Existence of the "supernatural"?

Question

**I understand "supernatural" refers to something that is CURRENTLY outside the realm of natural knowledge, I'm refering to what most people nowadays would consider "supernatural", such as magic, aliens, psychics, etc.**

Now in my mind it boils down to this... if any of these unusual things existed in our reality, we should see some proof of them at some point in our lives. I'm not talking about photoshopped images of UFOs, or greedy magicians like Cris Angel. Anyone that could perform some fantastic thing, or had some fantastic proof, would come forward with it because there would be no denying things after that. What are we missing? Has anybody ever experienced anything real and "supernatural"?

Answer 1

I know one thing about the supernatural.If you check into it all the accounts fall apart.Some say they need to be studied and tested more.They see the supernatural as something new,just now coming into the light.They ignore hundreds or thousands of years of supernatural claims.Psychics and mediums still use the same tricks.They've been exposed many times by folks like Houdini.People forget or ignore that and say we need more study.Their minds are closed.

    Some even accuse skeptics of keeping the truth underground.As if a truly powered psychic or telekinetic could be kept secret.

   As far as first hand accounts.Look at the Q&A's here.There's a demon in my cellar,It looks like.........What do I do?Does anyone believe that?Do you think the storyteller does?Firsthand accounts are useless.Folks like to tell tales.

     Any open-minded investigater,who's checked out a supernatural claim.Ask them if they've experienced the supernatural.Any good one will say"probably not"

Answer 2

Go to Resolved Questions on here. There are more paranormal experiences on there than you probably want to know about. Have fun!

Edit..If you're one of those who has to have "proof"..be careful what you ask for.

Answer 3

Why do you ask if anybody has ever experienced anything supernatural and in the same question say that answers about their experiences do not count as evidence?

Yes, many people (I would guess millions) since the beginning of written records have had experiences they can not explain and this has continued even as our science has advanced.

Science does not provide proof of anything it suggest hypothesis (reasons for something) and using experiments either provides supporting evidence for the hypothesis or fails to provide supporting evidence for the hypothesis.

The evidence is always open to debate as to how it is interpreted from statistical procedures being the correct ones and applied appropriately to the methods of the experiments.

Many people have come forward and the evidence continues to be debated despite the evidence for some psi phenomena meeting the criteria of every other field of science.

I have included links for you below if you wish to examine some of that evidence.

Psi

Answer 4

i totally agree with you my son commited suicide 7 months ago we had talked about death and decided whoever went first would do a certain thing to the other so we would know for sure but as of yet nothing

Answer 5

I have had a few with ghosts, not really big but, alll in the basement

I was in my sisters room in the basement, petting my cat, when all of a sudden the bed shook really hard like someone kicked it, and I sat frozen for a seccond, and my cat had ran away to the point of the stairs, where she stopped and looked at me(she's really loyal :3) when I saw the covers indent like someone was getting on the bed, so I screamed and ran, picked up my cat and darted up the stairs.

I was doing laundry in the basement, when the radio I had in there turned off, so I turned it back on, and it turned off again, and it continued like that for a minute, in till the radio tipped over off the shelf, At first I figured it was just me, but I just had a really uneasy feeling, so I ran out.

Those are all of mine really, other than thinking I heard voices, but my sister had one too.

She was asleep when she heard our dog barking, and looking up the stairs then running away, then back and barknig more. She figured she wanted out, so she went up the stairs when she saw a tall man's figure, but she firgured it was my uncle or my dad, so she just said thankyou and went back to bed, but they both claimed it wasn't them, and she says now that she thinks about it, the mand was really tall and slim, while my uncle and my dad are tall, but more muscley/chubby type XP

On our first day here, my dad called us all down to the basement, where he had removed this strange wooden board naild to the wall where a hole was, with a childs bed, a trunk filled with play clothes, art paintings, and many other items. The woman who lived here, her husband died, and when we contacted her about the things she wouldnt reply..

Answer 6

"I don't think secondhand, written experiences count as "proof" of anything". This is where things break down - if someone tells you of one of their experiences - you will say its not true - it has to be proven so how does one do that?

For example if someone has a dream of a loved one being injured and the next day it the loved one is injured just like the dream how does one prove it.

Or a deceased loved one actually "speaks" in someones mind and tells them to go over to a board at a supermarket where a littke lost dog name is "Hello Viv" and the person of the deceased is called Viv - how does one actually measure that?

Or intitition - how does one measire intutition when intutition can be effected by stress and tiredness?

A friend of mine say a spirit which frightened her but how could one measure it - she could be telling a big whopper!

Or someones moves into a house and their 2 year old son runs into their room yelling "mummy their is a gandma in my room" in the room the elderly owner died in .How can one prove that occurred when it could be the imagination of a 2 year old or a coached 2 year old?.

The facts are any type of paranormal is hard to prove . I read a 52 card deck of playing cards. Each card has a meaning but the meanings are very vague and its not until after the event does the cards make sense again hard to prove.

I can only say I believe in the existence of spirits and I believe in card readers etc but I cannot prove it so really people like you wanted a measured sample are never going to get it. There are a lot of people who have had an experience the problem is that they may come forwardf and risk being labeled a looney or they may not say anything in fear of being labeled a looney. others just can't believe what they witnessed and simply want to pretend "its" not true or will search for a logical explantion.

Often the signs from the people who have crossed over are very very subtle and difficult to understand. Suicides in particular can take at least 12 -18 months before they are able to communicate with people on an earthly plain.

There are people who absolutely refuse to believe that ghosts or spirits exist others may be more open but then many symptoms of mental illness also have patients experiecing visual and auditory hallucinations so its very hard to prove as the paranormal is so complex.

Answer 7

Nope.  If it was shown to actually exist or happen, it would now be in the range of the 'natural' vs the 'supernatural', and we'd be able to try to explain it.  I'm sure the oddities of quantum physics seemed supernatural at first, before it was explained.  Look up the double slit experiment to see what I'm talking about.

Answer 8

I know in many Christian churches they have Supernatural experiences all the time.At least that is what I am told. I am looking for my first.

Answer 9

The term supernatural (Latin: super "above" + natura "nature") pertains to entities, events or powers regarded as beyond nature, in that they cannot be explained by the laws of the natural world. Religious miracles are typical of such “supernatural” claims, as are spells and curses, divination, the belief that there is an afterlife for the dead, and innumerable others. Supernatural themes are often associated with magical and occult ideas.

Adherents of supernatural beliefs hold that such occurrences exist just as surely as does the natural world, whereas opponents argue that there are natural, physical explanations for all such occurrences, summed up as

“ Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so." ”

  ÃƒÂ¢Ã‚€Â” Galileo Galilei

“ If we subject everything to reason, our religion will have nothing mysterious or supernatural in it. If we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous." ”

  ÃƒÂ¢Ã‚€Â” Blaise Pascal

According to the strict materialist view, if something "supernatural" exists, it is by definition not supernatural. Are there forces beyond the natural forces studied by physics? Are there ways of sensing that go beyond our biological senses and instruments? Certainly there may always be things outside of the realm of human understanding, as of yet unconfirmed and dubious in existence, and some might term these "supernatural".

Argument and controversy has surrounded the issue on both sides. One complicating factor is that there is no exact definition of what “natural” is, and what the limits of naturalism might be. Concepts in the supernatural domain are closely related to concepts in religious spirituality and occultism or spiritualism. The term "supernatural" is often used interchangeably with paranormal or preternatural — the latter typically limited to an adjective for describing abilities which appear to exceed the bounds of possibility. See the nature of God in Western theology, anthropology of religion, and Biblical cosmology. Likewise, legendary characters such as vampires, poltergeists and leprechauns would be considered supernatural.

[edit] Views on the supernatural

Speculative views on the "supernatural" include that it may be:

Distinct from nature Some events occur according to natural laws, and others occur according to a separate set of principles external to nature. For example God (in most definitions) is considered to be the ultimate creator of the universe and the natural laws. Those who believe in Angels and Spirits generally assert that they are super-natural entities. Some religious people also believe that all things which humans see as natural only act the same way consistently because God wills it so, and that natural laws are an extension of divine will.

A higher nature Others assert that God, miracles, or other putative supernatural events are real, verifiable, and part of the laws of nature that we do not yet understand.[citation needed]

A human coping mechanism Others believe that all events have natural and only natural causes. They believe that human beings ascribe supernatural attributes to purely natural events (eg. Lightning, Rainbows, Floods, the Origin of Life).

Magic Many people have sought to use both magic and science in hopes of empowering humanity for improvement and to achieve a clearer picture of humanity's place in the cosmos. In the earliest Christian art (from the 3rd century) Jesus Christ is portrayed as a bare-faced youth holding a wand as a symbol of power[1][2] (See: Images of Jesus) [3]. There may be a persistent link between supernaturalism, the paranormal, and the desire for immortality[4][5].

A word for unexplained events Before the scientific method was used, everything was believed to have a supernatural cause.[citation needed] "Supernatural" today is in this sense merely used as an inspiration for more scientific knowledge tomorrow, through observation and analysis.

Another part of a larger nature This is a view largely held by monists and process theorists. According to this view, the "supernatural" is just a term for parts of nature that modern science and philosophy do not yet properly understand, similar to how sound and lightning used to be mysterious forces to science. Materialist monists believe that the "supernatural" consists of things in the physical universe not yet understood by modern science, while idealist monists reject the concept of "supernatural" on the grounds that they believe "nature" is the non-material. Neutral monists maintain that "nature" and "supernature" are artificial categories as they believe that the material and non-material are both either equally real and simultaneously existent, or illusions that stem from the human mind's interpretation of reality.

[edit] Arguments in favor of a supernatural reality

Many proponents believe that the complexities and mysteries of the universe cannot be explained by naturalistic explanations alone and argue that it is reasonable to assume that a nonnatural entity or entities resolve the unexplained. By its own definition, science today is incapable of examining or testing for the existence of things which are untestable and illogical. Science concerns itself with what can be measured and seen through observation, logic, and scientific reason. Proponents of supernaturalism claim that their belief system is more flexible, which allows them more diversity in terms of epistemology (ways of understanding knowledge). William Dembski writes: For the theist attempting to understand nature, God as creator is fundamental, the creation is derivative, and nature as the physical part of creation is still further downstream. [1]

[edit] Arguments against a supernatural reality

Many thinkers suggest that if a phenomenon is by definition outside of the realm of science, it therefore cannot be experienced and has by definition no impact on our lives.

Our knowledge of the world is continuously increasing. Some occurrences, once assumed supernatural, can today be explained by scientific theories.

Many claimed supernatural phenomena vanish when they are examined closely. There have been, for example, various studies on astrology, most of them with negative results[6][7][8] [9][10](a single positive result cannot outweigh many negative ones, as it can be expected by mere chance).

Supernaturality may be a remnant of a static world view. It comes from a time when the growth of human knowledge was appreciably slower than at present. As another example, the Aristotelian Mechanics were considered valid for more than a thousand years.

Some naturalists argue that the process of observing an event contradicts the definition of "supernatural", therefore, no event that can be observed can actually be described as supernatural. This leads to the conclusion that if there were supernatural events and beings, we would not be able to know about them.

A majority of supernaturalists of any given supernatural religion only believe in a very narrow subset of all supernatural explanations of reality when all the supernatural beliefs of all supernatural religions, past and present, are taken together. The vast majority of Christians today do not think that we are reincarnated, nor do the vast majority of today’s Hindus think that everyone permanently goes to heaven or h**l when they die. This differentiates a Hindu from a Christian. Since for both groups in this example the reasons for their particular choices do not differ in any discernable way, to then make claims about the "truth" of their own beliefs and the "untruth" of the opposing beliefs would not be fair and honest. Thus some say either accept all religious claims for the same reasons or reject all religious claims for the same reasons.

[edit] Naturalization vs. supernaturalization

Some people believe that supernatural events occur, while others do not.

[edit] "Naturalization"

The neologism naturalize, meaning "to make natural", is sometimes used to describe the perceived process of denying any supernatural significance to events which another presumes to be supernatural. This perceived process may also be referred to as reductionism or deconstructionism. It rests on the believer's presumption that supernatural events can and do occur; thus, their description as "natural" by the skeptic is seen as a result of a process of deliberate or unconscious denial of any supernatural significance, thus, "naturalization" (this should not be confused with naturalization, the process of voluntarily acquiring citizenship at some time after birth. Also, plants, for example many wildflowers and bulbs including lilies, will "naturalize"; that is spread and develop beds without extra cultivation).

[edit] "Supernaturalization"

The neologism supernaturalize, meaning "to make supernatural", is sometimes used to describe the perceived process of ascribing supernatural causes to events which someone else presumes to be natural. This perceived process may also be referred to as mythification or spiritualization. It rests on the presumption of the skeptic that supernatural events cannot or are unlikely to occur; thus, their description by the believer as supernatural is seen as the result of a process of deliberate or unconscious mysticism, thus, "supernaturalization". Supernaturalization can also mean the process by which stories and historical accounts are altered to describe supernatural elements.

[edit] The subjective nature of the issue

Two people may come to completely different conclusions based on identical evidence. One may automatically "screen out" possible explanation