Robert Tulip wrote: Saying there is no supernatural can either be an analytical statement, true by definition, as Interbane has implied, or a matter of induction, true by probability. The scientific approach is to say that error, utility and mendacity are much more probable causes of supernatural belief than the fact these beliefs are true. The vanishingly small probability that any supernatural belief is true means we have an asymptotic situation, a one in infinity chance or zero probability that might as well be rejected as a simple matter of faith.
Had the thread title been "Why Miracles Don't exist," I wouldn't feel the need call attention to the generality of the claim. The 'supernatural ' is an ambiguous word that has different meanings for each of us. I believe, for example, that any claim for the existence of a deity is a statement that phenomena outside of nature exist. Yet we can't use the method of analyzing a specific result to determine the natural causes of it to disprove existence of a deity. I don't believe one does exist, but I know I can't prove that negative.
I consider supernatural belief immoral because it substitutes a false imaginary fantasy world in place of the empirical reality that is available to us through scientific evidence, and therefore results in delusions forming opinions, creating unnecessary suffering. This is a Buddhist line of reasoning, based on the four noble truths which define delusion as the cause of suffering.
I think Buddhism thinks of delusions in terms of the attachments and anger we have such a hard time realizing aren't real. An accurate scientific understanding wouldn't in itself put us any farther along on the path to enlightenment. We might even need to let go of these empirical realities we're attached to in order to be enlightened.
The main part of the wider meaning of supernatural is the belief in a heavenly afterlife. This belief is the cornerstone of Christian ethics, with fear of hell and desire for heaven used in preaching to encourage good behavior. My view is that this framework should be seen as an obsolete theory of reality, since the more pertinent ethical concept of heaven is as the ideal goal that we aim for in improving the earth. Afterlife theory deflects our moral focus from the need to improve the earth, although it is not altogether bad in its moral effects.
I disagree that the afterlife is the central ethical element for Christians; there are others as important, a multiplicity you would expect with a phenomenon as durable and widespread as religion. Furthermore, anyone will have a hard time arguing that under Christian dispensations earthly betterment has not received its due.
What I dislike about supernatural thinking, for all its adaptivity, is that it produces a psychology that implies we humans are aliens here on earth. Contrary to the supernatural meme that sees people as intangible spiritual beings whose core identity is with God in heaven, our real ethical identity has to emerge from scientific understanding that humans are evolved animals on a finite planetary home.
I'd say the problem with the Christian mandate form God is that it has contributed not to our thinking of ourselves as aliens, but as the only beings to whom the earth belongs. That mandate is two-sided, though, the other part of it stressing the goodness of creation and implying the need to protect it. From that, the Christian green movement gets its existence. Up to this point, science, via technology, has only increased our ability to exploit and degrade. We've always had the necessary understanding to live in greater harmony on this 'finite planetary home,' but our own evolutionary heritage seems to put us us on a runaway train hurtling toward destruction.
