There is overlap of course. In the case of Pilate, the verification is provided by independent archeological evidence.
I think that something can be undisputed even though it hasn’t been verified, but disputing something that has been verified would seem to be a fool’s errand.
Hmm. What these cases have in common is that the doubts expressed by the radical fringe don’t stand up to very much scrutiny at all. I hope you’d agree on that? If not, we’re veering into ‘we can’t be sure of anything’ territory and again, I am not going there.
The sophistry lies in not subjecting supernatural claims to the same standards of evidence as we use for everything else. If we are allowed to verify a phletora of ordinary things on very understandable grounds, why are we not allowed to verify the supposed occurrence of something supernatural on similar grounds? What justifies placing that class of (claimed) events outside the ordinary considerations of true and false?
Why is that not special pleading? It certainly sniffs like that.
This is an oversimplification of “standards of evidence”. There are different standards of evidence between different fields. For example, I’m not sure there is 5 sigma statistical evidence that Pontius Pilate was a big shot in 1st century Palestine. Also, we have no repeatable experiments that can prove that Pilate existed. Yet the field of ancient history doesn’t operate with 5 sigma statistical evidence or lab experiments, so that’s OK.
But we cannot do the same with the claim that say, the Higgs boson exists. That sort of claim has to be established with the standards of particle physicists, which are an entirely different set of standards, which may have something in common with historians’ standards, but they’re not the same. They’re adapted in accordance with the nature of the object being studied. In this case, Higgs bosons are very different things compared with Roman prefects. So the standards are different. For example, discovering an old tablet that says “I saw the Higgs boson” would not be sufficient evidence for particle physicists to establish that the Higgs boson actually exists.
So coming back to the case of supernatural events, we have to first determine what supernatural events are, what they would look like, and what standards of evidence are appropriate to apply to them. As far as I can see, we don’t have an agreement on these questions, so we can’t proceed fruitfully on the question of their verification.
Cool. In the absence of all that then, it is correct to say that we don’t have a single verified supernatural event, so far.
Once you have cracked the issues you mention, let me know and we can have another look.
Based on your last reply, I’m not sure whether you’re here for a genuine conversation or just trying to score points.
I hope that you are referring to @Jim…
I’ll let people decide who it refers to, so everyone is happy. We don’t need a “verified meaning”… 
If you’re talking about whether they “appear” as “wave functions” before they are measured or not then we’re talking about the same thing.
As far as I can tell, if you can’t observe something you can only abductively infer whether or not it has a cause.
It seems to me that something like the resurrection of Jesus could easily have been verified by measurable evidence. So either you do not consider that to be an example of the supernatural, or your position is false.
I think you can ask for evidence that Jesus died, was buried, his tomb was found empty and that he was seen by multiple people afterwards. But if you were a committed atheist you could just say that there must have been some regular alternate explanation (e.g. the disciples stole the corpse and lied about it and nobody thought to investigate them for it), no matter how improbable or ad hoc that was.
I think that it would be better if you didn’t put words in the mouths of others.
It seems to me that the only rational answer is, regardless of belief, that there’s not much evidence of any kind, making “I don’t know” the best answer.
Sorry, I was not clear. I did not mean specifically that the resurrection of Jesus could be verified today. Rather, something of that nature could be verified, and could have been done at the time, at least in principle.
And something of that nature could be verified today. e.g. a person is executed by decapitation, and the identity of the body is confirmed by DNA testing and fingerprints. Then, three days later, we find the same guy walking around, perfectly healthy and fine except with a big scar going around his neck and we again confirm his identity thru reliable physical means.
I think it would be better if you read my statement more carefully to understand what I said.
I mean, yes, that’s possible. But how would we know that would actually be something supernatural, in the sense of being directly caused by God? Even if it was established that this person had special powers to be resuscitated, one could theorize that it’s due to some crazy biological anomaly, or that he was an alien with superior medical technology. The next logical scientific step (barring research ethics considerations) would be subjecting this person’s power to repeated testing. Analyze his cells to see if they have special regeneration capabilities, for example. Try decapitating him into multiple pieces and see if he can keep resurrecting again (like some worm species). Eventually once the phenomenon is repeatable enough then it no longer becomes supernatural but just routine.
No, we aren’t talking about the same thing.
You say that as if “infer” equates to “wild-ass guess”. Some things we can only “abductively infer” are quite certain. We know, to continue with the sun, that particular fusion reactions are going on at its core. Would you agree that we can be certain about that? And yet we can’t see a fusion reaction or the sun’s core, at all. You have a basic failure of epistemology.
Yes. That’s why I believe the concept of the “supernatural” is incoherent, unless it continues to apply to things for which there is no good evidence (by the usual standard of evidence that we use) that any of the things usually considered to be “supernatural” have ever happened.
It would be coherent as a category of things that could, in theory, happen but never do
Of note, you can’t actually discriminate between natural things and supernatural things that happen with regularity.
Nor supernatural things that happen only once.
Nor supernatural things that never happened.
I like that final sentence. Very concise. I should use it the next time I address this topic with someone who needs to expand their understanding of observation.
For me also! Along with that I realized that reflected images (e.g., off of mirrors) and a “direct” view of images weren’t all that different.
These are great posts.