I’ve commented once, and consider myself an intermediate blamer. I get my Twisty fix 1st thing every morning when I get to “work” and then check back numerous times throughout the day (because I’m addicted, you see). I came here from Sour Duck’s Carnival of Feminists a few months ago. You immediately became my numero uno feminist, Twisty. Thank you for being you! Let your friends/fans know if you need anything from us during this craptastic cancer-ridding process.

Now, in the same veign, a moments thought will tell us that there is no way to meaningfully talk about an object that has no observable traits.

Thus, the term “Natural” encompasses everything that can be discussed, and “supernatural” encompasses everything incomprehensible.

The thing is, most people don’t seem to see it this way. One of the things the Kansas school board did recently was to amend the definition of science so that it no longer sought “natural” explanations exclusively.

Now, if you think it out, every explanation is by definition natural. If this was common knowledge, it never would have even occured to the Kansas board to remove the word natural from the definition of science (Except perhaps to remove redundancy).

However, to most people, “Supernatural” seems to encompass all the hobgoblins of myth; magic, demons, gods, etc.

Now, since these things (If they exist) all have observable traits, they should be open to scientific inquiry. The average person knows this, and so it seems like a bizarre and arbitrary blind spot when scientists insist that science only covers the “natural world”.

Seriously, you hear ID types argue all the time that science should never be blind to the possibilities, but dumb old scientists willfully ignore evidence of the supernatural.

So, beacuase these terms cause much confusion, and are useless for any purpose besides analyzing fiction, I say they should be abolished.

The exclamation points just add to the insult, don’t you think?

I agree that the attempt to view humans as something other than animal makes no sense, either. Still, the effort to do so is as old as the hills and forms the DNA of patriarchy. That is, the belief is at the root of the model of dominance/submission that not only defines modern human heirarchies, but guarantees our destructive influence on all other living things.

Natural/Supernatural makes more sense to me. You can approach nuclear reactors and beaver dams and rivers — all natural things under this dichotomy — from a scientific, materialistic viewpoint. You can’t do that with, say, the afterlife, deities, or spiritual forces. These things just don’t make sense from a materialistic, scientific viewpoint..

The problem is that there’s no real coherent reason to consider demonic posession “supernatural” as opposed to “natural”.

The natural/unnatural divide makes a bit more sense, as it is really the man-made/other-animal-made distinction. However it is often used as a moral divide, and the divide simply can’t be used that way.

Anyway, I think that “natural” is used in two dichotomies: The “natural vs. artificial” dichotomy and the “natural vs. supernatural” dichotomy. Sometimes natural and artificial of the “natural vs. aritificial” dichotomy are folded into the “natural” of the “natural vs. supernatural” dichotomy. According to the natural vs. artificial dichotomy, then, sand is natural and plastic is artificial. According to the natural vs. supernatural dichotomy, sand and plastic are both natural, and demonic possession is supernatural.