What are your views on the supernatural?

I know this is a topic that is rather opinionated which is why i wondered to what the kongregate community thinks about it. So what do you think?

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As a general topic, it’s a term that describes a whole load of bullshit.

More indepth answer : You can’t give a general answer, as each separate claim needs examined separately, but I will say that anything “supernatural” for which we have ever found an explanation it has always been “not magic”. The rest, most of them turn out to be “never existed in the first place”, and the remainder are probably “not yet classified into the other two groups yet”.

Not sure what you mean by supernatural… so….

God: Nope, not me
Ghosties: Nope
Mind Readers: Nope…
Curses/Hex: Nope
Demonic stuff : no…
Exorcists: nope…

Pretty much all bull crap….

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Originally posted by thequestionofpoo:

but lik god give us proof u no? lik u seen wat dat protein look lik i show u video it a cross prove jesus is ma bestie brah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7chup0dZ1s

Originally posted by thequestionofpoo:

but lik god give us proof u no? lik u seen wat dat protein look lik i show u video it a cross prove jesus is ma bestie brah

Oh, stop already. This has to be a trolling.

Originally posted by bobyinhell:

I know this is a topic that is rather opinionated which is why i wondered to what the kongregate community thinks about it. So what do you think?

What do you think?

Originally posted by JohnnyBeGood:

Originally posted by thequestionofpoo:

but lik god give us proof u no? lik u seen wat dat protein look lik i show u video it a cross prove jesus is ma bestie brah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7chup0dZ1s

but that is not acutally true, it is only the republicans who ant you 2 think there no god so you dont help brown people and poor people but that is what god want.

Depends what you’re talking about.

I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe in an afterlife.

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Then there’s extrasensory perception, which, according to some dedicated scientists, might not be all that supernatural after all. (I can give an example of this if you want, it’s kind of long though)

Originally posted by fma1:
(I can give an example of this if you want, it’s kind of long though)

I am intrigued now.

Though I don’t know exactly how ell it would fit into this topic of discussion.

Originally posted by tenco1:

Originally posted by fma1:
(I can give an example of this if you want, it’s kind of long though)

I am intrigued now.

Though I don’t know exactly how ell it would fit into this topic of discussion.

Have you ever heard of the Global Conciousness Project?

It monitors the results from random number generators placed throughout the world and attempts to identify unusual outputs that correspond with widespread emotional responses to world events. The largest statistical anomaly recorded by the Global Consciousness Project occurred on September 11, 2001. At the time of the 9/11 attacks, the output of the Global Consciousness Project’s random number generators became much less random. A trend appeared during this time that seemed to indicate that the large scale emotion of many people had influenced the random number generators, causing a deviation from their normal random outputs. Another interesting fact about this is that the output of the random number generators had started to deviate from normal before the actual attacks took place. The spike in the data was centered on the time of the attacks, but the start of the unusual output of the random number generators began before the time that the attacks occurred. This indicates that the large scale emotion not only could have affected the physical system of the random number generator, but also that the large scale emotion began to take effect before the actual event that triggered it took place. 9/11 was the only time that the Global Consciousness Project’s network responded to an event before it actually began.

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Told you it was long. That is one out of two examples that I have. Want to see the second one?

Originally posted by fma1:

Told you it was long. That is one out of two examples that I have. Want to see the second one?

Yes, it sounds really cool, if highly unbelievable.

Fun fact, “random” number generators are a lot more algorithmic than you realize.

That they had correlation at one point was either coincidence or had some user input. In 2001 we were online, ya know.

Originally posted by tenco1:

Originally posted by fma1:

Told you it was long. That is one out of two examples that I have. Want to see the second one?

Yes, it sounds really cool, if highly unbelievable.

Example #2 of sceintific tests on extrasensory perception:

There is a neuroscience researcher named Michael Persinger who is know for his work on ESP. His theory is that that electrical impulses from the brain can travel along the earth’s magnetic field from one person to another, which would result in a form of telepathy. In his experiments, he placed two subjects in two separate rooms. The rooms were visually and acoustically isolated from each other. The rooms were also isolated from the earth’s magnetic field. A simulated magnetic field was created with electrical coils in each room. This ensured that both subjects experienced identical magnetic fields. Over 20 minutes, one subject was exposed to a flashing light several times while the other subject remained undisturbed in their darkened room. Both subjects’ brain activity was monitored throughout the experiment. When the light flashed, the brain activity of the subject who saw the light increased in response to the stimulus. The other subject, who remained undisturbed in a dark room throughout the experiment and was never shown the flashing light, also had an increase in brain activity at the same time that the first subject was exposed to the flashing light. After the experiment, the subject who was not given the stimulus of the flashing light reported seeing a flash of light in their peripheral vision at the same times that the first subject actually saw the light.

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There you go. What do you have to say to that, onlineidiot?

The thing about the supernatural is that it is, by definition, unable to be confirmed by science. Science deals in naturalistic explanations. If a thing can be explained by science it is not supernatural. Take example #2 for instance. If it is true then ESP is not supernatural, it is the natural response of two brains under the influence of specific magnetic fields.

Personally I take an apatheistic view of the supernatural. It’s existence or non existence is unimportant.

we’ve repeatedly been finding things that defied our understanding of nature, but none of it is truly “supernatural”, just outside of our stupid understanding. many things that have been or would have been labeled “supernatural” are real: electromagnetic fields, echo-location, communicating trees (by scent), documented effects of meditation, hypnosis and other mind-over-matter techniques, subliminal messaging etc. etc. etc.

of course, there’s always a “how it works” to every “it works”, even if we don’t understand it yet.

Originally posted by Klatoo:

Personally I take an apatheistic view of the supernatural. It’s existence or non existence is unimportant.

The thing is, its existence can be important. For example, if ESP is proven to exist, what would be the next step?
The next step would be learning how to tap into it and fully harness it. That could be very useful.

If ESP were scientifically proven to exist then it wasn’t supernatural to begin with.

Something that would probably help this thread is if the OP (or someone) would give a definition of supernatural. There’s more than one. This is the one I’ve been using.

Supernatural
of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena.

Some of the definitions are even more vague and could be said to include one eyed dwarfs.

As mentioned, the terminology “supernatural” contains within itself its own demise. People who tout the uncertainty of science as evidence for the supernatural don’t understand how science works. As if science claims to be all-knowing simply because it doesn’t support your wild ideas about the universe. No, we don’t know everything, but knowing what we do does allow us to eliminate claims that don’t fit what we know so far. If you have more than claims, then you’ve got grounds to change what we know. There is no mysterious third option. This is why “pure” agnosticism is dumb to me.

Originally posted by NaturalReject:

Originally posted by bobyinhell:

I know this is a topic that is rather opinionated which is why i wondered to what the kongregate community thinks about it. So what do you think?

What do you think?

I think that everything to do with the supernatural is only true when it can be proven, in the same way i view religion. For example i believe in spirits as i have seen enough for me to think they exist and from the experiances my friends have had. So as far as the supernatural goes most of it to me seems just like chinese whispers.

I’m just not spiritual enough to actually believe in supernatural things, but it seems to me that if god exists, then no ghosties for us, if he does’nt, then ghosties might exist, and maybe (and probably) neither of them do.
simple scientific logic shows that it’s unlikely though.

Example #2 of sceintific tests on extrasensory perception:

This one is obviously bullshit, the proposed mechanism is rendered unworkable via the experiment, and yet still works? Yeah, right. Essentially, it never happened. Somewhere, someone lied and it was passed on since then.

Have you ever heard of the Global Conciousness Project?

Yes, I’ve heard that it’s a whole pile of nothing. Nothing about 9/11 though, sounds like the sort of thing true believers make up to link thier beliefs to significant events.