A finishing blow to supernaturalistic claims

Back to Supernaturalism IX, part 9 of the series

The major problem of supernaturalism

When we do not know the cause of an event, we can speculate. In naturalism, there are certain limits to this. Not everything is possible, and not everything is even probable. If a window is broken, you can analyze the traces and find out if a stone was thrown, or someone hit the window, or it was shattered due to a nearby explosion. It could have been a gunshot. But rationality and evidence limit the possibilities and the probability. Supernaturalists have a tendency to claim that rationality is limited,  and they are right. But that is a strength, not  a weakness. You can eliminate some possibilities by looking at the evidence. It is impossible to do that once you claim that you believe that the event was triggered by something supernatural.

Anything could happen; there are no limits or boundaries. The probability cannot be calculated, the ad hoc probability is always zero. Any event could be triggered by an impersonal supernatural force, like in astrology, or by any supernatural agent. Just because someone prefers a supernatural agent does not mean that this might be true. It tells something about individual or cultural preferences, but there are no criteria to distinguish one possibility from any other. There is not even a chance to falsify any claim. We do not have a truth criterion; that is true for naturalism as well as for supernaturalism. In naturalism, we have logical possibilities and impossibilities, probability, and evidence. At least we can eliminate possibilities out of a limited set. We can know when we are wrong. In supernaturalism, you do not have a chance to apply any criterion to any event. In naturalism, we can know when we don't know. But in supernaturalism, this is impossible. 

Ever noticed that believers seldom say I don't know? In naturalism, this often happens; in belief systems based on supernaturalism, you can pretend to know everything because anything is possible and nothing can be ruled out. But pretending to know is meaningless in any case.

Why is this the case? Because supernaturalism is just another way to say I don't know, hidden behind dubious truth claims, doctrines, dogmas, presuppositions, and personal preferences due to wishful or magical thinking. 

Personal preferences and desires prevent the believer from realizing that his speculations are completely unfounded. It is knowledge out of nothing because supernaturalism is founded on the realm of the unknown. You cannot distinguish between real knowledge and fabrication (myths). In naturalism, you can sometimes, and that is a major advantage. The unknown is vast, and so is supernaturalism. The only argument that supernaturalists have is their denial of this vastness. That is not an argument at all.

If you cannot distinguish between real knowledge and myths, knowledge is pointless, because there isn't any. That is the reason supernaturalism does not make any sense. That is why it appears to be so powerful; it can explain everything, but it means it can explain nothing. In naturalism, any theory cannot explain everything; it is bound to a specific set of data. We can be wrong, but at least we have a chance to know it.

Supernaturalism is driven by personal preferences, and that is what believers prefer. Naturalism allows us to determine when this is the case.

We humans love to know and hate it when we are forced to admit that we don't know. Pretending to know has more convincing power than a humble acknowledgment that we don't know. And here the Dunning-Kruger effect kicks in: the less we know, the more we think we know. We know nothing about the supernatural because it is the unknown. Therefore, we may delude ourselves into thinking we know what we cannot possibly know.

Believers fail to notice that every attempt to make supernatural claims falls short because they do not think about alternatives to their claims. Every proposed supernatural cause could be explained by supernatural agents of any kind or forces that do not come from agents. For every possible explanation, there are an infinite number of alternative explanations. There are no tools, nor rules, no methods to rule out any possibility other than appeal to authority or tradition.

Believers do not think about alternative possibilities because of their lack of experience, because they have been raised in certain cultural traditions brought forth by self-acclaimed experts of the supernatural, and their tendency to accept beliefs without questioning. Traditions and authority trump critical investigation. Some of those who use critical thinking skills to explore these claims leave faith, resulting in an enormous growth of atheism in the 20th century. No religious group has ever spread faster than atheism in the past two centuries, even though atheism does not have comforting views, no tradition, no hope, and no authorities, no rituals. The search for truth cannot depend on tradition, authorities, etc.

Because supernatural claims are heavily immunized against criticism, it is not easy for common people to find ways to overcome this. Our education does not provide tools against ideologies, one of the biggest shortcomings in our education, resulting in big atrocities in the 20th century, like the rise of fascism and communism. Apologists invest much time in presenting the lie that atheism was responsible for fascism (which is rooted in right-wing Christianity) and communism. Though communism, unlike fascism, is indeed atheistic in nature, atheism is not the cause of communism; it is the other way around.

We need faith to believe in the supernatural. And the only accurate way to define faith is pretending to know what you don't know. And you can have faith in anything, because faith is blind by definition. You can even have faith in science or atheism, though believers despise that. And they are more than right to reject any faith, which they do, unless it supports their faith, without seeing the irony in that. It reminds me of communists rejecting all ideologies except their own. Faith creates blind spots in the thinking of believers. That is the reason to be careful to rely on faith under all circumstances. If you reject any faith but your own, you are applying double standards and a confirmation bias. Ironically, believers try to use that as a weapon against science and atheism.

A detective story

You can look at it this way. Imagine a detective at a crime scene who is a naturalist. He sees the victim with a knife in his back. He can conclude that this was not suicide by the angle of that knife. The victim was murdered. All suspects he can think of must have had the opportunity to commit the crime; they must have been near the scene, and they must have a motive. He can exclude person A as the murderer because at that time he was seen at a pub 100 miles away.  He can shorten the list and concentrate on all who had the opportunity and a motive.

Now imagine a detective who firmly believes in supernaturalism. He cannot exclude person A because he was away. A could have telekinetically killed the victim. It could have been an accident because A has no full control of his power. He could not exclude any person on this earth. It could have been a supernatural agent of some sort. He cannot rule out any possibility. His belief about supernaturalism does not allow him to stick to naturalism. He cannot exclude supernaturalism, which is a claim made by almost all supernaturalists.

As a chief commander of the police, even if you believe in supernaturalism, wouldn't you immediately fire the second detective? Why stick to supernaturalism in the first place?

Apply some critical thinking and find out for yourself. Fail to do so and get scammed. Your choice.

How not to refute a worldview

It is interesting that some supernaturalists, especially apologists, try to convince others that if a worldview cannot answer a question, this worldview must be completely invalid. I have seen a few apologists who try to debunk atheism by claiming that atheists cannot answer questions like where the universe came from, or how consciousness emerges, or how life began.

First, they attack naturalism, and because atheism does not depend on naturalism, this attack fails. Second, any worldview that claims to know all and can explain all must be false. Every so often we just have to admit that we don't know, something that believers either can't or won't. So this argument backfires.

I can ask some questions that Christians cannot answer, though they will deny it, and start attacking their opponent instead. It happens to me daily. I do not conclude from this that the whole Christian worldview must be false, and I would urge believers to think about naturalism likewise.

The Morality of Deception

It would all be quite funny if people weren’t using references to an irrelevant, nonexistent, or unverifiable other world to gain advantages in this world.

The motive behind such claims is the same. This type of religion stands in contrast to openness and honesty; the morality it espouses is corrupt from the very beginning.

Many people are honestly convinced that the supernatural exists. It is a form of self-deception that benefits a self-appointed elite. Whether healing gemstones, useless talismans, or Christian theology are being peddled makes no difference and cannot be distinguished—based on no criteria other than the single phrase, Trust me, I know what you don't know and nobody can know!

People will stick to supernaturalism no matter

Because it is convenient, grants certain wishes in the imagination of believers, is spread by peers and parents, is dominant in our culture, and is transferred by people who can show a strong conviction or even are charismatic, belief in supernaturalism will not vanish. No amount of arguments and evidence can convince most believers that they are mistaken. Who wants to be wrong anyway?

Most debates run in circles, like:

B (believer): You claim that nothing supernatural can exist!

S (skeptic): No, I think that you cannot distinguish the supernatural from the unknown. You draw a fictitious line in the unknown and arbitrarily declare something you wish existed as part of the unknown, apart from the unknown natural things.

B: But you cannot disprove that I'm wrong!

S: No, I can't. You have conveniently removed science from the debate by definition, because science is such a great tool to eliminate falsehoods and nonsense. Besides, you cannot disprove nonsense. How will you know that you can't disprove supernaturalism because it is nonsense?

B: But billions of people believe in supernaturalism. We have great authorities teaching the truth.

S: Believing something does not make it true. The count of people is irrelevant; even billions can be wrong. An argument from authority is called a fallacy for a reason. The bandwagon effect (claiming something is true because numerous people believe it) is called a cognitive error.

B: We have millions of people who witnessed a miracle, which clearly shows that the supernatural does exist.

S: Be careful with eyewitness accounts. Billions of people have been fooled by magic shows and scams, and you are thinking that you are immune to that? Just because you are so sure that it is true, without even trying to prove or disprove anything?

B: But we have proof of God.

S: No, you don't. I admit that some of these alleged proofs are quite deceiving. Besides, you claim that science cannot prove God, but you believe that science or philosophy can prove God. If that were true, science or philosophy could potentially disprove God. What else but erroneous thinking can lead you to the conclusion that your beliefs are free from error? Besides, the claim that billions of people make the same claims is dubious. It might be true on an abstract level but is false when you zoom in to the details. On an abstract level, apples and bananas are the same; they are fruits.

B: I know in my heart that it is true.

S: We know what thinking with the wrong organ can lead to; some of your priests are good examples.

B: You could be wrong.

S: Yes, I could, like anyone else, including you. It appears that you never think you could be wrong, unlike me.

B: Do you really think that all the martyrs died for something false? No one would die for a wrong idea.

S: No one would die for an idea he believes is wrong. But that does not mean that if he is strongly convinced that something is true, that it is true. Never confuse conviction with truth.

B: You cannot explain what caused the universe to exist.

S: Yes, I can't, and neither can you. We don't know, not you, not me, not anyone else. Besides, when you believe in nonsensical truth criteria like conviction, belief, authority, martyrs, tradition etc., how come that you do not ask whether you are wrong all the time about anything else?

B: Atheism cannot explain what caused the universe and is therefore false.

S: Atheists let scientists figure out how the universe came into being and are satisfied  with the answer We don't know. This has nothing to do with atheism. Atheism answers only one question: do you believe in God? All other questions are out of scope and have nothing to do with atheism. Whether any question can be answered by atheists or others has no bearing on atheism.

A very short history of the supernatural

The term supernatural first appeared in the Middle Ages. The earliest attested uses date from the early 15th century and are derived from the Medieval Latin supernaturalis. This term did not exist in antiquity; the distinction between natural and supernatural is a medieval theological innovation (invention). Therefore, a distinction between natural and supernatural cannot be found in the Bible. Because science did not exist at that time, the idea that the supernatural realm cannot be investigated by science is a still  later invention.

The need to immunize supernaturalism against scientific investigation arose when pragmatic scientific naturalism began to spread. The line between supernaturalism and naturalism was drawn from both sides. The theologians did it to prevent science from investigating supernatural claims; scientists did it to protect themselves against the political power of the churches.

Even when the political power of Christianity began to fade, science still accepted the boundary, because science only deals with ideas that can be falsified.

In the 20th century, science began to explore supernaturalism, which yielded no results. The latest thorough investigations concerning prayer (appeal to supernatural agents) resulted in nothing; the effects claimed by believers could not be found. This resulted in new efforts to immunize supernaturalism against critique. Apologists tried to defeat naturalism by pointing out that science cannot explain certain phenomena, like the existence of the universe, the emergence of life (abiogenesis), consciousness, and other ideas.

Problems arise the moment a supernaturalist claims that a supernatural force acts in the empirically observable world. Any claim that science cannot investigate these claims leads to a logical contradiction: a supernatural force causally changed empirically observable facts, but this cannot be found in the data representing the facts. Not because the effects are too small to be be found, science detected changes that are far below this threshold. And not because these unknown forces only change facts randomly, because we have statistical methods granular enough to find even tiny random changes.

The most common excuses by apologists claim that God, somehow, unknowable to humans, sabotages every attempt to find the effects of supernatural causes in the data. A loving God that wants humans to believe but sabotages certain attempts to find him is not very plausible. In this case, God acts like an evil demon, throwing monkey wrenches into our gears of understanding. Finally, it confirms that supernatural effects cannot be found. So we have changes that do not change anything, causes without effect, a God that does not want to be found but wants to be found, and a supernatural realm that does nothing and amounts to nothing. But somehow, it is important to believe in this nothingness that evaporates whenever we take a close look.

Science will admit when it lacks explanations; theologians are not as humble. Apologists tried to establish their pseudo-explanations against that lack of knowledge. This cannot be accepted by naturalists. When creationism started to attack evolution and education, even Christian scientists would rather side with outspoken atheists against these attacks than to accept anti-scientific claims. Science had been proven so useful that any attack against science poses a threat to the foundation of modern Western societies.

Christianity functioned 1,500 years long without supernaturalism. With every bit of knowledge, supernaturalism must retreat into the realm of the unknown and hide there. The better it hides, the less it can be falsified, and the less it can be falsified, the less meaning it has. Supernatural forces cause effects in our world, but they are not noticeable, as if such forces do not exist. Except for business models to scam people and being a servant to wishful thinking, of what use should that be? How should we distinguish between forces that sabotage our understanding of the natural world, cause something that is not noticeable for us, and make big promises of big effects that are too small to detect with nonexistent forces? All these challenges are not discussed by supernaturalists, and some of them even think that by attacking naturalism they can establish supernaturalism.

Supernatural effects can be found or cannot be found, depending on the context. The lack of findings should at least lead a rational mind into doubting that there is something at all. Lack of evidence is evidence of nonexistence if evidence must exist. That is called a qualified lack of evidence.

Nonrational people, of course, will reject my view, and they must be free to do so if they don't inflict harm on others or restrict my actions with their beliefs. This is true for rational and nonbelieving members of our society as well. Everyone is free to act on their beliefs; no one is free to force their beliefs on others, harm others, or forbid actions of others that do no harm.

But if you think that my view is not rational, speak out, and let's have a friendly discussion about the matter. I don't mind changing my opinion. Do you?

Back to the start of supernaturalism