Of course the supernatural events could have happened! Unless you're certain that:
- matter exists (i.e., physicalism or dualism is the correct metaphysical worldview)
- the universe is strictly a physics simulation
- there's no God who's capable of fiddling with human affairs (or interested in doing so)
> witness something that defies all natural explanation
> write about it
> people say it cannot have happened because it was a supernatural element
You see this too with stuff like "anything that predicted the destruction of the temple must have been written after because no one can predict the future."
Like, the whole point of huge chunks of the Bible is that world-altering supernatural events actually happened, and the authors want people to know about them.
I don't think it's terribly unreasonable to stake out a position of "supernatural elements cannot happen" and there are absolutely cogent responses to what I just did rhetorically, I just don't like that people who think that way try to assume the center; it's worth pointing out that it's the tail that wags the dog in big chunks of historicity debates.
These are presuppositions. They are assumptions that you make at the start of the game, that you build your interpretation of the world on. They are not empirically proven in any way. (For #2, show me the scientific experiment that proved it.)
But people have built these presuppositions so deeply into their thinking that they don't even realize that they're making them. Within the silo of those presuppositions, of course miracles don't ever happen!
But, if that's you (not Brindinooo, but you the reader), try to step outside that for a moment, just as a thought experiment. For this experiment, let us hypothesize that God actually exists - not just the word or the idea, but that someone is actually there. And let us hypothesize that he can actually do things, things that change physical reality. (You could think of it as breakpointing a running program with a debugger, and changing the value of a variable, and then resuming. The value actually changes, with no antecedent that the program can see.) And let us hypothesize that God actually does this - he actually changes something.
(Digression: A typical way of thinking about the scientific method is four steps: Systematic observation, search for regularity among the observations, forming a hypothesis to explain the regularity, and testing the hypothesis.)
For our thought experiment, let us suppose that science observes God doing something at step 1 (systematic observation). Now, what is science going to do with it? It's going to throw it out at step 2 (search for a regularity), because there is no regularity - unless God does the same miracle repeatedly.
But if it makes it past that step, the next problem comes at step 3 (forming a hypothesis). Under current thinking, God will never be the hypothesis. But in our thought experiment, God is actually the cause!
And even if God were to be the hypothesis, the next problem comes at step 4 (testing). How could you test the hypothesis? "Uh, God, could you do that again, and please sign it this time"? I don't see how you could do the experiment, even in principle.
So there is no direct scientific evidence that God exists, because science is not a tool that is capable of investigating that question.
But if God exists, and if he actually does something, even if we don't see it with science, we might see it with history. Somebody might have observed it and recorded it.
And when you read such a thing, how do you react? Do you say "That's impossible?" You're right; it is. But what is your next statement? "Therefore it didn't happen"? If that's your response, it indicates that you're in the silo of the material-universe-is-all-that-exists presupposition, and can't or won't think outside of it. Instead, I think you're reaction should be "That's impossible, but did it happen?" Because the impossible happening is exactly the signature that we would expect if God exists and actually did something.
So the fundamental question is not whether these events have a supernatural element or not. The fundamental question is whether they happened.
Sure there is. I could tell you that I am a mostly-anon web developer; I could also tell you I am President of the United States, or a founder of a prominent company that came out of YCombinator. For practical purposes you would evaluate my claims based on your wits and perhaps my comment history, and you would believe that one story is more likely than the others.
All are equally possible but not all are equally plausible.
I'm guessing you'd agree with that, but you'd disagree with what counts as credible evidence. Which I can understand. But the idea that you'd see "random guy on HN makes up a theory involving a fictional wormhole from a 90s television show" as no different from Biblical claims is troubling to me, most notably because the narrative itself doesn't make any claim that could be remotely construed to align with that.
Impossible things by definition didn't happen.
People observe and record all sorts of crazy things all the time, including for all of the religions you don't believe in, but that doesn't mean anything. You're just asking people to assume what the Bible says about the supernatural is real, and offering the lack of scientific evidence as supporting evidence for the Bible. I don't think you understand how profoundly unconvincing that argument is to people who don't already operate under the theistic model of reality that you do.
If you're trying to convert people with apologetics, this specific line of attack isn't going to be effective.
Can things happen that are possible via mechanisms you don't understand, or are incapable of grasping because of your sensory/intellectual limitations?
>You're just asking people to assume what the Bible says about the supernatural is real
I don't think that's what happened there.
>offering the lack of scientific evidence as supporting evidence for the Bible
No, the point is that the scientific method is not the only way to prove that things in the past happened.
>to people who don't already operate under the theistic model of reality that you do
How would you explain yourself to a two-dimensional person, and reveal yourself to its world?
Possibly, but I fully believe science is capable of explaining these mechanisms, because thus far science has been able to explain everything that theists claimed was supernatural in nature, while no evidence has been found to justify belief in the supernatural.
So this is, at best, an argument that scientific models are incomplete (which no one would disagree with) but not that scientific models are invalid, or that the supernatural is real.
>I don't think that's what happened there.
Their claim was that science cannot prove the supernatural, but the only possible evidence would be personal testimonials - and we're in a subthread litigating the supernatural claims surrounding the Exodus story - which only exist in the Bible. So I respectfully disagree. They were literally arguing that the fact that these claims were written in the Bible was evidence of their veracity.
Also, science should be able to prove the supernatural, as every claim about the supernatural is that it manifests in some physical, tangible form in our universe, which means it must leave some kind of evidence.
>No, the point is that the scientific method is not the only way to prove that things in the past happened.
It is, though. Claims alone don't prove anything. We prove that things happened in the past by discovering evidence of it, through artifacts or documents, and finding corroborating evidence, which is science.
>How would you explain yourself to a two-dimensional person, and reveal yourself to its world?
First, demonstrate that two dimensional people exist, otherwise it's a nonsense question.
One could imagine God parting a sea with scientific mechanisms we know nothing about.
> Claims alone don't prove anything
You can be convicted for murder "beyond a reasonable doubt" on claims alone.
>First, demonstrate that two dimensional people exist, otherwise it's a nonsense question.
Okay, I respect that. Thought of a better one later.
How would you explain what it means to be human to an ant? How would you get it to understand thermodynamics or whatever?
I dunno, it just seems like your overall thrust here is that humanity came out of the ooze through natural selection with everything that it needs to understand the mysteries of the universe. If we cannot see, touch, taste, smell, hear, or think it, either directly or through our instruments, it is impossible, and therefore it cannot happen.
If you're referring to my post, that is not what I argued. I argued that a claim of supernatural events could not be dismissed as "cannot have happened", but must be evaluated on the quality of the evidence for that event.
I did not apply that to events in the Bible, but that is how claims of supernatural events in the Bible must be evaluated. Sure, they're eyewitness claims. All history from that era is eyewitness or derived from it, or archaeology or derived from it. The point is to not say "can't have happened", but rather to actually evaluate how good the evidence is for any claim.
Doesn't mean I believe it's true, though: I think the point is more being willing to admit that humans might not be the pinnacle of existence, fully able to comprehend every mystery of the universe.
Yes, I am certain of these things because I am an adult with an education, and an awareness of the difference between mythology and reality.
If you believe in magic, and that the Bible describes reality more correctly than the entirety of science, and that archaeology and Biblical scholarship are all wrong, and that somehow out of all of the religions that humans have concocted only the Abrahamic God is the correct one, then the onus is on you to prove that.
And notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no credible evidence of the supernatural at all.
On what basis do you believe the Bible and its supernatural claims could have happened?
My understanding is that the shift can mostly be attributed to the rise of biblical minimalism as the dominant interpretive framework. Radiocarbon dating of the Jericho ruins did rule out Albright's preferred late Exodus date. But the radiocarbon date is consistent with an (in my opinion, far more interesting) earlier Exodus date, which would line up with the hypothesis that the Israeli people were the Hyksos, and which would also line up with a sequential interpretation of the timeline presented in Joshua, Judges, and Samuel.
> or are you implying that the interpretation of archaeological evidence either way is simply a matter of arbitrary personal preference?
Archaeological evidence constrains the set of defensible explanations. But the available evidence from this time period (Exodus, conquest of Canaan) is so scarce that it mostly comes down to personal preference.
> And notwithstanding that, there is absolutely no credible evidence of the supernatural at all.
How could it be otherwise? If there were reproducible evidence, then the phenomenon in question would be classified as natural.
> On what basis do you believe the Bible and its supernatural claims could have happened?
I'm quite certain that mind is more fundamental than matter, and I'm not very sure about a whole lot else.