Belief - repost

[andrewducker]

Question three was borked. Rewritten to actually cover all the bases, and not be internally contradictory. Apologies to the 7 people who already filled it in!

[Poll #1427776]

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I should have been clearer. My second paragraph is following on from the first.

I mean that aliens are not reducible to stuff in the sense that their minds might not be 'reducible to stuff' unless mentalness is ultimately reducible to stuff, which is completely unknown.

Carrier's definition of supernatural has absolutely nothing to do with outside of a system which God might have created. It's about the nature of mentality.

BTW I think this is a good example of how either Carrier's definition is not very good, or (more likely) 'supernatural' is being used without being properly defined (where really it means 'things I don't think exist').

[andrewducker]

I would consider God to be outside of the laws of nature if I believe in God. And therefore supernatural.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

OK, but that's not what Carrier means by supernatural at all, and Christians wouldn't (or shouldn't) even think in terms of the supernatural.

So I guess it goes to show that the term supernatural is not actually that useful for having a productive discussion as it means entirely different things to different people.

It's misleading (or just plain confusing) in the way it frames the debate, and leads to assumptions about the position of the other people in the debate.

[andrewducker]

That would be "language" for you...