Atheist VS Naturalist - the latter sounds more appealing to me...

[Belacqua]

Not 'testable according to science'. Testable in the sense that there is some potential observation that would show it to be wrong, yet all actual observations fail to do so.

"Testable according to science" means "testable in the sense that there is some potential observation that would show it to be wrong." 
You're telling me, several times in this post, that only science can address these issues, and only science can tell us anything. Science is the only tool you accept. 

if a frog was able to sing Mozart duets, that would be an observation. And it would lead to further investigation, not simply throwing up hands and proclaiming it to be supernatural.

In fact it might be supernatural. But because you have ruled that out a priori, you rely on the faith that it must be natural. 

I am not saying that there are supernatural things. I am only saying that your firm commitment to a naturalist metaphysics begs the question. 

Why? That seems to be all you are giving.

You brought up Aristotle, said his view of things was harmful, and said I shouldn't use the term "nature." But you haven't said why. 

I am curious as to why you think that's so.


This kind of "it's bad because I say it's bad" isn't helpful.

No, testable in the sense I gave. It requires falsifiability and accessibility to non-beievers. That is all.

Yes, this is how science works. I believe we've covered that.

Is there some way in which they *would* be testable? Again, in the sense that an explanation using them could be shown wrong by some potential observation?

If I'm understanding you correctly, you only accept as meaningful things that can be shown wrong by some potential observation. 

Many metaphysical beliefs can't be shown wrong in that way. The supernatural, if it existed, probably couldn't. 

Your own metaphysical commitment, that there is nothing unknowable to science, is also unfalsifiable in the way that you stick to it. Because if we did find something that science couldn't know, you would insist that through further tests science eventually would prevail. You just got through saying that above. 

So you are comfortable with at least one very strong unfalsifiable belief.

If you cannot do that, even in theory, what sense does it make to even say something exists?

Here I think your commitment to science is so strong that you are asking: if science can't address something, then we are OK to say that the thing doesn't exist. So in a metaphysical way, you are declaring that only those things addressable by scientific means exist. 

Again, this may be true, but it can't be proven.

Science has done a great job of demonstrating the kind of thing that science can demonstrate. This doesn't mean that nothing else exists.

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Food for thought: parrots can mimic human speech and song. Before we knew much about parrots, it probably seemed that a bird singing Yankee Doodle was “beyond its nature,” and therefore supernatural; 

It probably seemed that way. Then we discovered that it wasn't.

But please don't make the same mistake as Mr. Polymath and assume, therefore, that it will be the same in absolutely every case. We don't know.

“Beyond its nature” is just another example of an argument from ignorance.

If you are committed to the metaphysical belief that every question can be settled by scientific means, then you think that all problems not yet solved by science involve only ignorance. 

But you can't know this. 

What you and poly are offering here is "promissory naturalism." This is the term Popper used to point out that people with your type of metaphysical commitment promise a natural explanation for all questions, even before any such explanation is available. 

It works in practice. It can't be proven.