Yes, but that is irrelevant.
Someone decides to make a wooden chair entirely with hand tools. Then he makes one with power tools.
Same guy, making stuff happen thru different methods. We wouldn’t call one “supernatural”, would we?
So… you are a psychiatrist, and you can’t tell when someone is afraid because of “reasonable danger” vs. someone who is apparently afraid for no reason at all?
What kind of disingenuous sophistry are you trying to sell here?
You can play word games all day long … and it is still pretty normal to be able to say:
that happened because of lawful interactions of matter and energy …
versus…
“Hey… I don’t know what that was, but it appears to be possible only because of the Gods”…
Huh? What does that have to do with anything we are discussing?
That would make sense in a world view in which there were things that could happen without God being involved. But you are describing one in which nothing can happen or exist without God. So are just drawing ontological distinctions between phenomena that are not actually ontologically distinct.
A man of science is a man of science.
You either can see a difference in category for an event that goes “pooooooof”… and happens
either extremely rarely or just once, and with a seemingly magical context …
versus
an event that is repeatable, analyzable, and/or predictable.
I’m pretty well burned out on the “huh, I don’t understand” modality that many Atheists seem to perfect either before they arrive here… or during their time here.
You are not following. I see the difference. I am not seeing the reason to describe only one as “supernatural” if both are performed by a “supernatural being.”
It’d be like saying a chair made with hand tools is “man made” but one made with power tools is in a category other than man made. That would make no sense.
Follow now?
And that is the problem with Atheists… they have such “concrete thinking” apparatus that it is difficult to explain things to them.
If, you use a definition of the supernatural as anything conceived of by God, then you have just rendered the definition of the supernatural as irrelevant or meaningless - - if the theist presupposes that God conceives of everything.
So, what good has that definition accomplished? Nada; zilch; null.
Common sense leads one to conclude that something is not “miraculous” by the mere fact that a God or Gods is behind that thing’s existence.
So the usual course of action is to divide natural and super-natural into what is repeatable, capable of being perceived, and/or predictable. And “super-natural” is usually considered everything that is either not in the first category, or seems unlikely to be ever in the first category.
Feel free to pass that review on to any other Atheists you know who have problems with natural vs. super-natural.
Of course I see a difference. But what does this mean?:
If it happens through evolutionary processes, and evolutionary processes happen whether God tweaks them or not, did God do anything there? Does God sometimes jump in, or is he micromanaging each and every mutation and/or selective environment? If he does anything to disturb what would have happened without him, I call that supernatural; how about you?
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I’d say “anything done outside of physical causality”. If God causes mutations, he has to point his finger at something, somewhere, and say “Shazam”. It’s not part of causality. It’s outside the normal rules, even if we can’t tell the difference. Or, alternatively, if there are no normal rules and God just does everything, then there is no such thing as “natural”; it’s all supernatural. I think there’s benefit in pointing that out; to some theists, these concepts of “natural” and “causality” are bogus.
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That too is confusing. It seems as if you have a dichotomy in which God sets initial conditions and then mostly lays back, letting the process work by itself. If he sets up the conditions knowing everything that’s going to follow (and he could have set them up differently), then sure, he’s responsible for what happens. But he isn’t doing anything. The only time he did anything was at the start. You sound like a deist, with exceptions.
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If there was a definitive answer… do you think there would be 100s of denominations still?
Each faith develops a theory if metaphysics that suits the followers.
Calvinists see everything as being micro-managed. But some non-Calvinists (like me) also agree with that plus human freewill.
In my theology… god has to do some miraculous things to compensate for drift created by human freewill.
If there was no freewill, God probably wouldnt need to do miracles at all.
Have you seen the Behe video yet?
This is exactly how he describes his preferred scenario.
But its not Deism if God is also communivating with his devoted .
…or answering prayers.
And if he is doing any miracles… thats “real time” as well.
Deists dont have anything EXCEPT the moment of creation.
But what’s your answer? You seem to contradict yourself from sentence to sentence. First you say that God micromanages everything except human free will. Then you say that but for free will God wouldn’t have to do anything. And then you refer, apparently with approval, to Behe’s “pool shot”, but that contradicts the micromanagement scenario. Can you clarify?
@John_Harshman, you need more coffee.
I gave you my answer. I’ll give it again… for me… instead of trying to help you understand the diversity of possible answers (which apparently BLOWS YOUR MIND to smithereens)…
My answer is:
God plans everything that can be planned… human free will can be known … but it can’t always be responded to and accommodated if God has a specific end point (or multiple end points) in mind.
IN MY VIEW:
So, God uses miracles to patch the breaks that human freewill sometimes causes (either by just one person, or by multiple people exercising their freewill).
IN MY VIEW:
Whether God is performing a super-natural episode (what other people call an intervention)… or sustaining the substance of the Cosmos from moment to moment (what other people are tempted to call Deism)… it is God’s doing… it’s God all the way.
But … since it is God employing different methods… we can’t just call it all Miraculous. There is a difference between God being miraculous… and God working through natural processes.
Even Behe gets this point… and so you need to catch up … or be the one Atheist in the back of the room with a dunce cap on.
Ahhhhhh… you finally gave your answer! That’s a big help… because now I can use the phrases you find more meaningful.
For example, you use the phrase “anything done outside of physical causality” for the miraculous or super-natural. Great … I’ll use that phrase too.
However, when you write that a mutation is not part of causality? Well, now you are just being pedantic… there are two ways to do everything.
If God plans a mutation caused by a lightning strike… or by a cosmic ray from another galaxy… these are still mutations, right? Afterall, that’s what chromosomes do … they mutate… and that’s natural.
But if God needs to “pooooooof” something here or there in a chromosome… who is to say? So naturally, Theists have to accommodate that possibility. So… still TWO (2) of everything.
Oh really? So now you are the expert on what Theists think?
So far, the only Theist I know who thinks these are bogus differences is @Ashwin_s… and he is an extreme outlier.
It’s usually Atheists who think this is bogus… not Christians… since they know the difference between de novo creation of Adam … vs. evolving a primate into an Adam (and millions more like him!).
You might as well acknowledge that you are not very good at clarity rather than just reflexively blaming the victim.
What sorts of breaks, and what sorts of miracles?
That’s not what I understand deism (in the current sense) to be. It’s more of God winding up the clockwork universe and just letting it run. What does “sustaining the substance of the Cosmos from moment to moment” mean?
And what does that mean?
No, I wrote that a divinely caused mutation is not part of causality. It’s God reaching in and poofing some event that would not otherwise have happened. Just because he may have started the causal chain by poofing a lightning bolt or a cosmic ray (a weird view of mutation, incidentally) doesn’t make it any less miraculous. It just changes the location of the miracle.
I truly have no clue what you intended to say there.
About as much as you are, I expect. Anyone who thinks that God does everything must reject the idea of causality. The only connection between one event and the next is that God performs them both in sequence.
I defy you to identify a single atheist who thinks “natural” and “causality” are bogus. And what does “evolving a primate into an Adam” mean?
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Let’s look at your explanation for mutations -
- God does it directly.
- God does it by directing some natural event like a lightning.
Option 1 is outside physical causality.In Option 2, the mutation itself might have physical causes, but it ultimately needs God to initiate something (perhaps the initial condition of the universe). So option 2 depends on a chain of events ending in a event without “physical causality”.
I don’t think these are bogus differences. However both mechanisms ensure that God is the only agent behind creation and nature does not have any creative powers of its own.
I would prefer you don’t speak for my theological positions. Pls don’t do it again.
The “breaks” are what i refer to as “breaks in the causal chain” that can happen with Freewill choices.
If Freewill is, by definition, not naturally lawful … then it is a “break”.
And we already covered what is a miracle: anything outside the causal chain.
So when humans make a freewill choice that interferes with God’s end goal, he can use a combination of natural and super-natural mitigations (if both kinds of mitigations are necessary).
That’s exactly right… I am not discussing Deism. I consider the Cosmos’s existence, from moment to moment, to be God’s constant “doing”. If he stops “doing”… the Cosmos disappears.
God working through natural processes is God designing the causal chain, from the Big Bang … and throughout …wherever natural processes are sufficient to his plan.
And I’m saying … that God can also cause mutations without “pooofing” anything… he makes it part of the natural chain of events. Do you “get” this or not?
TWO (2) of everything… anything that can be caused by natural process… can ALSO be caused by a super-natural “poooofing”… Do you take naps in between my postings?
The poverty of your imagination is exceptionally stark.
I’m done.