Oh boy this is going to be a long post...
There's two problems there.
First off, defining energy as "the ability to do things" is like defining nature as "everything"; it's far too broad to be useful in a philosophical context, and the definition assumes your conclusion, leading to some reverse reasoning.
But it works both ways. Energy is pretty strictly defined physical term, but badly understood by the physically illiterate masses (clearly, you are aware of what the term means). This is exactly the reason why "energy" is such a popular woo word, used in contexts such as "spiritual energy" and "energy healing", etc.
Regardless, if you choose to attempt to define supernatural with physical terminology, then I'm going to use physics to expose any possible faults I see with the definition.
In this context, a better definition of Energy would be "the capacity of a physical system to perform work."
I disagree for two reasons.
First, it implies that there are non-physical systems. While you could argue that I'm using circular logic to exclude non-physical (ie. supernatural) things in the first place, I posit that it is merely a matter of perspective. I am not saying that unknown things cannot exist. Just that they cannot be supernatural, if they occur in nature. Which, for us to observe them, or indeed for them to affect the universe in any way, they have to do in the first place.
Secondly, and more importantly, is exactly the reason why I'm objecting to the viability of "supernatural" as a concept in the first place.
Labeling something as "non-physical" does not change the fact that if it causes something to happen in a physical system, it must have some potential to do that physical work. In a case where an unknown process is seemingly dumping energy into a physical system, causing work to be done, that means the unknown process is in fact part of the physical system that you're observing.
This is almost analogous to the cosmological constant, or "dark energy", as it's often called.
It is not supernatural, because we can observe its effects.
The only things you could possibly ever call "supernatural" with a degree of accuracy are things that are fundamentally un-observable, and that essentially means they do not cause any observable changes in our universe. Which, in effect, means they do not exist.
I'm talking a spiritual God, not a physical being like the Marvel Asgardians.
What's the difference?
However, I would argue that God (angels as well) have the ability to manipulate the matter and energy of our world, in much the same way that a programmer can manipulate a game world without entering it- God "coded" the world after all.
Which in no way makes the programmer divine.
If we imagine a scenario where our universe is in fact a nested, simulated world, that just means that whatever computer is running the simulator is obeying the laws of physics in the universe where it is physically present, and whatever entity is programming and managing the simulation is a naturally occurring sentient being living in its home universe.
Probably very different from us - probably the universe itself would be different from ours - but would it make any sense to call that being "divine" or even "supernatural"?
A being that does not have a physical body does not require physical energy to function.
Disagree. See above. All energy is physical because it is a physical term.
Second, you keep treating the distinction between the natural and supernatural as knowability. I've never claimed that knowability was part of the equation; you're debating something I don't believe anyway.
Historically, there has been several phenomena thought to be supernatural in origin. Once we acquired better knowledge of them, we began to understand the reasons behind them, and realized they were not supernatural at all.
But the thing didn't change, just our label for it. Hence, it's not a property of things to be supernatural, but just a degree of our knowledge of them.
Because of this, if there's something we can acquire knowledge of - even if it's currently unknown - it would make little sense to call it supernatural now. The trend seems to be that at some point we'll know enough about it that no one thinks it's supernatural any more.
That is also why the things that have
retained their "supernatural" label tend to be of the
unknowable variety. Claims that you can neither prove or disprove.
On the one angle, we can infer a number of things about the Supernatural by looking at the Natural- reasoning from the effect to the cause.
Natural reasoning (if you refer to "common sense") is fundamentally unreliable and suspect. Formal logic is not.
We
know from physical experiments that our universe is seemingly highly illogical - by which we mean counter-intuitive to us - on a fundamental level. What does that say about our ability to infer anything about what is natural and what is supernatural?
Take the human being for example: an incredibly complex design
About the same complexity as any other vertebrate mammal. Minor differences aside.
with a clear purpose to the design
I wasn't aware...
which functions and functions well.
Not so much functions well as "functions well enough that there haven't been sufficient selective pressure to eliminate the less functional features".
I personally wouldn't call it clever design to build a bridge, then add barely sufficient reinforcements to get it to stand vertically on one end, and use that as a base structure of a skyscraper. That's basically what human spine is like from engineering standpoint.
Even we humans, for all our remarkable intelligence, can't come up with anything nearly as advanced as ourselves.
Fundamentally can't, or simply haven't? There's a difference (which is similar to
unknown and
unknowable).
It also raises the question of how one would define "advanced". I mean, an i7 processor is fairly well advanced compared to my ability to perform calculations, yet I definitely agree that in creativity, problem-solving, and being aware of itself, it ranks about the same as a bacterium, which is none at all. But one could make a hypothesis that this is just down to software...
What that suggests to me is that something extremely intelligent had a hand in our design- if I found a car-like vehicle on a distant planet, I'd conclude something intelligent made it, and you and I are orders of magnitude more complex than a car. Our ability to think in such an advanced manner (like this conversation) also seems to indicate a higher intelligence- after all, computers don't program themselves. If my intelligence, and that of those around me, is the result of swirling atoms put together by random chance, I really don't have any reason to trust that intelligence to give me access to real, objective truth, except maybe with regards to finding food and sex... and therefore, I've got little reason to trust the deep scientific claim that my brain is a bunch of atoms put together by a blind, random-chance process. Art doesn't get formed by waves making shapes on the sand.
These are
incredibly worn out (straw man) arguments for intelligent design and I truly expected something different. I won't go into detail here on refuting them, since the topic of intelligent design really doesn't belong to this discussion I believe.
However, to understand why an inanimate object is different from a living organism that produces offspring, whose traits are affected by mutations, and the environment weeds out the least suitable specimens, I suggest watching
this excellent video, and paying attention to the details.
Computers don't program themselves, but you don't need anyone to program DNA. That's what evolution is all about.
On the other angle, if a Supernatural God exists, it's entirely reasonable that God would want to tell us about himself. Looking at history, we can find some very interesting evidence suggesting that he did so.
Which is made less interesting by the fact that these records are largely in contradiction with each other and seem to be highly dependant on the culture they were associated with.
The historical record of Jesus Christ and the early Christian Church simply doesn't make sense if we assume it was all a lie. Why would Christ and his followers be willing to die for a lie they made up?
Belief in something does not make it true. Even if you're willing to die for it.
People throughout history have been willing to die for their beliefs, wide and varied. Some of the beliefs have been true, some false. Some beliefs have been beneficial, some malicious. That proves absolutely nothing at all about the validity of the beliefs themselves.
This just seems like a complete Non Sequitur to me.
Why couldn't the Jewish religious leaders of the time have shut down the whole movement just be presenting Jesus's dead body? Even if you were to throw out the Bible, the historical records from neutral sources like Josephus simply don't make sense if Chistianity were a lie or a fantasy.
Even if the Jewish religious leaders were in charge (which they weren't, the Romans were) of matters like that, the whole thing was initially a very small Jewish fringe group or cult and remained so for significant time. Members of it were mostly being Jewish and doing Jewish things just as everyone else. They did some non-standard things like ritually consume their dead leader's body and blood, and spread some strange tales of a new way to salvation (which, by being far easier than other alternatives was undoubtedly quite tempting).
But you have to remember that the time period from Jesus' alleged death and the actual writing of the Gospels (and the rest of New Testament books) is somewhat unknown (even longer until they were canonized, while other records were discarded, but that's sort of another story). By the time the early Christian Church had gained enough momentum to be a serious threat to regional stability, I'm fairly sure any physical evidence to counter the claims made by the new church would have deteriorated beyond anything that could have convinced the people of the time. Forensic science was not the same back then, and people didn't really know just how much you could enhance a digital photograph of Jesus' tomb to prove that Jesus' body really was still in there.
Even if they had been presented with evidence to the contrary of their beliefs, it is
highly likely they would have simply ignored the evidence and continued believing regardless. That's how religions tend to work, especially if you're a convert.
