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To: atlaw
In the context of your hypothetical, you are presuming exhaustion of all possible physical explanations (you suggest, after all, that the supernatural explanation was not the assumption you started with).

You're still misunderstanding me. What I'm saying is that if I had been confronted with the situation I described, a supernatural explanation is not the assumption I'd start with. However, since I'm the one coming up with the hypothesis, I can posit any initial facts I like, and the initial fact I'm positing is that the cause of the phenomenon I'm describing is indeed what would be termed supernatural. It's not a "conclusion" I've reached; it's merely the initial conditions set out in the scenario.

So given those initial conditions (which the scientists conducting the investigation wouldn't be aware of at the beginning), would the scientists be capable of figuring it out? That is, would they be able to determine that it wasn't, or in all likelihood wasn't, the result of a non-"supernatural" cause?

349 posted on 10/01/2005 8:26:48 AM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: inquest
That is, would they be able to determine that it wasn't, or in all likelihood wasn't, the result of a non-"supernatural" cause?

Not unless they fully understood every aspect of how it formed and worked. Otherwise I don't see how they could be certain that a natural explaination won't turn up tommorow.

For example long ago the prospect of a rainbow or thunder storm having a natural explaination would have been ridiculous. There was just no fathomable natural explaination for those things. Yet that was clearly not a good reason to assume a lack of natural cause.

359 posted on 10/01/2005 8:49:35 AM PDT by bobdsmith
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To: inquest

Same answer as before. Yes, by first examining all possible physical explanations and ruling them out. Once that is accomplished (if ever), the supernatural explanation remains. But not before, and not as a starting point.


361 posted on 10/01/2005 8:53:12 AM PDT by atlaw
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