I think physical might mean being like a stage prop or an artifact. Physical means it's not ultimately real; an amalgamation of small particles.
A man creates an artifact, such as a chair, out of existing material. God creates an artifact, such as a universe, out of...what...nothing? We don't know. The supernatural realm is the real realm; our universe is a shadow of it. You could call the supernatural the "superphysical".
Stage props are real though. I don't know what it means for the physical not to be ultimately real. If this laptop wasn't real I couldn't type this, unless you say it's all in my imagination.
Physical is something measurable.
What does measurable mean?
Does this mean something is physical if a thing has quantity? I'm just trying to phrase it in terms of the object, rather than what the observer can do.
I think there is a huge amount of blurring between the two.
For example, what exactly is "energy"?
Why is that considered something physical? It seems entirely un-physical to me.
I don't know if energy is a thing, or if it's just a label to understand how matter acts.
We have basically defined "physical" as "things composed of matter and energy" and we have defined "supernatural" as "anything else".
What do we mean by matter? If a ghost or angel has extension, would it have to be made of some sort of matter?
If another universe has particles with difference qualities, I suspect we would call them physical.
But then we've got things like dark matter and dark energy that don't really seem to fit anywhere and thus we broaden the definition of "physical" to include "things composed of matter and energy and dark matter and dark energy and anti-matter and anti-energy".
Well dark matter and energy are probably just matter and energy. We just call them dark because we don't know what they are.
To me, the whole concept of energy and matter and their interrelatedness (e.g. E=mc^2) is where my conception of "spiritual" and "mysticism" come in.
Or, for example, the interrelatedness of electricity and magnetism. Or the idea of an electric "field" and magnetic "field" exerting forces across time and space. The way the speed of light drops out so beautifully from Maxwell's equations, etc.
I think this idea of "supernatural" vs. "natural" is misguided. The natural world often seems plenty supernatural for me
They are interesting, but I wouldn't say they are supernatural.
I think of God more as the ground-truth to all this. Both the "supernatural" and the "natural" take their essence from God.
What do you consider supernatural?
I believe physical and material are that which can be experienced via one or more of our 5 sences. Supernatural is that which is outside the laws of nature, and spiritual is that which cannot be experienced via our 5 sences.
Magnetism can't be experienced by our senses. I suppose we could say that we don't sense gravity either, we just feel the pressure put on our feet (for example). So I don't think that works.
I don' think you can define supernatural as being outside the laws of nature, because we are asking what it means for something to be natural.
If Universe is defined as "all that exist" How could there be other Universes? If there is something beyond, it will still be a part of the universe.
Ken
I don't define the universe like that though. If the universe is all that exists, that means God and angels are part of the universe, so God couldn't create the universe.
I have given definitions of physical and material/immaterial in the past, but most seem to think they are arbitrary.
IMO accepting a definition of the immaterial forces an implicit concession that unbelievers will never allow.
Why wouldn't we like to accept a definition. I could accept a definition of fairies, but not think they are real.
immaterial: The immaterial is irreducible, always active, and thereby exhibits at least one constant or continuous property.
A few clarifications to go with that ...
material: The material can be at rest, exhibits mass and extension while at rest, and is reducible.
physical: The term "physical" can have two connotations. 1) One is as a synonym of "material". 2) The other means an interaction between two entities. For this topic I mean #2 when I say something is "physical".
I don't know if material things can be at rest. Not all material things have mass (photons), and I'm not sure if they all have extension. I'd think the physical is only reducible to a point... it must stop somewhere, but that irreducible thing will still be physical.
To get at what I was trying to talk about, almost any definition would do. In fact, I think it makes the discussion easier to use banal terms like open/closed. Once I define what "closed" means in the statement, "The door is closed," wouldn't it be rather silly for you to deny that an equally valid statement is "The door is open"? ... for you to say, "Open is not possible"?
Likewise, were you to accept my definition of immaterial, I think you would find it very difficult to say the immaterial does not exist. That's my take on it.
Well I don't know if I would say that the supernatural is impossible. A door being a door would seem to imply that it could possibly be opened, since it would be a wall if it couldn't.
Asking whether the supernatural exists might be more like asking whether a thing is a door or a wall. Though it's quite a strange (and perhaps bad) example for talking about the physical and supernatural.
