How to prove the supernatural?

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Abrosz said:
God could rearrange the stars at will, and could make them display any message he desires.
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Have you ever read The Rose of Paracelsus by Jorge Luis Borges?

It’s a fictional story, but it’s worth the five minutes it would take to read if you’ve never done so. There’s a lesson to be learned therein about the premise of your question, and it’s worth some reflection.

The Path is hard. The way forward is often lost in darkness and obscurity, and the disciple is lost, wandering in circles in the wilderness. Direction can only be found by learning how to hear and understand the still, small Voice of the Silence, and perceive that which is beyond (or perhaps deeper than) the senses.

If a person is completely consumed by sensory perceptions and identification with the physical world, they could never complete the journey even if they were to embark. It would be fruitless. At best it would be a waste of time, and could be much worse.

If anything is evident about God’s approach to governing the universe it is tolerance, and absolute freedom. God permits people (and animals) to do whatever they want, and has not intervened to prevent even the most unthinkable of atrocities. To those who wish to escape the suffering inherent in wrong actions, he gives guidance, such as the Commandments, and the Beatitudes, but no one is compelled to obey. We are free to choose to suffer.

Why should that freedom not extend to the mind?

God allows us complete freedom of thought, and does not compel us, by force of evidence or otherwise, to think or believe anything.

To do what you are describing would not only be counterproductive (by bringing people to seek the spiritual life who have no hope of enjoying its fruits, due to the hardness of their hearts), but would also violate the principles of freedom, tolerance, and love by which God governs the cosmos.
 
Dan_Defender said:
Yes. Honeybeecombs are made up of hexagons because that geometrical shape results in the least amount of wax as building material. If God gave that knowledge to bees, how much more did He give to humans?
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As long as we’re talking about supernatural things and honeycombs, there have been several monks on Mount Athos (Greece) who put icons into their beehives, and the bees build their honeycombs over the holy image but never cover the face of the holy person. Wondering how the agnostic posters here view this occurrence:

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ReaderT said:
As long as we’re talking about supernatural things and honeycombs, there have been several monks on Mount Athos (Greece) who put icons into their beehives, and the bees build their honeycombs over the holy image but never cover the face of the holy person. Wondering how the agnostic posters here view this occurrence:

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This is a joke…right?

You don’t expect us to actually take this seriously.
 
If it isn’t a joke and it’s true, I’d say it is very, very, intriguing.

🤔
 
The supernatural cannot be proven unless it wants to prove itself to us, which could end up being a personal experience that no one else shares. We should at least be intelligent enough to suspect on our own, however, that we most likely know very little about the cause and origins of the universe, or the nature of existence to begin with and what, exactly, it’s comprised of. There’s much left to know. Stay tuned.
 
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lelinator said:
But you don’t actually believe that it has a supernatural origin…right?

Please tell me that you understand that it’s a perfectly natural phenomenon.
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“Perfectly natural” - what natural process leads the bees to cover the rest of the image (sometimes the feet / hands / torso of the saints) but never the holy faces? I’m no entomologist but I never heard any well-established reason for this behavior
 
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Pattylt said:
I think this is a problem all of us atheist/agnostics face concerning miracles. We want verifiable evidence and the supernatural just does not provide it. It seems you either believe it exists or you don’t.
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Really I think this is it tbh. A “proof” isn’t necessarily available. But what would provide that?

The disposition of the person listening is vital…

If a sign was provided in a natural world… I could think of many arguments to refute any supernatural origin. Miracles are available but people are sometimes unwilling to accept them as miracles. In my personal life God has given me many instances to see Him operating. On an individual level I could dismiss some of them, but all of them?

I’m a scientific person, it would be like if I said…the result is this…but to achieve that result I have to throw out 40% of data points which would indicate to the contrary.

If I open the Bible and look for contradictions I’ll find them. It needs to read spiritually. Or in any religion I can point to flawed people or histories. We have plenty of doubting saints, I was a bit reluctant myself. My background is in physics, and to be honest…there is almost nothing that can be stated with “certainty”. Technically speaking you can’t prove anything, only disprove.

For my atheist/agnostic friends I would recommend to be sure to be open to the truth. The data is there… but be sure to be open to seeing it. Look more broadly, love is everywhere. And don’t be afraid to pray…God is the best teacher, far better than we can be. But we are trying to point the flashlight towards Him. Gods given to us so much, we want to give back!
 
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Many miracles have been tested throughly by scientific means. What type of proof would you like to see? What evidence would be meaningful to those who may not be sure as of yet?
 
The Church obviously believes in the supernatural.
That’s why they have exorcists.

Pax
 
Servant31 said:
What type of proof would you like to see? What evidence would be meaningful to those who may not be sure as of yet?
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In the OP I gave you some,which cannot be denied, no how hard one would love to explain it away.The speed of light in vacuum is so well established (Michelson-Morely experiment) that no SANE person can deny it. Of course irrational people can, but why would anyone care about them? The position of the stars is also established with excellent precision. To experience the stars moving around would be visible to everyone - no experts would be needed. If the new arrangement would display some legible text, that would qualify as a bona-fide miracle.

Now the actually displayed text might be “confusing”… if it would be the Bible, the Talmud, or any of the so-called sacred texts, it would be a very serious evidence for the validity of those texts. But some mathematical formulae would lead to some supernatural origin. Even the Communist Manifesto, or the Kama Sutra.
 
At the very heart of Christianity is a man who rose from the dead.

Death is pretty much final in the natural world.
 
My point is that the Church believes both in God (as it were the “good” supernatural) and Satan (the “bad” supernatural).

If one wants to “prove” the supernatural (or disprove it as many have tried on this thread) then one will have to prove or disprove both the good and the bad supernatural.

Pax
 
Ok, gotcha! I think that once one has faith in God, it opens up all the supernatural. That becomes a problem when it extends to ESP, crystals, and all the others. This then requires limiting the supernatural to only those accepted by the religion of choice…your definition of what’s supernatural would be different from a Hindus, as an example. The only thing that distinguishes between various supernaturals is the text used. I just reject all of them until proven otherwise.

Part of the problem also involves the texts themselves. The Bible makes supernatural claims that invoke this material world as well. Why could Paul and Peter perform miracles in Jesus’ name but no one today can? Even if only occasionally? Peter walked on water while believing. No one else has. My problem is that certain miracles could occur according to the text but ever since cameras, testing equipment, science itself, they never pan out.

I’m reminded of this silly graph…
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Silly…but true…
 
I think nearly everybody who has heard of it accepts that anything before the “Big Bang” is presently unknowable and probably will always remain so. The reason being that the nature of it would have changed the nature of everything affected by it. So our rules of physics, for example, would be of no value in discerning what anything was like before the event. There are reputable physicists who “prove” mathematically that there are other dimenisons and therefore universes, which we will never be able to penetrate.

We accept that. But we choke on believing there can be a world or universe we call “supernatural”. If we posited all the things we believe to be “supernatural” as purely natural explainable by the laws of physics, chemistry and mathematics, we would accept them then, even if there were a dozen, dozen impenetrable “singularities” lodged within them.
 
ReaderT said:
No, it’s 100% real
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I’m not Orthodox, and I have real problems with the Monks of Mt. Athos. But I do know from experience that bees don’t leave open spaces, especially when they are compelled to “cross comb” as in the third photo for lack of space. At least in my experience, anything one does to repel bees also makes them sick. Maybe these monks know some secret formula that does it. But I sure don’t.

I’ll admit I’m pretty slow to discount miracles.
 
Pattylt said:
My problem is that certain miracles could occur according to the text but ever since cameras, testing equipment, science itself, they never pan out.
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I actually have posted about a lot of recorded miracles (both photo and video) on this forum. The problem is not lack of recording; the problem is the mindset of the skeptic: “This must be a trick because it couldn’t actually happen.”

Here’s another video of the Holy Fire in Jerusalem, a miracle that happens every year on Good Friday. The fire is known not to burn people. This woman waves the fire over her shirt without so much as a singe. But I can already hear people say “It’s not real, she had special flame-retardant clothing”…

 
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