I think a lot of people confuse metaphysical (ideas) with supernatural (explanations). An atheist - provided that he's interested in that sort of thing - might well discuss metaphysics and "possibilities", but he won't accept any explanation which demands supernatural forces or entities (which are "supernatural" in the sense that they cannot be proven or disproven), much less subject his mind to the sort of mental gangrene that constitutes "faith".

I don't.

        {If that is what an atheist is I don't understand why it has the root  theist in the word.}

             Theist means you have a theology;  A-theist means you have no theology.  From that take it up with a grammerian, I'm an engineer.

        {This begs the question. Even Sam Harris on his web page allows for the possiblity of the paranormal.}

             I too allow for such possibilities. But I want to see proof before I believe it. Once there is proof I suppose it is no longer paranormal but normal.

This answer does not account for your original description of atheist here.

The normal(natural) world requires detection and explanation (usually through mathematics). The supernatural(if it existed) could be detectable, and not scientifically explainable. Unless, of course you resort to the whole question begging retreat, and if so I have your answer.

 I don't see why not. An atheist lacks belief in a god. Beyond that what any atheist believes is a personal belief and does not speak for the rest of us. I think it is unlikely that an atheist will believe in the supernatural, as we have broken free from those kinds of beliefs. But just remember what the definition of an atheist is. I get really annoyed when people start classifying all atheist with other beliefs besides our disbelief in god. 

Why?

Because a god claim is no different. God as a claim is beyond nature, which would put it in the category of the super natural, thus the prefix "super" meaning "beyond".

God is the same as ghosts and Ouija boards and vampires. All these fall into the category of naked assertion based upon the same naked assertion of something being beyond nature.

It is not overloading a word. It is expanding it to put evidence first in all cases and the rightful rejection of absurdity IN ALL CASES.

"atheist" is currently defined as "god/s" that part is true. But I don't see why if one can reject the absurdity of a brain with no brain, which is "beyond nature" why that word can't include the rejection of other absurdities and unproven claims.

You for example are an atheist when it comes to pink unicorns, so what would be the difference? Have you ever seen a real unicorn outside of manufactured fiction? Wouldn't a pink unicorn be "beyond nature"?

"Beyond nature" is nothing more than humans attempting to pass off fiction as reality and nothing more than a gap answer and I don't think any claim about anything "super natural" should be treated with any less ridicule than a claim of a god. BOTH deserve ridicule and scorn.

What kind of convincing evidence could there be in anything that does not place that thing in the natural world?

Seriously, belief in the supernatural is just what it sounds like. No evidence in the real existence of some object makes it a supernatural matter and thus subject to belief. On the other hand, I can state with a high degree of confidence that they sky is blue. That is not something that I only believe to be true.

(1.) Agreed. Which is why we need to distinguish between "supernatural" and "paranormal". The words natural and normal are some times interchanged, but they really describe two very different things. "Natural" obviously refers to that which exists in nature; as a part of life here on earth. "Normal" however describes that which exists in compliance with a normative idea or concept. It follows from this that "supernatural" describes something separated from nature whereas "paranormal" decribes something which cannot be described with any standard idea for normalcy. More specifically, ideas about supernatural phenomenons and entities are based either A) in a poor understanding of physics, or B) in outright superstition (which is a psychotic reaction to metaphysical anxiety).

(2.) This is actually very ironic indeed, because the early Christians refused to acknowledge the god-nature of the Roman emperor, and this is why they were being called atheists. Of course that all changed as soon as they adopted the essentially blasphemic idea that their prophet was actually not only "a" god, but the Big Boss himself, trying on a human life for convenience.

Other than that, what I specifically mean with the statement 'not all atheists are skeptics' is that many of them are quite naive in political matters; even to the point of what we may call 'inverse paranoia', i.e. the irrational idea that people are "naturally good".

Of course atheists can believe in the supernatural....such as psychics, ghosts, telekinesis, fate, etc, etc, etc, etc. Just when it comes to gods/goddess/demi-gods and beings within that realm is where the term atheist comes into play. I know a few atheists that believe in the whole tarot cards/palm readings and in ghosts, as well as in psychic abilities.

However I will say that the majority of atheists I know tend to be on the more skeptic side of things when it comes to supernatural claims.

Yes, this is what I heard also. Do they consider themselves atheists?

An atheist is a person that doesn't believe in God. So, yes, an atheist can believe in supernatural things, provided that none of those things are God.

Huh? What dictionary or encyclopedia says atheists do not believe anything without evidence? Atheism is the disbelief or denial of the existence of a God or gods. That's it. No more. No less. 

But, we already have other words for that.

No, I think that atheists can not BELIEVE in the supernatural. However, they can OBSERVE it, and become convinced beyond any belief. This often happens with doctors. Human body is the most malleable to so-called supernatural influences, so a few miraculous healings during career will give a doctor some food for thought. A doctor can also observe effects of alternative medicine on his well-known patients, this is why many become convinced that it works. Our group unites several such a doctors, both practical and psychologists. I'm not giving out any names, of course.

Yeah, it is OK to not believe. This is what I do - I don't believe. I observe, with a big community that can repeat and confirm (or not) the correctness of my observations.

Actually, there is a plenty of potential in science to explain supernatural phenomena. It's not just the often cursed quantum mysticism. Every time I read up on dark matter or string theory, I barely resist *facepalming*, seeing how it is identic with standard esoteric theory. Duh. All those scientists researching dark matter and strings do nothing else, than naturalize what was until now "supernatural".
It's ashaming how scientists at one side research dark matter, but on the other side reject it's effects on everyday world. Dark matter forms whole levels of universe, full of life, that is eager to interact with us - because we are partially based on dark matter too. This is how and why there always were countless rituals, myths and attempts to get into contact with invisible world that surrounds us - the dark matter, as it's called nowadays. Almost all "paranormal" phenomena are very simply explainable, if we take into account the omnipresent invisible world of dark matter.
If dark matter interacts with our matter very closely as scientists think, then it's effects had to be necessarily observed during history of mankind. These observations evolved into myths, rituals, superstition, religions, gods, magic, visions, hallucinations, and abilities seemingly defying natural laws. It needs only one hypothetical step - that human thoughts, emotions or ideas are actually a phenomena, that exist in some form of dark matter like it's objects. That the consciousness itself interacts with dark matter of some kind, or perhaps is even based on it. That is, what all thinkers should consider.

Are you attempting to create an ontological proof of God based on a supposed "existence" of the supernatural?  i.e. That by conceiving of the supernatural, that it (and a supernatural being) must be so?

No, I'm using probabilistic reasoning. If there existed any supernatural then I maintain it is more likely that God exists. At the very least, once you've disproven pure materialism the a priori rejection of anything supernatural is unavailable. 

How would you identify something that is supernatural? 

Even using that, once we can prove the supernatural beliefs that some atheists may have, they are no longer supernatural but just plain old natural, of course the reason it is considered supernatural is because there is no evidence for it and it requires to suspend reality in order for it to be explained. However for god to even exist there has to be some form of evidence that he does at all, and then some proper definition of what god is in order to verify that what is to be "known" as god is actually god. So far all the descriptions of god that I have heard are reduced to contradictory statements and well babble.

OK, I can follow that much. What I fail to see is how what you are talking about is actually supernatural and not something that is firmly grounded in the real world, just not yet well understood by the wider community.

Not too many centuries ago, sailors used a type of mineral known as lodestone hung on a string to determine which direction magnetic north was when they were far from land. Today we call that a compass and thanks to James Clerk Maxwell we have a whole well described theory of electromagnetism. Due to his work, it is possible to get a hand held GPS for the cost of a month or two of lunches.

Or since you mention medicine, the pharmaceutical industry has field researchers who find primitive tribal doctors and get them to show what they use as medicine. From that work comes many of our modern drugs. On a personal level, my own mother was granted a couple of extra years on this planet due to an extract from the yew tree. However, it was not the tree source, rather chemists learned how to make the stuff artificially as the tree is just not abundant enough in nature to meet the demands of cancer patients.

None of that stuff is supernatural. It was all stuff that was very poorly understood in the past but by examining the available evidence, it is now science. There is nothing to believe in here. It is all stuff that can be known with a high degree of confidence.

I think the word supernatural carries more baggage than you are admitting to.  For most people I know, supernatural means magic.  Harry Potter magic, not your magic.  Although, of course I think most of your magic is Harry Potter magic too, but for the sake of this discussion I am letting that slide because I know you think you are talking about a reality that actually exists.

I think you give the average person too much credit by assuming they have actually thought what reality is, or what it would actually mean if an angel pulled them from a car wreck.

This is where you go wrong. You mix and match until all you have is a toxic stew that carries no meaning at all.

Physics pretty much has it all covered, and the reason why you don't know this is because you haven't taken the time to study it, which must be why you call dark matter (which BTW is only hypotheized so far) "subtle" whereas physicists call it "dark" because it doesn't interact with light (so we can't see it) and yet it seems to have mass (because the gravitational pull is present). But there is also the possibility that the observational data is wrong, or any number of other possibilities. We just don't know, but "dark matter" has been predicted.

When we discussed this, I told you that what you call "spiritualism" I call "sexual hysteria". This is unconnected to interstellar phenomenons, it is simply a product of redirecting your sexual energy to the neural complex of the cortex, thus producing some really rather powerful hallucinatory effects (much like drugs may do). This has the power to transform your neural pathways and change your cognitive structures. For better or worse. It boils down to being able to control it, as is the case with so much in life. I.e. "personal power", or discipline.

A critical thinker can't believe in the supernatural- or rather, if the critical thinker is critical thinking about it, he or she won't believe in the supernatural.  That's not to say that the critical thinker won't believe phenomena aren't real, but that they have natural explanations.

But then, not all atheists are critical thinkers.

I can tell you that in China, the majority of the population are atheists (or very nearly), and the majority also believe in the supernatural in one way or another- but do they recognize it as supernatural, or are they believing in something they think is natural?  Take the voodoo medicine in China- and the magical energy lines and such in the body people think exist- they think those are natural.

That's what it comes down to- because virtually nobody believes in anything, believing it to be supernatural.  Wiccans, for the most part, believe that magic is natural, and part of nature.  Nature spirits are some of the basic origins of deities- possibly the most fundamental origin or theists.  A good number of theists will tell you that their god is natural, and part of nature- while most of the common definitions of gods still explicitly contain the necessity of them being supernatural.

The most important question here is "what is supernaturality?"

A critical thinker will tell you that it's something beyond the natural- beyond logic and naturalism, and as such, something that is patently false.  And that would be right.  Not everybody knows that, though.

Can an atheist believe in the supernatural?  Out of ignorance- absolutely.  Ignorance of the word and its meaning?  Sometimes.  Ignorance of the implications and nature?  Often.

And the rest?  Out of ignorance of critical thinking- sure. 

But among those we have the few who know very well the implications,  and are blatantly rejecting naturalism in those cases- believing in true magic while with full knowledge of what they're saying.  I know a few of them, and they're still atheists, but if only by the generosity of the definition of atheism- that whatever they believe in, they either don't consider to be a god, or don't worship as their god.

An atheist, after all, can be anything short of a theist.  While the slide between animism and theism may be a short one, it's still there, so they're left slipping around in the murky grey region between superstition and outright devotion/subservience to deities- maybe never to get there, but with seemingly nothing to stop them. 

They all definitely make up a vulnerable subsect of atheist the people of which are liable to become religious at any opportunity, given the right incentive.

As a scientist who knows esotericism, I can confirm Marquis' statement.

With imaginative thinking, yes, because esotericism has wiggle room for interpretation, and a poor understanding of science has a margin of error that overlaps that wiggle room.  

Taken with a strong understanding of the science, esoterism is rarely passable within its own wiggle room, but only by dumb luck- taken as a whole, my experience is that it has a track rate profoundly *worse* than random guessing.  When a set of dice agree with science more often than esoterism does, that's pretty abysmal.  

Taking the opposite stance of esoterism, though, would tend to have a slightly better track record than luck... so, if you just believe the opposite of what esotericists believe, you'd know slightly more about the universe than you did in a state of complete ignorance.

It's really a shame, though.

When I study people like Yeats, I think to myself:  There but for the grace of critical thinking go I.

And it's true- these are largely very intelligent people.  Yeats, of course, Aleister Crowley, etc.  These men are brilliant- and gifted with immense creativity.  The power of the human mind is pattern finding- we can find faces in clouds, and see images in TV static (statistically probable configurations, but ones that retain remarkable similarity to genuine reflections).

Intelligence, particularly with creativity, can actually serve to work against critical thinking.  Most religious people are idiots- most esoteric new-agers are idiots- most people are idiots.  The leaders in the fields, though?  largely brilliant- and they are the ones finding the patters that the rest of the flock are following.

It's hard to find coherent and consistent somersaults of reasoning to justify magic, souls, etc. and takes foresight and extensive investigation.  It is, essentially, the formation of theories.  Where the esotericists fail, though, is in becoming too attached the the theories, and obtaining only biased evidence for them.

I should know- as anybody who has practiced the occult or science does (though perhaps only the former can admit)- we become attached to our theories.  We see them as reflections of our achievements and hard work, and we don't want them to die.  We cheer at successful trials- even the best scientists.  That's *why* we have the scientific method.  When we don't know if the trial is supporting our theory, or a data-point against us in the control, we are incapable of accidentally biasing our results (and I do believe that for most esotericists it is an accident).

The greatest shortcoming of the education system is, in so many years, completely failing to teach the scientific method.  The scientific method is taught as "formulating a hypothesis, doing experiments, and making conclusions", which is nothing whatsoever to do with it- that's just haphazard testing.  And yet, coming away with that, esotericists end up genuinely believing that they know and do science.

Science is the elimination of human bias through proper controls in experimentation for statistically valid empirical results- that's it.  A hypothesis isn't even necessary- nor is, strictly, a conclusion.  The data itself has been derived by the scientific method if it has been controlled for human bias.

Esotericism is fundamentally different in this one capacity, and as such, unfortunately has nothing whatsoever to do with science.

No.  If esotericists started using the scientific method properly, then scientific progress would speed up linearly (because it would have gained more scientists).  They might bring with them, though, a few things they accidentally believed that actually are true by virtue of dumb luck.

Yes, these people are polymaths, and come in varying degrees.  Not only the sciences, but are generally also experts in literature, linguistics, history, and psychology-- and even the occult.  Comprehensive polymaths have become less common since the industrial revolution, as the body of human knowledge as expanded due to modern science- they nonetheless still do exist.

Which is exactly my point- no, no you haven't (or at least, it's very unlikely that you have).  You have confirmed your own biases and predispositions by informally accruing patently unreliable biased evidence, and conveniently forgetting or failing to notice any other evidence- a biased evidence of that kind which really isn't any kind of evidence at all, beyond that as required for an examination into your preconceptions.

If you have (extremely unlikely), conducted any remotely useful experimentation: What was your experiment setup?  What were your controls?  How did you triple blind the trials?  What was the standard deviation for your experiment and control groups?  How many trials did you do?

You seem to be saying you do not need to apply proper scientific method to your experiences because you think your subjective experiences make them unnecessary.  Is that an accurate statement?  If so, it is an obvious flaw because it allows you to believe in anything you feel, regardless of reality.  If not, the last portion of your post seems to be indicating that idea.

i will say YES, because i'm all for atheism being limited to its root meaning.  as someone who studies the histories of political ideologies, particularly leftist political ideologies, i've known the frustration of trying to argue with people who both know and use words like "communist," "socialist," "fascist," "anarchist," etc., as meaningless, amorphous blobs or buzzwords, or, worse, use them interchangeably.  rational discourse becomes very difficult and often impossible when words are convoluted beyond all recognition.  in my opinion, convoluted terms are a sign of demagoguery and intellectual laziness.

this is the very reason why you will almost never see me chime in on any scientific discussion on this website.  i've mastered neither the concepts nor the terminology of the physical sciences and thus it would be disrespectful of me to make any but the most tentative assertions.

There is a disconnect in what you are saying.  You say humans don't use the scientific method in daily life and your group does not need it because you share and agree with each others subjective experience.

The purpose of the scientific method is to remove bias and test for reality.  How do you know the people in your group are not crazy, or aren't just sycophants?  No-one is suggesting you go around and have a double blind test to see whether or not you prefer coffee to tea, but come on...you are investigating the building blocks or reality from inside a field that even you admit is full of quackery and lies.  How can you possible trust the judgment of yourself or the observations of others inside your social circle without some measure of methodological structure?  "Common sense" gets things wrong every single day, you cannot trust it when doing research of this type.

Plus there is the fact that out of the entire group of esoterists who claim what they see/do is 'real' no-one ever does a proper study, even if only to humor us poor normals.

It isn't like we have not had this discussion before though, but you never have a good response.  I wish someone you really trust could step up to the plate and do the work so we could separate truth from fiction.  From my perspective, scientific method is the best way I have to discern what is real in the world around me.  When someone makes extraordinary claims and refuses to analyze those claims using the best tool I know about for such a purpose, it sets off my bullshit alarm.

Same old same old Luminon.  You don't need a fancy machine to do anything.  If you can discern things with your mind then we group you with other people who claim to do the same thing, test you individually with control groups and blammo, we've done a proper test.

Talk to spirits?  Have a sampling of people visit 10 different mediums and be totally honest.  Record what you find.

See auras?  Have 10 different readers read a random sampling of people, record and compare.

NDE?  Same.

Prophecy, well you have already made some claims that are hard enough we can test them, but they are a couple years out.  A good start though...what will you do if they don't happen?  Usually people just reinterpret over and over and drag it out, clinging to the original idea.  Or they point to something minor and make an excuse.  I don't think I've ever heard of a prophet say, "whoops, I must be full of shit!".  Wouldn't that be refreshing?

Or whatever.  Is there a website were someone lists all the crap people think they can see/experience/do via esoteric means?  Something you consider legitimate?

This stuff isn't rocket science dude.  We went over this in another thread and you were never willing to put it on the line and actually put a hard claim on what you or others are able to consistently accomplish/observe.  If you can't consistently accomplish anything, you are probably not experiencing what you think you are.