What is "Hypernaturalism"?

I’m a little surprised that @terrellclemmons is not more on board with the possibility – nay, certainty – of God’s hypernatural actions in biological evolution. I would think that anyone who acknowledges his providential action in the evolution of the cosmos should be open to it. (Is Hugh Ross listening? :slightly_smiling_face:)

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I’m guessing you misunderstood her… Hoping she replies.

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@DaleCutler, I’m not really on board or off board with that, mainly because I’m only barely familiar with it. I haven’t heard the term ‘hypernatural’ from anywhere except PS, and (I think) only from you.

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My comment was partly, or largely, based on this at SalvoMag: Darwinism Dissembled (not behind a paywall. Yay! :slightly_smiling_face:)

ID is still beating neo-Darwinism, a dead horse.

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@DaleCutler I don’t know if we’ve specifically explored this topic before. But you do keep bringing up hypernaturalism, and while I have an idea of what you’re getting at, it would be interesting for you to spell out in detail what you mean by that.

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But you CAN pay and support @terrellclemmons! Just saying!!

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Yessss :grin::grin:

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Absolutely! (In spirit if not in coin, being the retired old man that I am. :slightly_smiling_face:)

Sorry to confuse things. ‘Hypernatural’ has actually been mentioned here a number of times, admittedly primarily by me. It ‘just’ (not as if it were any mean thing!) refers to God’s providential actions where he has not broken any natural laws. The unbelieving world would call them coincidences, but in series and groupings imparting meaning, they are anything but. You dealt with it nicely in here: Welcome to Terrell Clemmons: Questions on Methodological Naturalism:

There is a difference between a set of circumstances that is improbable, and a set of circumstances that is improbable and also performs a function.

That nicely describes one mode of God’s providence (the hypernatural :woozy_face:), and I would suggest that it is maybe his primary M.O. with regard to our lives’ circumstances as his children.

Is there an objectively discernible difference between natural causality and hypernatural causality, or does the difference lie in how the individual observer subjectively interprets the given set of circumstances?

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@rcohlers gets into this @terrellclemmons.

Some of Jesus’s miracles would undeniably have to be supernatural. Raising Lazarus from the dead is one such example.

Some of his miracles, however, can be explained by the ordinary operation of the world. For example, the miracle of the fish with a coin in his mouth may not have required supernatural action in the world.

The second class of miracles are still miracles, but they might be termed “natural miracles.” @DaleCutler is referring to these as hypernatural, and I have not heard that before. Conceptually he is on solid ground as long as he doesn’t deny the possibility of the first class of miracles.

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The latter. The unbeliever does not believe in providence, so a set of coincidences (that word is not in my working vocabulary, nor is luck), no matter how astronomically improbable, is still just a set of coincidences, with any related meaning from the set or series denied, and especially that the God who is had anything to do with it. The believer, however, can recognize providence – no natural laws need to be broken, but the timing and placing are extraordinary.

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Certainly not.

I was conversing in Facebook group within the last year or two and recounting God’s amazing timing with respect to my discovery of my renal cancer and subsequent nephrectomy. ‘Coincidentally’, a Christian respondent who ‘happened’ to be reading marveled at the timing. He had been amazingly cured of kidney cancer such that his nephrologist, having seen nothing like it before, declared it miraculous. Of course, it could have been a ‘natural miracle’ too, but I am in no way denying supernatural miracles where God does indeed override the natural order that he has created.

I would never use the term ‘hypernaturalism’. ‘Hypernatural’ is just a convenient – albeit unnatural (:slightly_smiling_face:) for those unfamiliar with it – adjective for a miracle of supernatural timing and placing and maybe also of degree and extent of natural events, not breaking any natural laws.

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I don’t think we should invoke supernatural miracles where it is not warranted – that is something that YECs are compelled to do extensively with their interpretations.

I have no hypernatural explanation for axe heads floating, although there might be one, but I am quite comfortable with a hypernatural explanation for Joshua’s long day, related here. It in no way diminishes God’s sovereignty over his creation – in fact, hypernatural explanations exalt it, because they involve precursor events and God’s sovereignty over time.

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