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[Craving]

Do you agree with the sentiment that if something can be explained through natural causes, that explanation would supersede any supernatural explanation?

For example; If a hurricane or earthquake could be shown to have occurred through natural events/causes, would that explanation be the superior explanation compared to a supernatural explanation - such as an angry God?

[jimwalton]

No. The Bible is clear that sometimes God uses natural forces in His action. He used an earthquake to knock down enough of Jericho's wall for the Israelite army to enter the city. It has a very natural explanation (Jericho lies on a fault line and has experienced many earthquakes), and yet the natural explanation doesn't begin to rule out supernatural activity. There is simply no way to distinguish between the two or to say "this part was natural" and "this part was supernatural."

When God parted the Reed Sea (Ex. 14.21), a strong wind blew all night long. So was it natural or supernatural? It was both. Just because the event might possibly be explainable by natural causes (which some have done: Biblical Archaeology Review, Sept/Oct. 1992, p. 26), that explanation doesn't necessarily supersede a supernatural explanation.

[Craving]

To be clear, I believe that you’re saying that (ultimately) everything is supernatural. I say this because if God is using the supernatural to alter anything, that would have to be fundamentally a supernatural event. Any storm that God might change, would, by nature, be a supernatural storm.

[jimwalton]

No, I'm not saying that. Certainly in the ancient Near East there was no line of demarcation between the natural and the supernatural. "Natural" and "supernatural" are modern categories, not biblical ones. In the ancient world, the deities were never distinguished from the ways things normally work.

In our modern world we don't still think that way, and neither do I. To be clear, what I was saying is that sometimes God's work in the world is so natural as to be indistinguishable from what we call natural events, so much so that one could never say that a natural explanation, if there were one, would supersede a supernatural one.