In trying to find out how far back the idea of the natural went the search engine offered a link to a paper by a naturalist philosopher, David Papineau, who described philosophers like himself as people who were committed to the belief that reality contained only what is natural, nothing supernatural.
Papineau wrote1,
They [naturalist philosophers] urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit”…
His argument could be easily rejected. All I’d have to do is reject any definition of natural that could exhaust reality. Indeed, I’m more inclined to feel that reality is exhausted by the supernatural rather than the other way around.
A Miraculous Raising From the Dead
Besides Papineau, I was also listening today to Curry Blake give a testimony during his Divine Healing Technician Training lectures. Before he was involved in his healing ministry his first daughter died when she was three and years later another daughter fell over twenty feet onto concrete. He could tell she was dead, but he carried her and then stood her up against the wall commanding her over and over again: In the name of Jesus you will live and not die.
And then she came back.
She said she was hungry. He gave her only a small piece of bread, because her mouth was crushed in the fall. When he took her to the hospital they said she had been dead for 45 minutes.
Blake made an interesting comment (about 52:50 in the video) explaining why he didn’t take his daughter to the hospital when he realized that she was dead:
Now I didn’t rush her to the hospital cause any time you take a dead body to the hospital they take them away from you and you don’t get to be with them anymore. Right? That’s why we don’t see many dead raisings in the States. Soon as somebody dies they take them away and they start cutting on them and taking pieces out and you’re not with them and you can’t get to them again until the funeral. Whereas in other countries they, a lot of times they, keep the body in the house and different things go on and you can get to the body. That’s why there are so many more dead raisings in other countries. You know, we’ve civilized ourselves out of the power of God most of the time.
In my mind I took Blake’s testimony back to Papineau. I had a few questions to ask the naturalist philosopher.
- If dead bodies are part of a reality that is exhausted by nature can commanding them to live and not die in the name of Jesus bring them back to life?
- When dead bodies do in fact come back to life, how does that fit into the deterministic natural laws that supposedly rule a universe closed to the supernatural?
He didn’t answer, but then I only asked him in my mind. In my heart I was beginning to see how our philosophical commitments to what we think of as natural keeps us from seeing what is truly real.
Footnotes
1 Papineau, David, “Naturalism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/naturalism/>.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 
In their minds, there is nothing that cannot be explained by “natural” laws or the scientific method.
Except dark matter, quarks, the quantum realm, bending of time and light. How can light be both a particle and a wave? How can there be “noise” in space? They say it’s radiation on a really low level, but it’s consistent? How can some species of reptiles regenerate parts and others cannot? How can something without a brain survive for 1000s of years? If you establish “natural” based only on our own observations, isn’t it limited to your own imagination? We still do not comprehend how the mind works. If it is a biological computer, how can it generate new ideas, ask questions, experiment? How can it CREATE? I would argue that it is natural, and nothing is supernatural. They just cannot define natural unless it comes with explanations. Super-natural is beyond natural, but there is nothing beyond natural with God because he created nature. We just do not understand it yet. We may never completely understand it.
I imagine going to heaven and having a bunch of scientists and engineers in the classroom and from outside the door we hear, “OH! So THAT’S how it works!” “Oh really?! That simple?” “Oh wow, well that links everything up!”
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Good point: “If you establish “natural” based only on our own observations, isn’t it limited to your own imagination?”
It is easy to come up with explanations if truth doesn’t matter.
Blessings to you, Rebecca!
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An amazing story!
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Thank you, Dan! Blessings to you!
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Love this brother. Thanks for the insight. “In my heart I was beginning to see how our philosophical commitments to what we think of as natural keeps us from seeing what is truly real.”
Blessings.
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Blessings, Michael! Thank you!
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People who believe only in the natural live in a tiny studio apartment. Those who believe in the supernatural as well live in a mansion with too many rooms to explore. Naturalists limit themselves so badly, it’s sad.
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That’s a good way of putting it, Mimi. Naturalists have limited themselves badly. They live in a tiny studio apartment rather than the immense mansion that reality has provided them. Blessings to you!
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The naturalist is soooo circular
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It is circular. His argument needs to assume as obvious that there are uncreated natural things that are closed to the supernatural. That is the baited hook. Many people are willing to take the bait because they already believe something like that. Blessings, Jim!
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💯💯🎯🎯
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