Science and Supernatural -- Two Extreme Views

How both science and supernatural fall victims of a dogma

Photo by Alex Bunardzic

We find ourselves living in the world that is chock full of constraints. To stay alive, we are compelled to breathe, many times each minute, 24 hours, 7 days a week. That’s one critical constraint right there. What are the other critical constraints in our world? Let me count the ways:

Or better not, because if we were to try to enumerate all the constraints under which we, living beings, are forced to function, this would turn into a multiple tome book. Suffice it to say here that our lives, our thoughts, our speech, our actions, are governed by what appear to be immutable laws of nature. Those laws are what we tend to call natural laws. Those laws seem immune to any of our attempts at tampering with them. For example, we could try to ‘fool Mother Nature’ and tamper with the law of gravity, but we wouldn’t get very far with that. It would be a veritable fool’s errand to try to do something like that.

Not only are the laws of nature, as we perceive them, immutable and unalterable, they also apply with unwavering regularity. The law of gravity, that operates on the surface of the planet Earth, never lets up. It is our constant companion. No one has ever detected even a single event when the law of gravity stopped working on the Earth’s surface, even for a split second.

What is supernatural?

Any perceived phenomenon that manages to alter an already established law of nature qualifies to be regarded as a supernatural phenomenon. For example, if someone takes a bucket of frozen ice and places it outside while the outside temperature is measured as being -30 degrees Celsius, and leaves that bucket of water on the ground where there is no sight of any source of heat nearby, but after only a few seconds the ice suddenly starts melting and turning into a cloud of steam, that phenomenon would be viewed as being supernatural. Of course, there are no documented incidents of such an experiment, but if someone could conduct it, that experiment could be used as the evidence and the proof that supernatural phenomena do exist.

Another proof that supernatural phenomena may exist would be an experiment where a person would walk on water. Let’s say there is a large swimming pool containing fresh water filled up to its brim, and the outside temperature is balmy 25 degrees Celsius. The pool is 2 meters deep, and then we witness someone steps into the pool and instead of sinking into the water, that person remains standing on the surface of the water, as if it’s a solid ground. If we were to witness that incident, we would have no recourse but to admit that the laws of nature have been altered and that supernatural phenomena are indeed real.

Of course, there is no evidence that such an experiment is possible. We therefore remain skeptical regarding the reality of the supernatural realm.

What is science?

Science is an attempt to understand how the world functions. Science is not the only attempt at that, of course. So, what makes science different from other attempts to understand how the world works?

What’s unique about science is its insistence that, when trying to understand how some observed phenomena come to be and how such phenomena function (as well as how do such phenomena cease to be), we are not to in any way invoke any mental factors. Science forbids the mind, or intelligence, to enter the description and the attempt at explanation.

What that means is that science eschews all forms of so-called ‘intelligent design’. In other words, there is no intelligent agent who has at some point intervened to design and create any of the perceived natural phenomena. No one designed living beings, we have merely evolved over time.

Science negates everything supernatural

It is not hard to see from the above line of reasoning that science vehemently denies any possibility of a supernatural realm and of any supernatural phenomena. If something occurs for which we have no explanation, science claims that it is not because the laws of nature have been somehow suspended, it is just that we still haven’t discovered, described, and explained all laws of nature.

Supernatural does not negate anything natural

On the other hand, those who uphold views that there is a supernatural realm that enables/produces supernatural phenomena, have no qualm whatsoever with anything natural. For example, if a person believes in supernatural phenomenon that it is possible for someone to defy gravity and walk on water, that belief does not in the least invalidate the law of gravity. People who are believers in supernatural seem to hold that supernatural phenomena occur due to the temporary/local suspension of the laws of nature. In that view, a person who walks on water without sinking has managed to suspend the law of gravity, but that suspension of the law of gravity is only limited to the space that the person, who miraculously walks on water, occupies, and the suspension may only be limited for a short period of time. And while the miracle worker keeps walking on water, people around that miracle worker are still functioning under the strict rules of the law of gravity. To them, the temporary suspension of the law of gravity does not apply.

So, we see that supernatural views are of the pick-and-choose variety (sometimes called a la carte, or cafeteria-style). Those supernatural events, or laws, do not apply across the board nor do they apply with uniform regularity. They are always viewed and treated as exceptions from the natural laws, from the way nature always functions.

Why are science and supernatural regarded as extreme views?

It is easy to see why is supernatural regarded as an extreme view. For one, it seems impossible to conduct an experiment to demonstrate the working of the hypothetical supernatural realm, as it would supposedly interfere/meddle in the natural world by temporarily suspending one or more of the natural laws. That means that reported occurrences that allegedly prove the existence of supernatural are exceedingly rare. No credible evidence that such events are even possible has ever been provided.

But it is also easy to see why is scientific approach regarded as an extreme view. Attempting to describe and explain natural phenomena by completely ruling out any mental factors as having any causal power is indeed a very extreme position. Why shove our scientific heads into the sand and pretend that mental factors do not play any role, while simultaneous admitting that mental factors do indeed exist and are part of the nature?

Scientific epistemology is therefore fundamentally flawed, and as such cannot be regarded as a well tempered approach to the attempts to understand our world.

Are there any non-extreme views?

If science cannot escape but be regarded as an extreme view, and if the belief in supernatural also cannot escape but be regarded as an extreme view, what’s left? Are we to throw the towel in and conclude that it is not possible to understand how the world functions without falling into extreme views?

That conclusion would, of course, be nonsensical. We can indeed understand how reality operates, but we can only do that if we do not exclude certain category of observable phenomena. The only thing we must be weary of is including unobservable phenomena when attempting to describe and explain the reality. By ‘unobservable phenomena’ I mean any hypothetical supernatural phenomena, as well as any so-called metaphysical phenomena.

So, if we were to put aside all supernatural and all metaphysical phenomena (i.e., imaginary concepts), what are we left with? We are left with the empirical world. Anything that could be empirically detected is fair game. The searchlight now must be turned toward the phenomena that we, humans, can observe and describe.

Science cannot tell us what’s really going on, because science bans any mental phenomena (that is to say, mind, as a factor that could fully or partially determine the working of reality, is strictly forbidden in any and all scientific activities). Supernatural also cannot tell us what’s really going on. Supernatural phenomena are hypothetical, and they smack of wishful thinking. While science is thankfully relieved of any traces of wishfulness, it is sadly debilitated by its refusal to regard the mind as being a causal factor. And supernatural views always end up being nothing more than wishful, superstitious, and infantile projections.

To avoid such extreme, non-productive views, we must allow for mental activities (for the mind) to enter the picture as a causal factor. This causal factor has the power to determine how reality actually works. And while science recoils from such views, and supernatural posits a mind that is outside of the natural order and is thus capricious (and can only be effective if it somehow manages to suspend the laws of nature), the middle ground can be established by introducing the mind as one of the significant factors (if not the factor) in establishing the natural order of things.

Almost 100 years ago quantum mechanics started flirting with such views. We need go no further than examining the famous observer effect to realize that science needs to throw off the yoke of dogmatism and accept that mental factors are the key player in the way reality works. Accepting that fact is the only way to avoid falling into extreme views and is the only reasonable approach to treading the middle way.