Can't prove the supernatural God

[robvalue]

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I agree, that would be good.

If any theist wants to tell me what "natural" means to them, I'd be interested. I've not heard anything coherent as of yet.

Obviously, we have natural and "man made", but this is not the same context.

Well, the word has a long history. I find that, especially in the context of discussions like these, the "older" understanding of natural is most helpful. Nature, in the older metaphysical terminology, was nearly synonymous with "essence" or "substance". In short, a thing's "nature" described the thing's "what-ness". In the stricter sense, it described a specific type of substance which had its own power of growth and change (e.g. living things like trees, animals, people, etc.) which was directed toward and by the "fulfillment" of the thing's nature.

So, for this sort of discussion, a simplified use of the term nature could be: the "what" of a thing which describes 1) what it is and 2) what it does/can do in response to other natures
and 3)  what it does/can do to become fully what it is

Not all things have a #3 (i.e. some things just are what they are, and don't "grow" into what they are)

Natural, then, describes those things and events which occur/happen according to things' natures.

It is natural for a fruit true to make fruit. It is not natural for a fruit tree to make human cells.

It may be natural for some specimens in a population to survive a change in conditions while it is natural for other members of the same population to succumb to those same conditions.

Given that a human person is naturally able to see the visible spectrum of light, he naturally sees that spectrum. If a human being was able to see beyond that spectrum, there are only a few possibilities for that:

1) The person's nature has been altered in some way (e.g. genetic variation/mutation) that provides for the person to see the new wavelengths naturally

OR

2) The person sees the new wavelengths through an instrument which translates those wavelengths into the visible spectrum

OR

3) The person sees the new wavelengths by some other means that is not derived from the abilities of the person's nature, but also not instrumentally. In other words, the person sees,through his nature, what his nature is not able to see, i.e. supernaturally (beyond nature, above nature, etc.)

OR

4) Several other possibilities...

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OK, thank you for your response

If everything was designed and created by an intelligence, are you saying the "nature" of things is simply what the designer decides was its nature?

And are we, as humans, able to alter the "nature" of things? In such a case, are we supernatural? Is the action supernatural?

Is natural simply a subjective term?