real life wrote: By "supernatural", we are referring to that which is not empirically known.
Perhaps you define Supernatural im that manner, others define it as unestablished.
Quote:There are many things that do not originate in or depend on empirical data, Timber.
per arguendo, OK, granted, at least in the abstract.
Quote:To lump all of these together as illicit and superstitious may seem convenient,
It certainly would seem to be convenient to do so ... at least as, if not more convenient than lumping together the plethora of assumptions, postulations, and guesses that make up the religionist proposition as forensically valid. In as much as neither approach is intellectually honest, neither approach has any appeal for me.
Quote: but that doesn't make your definition a valid one.
Of course not, and the converse does not validate your definition. On the other hand, the objection you pose has just been demonstrated to be a straw man fallacy - your allegation not withstanding, I do not endorse or employ either approach.
Quote:A common example--ideas.
One may have an idea for an invention, for instance, that he has never seen nor experienced anything like. Is his idea "superstitious" because he did not see something like it first?
Perhaps to you, he is superstitious. But the world has been moved forward by "superstitious" men such as that.
Poppycock. While it may be admitted there is such a thing as truly original thought, at end, without experiencial reference there would be no basis for original thought, or for reason and logic, from which tripartite synthesis spring invention, which builds on itself, driven by the tripartite synthesis of original thought, reason, and logic, growing over a few millenia from simple unworked stone and bone tools to interplanetary exploration. If there is anything in which I have faith, its is humankind's endless curiosity and boundless inventiveness, though to attribute that recognition to faith would be incorrect; the truth of humankind's endless curiosity and boundless inventiveness is told unmistakeably in the progrssion from unworked stone and bone tools to interplanetary exploration. It isn't superstition which has driven humankind to this point, and propells it further, it is curiosity and inventiveness.
Quote:Rigid, exclusive empiricism eventually falls upon its own sword. You have the classic contradiction to deal with; namely that the very concept of God probably did not originate by experience, if your proposition that such a God is highly improbable is to be believed, and if all is dependent upon experience.
Poippycock. There is no contadiction. Humankind, powerless to influence thouroughly un-understood , even incomprehensible-by-current-knowledge forces of time and nature which ruled his existence quite logically should be expected to have formulated the concept of external, "supernatural" forces by which to explain that which humankind's accumulated knowledge left unexplained. An ethereal being hurling bolts of fire, sometimes by caprice, sometimes by design, is far more likely to be assumed and accepted by a primitve than is the concept of atmospheric-friction-induced electrostatic discharge. That which humankind could not influence, but which with inescapable certainty influenced humankind, sometimes benificently, sometimes terribly, but always inescapably, naturally would be conceived to be driven by some other intelligence and will, as by direct observation all which humankind was able to influence was influenced by mankind's intelligence and will. Human throws rock, rock flies through air, strikes and kills prey; human
DID that - thought it out, willed it, and did it. Fire flies through air, strikes tree, tree burns; no human did that, but it happened, so a god must have done that. Very simple really; no other logical explanation can be imagined.
Quote:So how did Man conceive of something like an All Powerful God if he had not experienced or encountered anyone like that?
.
See the above. All you are saying is that in order to have faith in a god, you have to have faith, and that if you have faith in god, you have faith. So it seems what it comes down to is that in order to have faith, you've got to have faith, and if you have faith and have faith in faith, you'll have faith, so you'll have god, is that about it?
Sorry, partner, I just can't see that- it just doesn't ad up; too many zeros, too many unknowns. The math just doesn't work. To me, by the available evidence, there is at end no difference between faith and superstition.
<--- Click the image, turn up your speakers, and be a little patient 
