Science Guide

In The entire recorded history of our species, and likely long before, no one has ever proposed a universally accepted notion of the Supernatural. Historically, people have resolved disputes over competing definitions of the supernatural by killing each other, hardly conducive to constructive discourse. For the purpose of this discussion, let's use the following definition for this concept: That which is outside, apart from, above or beyond the Natural world and its laws. Let's also define, just for the sake of argument, Supernaturalism: An ontological concept involving a belief in the reality of the supernatural. Going by these definitions, what does it mean to be outside or apart from Nature? Ever since the last few centuries, with Francis Bacon, and millennia before that, during the Ionian Awakening, historically beginning with Thales of Miletus, science has rejected the entertainment of as worthy of investigation, supernatural hypotheses (a hypothesis is a specific prediction, or retrodiction, made within the framework of a theory...just to be pedantic) in its methodological and philosophical underpinnings, but we'll get to that soon enough. Let's also use an operational definition of Nature as it is used in science. This is much much more than rocks, trees, the weather, and disgustingly cute (and not so disgustingly cute...) mammals and other animals. I suspect that science takes its definition etymologically from the name of the Greek god of Nature, Pan, whose name means, to be even more pedantic, because I can, so deal with it, All. Science defines Nature as: The entire Universe and everything within it, everything with which everything else is potentially capable of interacting, what the Stoics of ancient Greece called 'Cosmos,' all of Reality, all of Existence. Now, back to science's rejection of supernatural hypotheses: Creationists, and their evolutionary descendants, Intelligent Design advocates, harangue loudly and often that the Game of Science is 'unfairly weighted in favor of naturalistic explanations over supernatural ones,' that closed-minded scientists are unnecessarily restricting the power of science by rejecting the latter, in their refusal to consider explanations involving a Designer. I shall now attempt to address the question I posed earlier. First I will state for the record, that though I am a nontheist, I am open to the possibility of a supernatural entity, that while 'outside of existence' is the transcendent source of existence, the source of all being without being a part of it. This being said, I remain unconvinced of such an entity, due to, perhaps, my adherence to standards of logic and evidence as requirements for belief. That, and the fact that I currently prefer not to inflate my ontology with unessential possibilities. To accept the reality of such a being would require an emotional leap of faith that I have yet to make. Any hypotheses formulated about supernatural entities, since such agencies, being conceptually unlimited by the laws of Nature and the vagaries of chance, are capable of anything they want, any way they want, any time they want, are unfalsifiable, therefore untestable, and thus such hypotheses, because of how they are constructed are simply not scientific questions, therefore not answerable by science. Such hypotheses are more the province of philosophical speculation and theology and not a part of science. I have no problem with theology or speculative philosophy, but everything has its place. Science rejects supernatural explanations, not because of scientific conspiracies and arguments from authority, but because it simply cannot do anything useful with them. Once you grasp for a supernatural agency to serve as a placeholder for your own ignorance, you have stopped asking questions, stopped looking for answers, and are no longer doing the business of science. Methodological Naturalism is an approach, not a conclusion.