.

Hence the debate on evolution is just a debate on where to assign the miracles and at what time intervals."

Also check out:

ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/vi … p?t=153243

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