Supernatural isn't a useful concept

[Whateverist]

It is said that a natural law is a codification of an effect which deviates from the random in a consistent, non-random way.  The law of gravity exists because objects depart from the traditional "an object in motion tends to remain in motion" and "an object at rest tends to remain at rest" in consistent and predictable ways.  The paths of moving objects are changed in non-random ways.

If this is the hallmark of natural law, then perhaps the supernatural is that which deviates from randomness or natural law in inconsistent but non-random ways.  So a phenomena which deviated from the consistency of natural law only under certain, repeatable circumstances, might be considered supernatural.  For example, a person [allegedly] making a sphere levitate.  It would be inconsistent with the way natural law ordinarily affects the sphere.  The sticky wicket in all this is attributing cause.  How do we verify that the person is actually causing the sphere to levitate as opposed to some other unknown cause.  If the effect is inconsistent with natural law, differentiating between the supernatural and the unexplained seems impossible in principle.  The inconsistency of the effect supercedes our ability to find a natural law to cover the phenomena.

Hmm, your second paragraph makes me think about the Casimir effect and the fact that virtual particles spring in and out of being within a vacuum. This is an observable phenomenon related to a process that is random and inconsistent. I would call it natural; as natural as throwing dice which is also random (mostly). I was hoping someone would argue for the value of the term. Your post at least elucidates a probable use case that is free from woo.

Couldn't agree more (my bold). At the very least the term is poorly defined. It seems to me that most theists we encounter here who are wed to the term simply lack a sufficiently robust grasp of the word "natural".

Even if there turned out to be some intelligent form of organizing energy -picture here something from an early episode of the original Star Trek

https://youtu.be/QEli-1xdOMo

-it would still be natural, it would still have to work within the natural world in ways which were consistent with everything we already know to be true. It would have limits and potentials. It's actions, assuming they reflected the exercise of its intelligence, would reflect its own understanding of the natural world. Its understanding of the natural world might simply be more complete than our own. But it wouldn't be something else altogether.

But it remains absurd to imagine any being for whom the natural world is its own invention, entirely optional and always subject to revision. That is just our own infantile sense of omnipotence finding an outlet in theology.