Nonsensical Supernatural

According to Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, nature is defined as “the sum of all things in time and space; the entire universe.” If nature is the entire universe, how do we define supernatural? Back to Webster – supernatural is “existing or occurring outside the normal experience or knowledge of man.” Definition 2 states that supernatural is “attributed to hypothetical forces beyond nature; miraculous; divine.”

If nature is all that we are aware of or have experience of, how can something like “supernatural” exist? What we have is knowledge of the universe. What we experience is the universe. We have no knowledge or experience with anything outside the universe. Really! True we don’t know all there is about the universe but so far our experiences and explorations have shown that what we have discovered locally seem to hold throughout the known universe. So what is this thing called supernatural?

I contend that supernatural does not exist. It’s nonsensical word. If supernatural did exist, then we would have knowledge of it and therefore it would be part of nature, i.e. the universe. The question of the existence of a supernatural god is a good example. The claim is made that a god or gods exists but so far there has been no definitive, testable proof or evidence of its/their existence. As long as there is no solid evidence of the existence of a god, then the whole question of god remains a hypothesis.

There has been much written about some of the characteristics of a supernatural entity such as omniscience, omnipresent and omnipotent. But what about location? According to the Bible, god created the world. Most of the story of the creation concerns its self with the creation of the Earth and living things. Mentioned also is the creation of the universe, e.g. “let there be light!” (Genesis 1:22) So following the line of logic that says, if god created the universe that presumes that the universe did not exist at a particular point and then god brought it into existence. That further supposes that god must exist in some realm “outside” our known universe. Or does he?

Some have proposed that god is the universe. In other words god is the sum total of all that is. I prefer to look at the question another way. If a god exists, where does he/she/it exists? Again location. To me, the answer has to be either in the universe (as part of it or it as a whole) or outside of the universe in some other realm. Either answer poses problems.

Consider the proposition that god exists outside the known universe. By the way, I am assuming that a supernatural god exists for purposes of this discussion. If god exists outside of the known universe then that presumes that “something” outside our universe exists. Therefore god must reside in this “something”. That immediately begs the question of what is this “something” that god resides in? If there is something beyond our universe, could there not be other universes? Cosmology delves into the multiverse theory as something that is plausible but as of yet, no evidence exists to support the theory.

But assuming that god exists outside our known universe and that there is the possibility of other universes that he/she/it deals with, are we his favorite or just one of many? Maybe we are just an experiment. Since the Bible states that god has always existed, maybe we are just one of many universes that he/she/it puts together just for the fun of it.

Now think of the other possibility, that god exists in our universe. That presumes there is nothing outside of what we know or see of our universe. Since we have pretty good evidence that the laws of physics operate the same in the observable universe, it can be assumed that god must be subject to the same laws. But wait, theologians maintain that god can do what he pleases, regardless of the laws of nature, for example Jesus stilling the waters by his words. That leads to two other lines of questions. If god exists in the universe and is bound by the laws of nature, as we know them, is god just a real smart entity who knows more than we do about the universe? Is this god just a super alien with knowledge about the universe we haven’t come to know?

Or is god operating under his own rules, laws, etc.? How can he/she/it operate in the universe and not run into conflict with the laws of nature as we know them? It’s like having a bonfire in a solid ice cave. The fire would eventually melt the ice and the melting ice would put out the fire unless there was a trick involved.

So if supernatural is a nonsense word, maybe we should hold off on declaring that a god like entity exists until we have definite evidence. But then Christians and others have always said that having faith is belief in something in the face of NO evidence. Remember just believing that something exists doesn’t make it exist.