While I was walking towards campus the other morning, I started to contemplate the question of whether or not we really have the necessary cognitive faculties and means of reasoning to make qualitative statements about the supernatural and God(s), assuming they both exist. This isn't the first time I've contemplated the question, but I've been thinking about it a lot as of late and I thought it'd be something worth asking you guys.
In the natural world, we come to understand our environment mainly by means of inductive inferences. That is, we make extrapolations about the nature of the physical world on the basis of previous instances of any given phenomenon, and from that we come to make generalized statements about causal connections between events. We see that dark clouds precede rainfall, and that objects fall towards the ground after they are released. From this we reason that there is a causal relationship between the events, which allows us to make qualitative statements about the physical world. Though this is a really over-simplified model of how we come to understand our environment, as we also use abductive and deductive methods of reasoning as well. But the point is that our understanding of how the physical universe behaves is essentially predicated upon our observations of the effects of natural phenomena.
Of course, this methodology isn't perfect, and it is important to realize that the veracity of our descriptions of the universe tend to lie on a continuum of truth. The history of science is littered with failed theories that have been tossed out the window due to our inability to account for data that contradicts them. For example, it was only around a century ago that physicists thought that Galilean Relativity was the correct model of the universe, and that there was a universal medium through which light could propagate, known as the Ether. It nicely explained why it was that light appeared to have a definite value for its velocity and why it exhibits wave-like properties (as waves require a medium through which to propagate). A consequence of this model would be that velocities can be added linearly between frames of reference, which would allow for light to appear to travel faster than c in reference frames that are traveling at very high speeds. But later experiments showed that Galilean Relativity can't be true, as the speed of light was found to be invariant between all frames of reference. This means that light appears to travel at the same speed regardless of whether you're remaining stationary or traveling at a velocity close to the speed of light.
But the important thing to note is that this was determined experimentally. Near as we can tell, there is no a priori reason why it makes more sense for light to travel at the same speed in all reference frames, rather than being able to add velocities between reference frames in a non-relativistic manner that would allow for light to appear to travel at a speed greater than c depending on your own frame of reference. It just so happens that this is how light behaves.
The same can be said for many other aspects of the physical world, which is why reasoning it out on an armchair simply doesn't work. There doesn't seem to be some sort of ultimate reason as to why it would make more sense for gravity to be an attractive force rather than a repulsive one, or for organic matter to be built around carbon-based molecules rather than being built around some other element. This just so happens to be how the physical world behaves, and none of this appears to be a function of logic or rooted in axioms. This is why at some point we have to get off the chair, away from the desk and into the lab, because natural phenomena must be understood by means of observation and experimentation --not merely rationalization.
So then this begs the question as to how it is that we're able to make assertions about the nature of reality outside of the physical world if we're more often wrong than right about the physical world itself. If they exist, by what means are we able to understand the supernatural and God(s) if our current methods of reason already have enough trouble trying to model the physical world --the one world that we can be sure of? We can't investigate it through the same means by which we investigate the natural world, because scientific methodology is fundamentally restricted to natural world given its inductive nature. So then what does that leave us with? Rational deduction by reasoning a priori?
Since it seems as though the physical world itself isn't modeled very well by such reasoning and instead requires empirical investigation, I'm skeptical of the notion that a supernatural realm would somehow behave in a manner that is consistent with our systems of rational deduction (which is something that a lot of arguments for the existence of God(s) or the necessity of metaphysical dualism seem to be rooted in). Moreover, we also don't seem to have any reason to assume that realms outside of the physical universe --assuming they exist-- behave analogously to our own universe. So if we can't make claims regarding the nature of a supernatural realm or God(s) using the same methodology as we do in the physical world, and reasoning a priori doesn't effectively model the physical world, what reason do we have to assume that it would work for a realm beyond the physical world? It seems to me as though we really don't have good reason to think that this would be the case, and that such metaphysical arguments for the existence of God(s) and realms beyond the physical world simply have to ignore the question of the veracity of this assumption in order to work.
So what do you guys think? Does any of this make sense? Do you feel that our current methods of reasoning are sufficient to make qualitative statements about the supernatural? Do we have good reason to assume that such a world beyond the physical realm would behave in a manner that is consistent with our deductive models of logic even though the physical universe doesn't necessarily do so? Is there some other method of reasoning or investigation by which we can make qualitative statements about entities beyond the physical world, should such a realm exist?
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