supernatural
drorzel | June 21, 2011Josh Rosenau has a post about the supernatural, spinning off recent posts about a recent Calamities of Nature webcomic. Josh makes a point that I think is valid but subtle:
The issue with the supernatural is not whether it's part of the universe, but whether it is bound by the same laws as all the other elements of the universe. The bizarre claim about ghosts is that they somehow obey some laws but not others, for no obvious reasons.
Something supernatural could, in principle, interact with the universe sometimes but not at others. If it is operating outside of natural laws, that doesn't…
laelaps | October 26, 2007Actually, I don't believe in "spooks," ESP, alien abductions, or much of the other paranormal rot that crops up so often this time of year, but apparently 24% of 1,013 polled adults do. While I take issue with surveys asking a relatively insignificant amount of people their opinion and then projecting those numbers on the whole of the population, I have run into many people who have some, erm, interesting ideas about rather ordinary phenomena. I've been told that cats can detect human souls, that saber-tooth cats were aquatic predators and bit their prey sideways, that there are living…