Your position on naturalism

[Excited Penguin]

The fact that apparently you're a naturalist, and don't believe in miracles. [1] God isn't natural.  We don't find it anywhere in nature. [2] Magic things described in the Bible aren't natural either. Science studies the natural world. Nothing magical about it. [3]

You can't be religious and a naturalist. That's a contradiction in terms, I'm afraid. [4] God is defined as a supernatural being. [5] Religion is belief in a supernatural power. [6] If you don't believe in the supernatural, you should probably change your religious status to skeptic or atheist. [7]

1) Who said I don't believe in miracles? I explicitly provided the possibility of explanation for any given purported miracle:

"either it is 1) a previously unknown ability of that thing, or it is 2) the action of some other thing able to do that act within/through the original thing, or 3) some combination of the two."

If the primary agent of the 'miraculous' act is god, and the act is mediated through some other thing incapable of bringing that act about by its own nature... then it is 'miraculous'. Seeing as something as basic as faith is one of those sorts of divine actions, I'd expect there to be some distinctions down the line to categorize god's public wonders exclusively as miracles.

2) Reread these words: "Things only exist as something, not super-somethings." If there is a god, it exists as something. God is typically the word we use to describe that something. In more serious philosophical treatment of that "something", we use words like substance, essence, or... wait for it... NATURE! Not super-nature. In that sense, which is the sense from which "naturalism" reduces to a strictly 'material' understanding, god is natural... i.e. it has/is a nature, not a super-nature.

3) Combine 1 and 2 above. If there is a god, then god is something. If god is something, then god is/has a nature. If god is/has a nature, then god is natural. If god is natural, then his actions are natural. If god's nature has the capacity to freely cure leprosy with/through the will and speech of a man (if we could say that humanity does not have of itself the natural capacity to so cure leprosy), then, if god does just so, it does so naturally. If we were to witness this divine agency mediated through such a man's will and voice, we would call it a miracle. That does not exhaust the category of miracles, but I think that is the most interesting sense for the context of these forums. That doesn't mean that, therefore, all of the miracles attested in the bible are verified.

4) Which is why I said "a sort of philosophical naturalism", and went on to define what I meant by it. I don't ascribe the sort of philosophical naturalism which holds "nature" as equivalent to "material". Anything that exists, material or otherwise, exists as something. In older days people used to call that "something": "it's nature/essence/substance". Those terms aren't really helpful these days, as your response is demonstrating.

5) By who? What does a "supernatural" being even mean?

6) Seems like a poor definition. A bit reductive, confusing and inadequate to cover the entire religious experience. Divine power seems to work just fine. God's power. Whatever.

7) Catholic suits me just fine. Thanks though!

Wow, what a load of utter bullshit.