Posted on 03/19/2010 4:56:11 PM PDT by chessplayer
What if Darwin's theory of natural selection is inaccurate? What if the way you live now affects the life expectancy of your descendants?
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
"Something else for the FR Folding gang to ruminate" PING.
So, you see, you seem to know what is natural and what is supernatural. Then why all this about definitions?
Even to this day, the highest academic degree in sciences is a PhD (Philosophiae Doctor, or teacher of philosophy).
Thomas Jefferson lists the "sciences" that interest him as, "botany, chemistry, zoology, anatomy, surgery, medicine, natural philosophy [this probably means physics], agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, geography, politics, commerce, history, ethics, law, arts, fine arts."
Medicine has from the earliest days of learning institutions in Medieval Europe been treated as separate from philosophy and was award a different diploma so as not to confuse it with "real" medical sciences such as zoology, botany, anatomy, etc.
This distinction is maintained to this very day in the degrees awarded—MD for medicine (requires no dissertation), and PhD for medical sciences (anatomy, physiology, pathology, etc.)
If people don't agree on definitions, what would the ensuing discussion be about? What point would there be in even having the discussion? What you end up with is the correspondents just talking past each other. Which has clearly been the case in our "backing-and-forthing," kosta.
Do I know what is natural and what is supernatural? I have only a general idea, and only rough definitions. To take a stab at the problem, to me, at minimum, the supernatural is the realm of universals of whatever kind. The natural is that which forms from them.
But that would be a "philosopher's definition." Maybe you can improve on it, kosta?
Sh** they try to define the entire universe according to their terms, but it never cooperates )-)
Hey its not just the Bible, all the great works warn of the fool who comes with rich accouterments.
Look no one can stop you from taking god out of your heart, and no matter how much the evolutionist wants it to be so, they can never take god out of the the hearts of man.
‘Beware Arjuna, those who worship lessor gods will go onto them’
Acceptance of the theory of evolution through natural selection of genetic variation only takes God out of your heart if you are a cretin who thinks that acceptance of scientific reasoning and rejection of religious dogma means rejection of God.
God is much more than your dogmatic insistence about the near simultaneous creation of all species.
I had a discussion several months ago with someone else who was trying to claim that “creationist” just meant anyone who believed in a creator God. I offered cites from encyclopedias of philosophy, from religious sources, and from self-described creationists, all of which used the term as you have defined it. I challenged the person I was talking to to find any example of the term used in common speech to mean anything other than someone who rejects evolution in favor of Genesis-style creation. They never did.
Nevertheless, some people apparently still insist that other, more expansive definition is out there, somewhere. If so, the obvious corollary is that someone can be both an evo and a creationist. So I’ll turn the question back around: what, then, shall we call a non-evo creationist?
Similarly, and without any apparent sense of irony, you were also accused of meaning the word as an epithet and making up your own definition for it - despite using the most commonly accepted definition, one that is unabashedly used among its adherents, and one that should cause absolutely no misunderstanding to any who is conversant with commonly used and understood words in English.
Very interesting, shibumi!
The thought occurs to me that the Logos of the Beginning can be thought of as "the simultaneous creation of all species," and of everything else. This was "before" linear time kicked in. Then time kicked in; and evolution took it from there.
Just a thought. Am mulling it over some more.
Thank you so much, shibumi, for your most intriguing and thought-provoking observation!
Hmmmmm . . .
I think . . . only think . . .
that we’ll eventually discover that evolution has had very little to do with much of anything.
Betty boop, I have no idea what you mean by the "realm of universals."
If natural is everything that is in "this world" then supernatural would be everything that is "above" or "beyond" this world.
Now, where does it say that the natural comes from the supernatural?
Are these your definitions of "natural" and "supernatural?"
What is the meaning of "'above' or 'beyond'"? Relative to what? "This world?"
I gather you sharply divide the natural and the supernatural, and possibly think of them as mutually exclusive. I rather see them as mutually interpenetrating (for lack of a better word). It looks like different time orders might be involved simultaneously. [BTW, MHGinTN has some very interesting reflections about what he has called "volumetric time." I wish I had a link handy....]
You asked, "where does it say that the natural comes from the supernatural?" That was my speculation, kosta. It's based on a fundamental dualism that seems to run all through nature: (1) that which does not change [i.e., the universal] and (2) that which is susceptible to change [natural phenomena].
Here's a little something from Rod Swenson, from the "science side" that might shed some light on the issue:
The first and second laws of thermodynamics are not ordinary laws of physics. Because the first law, the law of energy conservation, in effect, unifies all real-world processes, it is thus a law on which all other laws depend. In more technical terms, it expresses the time-translation symmetry of the laws of physics themselves. With respect to the second law, Eddington (1929) has argued that it holds the supreme position among all the laws of nature because it not only governs the ordinary laws of physics but the first law as well. If the first law expresses the underlying symmetry of the natural world (that which remains the same) the second law expresses the broken symmetry (that which changes). It is with the second law that a basic nomological understanding of end-directedness, and time itself, the ordinary experience of then and now, of the flow of things, came into the world…. Heraclitus (c. 536 B.C.), with his insistence on the relation between persistence and change … could well be argued to hold the top position among the earliest progenitors of the field that would become thermodynamics. Of modern scholars it was Leibnitz who first argued that there must be something which is conserved (later the first law) and something which changes (later the second law). — Rod Swenson, “Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Behavior,” from The Encyclopedia of Comparative Psychology, G. Greenberg and M. Haraway (eds.), New York: Garland Publishers, Inc., 1997, p. 220. http://www.entropylaw.com/thermoevolution4.html.
Try this one.
The natural world is what we perceive with our senses.
The supernatural world is what we perceive with the senses we don’t have names for.
Great observation, shibumi! It makes sense to me!
Thank you so very much for writing!
INDEED.
Hardly. Nature means "the material world." (look up any dictionary meaning) Natural (adjective of nature) is that which pertains and is part of this material world.
Supernatural is "of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal." (see dictionary.com)
I gather you sharply divide the natural and the supernatural
Yes, they are ontologically night and day, by definition.
I rather see them as mutually interpenetrating (for lack of a better word)
On what basis? Your own definition?
You asked, "where does it say that the natural comes from the supernatural?" That was my speculation, kosta. It's based on a fundamental dualism that seems to run all through nature: (1) that which does not change [i.e., the universal] and (2) that which is susceptible to change [natural phenomena]
But supernatural is not part of nature, which is the created world.
Here's a little something from Rod Swenson..., from the "science side..."
He is arguing that nature is a closed-self-suffcient system that recycles itself. That argument actually goes against your concept of God, and proposes a perpetuum mobile closed world, an island universe, where perpetuity is not supernatural or divine but very much natural.
Oh, then radio waves must be "unnatural" or even "supernatural?" Try again.
The supernatural world is what we perceive with the senses we don’t have names for
So, God is not a name? Spirit is not a name? You wish to reconsider?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.