1.2.4.4 The Supernatural

The supernatural is usually deemed to involve something beyond normal human perceptions, and/or beyond reason, that requires faith rather than reason and evidence.  The supernatural doesn’t necessarily involve Gods, but many people believe the supernatural includes one or more God(s).  We can distinguish between three types of “supernatural�:

1.     The supernatural may consist of disembodied minds or spirits, or immaterial beings, inhabiting some region beyond normal human perceptions, that behave independently of the natural laws of the universe (whether these be deterministic or probabilistic) and some of these interact with the natural world, perhaps answering prayers, punishing miscreants, or just keeping things going.

2.     The supernatural could consist of such entities but they don't interact with the natural world. 

3.     The supernatural could involve beliefs and values that are beyond reason, and require faith, without envisaging disembodied minds or a separate immaterial world.

Many people think the Whole Universe is made up of the natural world and a supernatural world, or that the supernatural world is outside the Whole Universe.  Most believers in the supernatural world seem to adopt this view for the following main reasons:

●   Some say the world must have come from somewhere.  One way to argue this is to say that everything in the natural world has a cause.  So the natural world itself must have a cause: the First Cause.  This must be something supernatural.  Another way to argue this is to say that the Whole Universe must have had a beginning, so it must have been created, so there must be one or more creators, that we call God(s).  We discuss this in detail in Chapter 1.3 (Theology).

●   Many believe that the material world cannot have any intrinsic values.  They believe that values do exist.  Therefore values must come from a non-material, supernatural world.  We discuss this in detail in Chapter 1.5 (Ethics).

●   In addition to ethics, many say emotional experiences such as beauty, wonder and awe cannot be explained by science, and seem to be contrary to a materialist view of the world.  We discuss this in detail in Chapter 1.6 (Aesthetics).

●   In addition to ethics and aesthetics, many believe mind and consciousness itself cannot be explained by science, and is contrary to a materialist view of the world.  Many people don't want to accept that when we die our mental life ceases.  They hope for an afterlife, to meet loved ones again, or to be reincarnated, looking forward to a hopefully better future.  We discuss this in detail in Chapter 1.4 (Mind).

To provide immediate responses to these ideas we need to summarise what is in Chapters 1.3 to 1.6.

The First Cause and a Creator God

The First Cause argument has well known flaws which we present in Chapter 1.3 (Theology).  In essence, there is no need to assume the Whole Universe had a beginning, or that it needed a First Cause, or that such a cause must be supernatural, or that a creator God would care about us mere humans or that such a God would be kind. 

Deists believe that there is a God who created the world, because they can't think of any other explanation for existence, but they don't believe this God has any further interest in the world. 

And even if God did create the Whole Universe, we simply ask who created that God.  Some theists claim that God is self –existent, but that is an assertion not a reason.  Other theists, in Gnosticism and Hinduism explain that there was a sequence of Gods, one creating another, until one of them created the world.  As explained in detail in Chapter 1.3 there is no need to believe any of this.

 

Values

Many people think of values as things to be discovered and taught.  But they are choices, not things.

We adopt core values such as Truth, Diversity, Reality, Life, Love, Beauty, Responsibility, Equality and Hope, by making choices based on the beliefs we have about the options available to us.  These choices do not require any belief in supernatural worlds, and we make them in this material world. 

Each Chapter in Part 1 (Philosophy) explains how we make most of these core value choices, and the remaining Parts 2 to 7 describe how we arrive at derived, effecting, and ancillary values.

Emotions and Feelings

As discussed is Part 2, science can explain the things most often raised to support a belief in the supernatural, such as the evolution of the universe, life, love, consciousness and so on.  Many people have a very limited understanding of science, particularly modern neuroscience, which is developing credible explanations of consciousness, emotions and feelings, and wordless ‘spiritual’ experiences.

Beyond Normal Perceptions

Though we don't need to believe in supernatural worlds, we can quite reasonably believe in a reality that is beyond our normal perceptions and even beyond measurement with our finest scientific instruments.  This is the reality of quantum physics and relativity theory. 

Scientists have no grand unifying theory.  Even if and when they do eventually develop a grand unifying theory, it will still subject to ongoing testing and might be falsified.  Even if the theory is totally consistent with the evidence, we will always be able to ask “But what’s behind that?�

Beyond Reason: Faith

Many of the core value choices note above are contrary to the evidence, or at least, there is evidence to the contrary.  We believe in Truth, despite accepting that all events, including our value choices, are either determined or random, caused or chaotic, as discussed in Chapter 1.1 (Epistemology).  We can say, to that extent, that our core value choices are beyond mere reason and require some faith.

But that doesn’t mean we need to believe in supernatural worlds.  Our choices are events not things, and the “supernatural� aspect of these value choices is that they are beyond mere reason (they are actions rather than a reasoned analysis), and though we consider the evidence, they are also in partly based on faith.  We discuss this further in section 8.0.8 (Defining Religion).

Conclusion

The following proposed conclusion is based not only on the reasons and evidence presented in this section, but also on what is said in the related sections noted above.