Nature, Supernatural - A Boring Explanation Of Why I Don't Like These Words

I don't like to use the word "truth" because it is far too freighted with complex baggage to clarify, within the medium of a blog post, how I am using it. There are substitute words that are far more clear, so why not use them?

On the use of "nature", "natural", and "supernatural", I have different reasons for not using these terms.

Far too often they are tossed about with the general assumption that both the writer and readers will understand what is meant by them. For the most part, though, these words really mean whatever we want them to mean, and I, for one, find myself wondering what they do mean.

Do we, in general, know the referent for the word "nature"? Is it trees, grass, birdies in the trees and rainbows in the sky? Is it "nature red in tooth and claw"? Is is the phenomenal world unfolding under the auspices of the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology? This last one leaves me even more frustrated because I find myself wondering, if this is the case, what happens when, next month, we discover that all we thought we knew about these "laws" was, for all intents and purposes, wrong? That is the way science works, after all.

Since I have no idea what the referent for "nature" is, I find the word "supernatural" even more confusing. Because, for something to be "supernatural", we first have to be clear about what is "natural". Right? Yet, we aren't.

This has something to do with discussions I have found concerning such things as "miracles" (again, one of those words I find troubling). It also revolves around the matter of who, or what, God is or might be. The general assertion that, at least in western Christianity, God is conceived as a "supernatural being", is, given even a moment's thought, nonsensical. Even the claim from some Christians that this is so is just incoherent. If it is possible to have an experience to which we attach the term "God", individually or collectively, then how can this be "supernatural", that is, outside any "natural" frame of reference or possible experience? Of course, then we have the fallback use of "miracle", which only pushes the initial question back a step.

A fallback defense I have come across recently, particularly in reference to the word "miracle", is that we use this word "for lack of a better term". In other words, something happens and rather than investigate what it is or might mean, we simply cry out, "It's a miracle!", which, without any understanding, says absolutely nothing at all except we are too lazy to actually reflect on events that we insist have an impact on our lives.

Let us take a random example from the Bible as a "fer-instance". The following argument isn't original with me; I think I'm lifting it from N. T. Wright: Jesus heals a blind man. At the time, such afflictions were considered divine retribution. Jesus, on the other hand, not only heals the guy, he posits that the blindness was a pretext for Jesus to display the power he has from God. By giving the guy his sight, not only is Jesus displaying power, by any reasonable interpretation then current, he is not so much intervening in the natural order in some way that defies description ("A miracle!") as he is restoring the natural order as defined first and foremost by God. Understood in this way, our current uses of "nature", "natural", and "supernatural" become nonsensical, rooted in a vision of their referents as something, ultimately, mundane and, with the prefix "super-", its opposite.

Rather than get in to arguments over definitions, I just find it far easier to not use certain words. Others find them useful, and that's OK. I do not, though.