{"id":412,"date":"2011-10-19T07:16:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T07:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2011\/10\/science-and-the-supernatural\/"},"modified":"2014-12-26T11:47:08","modified_gmt":"2014-12-26T16:47:08","slug":"science-and-the-supernatural","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2011\/10\/science-and-the-supernatural.html","title":{"rendered":"Science and the Supernatural"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both; text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<p>\u201cThe supernatural can never explain the physical world we observe.\u201d says a friend.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course it can\u2019t. It wasn\u2019t supposed to\u2013at least in the scientific sense.\u201d is my reply.<\/p>\n<p>So my friend has this motorcycle which he really loves to fix up and ride, and I try to explain, \u201cYou might as well say that \u2018love\u2019 can never show you how to change the oil on your motorcycle. Science tries to tell us how things work\u2013not why they exist, or what our relationship should be to them. \u2018Love\u2019 might not tell you how to change the oil on your motorcycle, but meditating on love might help you understand why you love that motorcycle, and why you love to ride it on a beautiful Autumn day, and if the motorcycle is a gift from your wife, then love will also show you why that motorcycle has meaning beyond its mechanical genius. Love may not tell you how to change the oil, but it is the one thing that makes your motorcycle more than an ingenious lump of metal.<\/p>\n<p>So with religion and science. The supernatural realm is not some kind of philosophical \u2018deus ex machina\u2019\u2013a God of the gaps\u2013an answer for natural mysteries when we have no other answer. Instead the supernatural realm is a given within a philosophical view of the cosmos. It is the universal experience of the human race that the unseen realm is \u2018there\u2019. It\u2019s part of reality. Deciding how it interacts with the visible realm and what it has to do with me and my destiny is where the fun begins.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe supernatural can never explain the physical world we observe.\u201d says a friend. \u201cOf course it can\u2019t. It wasn\u2019t supposed to\u2013at least in the scientific sense.\u201d is my reply. So my friend has this motorcycle which he really loves to fix up and ride, and I try to explain, \u201cYou might as well say that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":557,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Science and the Supernatural<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&quot;The supernatural can never explain the physical world we observe.&quot; says a friend. &quot;Of course it can&#039;t. 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Dwight Longenecker\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-10-19T07:16:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-12-26T16:47:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. Dwight Longenecker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fr. 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