Right, what is, is, dispite what we call it. But isnt it funny once we know something, it no longer falls into the "Super natural" catigory and we discover it to be natural. "Supernatural" shrinks the more we discover.

So what is the point of calling anything beyond nature? Why not do what you rightfully say and call it, "Unknown at this time" insted of assigning magic into a gap.

"Poof" mentality is what that is. It is intelectual lazyness.

"Supernatural/deity/ universal conciousness" Are all utterances by people who refuse to face the unknown and childishly incert bad guesses into the gaps of scientific knowlege because their ego wont let them accept they dont know everything.

It is an evolutionary hiccup, a missfire. If one thinks they have the answer, even if false, will continue to spread the lie to create a  false club, a safty in numbers game in an futile attempt to avoid their own mortality or the mortality of the club.

When a skeptic says. "Wait and see"

The theist says, "There must be magic in that gap"

"Snarfwidgit"

I just used language to utter a word, "Snarfwidgit". Since I cant define it, and since you cant disprove it, "Snarfwidget" must fall under the relm of  "Language failing to discribe it".

Or could it just be wishfull thinking on the part of the theist? Just like I just made up a nonsense word? "Snarfwidgit"? 

Here's a possibility that theists could make use of.
The most fundamental elements of nature as we understand it is the space-time structure. Space time gives a most fundamental structure that all the other scientific facts depend upon.

A supernatural being could be one who is outside this structure. What's more, our space-time structure would be contingent on his will.
Sometimes there are arguments that as concepts of mind rely on a temporal structure, a God with mental properties (e.g. agency) would also need a temporal structure. But although this God would be outside the structure of our spacetime universe, that doesn't mean that he himself cannot also be within a different temporal structure. So this definition is coherent.

There's no evidence for such a being and I am an atheist.
But atleast such a definition would be coherent and it would also make it theoretically possible for there to be evidence for such a God, and there to be potential in certain ID arguments.

Well, if the definition of natural is all that exists, then there can be no super natural.

However, if you want to get technical, higher dimensions (11 predicted by string theory) could be above our nature, in the sense we can never experience them.

If you are referring to extensions into m-theory, etc, where we envisage other 'Universes' which may be versions of our own Big-Bang-originated observable universe, this is really just enlarging the realm of the Natural.

Any attempt to insert a Supernatural 'realm' this way is just a grander version of identifying 'God' with super-powerful aliens within our own universe, leaving unaddressed the fallacy of God as ultimate 'cause'.

So I guess we could restrict ourselves to what we can detect directly or indirectly with our senses or instruments. It seems that something 'supernatural' is often suggested as the cause of some observable phenomena when we can't explain it by what we currently know, but that doesn't 'define' what is meant in any useful sense, because we can't know what may be discovered in the future.

So this is the basic 'Supernatural' problem, it seems to always end up being defined negatively.

wavefreak,  "Tis a weird and wonderful universe. "

----------------

Would a theist please explain theist to me?

I am religiously baffled ?  , seriously friends ....

Relativity, special or general, is a natural occurrence.

NOT relativism. lol.

Wave, I'm not quite sure if you mean to go anywhere with this language bit.  The inability of humans to use language to fully articulate reality is a failing of language, and has no effect on the nature of reality.  Regardless of the inadequacy of my description, when I say the word, "Mother," I am conveying the concept to another person.  Regardless of whether I or the other person have a complete understanding of the word, female animals who reproduce are mothers.  Our label has no bearing on animal reproduction.  It is simply a way for us to transfer an idea between brains.  Likewise, the inadequacy of language to describe itself doesn't have anything to do with the fact that we can and do communicate.

I think perhaps you are overthinking the function of language.  We use language to communicate.  It is not strictly necessary for logic.  Consider a feral person who learns to use tools.  Clearly deduction and induction don't require language -- just concepts.  If we wish to transmit our conclusion to another being, we must use some sort of symbolic language, whether it is verbal or physical.

The point of saying all this is that your scenario of a god-like being communicating to you is not really accurate.  If such a being exists, its existence will conform to natural laws, whether we are aware of the laws or not.  If such a communication occurs, it will cause an effect which can be measured.  In other words, it will be falsifiable.  Like any unknown in science, we will be able to take what we know about it and begin eliminating possible explanations.

Until and unless some kind of evidence for a god-like creature exists, there is absolutely no reason to alter our concept of the laws of nature.  In what way would we alter them?  Without knowing anything about such a being, we could pick any one of thousands of changes to make in the nature of nature.

I always like hearing when people agree with me.

I think you might be making a kind of fallacy of composition here. I don't think there's a name for it, actually. You might have just invented a new fallacy. Basically, we do know quite a lot. It takes a rather enormous amount of information to make a particle accelerator. What I think you're doing is equating all the possible information about something (virtually unlimited) with all the relevant information about it. With regards to particle accelerators, we know everything we need to know to build ones like those already existing. It's safe to say we know almost enough to make accelerators that are slightly better than the ones we have now.

I'm not trying to brush off your point... not exactly. It's true that there's quite a lot we don't know. However, the accumulation of human knowledge is vast with regard to that which we've investigated thoroughly and scientifically.

Speaking of not brushing off your whole point, while what you say is true in a sense -- most of our knowledge is an approximation from one vantage point or another -- this is the same kind of thing. Though we can speak of not having precise knowledge of all the atoms which make up a particle accelerator, our knowledge is extremely precise within the framework of the precision necessary to make a particle accelerator.

The human brain is susceptible to what I like to call "Intellectual Vertigo." That's when we think about something on a scale that's difficult for our human sized perception to deal with, and the immensity of it makes our brains boggle. There's nothing wrong with it. It's natural. However, I object to using the boggle as a justification for abandoning what we know works on a more managable intellectual plane.

Hamby - I'm not disparaging what we do know, just boggled by the amount of data in the universe that will forever be inaccessible to us. Are capacity for abstracting the essentials serves us remarkably well. But it is still a tiny fraction of what is "out there". I like your term "Intellectual Vertigo". For me, at least, it is that sense of bogglement that keeps things interesting. Without being boggled once in awhile, we might stop asking questions. That would be painfully boring for me. Call me a cognitive bungee jumper. I like the virtigo.

Ten + time 

Actually it can be up to 26 as posed in a certain variant of the String Theory.

But who counts :P

@ the supernatural

It simply doesnt exist, since everything that exists is natural.