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"Exists" doesn't necessarily mean "you can point your finger at it." You can't point your finger at these nebulous "thought" things, either. Surely one can sa

"Exists" doesn't necessarily mean "you can point your finger at it." You can't point your finger at these nebulous "thought" things, either. Surely one can say something like "there exists a number such that ..." and proceed to give conditions. For example, even numbers exist (8, for example). Is this some kind of erroneous use of the word "exists"? Of course not. It's just that "exist" is a pretty generic operator - the conditions for one thing to exist can be radically different from the conditions for another thing to exist; they don't have any clear shared "flavor of existing"

derleth 15y ago
> "Exists" doesn't necessarily mean "you can point your finger at it." I agree with this if you allow mathematicians to use the word 'exists' in their usual way. > You can't point your finger at these nebulous "thought" things, either. Again, largely correct, in much the same way you can't really point at a specific wind. > It's just that "exist" is a pretty generic operator - the conditions for one thing to exist can be radically different from the conditions for another thing to exist; they don't have any clear shared "flavor of existing" And this leads into a massive philosophical issue that we've probably been going around and around with since even before the Ancient Greeks. My point, though, is that saying "the supernatural exists" is either a null statement (because the "supernatural" being talked about doesn't do anything) or demonstrably false (because someone makes a testable claim and it's proven that the phenomenon under discussion has a natural cause).
- cristianpascu 15y ago
  > or demonstrably false (because someone makes a testable claim and it's proven that the phenomenon under discussion has a natural cause). Beware that you actually test the claims and not necessarily the existence of that 'supernatural' object. People make all kind of claims about the supernatural, often contradictory to each other. Proving one wrong, doesn't make the other ones wrong. You still have to prove each individual claim (statement within a system of beliefs) to be wrong. Saying that an entity S is X and Y, and given that claim X contradicts fact F, doesn't yield that S is not Y (unless X and Y are dependently bound), or that S doesn't in fact exist(ed). One can claim about Aristotle that he had blue eyes, or red beard. If these claims are false, does it mean he didn't exist?
  - derleth 15y ago
    > Proving one wrong, doesn't make the other ones wrong. You still have to prove each individual claim (statement within a system of beliefs) to be wrong. Right. However, as humans are allowed to reason statistically, proving most of the claims of a given religion wrong will make it very unlikely that any of them are all that accurate. The rest of your post I agree with.
  - slurgfest 15y ago
    Suppose that we strip Santa of all his characteristics: we say that Santa's age, weight, beard, gender, personhood, personal history, powers, acts, etc. are all irrelevant. Now what meaning is there in discussing the existence of Santa? None. Because (I submit) what it means for something to exist is completely different for each thing. Discussions about God constantly founder on this point - at the outset, when discussing the mere existence of God, it seems almost inevitable that every single characteristic is removed from the table until there is nothing to say about him. But if his existence seems to be proven, then a massive conjunction of claims about him (indeed, a great number of claims specific to a religion) tends to spring up out of nowhere, as if these did not need to be specifically shown. This shouldn't be surprising, since many specialists in apologetics have admitted openly that their purpose is not to zero in on the truth through reasoning and discussion but to try to use reason as a weapon against itself to clear the way for adherence to some specific religion. "I'm trying to figure it out" isn't a religion, unfortunately.
- slurgfest 15y ago
  I see your point. If God exist(s|ed) then all the observable parts or effects of God (are|would be) natural, 'by definition'. And in that case the supernatural existence of God is totally pointless if it is even an issue. And it wouldn't work to disjunctively define 'caused by God' as meaning 'no natural cause' because some or all natural causes would be from God. I suspect that the insistence on words like 'supernatural' is an insistence on an honorific, and on a social attempt to suspend the use of reason and evidence as they pertain to specific topics. Theists who don't insist on this kind of artificial isolation between talk about God and (say) talk about numbers or ethics or physics necessarily become more heavily engaged in the messy details. For similar reasons, dismissing the supernatural is quick and satisfying for skeptics in a way which extended theological arguments are not

derleth 15y ago

> "Exists" doesn't necessarily mean "you can point your finger at it." I agree with this if you allow mathematicians to use the word 'exists' in their usual way. > You can't point your finger at these nebulous "thought" things, either. Again, largely correct, in much the same way you can't really point at a specific wind. > It's just that "exist" is a pretty generic operator - the conditions for one thing to exist can be radically different from the conditions for another thing to exist; they don't have any clear shared "flavor of existing" And this leads into a massive philosophical issue that we've probably been going around and around with since even before the Ancient Greeks. My point, though, is that saying "the supernatural exists" is either a null statement (because the "supernatural" being talked about doesn't do anything) or demonstrably false (because someone makes a testable claim and it's proven that the phenomenon under discussion has a natural cause).

cristianpascu 15y ago
> or demonstrably false (because someone makes a testable claim and it's proven that the phenomenon under discussion has a natural cause). Beware that you actually test the claims and not necessarily the existence of that 'supernatural' object. People make all kind of claims about the supernatural, often contradictory to each other. Proving one wrong, doesn't make the other ones wrong. You still have to prove each individual claim (statement within a system of beliefs) to be wrong. Saying that an entity S is X and Y, and given that claim X contradicts fact F, doesn't yield that S is not Y (unless X and Y are dependently bound), or that S doesn't in fact exist(ed). One can claim about Aristotle that he had blue eyes, or red beard. If these claims are false, does it mean he didn't exist?
- derleth 15y ago
  > Proving one wrong, doesn't make the other ones wrong. You still have to prove each individual claim (statement within a system of beliefs) to be wrong. Right. However, as humans are allowed to reason statistically, proving most of the claims of a given religion wrong will make it very unlikely that any of them are all that accurate. The rest of your post I agree with.
- slurgfest 15y ago
  Suppose that we strip Santa of all his characteristics: we say that Santa's age, weight, beard, gender, personhood, personal history, powers, acts, etc. are all irrelevant. Now what meaning is there in discussing the existence of Santa? None. Because (I submit) what it means for something to exist is completely different for each thing. Discussions about God constantly founder on this point - at the outset, when discussing the mere existence of God, it seems almost inevitable that every single characteristic is removed from the table until there is nothing to say about him. But if his existence seems to be proven, then a massive conjunction of claims about him (indeed, a great number of claims specific to a religion) tends to spring up out of nowhere, as if these did not need to be specifically shown. This shouldn't be surprising, since many specialists in apologetics have admitted openly that their purpose is not to zero in on the truth through reasoning and discussion but to try to use reason as a weapon against itself to clear the way for adherence to some specific religion. "I'm trying to figure it out" isn't a religion, unfortunately.
slurgfest 15y ago
I see your point. If God exist(s|ed) then all the observable parts or effects of God (are|would be) natural, 'by definition'. And in that case the supernatural existence of God is totally pointless if it is even an issue. And it wouldn't work to disjunctively define 'caused by God' as meaning 'no natural cause' because some or all natural causes would be from God. I suspect that the insistence on words like 'supernatural' is an insistence on an honorific, and on a social attempt to suspend the use of reason and evidence as they pertain to specific topics. Theists who don't insist on this kind of artificial isolation between talk about God and (say) talk about numbers or ethics or physics necessarily become more heavily engaged in the messy details. For similar reasons, dismissing the supernatural is quick and satisfying for skeptics in a way which extended theological arguments are not