CADRE Comments

  Realms Beyond I've demonstrated in other posts ,  that transcendent realms were not the origination comcept of suernatural. That is, however, the modern Western concept. Thus, we might as well ask, are there realms beyond our knowing, is this possible? If so, is there any possibility of our investigating them? Scientists have usually tended to assume that metaphysical assumptions about realms beyond are just out of the domain of science and can’t be investigated so they don’t bother to comment. Victor Stenger, however, wants to be able to assert that he’s disproved them so he argues that the magisteria do overlap. “There exists a widespread notion, promulgated at the higher levels of the scientific community itself, that science has nothing to say about God or the supernatural…” [1]   He sights the national academy of sciences and their position that these are non overlapping magisteria, “science is a way of knowing about the natural...

Dave's Challenge is a multi-part long-ruining theme on my blog:   Remember Dave wanted me to describe Chrsitain message without using any conventional language because he consider all the Christian terminology to be worn out, to have become so often used we don't think about it anymore. I thought I did pretty well but Dave didn't think so. I'm working on the premise that granting the problem Dave finds, worn out language, the other approach we can do, besides Dave's approach (which is chucking traditional terms and re-describing) is to re-define the old terms. I said: "I've already demonstrated how one might expand upon God talk without referring to God per se." Dave answers: You've touched on the edges of how one might do so, but still firmly rooted in a heavily theological framework and philosophical perspective. There's still the issue of Christianity.  No offense to my friend Dave, who is a professional academic an...

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman writes about the dichotomy between natural and supernatural and how unnecessary it is. He quotes a question ask him form the general public, a question that shows the extent to which supernature has been discredited and slandered: The supernatural seems irrational, superstitious, archaic and primitive. So far, the natural world has provided explanations for the previously mysterious unknown: social psychology, psychiatry, chemistry, mathematics, biology, medicine, physics, astronomy, geology and history have aided humanity and preserved our mental and physical health and extended our lives. So why do we refer to G-d to as a supernatural being? Where is the evidence that the supernatural exists, or has any bearing on our lives? Does the word "supernatural" even mean anything, other than "I don't understand this (yet)"? [1] Here we see several of these misconceptions about the supernatural, not only because it’s linked to superstitio...

It's safe to say that many Christians have an ambivalent stance towards paranormal activity. Many Western Christians have been culturally conditioned to posit a stark dichotomy between two realms: the natural world, which they define in terms of the everyday, humdrum, physical reality we experience most of the time, and the supernatural world, more or less limited to God and angels. If they allow for the possibility in our day and age, they take miraculous healings and visions to be signs of God's direct intervention in human affairs, with immediate evidential value in arguing for Christianity. Further along towards the charismatic end of the spectrum, demonic influence and exorcisms may enter the picture. This world-picture is problematized, however, by the fact that seemingly supernatural occurrences, including dramatic healings, visions of the departed, precognitive dreams, etc. are not confined to Christian saints or even Christians in general. In fact, they're not ev...

Someone named Greta Christina has put together a list of the top ten reasons why she doesn't believe in God. They are bad reasons, and have been repeatedly refuted, but responding to a recent regurgitation of them will give me the chance to clarify some misconceptions and consolidate my own current thinking about these issues. Before I examine each individual reason, I should point out a severe flaw at the heart of Christina's discussion: her definition of God is so all-encompassing (at one point she says that by 'God' she includes "the soul, or metaphysical energy, or any sort of supernatural being or substance") that her arguments, far from relentlessly picking apart one well-defined hypothesis, at best strike glancing blows at a dozen different and sometimes incompatible views. An argument against substance dualism when it comes to explaining human consciousness, for example, has no implications for the existence of God as conceived by the monotheistic r...