What is the difference between scientific explanations and supernatural explanations?

Answer 1

Scientific explanations should not be given unless it has been proved by experiment and testing that they are accurate and reliable.

Supernatural explanations can be given by anybody anywhere, whether they know anything about the subject or not.

More deeply, this question is really about a much bigger question, "Is there a supernatural?" The adjective "supernatural", usually refers to events and ideas which belong in the spiritual world. The spiritual world is usually described as a copy of the natural world. The difference is that in the spiritual world, the rules which cover what can and cannot be done in the natural world, do not apply.

For example, spirits are people who may have existed in the natural world, but have left their dead bodies in the real world and have escaped to the spiritual world. There are many interpretations of this notion. Some imagine that these spirits have spiritual bodies which are copies of natural bodies, but without natural substance. Interpretations vary wildly. Some people believe that spiritual bodies need spiritual houses to live in, and cannot walk through the walls. Others suppose that spirits have no bodies at all - no eyes, no legs, no brain and nothing but a consciousness by which they can observe, think and do things in an unexplainable manner to unexplainable subjects.

Supernatural explanations are most often used to explain things for one of two reasons. The first is that things which cannot be explained by scientists seem to defy the rules of science. Jesus turned water into wine, but to do that today we would need a very powerful nuclear reactor which could fuse hydrogen and oxygen atoms into carbon atoms - and that would be just a start. Nitrogen and phosphorus are also necessary to produce the organic matter which makes up the organic material in wine. Obviously, those things weren't known in Jesus's time and there were certainly no nuclear power stations. Therefore a spiritual explanation for how he did it is needed. The laws of science have to be bypassed.

So, scientists know how we could turn water into wine, but they also know that we can't do it with the equipment we have. That is the scientific explanation. The spiritual explanation is simply that in the supernatural world there are no limitations on what can be done.

The second use for supernatural explanations usually involves relations between people. If we accept that there is a supernatural part of all living people, then the things they do may not be due to their natural part, but due to their spirit. In that way, the strange things people do can be simply explained by our lack of understanding their spiritual desires.