Yes. And that’s really all that needs to be said. For precisely that reason, the term “supernatural” is a somewhat redundant modifier. If one observes something that is ostensibly behaving outside the natural laws as they are currently understood, then one must clearly assume that one’s understanding of the natural laws are either dead wrong or incomplete and in need of refining.

Even so, PN is a barely coherent philosophical position because it amounts to circular reasoning anyway; “All that is must be natural, and so nothing that is supernatural is” That doesn’t really get us anywhere when it comes to extraordinary claims.

Quoting wikipeida, Many modern naturalistic philosophers see no impenetrable barrier in deriving “ought” from “is” believing an “ought” can derive from an “is” whenever we analyze goal-directed behavior, and a statement of the form “In order for A to achieve goal B, A ought to do C” exhibits no category error and may be factually verified or refuted. I’d roughly fall in that category of (amateur) philosopher.

I also would say that this restricted and contingent sense of “ought” –explicitly invoking particular consequences of choice to give the term meaning– is not entirely incompatible with Science. That is to say, given the suggestions of actions C, D, and E,the results of Science may be used to try to evaluate which of the three is most likely to lead to goal B being achieved.

However, that does edge across the border from Science to Engineering, as the selection of the goals and the choices made for seeking them appears the essence of the Art of Engineering.

I was thinking of Hume’s guillotine, etc.
But I agree with you about ZF, too.

You indicated you had other limits in mind on science beyond those; care to detail?

I didn’t follow either of those comments. What do you mean?

abb3w,

Well, yes, but I’m not aware of any religion passing comment on the truth of the axiom of choice. (Ramanujan might have, but so far as I know didn’t.) I had different sorts of limits in mind.

However, this isn’t complexity of the situation, nor ambiguity of the behavior; it’s merely ambiguity of the question you’re asking. Your further remarks indicate that you’re referring to the problem of evil in relationship to God. However, your claim that you have to approach the question in terms of there being a God overlooks that (as jrshipley pointed out at 60) this leads to an apparent contradiction, for which one resolution dates back to Epicurus: recognize the initial assumption is wrong.

This leads the broader “question of evil”, on this lines of “what is the defining nature of ‘evil’ if there is no God”, and “does the object of that definition actually exist in the universe”.

Further Anthony adds, You do know that the idea of subjecting something that isn’t part of the material universe to science does, actually, destroy the meaning of science.

The ultimate scope of science is not “the material universe” but “the source of experience”. Which means, if you claim to experience God, Science can study your claim, and compare it to competing claims such as “You’re a looney!” and “You’re trying to sell snake oil, hain’tcha?” The underlying philosophical metric allows such comparison; and all three are (conceptually) possible verdicts… even if the first would (in the Kuhnian sense) overthrow the prevailing paradigm. The Experimental Method isn’t the only tool Science has in its philosophical arsenal for such competitive testing. It’s just usually handy for getting easier math, and thus one most common in the anthropological practice. As noted earlier, in addition to the rule of Falsification, science also uses the rule of Simplicity, which has recently been formally expressed with a philosophical foundation as solid as (and partaking of) that underlying “1+1=2″.

The passing physicist notes Science certainly has limits. Indeed. It is constrained by the assumptions that propositional predicate logic is valid for inference between concepts, that the concept of the joint affirmation of the ZF axioms (skipping Choice) is self-consistent, and that reality and evidence have “some pattern” (of formal complexity recognized by some level of hypercomputation). It is also subject to the other constraints, such as being limited to only considering the descriptions of experience (aka, evidence) that have been suggested, and the computation for consideration may be at times be hefty.

These, however, do not preclude considering descriptions involving “gods” and deciding that the descriptions are not the most probable for the evidence. Science does not have “absolute knowledge”; what it does have is the absolute best tool for evaluating between alternative descriptions, to identify which is most probably correct.

Philosophy of science has included the concepts of Context of Discovery and Context of Justification. (I would make some finer demarcations, but they’re not generally accepted, nor really necessary here.) Religion is still a perfectly valid tool in the Context of Discovery of science as a philosophical discipline, even if it’s considered less fruitful than other approaches in Science as anthropological practice. If you wish to consult a pack of Tarot cards or await a vision of Golden Tablets delivered by Seraphim Choir, these are legitimate in the former context. The playing field here is level.

In the Context of Justification, however, there at least philosophically is no royal road placing ideas of any source ahead of any other. They are all measured, and those not strongest are dismissed until there is further evidence to change the balance of measure.