why does God have to be supernatural?

many posts here in religion from atheist (some from theist) assume God has to be supernatural.(outside the natural laws of the universe)

why?

it makes sense to me;
if i were God i would not make a universe i could not exist in. (assuming 'supernatural' does not exist)
if i were God i would create a system that would be like super easy for me to influence, IE blow on a particle to change the course of it, thereby creating life,(many more steps involved in creating life,think butterfly effect) or plant a thought into a persons subconscious.

IOW
why couldn't God work within this physical reality?

 

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Depends on your definition of god I suppose. A civilization advanced enough could appear like gods to us, but only because we can't explain a lot of what they can do. But they'd still be constrained to the laws of the physical universe. But even if he could do all the things we attribute as godly powers because he knows more about physics than we do, that's a far cry from the conventional all-knowing all-powerful god that's talked about in the major religions.

And if there's one being like that, why just one? Maybe Heinlein was right in his book, Job: A Comedy of Justice, and this universe's particular god is just one of others with their own universes to rule, but he's not especially good or fair at being a god.

 

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i like Heinlein, i looked up the book..now i wanna read it..

 

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Are you serious?

jan.

 

Well, if God is supposed to have created the universe ex nihilo, out of nothing, then presumably God must transcend the universe in some respect (even if it isn't spatial or temporal). Certainly God's supposed to be more ontologically fundamental since the universe's existence is said to depend on God, but not vice versa.

According to the traditional Christian and Muslim views, God does work within this physical reality, doesn't he? There's divine providence and no end of special miracles. But that doesn't mean that Christianity and Islam imagine God to be another physical organism, however large and superpowered he might be.

They don't even imagine the entire universe to be a single conscious organism in the pantheistic style of the ancient Stoics. The Stoics identified the universe's mind and consciousness as their God. That's where the idea that mankind is a microcosm of the universe originally came from, since we are functioning organisms with a ruling mind too, just like their vision of the universe/God.

 

Sometimes, I think that "supernatural" and "spiritual" are just fancy words meant to confuse people, to stupefy them, to shut them up.

"It's spiritual, you wouldn't understand."
"It's supernatural, that's why you don't understand it."

 

Possibly because the usual experience of many people is that God cannot be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted (assuming that "natural" things can be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted).

Our usual experience is that whenever we see, hear, touch, smell or taste something, we do not think "I am seeing / hearing / touching / smelling / tasting God",
but we think "I see an apple / hear music on the radio / touch the table I am sitting at / smell the lunch cooking / I taste a banana."

If we go by the ideas of some religions, the two are not mutually exclusive, though: when you taste a banana, for example, you also taste God, because God is in everything, including bananas.

But our usual experience is to name phenomena in a mutually exclusive manner: "This object here is either an apple, or a banana, but it cannot be both."

So we say "I am either seeing an apple, or I am seeing God, it cannot be both; Either the Big Bang caused the Universe, or God did, but it cannot be both" etc.

 

Do you encounter these explantions often?


jan.

 

Why do you assume God cannot exist in the universe while being supernatural?

Why do you assume God cannot do these things while being supernatural??

God can and has worked within this physical reality.


You seem to think that being supernatural locks God outside the universe. I cannot see any reason why you would come to this conclusion.



All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

Most words are fancy ways of getting people to quiet down over things they don't understand or can't explain. There is nothing supernatural or spiritual about God. It is just another way of cognitively representing what is understood to be the universe. The two words are interchangeable as both lead the mind to imagine "beyond" what we have here.

 

The definition of supernatural. Specifically the "super-" part, meaning above, beyond, or outside.

 

if this is the definition of natural...

Existing in or caused by nature; not made or caused by humankind.

i think we misuse the term supernatural to describe things that are in fact natural, but that we don't understand. and there are plenty of those things.

 

it is not I who comes to this conclusion,
this is an observation that i have noticed here on sciforums,
IE theist makes claim about God, atheist either argues against the supernatural side of it, or dismisses it as something natural.

my question is more for the atheist than the theist, but it still applies to the theist, why does God have to be supernatural to exist?

 

for the atheist, it's because then they can totally dismiss it. :shrug:

 

God does not have to be supernatural to exist, but a God that is not supernatural is, by definition, natural, and thus limited by the natural laws.

Further, a God that is natural is indistinguishable from everything else that is natural, and thus can not be identified, let alone known.

The alternative is to say that God IS nature... all of it... but that merely adds a label, and accompanying baggage, to something that does not need, imo, need it. It also does not elevate God above the "mundane", which is where the label generally implies it sits (above the mundane).

So, in order to be distinct, God is generally considered to be supernatural.

 

of humanities understandings, as humanity does not know the full limits of natural laws.

see this post..we all agree God cannot be known...

meaning unable to affect(effect?) influence nature? (or more to the point humanity?)

is that what it takes to influence us?

 

Well maybe the definition is faulty then. If the definition you give is indeed solid then God is not Supernatural. They will have to use another descriptor for God. Or make up a new descriptor that suits.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

Well as has been pointed out to me. There maybe a problem using the word Supernatural. If Supernatural means that God cannot exist in the universe and is locked outside then God is not supernatural and this whole discussion is therefore irrelevant.



All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

No, I mean that it is not limited by the absolute natural laws.
Whether or not we understand them, or will ever understand them, is irrelevant. A God that is merely hiding in the gaps between our current understanding of them and "perfect" understanding is just a God of the Gaps and diminishes with each improvement in our understanding.

"We" as in you and I, perhaps, but many consider God to be knowable. Christians consider the Bible to be the word of God - and thus he is knowable through the Book, for example.

If God influences nature from outside of nature then those influences would be observable as being distinct from the absolute natural laws.

Influence who of what? That God does not exist? Or that God, if it exists, is supernatural?

 

Most theists claim god created natural laws. By "definition" this places god outside of nature.