The difference between natural and supernatural
Some time ago, during a debate about God as creator, I found myself running into a wall with my atheist opponent who kept refusing to acknowledge anything “magical”. Funny thing was, I wasn’t even talking about anything magical. I was only suggesting the possibility that something intelligent may have created the universe. My friend kept insisting that the idea of something magical having created the universe was preposterous.
He was making the common mistake of equating higher intelligence with magic. He probably wouldn’t have resisted my suggestion as vehemently if I had said that an intelligent alien race created the universe. It was the word God that he wasn’t comfortable with.
But this disagreement pointed me in another direction. I realised that we tend to label a lot of concepts as ‘supernatural’ without a second thought. Things that science can’t explain are labeled supernatural. Ideas that are not reflected in scientific literature of the time are labeled supernatural. The God concept, of course, gets thrown into that pile as well.
Basically anything that isn’t part of the tangible, knowable, visible universe; is classified as supernatural. But it is not a valid classification, is it? The mistake we make in making such a classification is assuming that nature is only made up of things that we know. We mistake our view of the world to be the absolute world. We confuse the subjective with the objective.
A few centuries ago, the idea of man flying across continents in minutes may have been labeled supernatural. People recovering from utterly destroying injuries was supernatural some time ago. Now, thanks to advancements in medical science, such events are seen as perfectly natural. History has repeatedly rewritten our definitions of what is natural and what is supernatural. Our view of nature keeps expanding as time passes.
Religion, sadly, has often encouraged the facile divide between natural and supernatural. God has been put on a pedestal and his images have been lined with armies of priests specialising in incredibly complex rituals. What should have been man’s direct line with God has been turned into a veritable industry with all manner of middlemen telling you how to go about finding God. God has been taken from his rightful place – that is inside man – and imprisoned in an imposing “out there” and “up there” structure.
In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell describes the nature of the killing idea that the modern world has come to refer to as the supernatural:
The idea of the supernatural as being something over and above the natural is a killing idea. In the Middle Ages this was the idea that finally turned the world into something like a wasteland, a land where people were living inauthentic lives, never doing a thing that they truly wanted because the supernatural laws required them to live as directed by their clergy. In a wasteland, people are fulfilling purposes that are not properly theirs but have been put upon them as inescapable laws. This is a killer.
I myself used to think of God as something beyond nature. But when you actually think about it, there is nothing magical or supernatural about God or the so-called miracles. They are only aspects of reality we haven’t been exposed to yet. Once you understand them, they simply melt into the natural, becoming parts of it.
The divide between what we call natural and what we consider supernatural roots from the tendency to see certain things as being “beyond this realm”. In truth, there is no realm other than this one realm. It is only our faulty and limited understanding of reality that causes such bogus divisions. At the end of the day, there is only one universe that contains it all.
Intersting. I went through your older posts, including the one where you mentioned about ‘converting’ from atheism. Just out of curiosity, have you read ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins?
Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 10:36 am
I haven’t read Dawkins’ book Ankur. But here is something interesting. After the book’s publication and incredible popularity in America in the late eighties, many Indian magazines too did series on atheism and debunked the God concept.
My childhood atheist phase was inspired by many of these articles (this was in the early nineties). So indirectly, I have been exposed to Dawkinsian logic.
But then I outgrew it. Even today, as I find the annoying tribe of neo atheists rant all over the web, the Dawkins doctrine isn’t satisfactory and leaves many questions unanswered.
From what I have read of the book though, it is very childish and illogical. It considers evolution to be proof of God’s non-existence. That is like saying that because I have a black pen I can explain away easily, there is no pen factory anywhere.
Ankur Banerjee
11 Jan 10 at 6:10 am
Although ‘The God Delusion’ does focus on debunking the concept of Creationism in the Judeo-Christian faith for most part, it *does* go and elaborate about moral values and atheism, etc.
I think you’ll find this speech by Douglas Adams, titled ‘Is There An Artificial God?’, to be worth reading. http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/index.html It speaks on his views of how religious views might have come about.
Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
January 11th, 2010 at 10:30 pm
What you said Ankur. Dawkins’ book’s scope is very limited and thus it is always a yank at me when someone calls it the ultimate atheist treatise. There are far more educated books on the topic. One need only search.
As I said, I haven’t read the book (I intend to) but the arguments he makes about morality, humanism, and the “secular 10 commandments” are more or less known to me. Again, very limited definitions and dismissive of a whole lot of other concepts and questions.
Douglas Adams was a genius. Going through the link now. Thanks!
Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
January 12th, 2010 at 12:31 am
@Ankur: Just read the DNA speech. It was beautiful. I wrote something on similar lines a few years ago.
See this: http://www.mypajama.vmohanty.com/?p=252
Ankur Banerjee
11 Jan 10 at 10:14 pm
And you are a closet believer!
Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
January 12th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
What closet? I am quite out in the open.
Especially after the last few posts.
me
12 Jan 10 at 3:06 am
I didn’t see the last few posts before posting the comment.
Anyway, not good for the universe. One more pawn has fallen to the evil designs of the dark-side.
That Mullah will not be saved by his unflinching-ness. Stupidity of blind faith and selective-reasoning will eventually make you stupid and everything else that comes with it. But that never stopped the masses from burying their heads in sand. Whatever keeps you busy.
Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
January 12th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
By which of course you mean to imply that non-Mullahs will live forever.
Every single on of us will die. That is not up for debate. What matters is the way we live. And to me it seems a smarter idea to live courageously than live in fear.
Faith is always blind. And it is not something exclusive to religion either. That you think in terms of “everything that comes with it” only shows your ignorance of the fact that life isn’t black and white.
me
12 Jan 10 at 2:45 pm
Much like difference between science,religion – well written RT @vimoh: The difference between natural and supernatural http://bit.ly/4Wnw6E
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
sanjeev_helmet
11 Jan 10 at 3:14 am
The difference between natural and supernatural http://bit.ly/6Bz9nA < thought-provoking piece, @vimoh & well written as usual
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
rjleaman
11 Jan 10 at 4:37 pm
@DaleEstey instead of picking on me, read @vimoh’s post on the natural and supernatural http://bit.ly/6Bz9nA : I thought of you, somehow.
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
rjleaman
12 Jan 10 at 2:32 am