The limits of science

 It can't be done Fennifer and know this, a NATURAL change is from higher state of oder to a lower state of order which basically disproves the so-called theory of evolution.

I totally disagree.  Supernatural means beyond nature.  Something other than nature.  That something other than nature can affect the physical world does not mean it is discoverable by science.  Science may be able to observe the effect but still not determine or prove the cause.  You are right that if science does uncover a natural cause, that effect does not on the surface result from the Supernatural.  Where science is ineffective is determining the "Final Cause" (Is there a God behind it all).

I will happily jump off that bandwagon, if you can offer me a more convincing alternative.

Because so far I have seen nothing else, that even romotely matches the evidence.

Making Evolution not so much a choice, than a lack of options.

Thanks for your understanding comments. My main concerns are that: (1) Secret technology is now *so* far advanced that it causes a division of power so extreme that fighting against it might be like cows fighting against being slaughtered: hopeless; (2) Our leaders are so extremely incompetent and careless that they are likely to destroy the human race totally, even on any off-planet outposts, out of sheer carelessness or indirectly by any stronger/higher powers watching them who then give up hope on our species. Our leaders can't even keep killer bees and genetically altered lifeforms from escaping into the environment; (3) Anyone working on state-of-the-art technology is either bought off, killed, or forced into an insignificant station in life. Perfect examples: cryptography, Zero Point Energy. (4) If even the tiniest minority of humans achieves artificial general intelligence in secret, resulting in The Singularity, they will have no real need of the rest of the human race because labor will be free, and that minority is likely to conclude that the vast majority of the human race is expendable, and with the ensuing technology they might well be able to carry out such a decimation agenda.

Well, we must define what "nature" is then. We exist in this nature, and if something exists in some other nature, then this something has no impact on us. If it does, then it is a part of our nature - even if we are unable to directly interact with it in its "natural habitat", we can still learn a lot about how it affects us by applying scientific method to the effects we observe caused by it. Much like we cannot directly interact with dark energy (at least to the measurable extent), but we know it is there, and we know a lot of its properties from the observations.

As far as the "final cause" goes, in my opinion it is irrelevant whether the Universe was created by some being or appeared naturally. Whatever the case, the Universe is what it is. We don't need to know how the Universe was created, it is enough to know how it operates to be able to answer all the physical questions that have any relation to our existence.

Imagine a video game with self-aware characters managed by complex self-learning AIs. Unless we program them to be aware of it, they might never learn that they are just a part of a video game - they will live their life and use the environment around them to their purposes. The only way they might ever learn that there is more to it than they thought is if we directly interfere in the video game and do something that naturally would never happen in the video game. But, again, they don't have to interpret it as a proof of existence of the creator, they might just assume that the Universe they live in has an inherent factor of randomness, and however hard we try, we cannot give them hard evidence of the contrary. So to them, it doesn't matter if we exist or not: their world view doesn't have to be affected by our existence.

I realize I'm not sure what your beliefs are, or what you're claiming, partly because I didn't read much of that evolution thread. 

Per Wikipedia it looks like you're right about metaphysics being considered part of philosophy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics). Until now I always thought of metaphysics as generally unaccepted fringe science, also called pseudoscience (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience), but per those definitions my earlier impressions were wrong.

I tend to believe that *some* pseudoscientific topics will eventually become accepted scientific topics, while other pseudoscientific topics will eventually be disproved, if they haven't already. I'm not sure what you mean by "material world." If there exist living entities in higher dimensional space, as some people believe, would you still consider that the "material world"? I would, though I've read that 4D space is not stable within our laws of physics, so I regard such claims as only marginally believable. (I can provide a reference if you want.) What if the Many Worlds Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation) is true, which means that all possibilities exist at the same time? Would you consider those other realities the "material world"? What if ghosts are shown to exist, but somehow share our 3D space on a different frequency? Would you consider their reality as part of our "material world"? Altogether I'm not sure what you mean by "material world" and what your beliefs are.

  Then you're saying that you think there is a possibility that God exists?

 Haha, no beating around the bushes with this guy!

Our universe, solar system and planet appear to be so fine tuned that it seems as if there is an intelligence behind them.  The many world hypothesis was developed to explain this fine tuning without having to accept the idea of an intelligence (God).  If there are infinite worlds with different sets of laws, one of them, by chance may appear fine tuned like our own, so no need to hypothesize intelligence.  I subscribe to an Intelligence (God) behind the order but I don't believe that this Intelligence is discoverable by science. That God can interact with the physical world does not mean he is part of that world or discoverable scientifically.  My worldview is Judeo Christian which understand that there are both spiritual as well physical realities.  Science is limited to the physical realm.  

Over on the evolution thread many contributers seem to have the attitude that a materialistc worldview (material is all that exists) is somehow more "scientific" than a worldview that accepts spiritual realities.  The point I am trying to make is that just because science is confined to the physical world, and cannot explore the spiritual world, does not negate the existence of a spiritual world.

I see. So we agree completely, as far as I can see.

By the way, I just blocked the insulter above. I recommend you do the same so that he doesn't harass future posters in this thread.

If you're trying to infer that God exists from the many worlds interpretation (MWI), then you either didn't read or didn't understand the Wikipedia page on that topic. MWI says that all possibilities occur, stemming from any given current state. It doesn't imply anything about God because we don't know if any former current state included God.

But for the record, although my belief is unrelated to the MWI, yes, I believe that God as conceived by many Americans might exist. Lack of knowledge of X does not imply nonexistence of X any more than lack of trust in X implies distrust of X. There simply isn't enough information available to make such an inference.

I don't think there is a possibility that God exists, but I think there is a possibility that Legendary Flying Spaghetti Godzilla-Mutant That-Ate-Jesus-And-Mohammed-When-It-Was-Hungry exists. It came to me in my dream after I drank 5 bottles of strong Moscato and told me that I am to be its harbinger. Can't prove me wrong, la-la-la!

drunk pastafarian prophets ...  they're everywhere ...

It is not clear to me why you assume that science cannot explore the spiritual world. What prevents it from doing it? If spiritual world exists and can be interacted with, then scientific method will work for it just as well as it works for the material world. We study, for example, force fields, even though they aren't exactly material.

If there is something that isn't accessible to science, then, chances are, it isn't accessible to anything, including our perception, hence, even if we interact with this something, we will never learn of this something's existence.

Perhaps "physical" is a better word than "material".  Force fields are physical so are discoverable by science.

Maybe a way to make myself clear is to take psychology as an example.  Some people would view psychology as a pure science.  I view it as a "soft" science.  A purely materialistic view of the world is deterministic, viewing people as machines. I view people as both material as well as spiritual, with free will.  The free will comes from the spiritual part and so, is not open to scientific investigation.  Science deals with pure cause and effect.  Things that always follow from other things.  Free will, is just that, free, so not predetermined by some cause.

does science even exist as something different to the thought process of human beings ?

Some people believe that the material world itself is only a construct of the human mind and does not actually exist.  I do not hold that view.

isn't the material world the wheel of energy ? where energy is more dense and maintains its patterns over a certain span of time ?

Science can and does, although often secretly conducted. Ever see "The Men Who Stare at Goats" (2009)? That is based on historical fact of American government programs. The problem is politics. See (my) Post #90.

Naw, that's the old Boyd-Boyette Hypothesis, which went out in 2017.