I never asserted that science is a religion or anything like it. I only maintained, and still maintain, that a resolution to rationalising everything as a natural phenomenon even in the absence of evidence for that rationalisation
The pile of evidence for that rationalization is absolutely massive, and growing every day. As I said earlier, we accept today a rational, natural or scientific explanation for things that previously had been ascribed to the supernatural or divine. Even religious people today accept yesterday's scientific revolutions as axiomatic truths.
while simultaneously absolutely shutting down any openness towards an acceptance that the thing may be due to causes outside of the laws of nature as we understand them
"As we understand them" is the key here. We simply don't ascribe a supernatural, spiritual or divine character to things we don't understand. There's no reason to, beyond one's personal desire to.
[...]you can still do science while believing in the supernatural, as many scientists have done, and still do.
You can, yes, but people are capable of holding contradictory ideas in our heads. I once knew a scientist who was also a man of faith, and when his daughter was in a car accident he sat in the waiting room praying while the doctors and nurses made her better. (And they did. She was fine.)
I find some of the responses to OP's question interesting. Any proof of divinity can be explained through natural causes,
Well, that's been the history of humankind so far.
to the point that a seemingly all-powerful omniscient being could go around doing miracles lifted straight from the Testaments but some people would still put their faith in natural causes. I do wonder how they would actually react when actually confronted with such a situation rather than contemplating a hypothesis.
We would examine it. Well, maybe not
us, but people with the experience and the tools.
The intent behind my questions was not to 'bait/trap' but only to understand how a person who believes only in natural laws would react to a situation where everything would seem to go against their 'beliefs'.
Here you go:
Ars Technica, 19 July 2023 -
"Something in space has been lighting up every 20 minutes since 1988"
Ars Technica said:
On Wednesday, researchers announced the discovery of a new astronomical enigma. The new object, GPM J1839–10, behaves a bit like a pulsar, sending out regular bursts of radio energy. But the physics that drives pulsars means that they'd stop emitting if they slowed down too much, and almost every pulsar we know of blinks at least once per minute.
GPM J1839–10 takes 22 minutes between pulses. We have no idea what kind of physics or what kind of objects can power that.
The full journal article is available here, although you need a subscription to read more than the abstract.
Nature, 19 July 2023 -
"A long-period radio transient active for three decades"
The paper was co-authored by 25 people from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, Curtin University, Bentley, Australia; the Institute of Space Sciences, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Barcelona, Spain; the Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO Space & Astronomy, Epping, New South Wales, Australia; the Dept. of Astrophysics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK; Department of Physics & Electronics, Rhodes University, Makhanda, South Africa; South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), Cape Town, South Africa; the Department of Engineering and Physics, Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, VA, USA; the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany; the Remote Sensing Division, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA; the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics, The University of Sydney; INAF Capodimonte Astronomical Observatory Naples, Naples, Italy; ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands; and the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
As I understand it, observatories around the world - specifically, in the two hemispheres - have to collaborate to continuously monitor a stellar phenomenon. So that's probably why there are so many co-authors. I haven't bothered to check the individual credentials of the 25 people named, but I trust that I could if I wanted to dive that deep into it. I imagine that most of these people have "Ph.D." after their names, awarded to them by qualified universities, and that they're, y'know, good at this stuff. I also trust that the journal they published in did its due diligence and that this paper has been "peer reviewed", which is supposed to be part of the process.
I have had brushings with the paranormal, or at least have experienced certain incidents for which I could find and still find no rational explanation. But I was already a believer. It may be that my beliefs made me more recipient to the idea of these incidents being supernatural, and it may be possible that a non-believer would have no problem with believing in a rational explanation or at least would keep himself aloof from accepting a supernatural explanation were he in my place.
Yeah, that's my take as well. People who are already religious, or spiritual, or however they would describe themselves, can and do ascribe causes to things without any evidence of what the causes are, and sometimes even in the face of evidence that suggests something else.
It isn't, and assertions that it is, in combination with cutesy attempts to bait/trap the atheist/non-believer, never go anywhere positive. There's a long history of threads getting locked when the arguments turn nasty along these lines. Been there, done that, don't want the t-shirt (though the stand is that way -->).
