The concept that God occupies a separate supernatural realm is a bit of semantic wordplay. There’s something of a parallel in the field of alternative medicine. It’s been said that if alternative medicine actually worked it would be called "medicine." We can see that “alternative medicine” is only meant to describe remedies that can’t be shown to work (better than placebo). As such there are lots of unfounded claims in the alternative medicine business (herbal medicines are regulated as a food and thus these claims can be made). And so, ginkgo biloba supposedly enhances memory and can be used to treat dementia and Alzheimer’s. Without evidence to support this claim, ginkgo biloba remains an alternative medicine.Interbane wrote:I think science has pushed god back into meaningless definition territory. Or at least, it's close.
But, as Steven Novella says, ginkgo biloba itself is an herb. Herbal remedies are drugs and can be studied as drugs. We can actually test the efficacy of this drug.
That’s where the parallel ends because there is nothing for science to study in the realm of “supernatural.” By its very definition, "supernatural" conveniently falls outside the realm of empirical science (along with "alternative medicine"). If we could study some aspect of the "supernatural" then that aspect of the “supernatural” would be “natural.”
Interbane frames this question of God-as-scientific-hypothesis so well that we quickly come to a wall in which we have to apply Occam's razor: which is actually more likely: a) the existence of an all-powerful deity that cannot be detected or exist in the natural world, or b) the existence of those people who for whatever psychological reason believe that there is a God?
As such, I would argue that the God-as-scientific-hypothesis is dead in the water. A scientist-philosopher now would shift his hypothesis to a psychological study of why people believe.
