Supernaturalism Is an Admission of Defeat

23Apr07

Science has been accused of being biased towards naturalism. That’s a fair accusation. The question one should ask, however, is not whether science has a naturalistic bias, but rather whether such a bias is justified. Is there really any good reason to suppose that the world is naturalistic and that supernatural forces are nothing but mythology and legend?

First, a bit of clarification. Some will insist that, whenever we describe a “supernatural” process, it becomes natural. This is not what we mean in everyday language. You know what I mean when I refer to the supernatural: ghosts, gnomes, fairies, elves, trolls, apparitions, clarvoyance, astral projections, demons, magic, gods, exorcism, spiritism, miracles, mind-body dualism. The question we are asking is about these phenomenas and the like, and this is what I mean when I talk about supernatural causes. This, I suspect, is also what scientists mean when they say that an event has not a supernatural but a natural cause. There are those that will say that we can never know the truth about some phenomena, because, as Arthur C. Clarke stated it:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This is probably true. There is knowledge that is outside of our grasp, either in principle or in any practical sense. We must learn to approach the knowledge we have access to, and this knowledge does not include knowledge about the supernatural.

Is there anything about the scientific method itself that precludes us from investigating supernatural hypotheses? If so, perhaps science has no choice but to go the naturalistic route if it wants to remain true to its principles. But if we distill science to its core, there is nothing that leads us automatically to believe that supernatural causes are impossible. Science is about observation, hypothesis, prediction, test. This cycle repeats itself ad infinitum. At any stage, an idea may be rejected. First, we make an observation. If this observation is completely at odds with all previous observations, there is reason to doubt its validity and we must be careful not to jump all over it too early. At this stage, if we’re unable to repeat the experiment, we may abandon it, or we may put the observation on hold awaiting further data. On this stage, nothing prevents supernatural science. The next stage is hypothesis. If we have a really odd observation, we may be unable to come up with an hypothesis that can explain the observation. If this is so, we get stuck. At this point, there should be no problem for the supernatural, because people have made up supernatural causes since the dawn of humans. The next stage is prediction. In theory, there should be no problem here, either. Finally is test. If the test confirms the predictions, the hypothesis is a little safer. If it falsifies them, we must reject it. In none of the stages is there in principle any problem with supernaturalism.

Unfortunately, theory differs from practice. In theory, theory equals practice, but sadly it does not in practice. The difference in this case is simple, and it’s not really any profound thought if you think it through. All supernaturalists would do well to consider it every once in a while, and especially if considering basing some science on their supernatural ideas. Supernaturalism is a nonexplanation, an open admission of defeat. It’s waving a white flag at the universe and demanding piece, it’s closing the book and putting the microscope in the closet. It’s closing your ideas, your ears, your nose.

When we get to the hypothesis phase, supernaturalists have no problem coming up with ideas. They don’t have to make them fit into the current views of the universe in science, because they believe it to contain a glaring flaw, an omission of a whole dimension of reality from study. They make up all sorts of explanations: God did it, my dead grandma said so, Jesus ordered me to do it in a dream, a higher consciousness lifted me out of my body and projected me to the surface of an extrasolar planet. When they have done so, they find themselves quite satisfied with their hypothesis.

This practice is little more than putting a name on our ignorance. From the dawn of consciousness, that strange little primate has pointed at its own ignorance and called it “God”, or “spirit”, or “ghost”. What have we gained from this? What understanding have we built up from this renaming? When will someone come along and make a coherent foundation for supernatural realms, like Newton or Maxwell or Einstein? When will technology based on the understanding of the supernatural be accessible to the public? Nothing short of a worldwide conspiracy spanning millenia in time and the whole planet in geographical terms could possibly prevent us from seeing the results of this field of inquiry. That is, if there were any.

When we come to the prediction stage, supernaturalists must deal with a problem: their hypothesis is essentially arbitrary. They’ve made up a concept to explain another, without regard for previous confirmed hypotheses. While an ordinary scientific hypothesis is an educated guess based on prior observations and theories, a supernatural hypothesis is nothing but a guess. So, you’ve seen a woman get mysteriously ill, and then suddenly she’s just fine. What do you propose? Obviously, her dead lover healed her using his supercool überghostpowers. What can we expect to see if a woman is healed by her dead lover using his überghostpowers? This is where the surface gets bumpy. Perhaps you can expect her to be healed the next time she falls ill…but then again, maybe her dead lover is tired of zapping her back into health and has demanded that she keep healthy or he won’t help her. Perhaps we can expect to see the spot in her body where the immaterial überghostpowers made material impact, but then again, maybe her lover’s powers are magical and leave no mark on the body.

What can we expect if there are really ghosts with superpowers? What understanding will this help us gain? None at all. How do we detect this ghost-stuff? We don’t, because our equipment is not made of ghost-stuff but of a different substance, namely matter. How do we communicate? We don’t, because we have no idea how to and no idea how to find out. What possible evidence could we find to confirm this hypothesis? None at all, because the situation is equivalent to the one we’d expect with any of a thousand other supernatural hypotheses. What possible evidence could deny this hypothesis? None at all, because we have no idea what to expect and so we can’t say whether the situation really goes against our expectations.

Sure, there are unanswered questions. I have a feeling, though I would be delighted to be wrong, that we as a society and species will never fully understand the reality in which we find outselves. One open question is the origin of life, as opposed to its development over time. Some have suggested that, because science cannot yet provide us with an explanation, it ought to abandon all hope of a naturalistic cause and instead search for a supernatural one. This is little more than naming our ignorance and then worshipping it. If you say that God did it, what more are you saying than, “I cannot find any reason besides supernatural intelligence; I can’t seem to work out any of its implications or a way to test it, but it does satisfy my curiousity.”

You can complain that this naturalistic bias is bad, because it leaves a lot of land unexplored and the cause may still be supernatural. There are two answers to this. The first is that we have yet to observe anything that could be proven to be non-natural (and I mean that in the sense described in the beginning of this post). Therefore, we have no reason to assume there is a supernatural cause. The other way is the one I have chosen today: questioning the explanatory power of supernatural hypotheses. Science is the search for understanding of the world. Understanding necessitates some requirements, such as the ability to predict the consequences of our ideas, so that we can test it and use the knowledge practically in building yet more knowledge. It may be that the cause of the universe, or life, or other phenomena we observe is supernatural. But until supernaturalists can bring themselves down from the sky and see that their theories are nothing but elaborate naming schemes all describing facets of our ignorance, nothing will be done.

So, please, supernaturalists: before you question the validity of a search based on naturalistic assumptions, do make sure that your own assumptions are testable in principle and practice, and that their truth will actually tell us something. You cannot name a single discovery that was made on supernatural assumptions, and supernaturalism was the norm for thousands of years. Many supernaturalists have made great contributions to the natural sciences, but that is in spite of their supernaturalism, not because of it. When you look closer, none of the great discoveries we have made have been made on the basis of revelation, scripture, mythology or clarvoyance. None of our great heroes of science have relied solely on supernaturalism, and none of their achievements have been due to it.

Supernaturalism is an admission of defeat.

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