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

[polymath257]

No, I used your definition to show that there could not be a supernatural based on that definition. That was simple logic.

I asked if you had a different definition.

No, you asserted that anything we can observe is in the nature of the thing observed. That's your definition of what a nature is. It begs the question. For most people, the nature of a thing has limits. See my post to LadyforCamus above.

And you had previously *defined* the nature of something as being 'what it is and does'.

That *means* that anything it does is, BY DEFINITION, natural.

That is simple logic.

Now, if you want to change that definition, please suggest another. But my claim directly follows from your definition.

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It's a bit weird to me when people seem to be equating naturalism to something  that could be aptly labeled "possibilism".

That's fair. 

I have been defining "natural" as that set of things which it is possible for a given thing to do. If we see it doing something which we take to be impossible, that is evidence for the supernatural, for people who don't rule it out a priori.

And in this view, since it is possible for Zeus to shoot lightning from his fingertips (or would be if he existed), then it would be natural for him.

I think our whole category of natural/supernatural is likely modern and misleading. The Greeks thought that daemons, muses, and gods were a normal part of the world. In their view, there was no separation between the part of nature we observe and gods with powers greater than human. I can't think of any ancient text that talks about the supernatural -- only the super-human, the hidden, the greater-than-we-can-know.

And, by this definition, if a frog is singing duets, then it is *possible* for it to sing duets, which means that singing duets is 'natural' for that frog.

If it happens, then it is possible.

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Even if we couldn't come up with a clear definition of natural vs supernatural, I do believe there is nevertheless a general imprecise intuition shared by many of us regarding the boundary between what's natural and what's supernatural. If there are gods involved that spin fire out of "nothing" and mysteriously make frogs sing Italian songs randomly and unpredictably, I think we're more likely to intuit that as supernatural rather than simply an unexpected instance of the natural. It's a bit weird to me when people seem to be equating naturalism to something  that could be aptly labeled "possibilism".

I disagree with this. If you went back 200 years, many of the things we do on a daily basis would have been considered 'magical' or 'supernatural'. We communicate instantly with people across the world, we can remotely control machinery, we can bring up moving pictures of events, we can cure diseases, etc.

Much of the modern world would have been considered to be supernatural not all that long ago. The only reason we don't consider it so today is because it is part of the technology we use and we feel we understand it.

I have yet to see a coherent definition of the term 'natural' that takes into consideration the actual methods of science and the possibility of scientific revolution that can lead to significantly different technologies.

As Clark said, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'.