[CoolAndComposed]

I take issue with this is a rather rigid classification of things, that isn't useful, and I hear a lot out of various modern scientist/philosophers.

> There is nothing supernatural; there is nothing outside of or distinct from Nature and independent of its laws and operations.

It's pretty common to associate supernatural with magical because super-natural sounds like beyond the rules of nature, when it can just as easily mean beyond the known rules of nature. If you can't explain events under natural law (rules, whatever), it's practically and effectively supernatural. That doesn't necessarily exclude a future explanation, just because people have been averse or ignorant, to investigate in the past. Straight from history, countless supernatural events have been brought in to the fold.

Otherwise, this guy sounds like he had some contemporary beliefs shared by rationalists.

[simonh]

That definition of supernatural, as just the as-yet unknown natural, is a bit contentious and I've not seen it commonly (ever) espoused by anyone else. Most people who use the term really do seem to mean, on questioning, something beyond and different from the knowable natural world and it's forces. Sometimes they will even classify it as things by definition unknowable to science.

I do agree that many if not most 'supernatural' phenomena have been explained by science. However I don't think that it's all that useful to classify them as supernatural at a previous time and natural now. They haven't changed.