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

[polymath257]

understand those laws using the scientific method.

A very large prime number which is currently unknown to us has the same ontological status as one which is known.

A law of physics which is not known to us has the same ontological status as one which is known. 

Numbers, laws, physics -- all these are concepts which humans are comfortable with. That's not what I'm talking about. 

I'm talking about things which are entirely unavailable to us, which the scientific method can't analyze. This is a traditional meaning of the terms natural/supernatural. 

It's possible that aliens would understand some of these things -- not through advanced science but through methods which humans can't conceive of. In that case I guess the traditionalists would say that the aliens understand the supernatural. They often posited that there would be higher beings who understood what is beyond nature. 

Maybe you reject the notion that there could possibly be anything unavailable to the scientific method. But that's unprovable.

 I wasn't just talking about large prime numbers. I was talking about mathematical *concepts* that are beyond us because of our limitations. Ones that we simply don't have the brain capacity to grasp.

In saying that an unknown physical law (one that could be found by a super-intelligent alien using the scientific method) has the same ontological status as the ones we know, you negate your own earthworm analogy: in that, it was simply the inability of an earthworm to grasp neoliberal economics, NOT that it was a different type of knowledge all together.

In your analogy, we would be the intelligent aliens using the scientific method and the earthworms would be the human race unable to grasp the new laws of physics. But those laws are *still* found by the scientific method.

So, your definition has even more problems. It isn't simply that we are earthworms, but you want to say something exists that cannot be found, no matter how intelligent the actor, using the scientific method.

And, at that point, your argument that we can't ignore the possibility because it might still affect us goes out the window: if we allow super-intelligent beings that can notice any patterns that exist, then that is no longer a possibility: if it affects such beings, then the pattern would be detectable by such beings and thereby studied by the scientific method.

If a pattern can be found, then that pattern can be studied by the scientific method. If you allow intelligence great enough to discover all available patterns, then all patterns can be studied.

And if there is no pattern *at all*, even in the probabilities (quantum mechanics!), then it is meaningless to say the phenomenon even exists.