Reality is defined by the Collins dictionary as “the state of things as they are or appear to be, rather than as one might wish them to be”. A further definition can be found in the Oxford dictionary which says “the true situation and the problems that actually exist in the world, especially in contrast to how people would like it”. Basically, we can conclude that there is only one true definition of reality, no matter what false “definitions of reality” we dream up to suit our own tastes or purposes. e.g there are not multiple true realities by definition. And this statement of reality seems to fit our intuitive view of what we see around us.

Let’s call the “reality” or the “true situation” we find ourselves in, “nature”. This appears to be a reasonable decision as nature is defined as “the whole system of the existence, arrangement, forces, and events of all physical life that are not controlled by humankind” (Collins). We can see that this definition of nature is indeed a large subset of our current definition of reality e.g. it just excludes things made by humankind noting that this definition also includes the universe as part of the “all”.

Therefore based on our premise of only one “true situation” expressed by nature, what are our options to explain the origins of nature? It appears to me that there are only really three options;

  1. Nature was started by nature.
  2. Nature is eternal in that it had no beginning or start.
  3. Nature was started by an event or action above or beyond nature e.g outside of nature.

Obviously, by using our own intuition with logical reasoning shows us that something can not start itself. So we can discard option 1, “Nature was started by nature”.

Current scientific investigations into the origins of nature show us that theoretically, nature looks like it did have a beginning so we can discard option 2, “Nature is eternal in that it had no beginning or start.”

Therefore this leaves us with the conclusion shown by option 3, that “Nature was started by an event or action above or beyond nature”. So what do we call an “event or action” above or beyond nature?

The prefix “super” is defined as ‘a prefix occurring originally in loanwords from Latin, with the basic meaning “above, beyond”’ (Dictionary.com). So if we use this prefix and create the word “supernature”, it could be used to describe an “event or action above or beyond nature” e.g the origin of nature. Indeed we could rephrase option 3 as “Nature was started by a supernatural event or action” if we accept the Collins definition of “supernature” as the same as “supernatural”.

But your probably thinking, hang on, that’s not the current definition of “supernatural”. If we look at the definitions of the word supernatural, there are at least two definitions for “supernatural” as defined by the Collins dictionary. The second definition is what most people think of and is defined as the “characteristic of or caused by or as if by a god; miraculous”. But the primary definition is defined as “of or relating to things that cannot be explained according to natural laws”, which is very similar to our definition of “above or beyond nature”.

One could be cynical and ask why most scientists ignore the primary definition of the term “supernatural” and focus on its secondary definition, but we should defer such a discussion to another article.

So far then we have concluded logically that, “Nature was started by a supernatural event or action”. But what is the source or cause of the supernatural event or action?

Well, inductive logic tells us that there could be almost an infinite number of possible supernatural events that individually could have caused the origin of nature and therefore we need more information to determine the actual unique cause of the supernatural event that resulted in the origin of nature.

We could use “science” to see if we can discover the cause of “nature” but there may be a problem with such an investigation in that since the causation event occurred outside of “nature”, there may be no or very limited evidence inside “nature” to determine what the cause was of the supernatural event.

Let’s theorize and follow a clue given by the second definition of “supernatural” which is defined as the “characteristic of or caused by or as if by a god; miraculous” and hypothesize that a god was the cause of the supernatural event that caused the origin of “nature”. This leads us to some questions that may help us to come up with theoretical statements (axioms) regarding our theory;

  1. If the cause of “nature” was God, then as we have discussed it would be a causation event outside of “nature” and possibly have limited evidence available to “science” of causation inside “nature”. Therefore for us to know that supernatural causation had occurred, God would need to convey information to us that God had caused the event to occur.
  2. It may be possible to determine that supernatural causation has occurred by postulating causation events that seem unlikely when compared to our scientific laws of “nature”. For example, our causation theories may require exceedingly low probability causation events (as formulated by our scientific laws) to occur. But such low event probabilities would indicate it would be extremely unlikely that they should occur.
  3. God could create supernatural events in our reality that do not follow our scientific laws of “nature” as evidence to show that God did create our reality via a supernatural causation event. Some would call these events, “miracles” which is defined as “an act or event that does not follow the laws of nature and is believed to be caused by God” (Oxford)

We will leave it to you to determine if you can see any evidence in our reality (world of “nature”) that would indicate that the above three axioms may be valid. For if two or more of them are valid, this would indicate that God created our reality via a supernatural event and therefore we should spend the time to find out about who this God is.