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To: Dimensio; ArGee

Remember however, if you can observe it and test it, it ain't supernatural by definition.


871 posted on 05/26/2005 1:27:57 PM PDT by Junior (“Even if you are one-in-a-million, there are still 6,000 others just like you.”)
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To: Junior
Remember however, if you can observe it and test it, it ain't supernatural by definition.

Is the rest of the world supposed to accept this as the only valid definition of what is, or is not, supernatural? If so, why? By what authority do you make this proposition, and with what evidence?

885 posted on 05/26/2005 1:45:45 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Junior
Remember however, if you can observe it and test it, it ain't supernatural by definition.

Test it, but not observe it. If you had seen Jesus walk on water you would have observed the supernatural, but you would not have been able to test it.

That said, I agree that science is limited in its value precisely because it can not be applied to the supernatural, among other things. But to tell a scientist that he may not consider the supernatural is to limit him unfairly.

Doyle had Sherlock Holmes say something like, "When you have eliminated all the alternatives, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is not only probable, but the solution." (Apologies to Doyle.) I would be very disappointed in a scientist who moved to the supernatural before exhausting all possible alternatives and without a healthy dose of skepticism. I would be very disappointed in a scientist who, when faced with the supernatural being the only explaination (Jesus walking on water, for example) he would refuse that answer.

Shalom.

915 posted on 05/26/2005 2:14:38 PM PDT by ArGee (Why do we let the abnormal tell us what's normal?)
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