The issue I see with that is that it defines “natural” in a way that is both useless, because it literally applies to anything in existence, and doesn’t fit the way people generally use it, that being something more like “how things are when they have not been significantly altered by people”. Under a more typical usage, human activity isn’t natural by definition, not because humans are special in some way but just because the term natural has been arbitrarily created to describe everything except that activity.
You just described exactly why it’s a useless word to throw out there when trying to make any kind of actually rational argument about human behavior. Every time someone stands up and says “natural” at this point we all already know that person does not understand nature and is likely appealing to something supernatural. So as soon as someone pulls out that tired old yarn they get ridicule from me. If they want to be taken seriously, they need to be honest with themselves and with everyone else about what they’re really about and what they really believe, not hide behind weasel-y language and pretenses of naturalism.
The issue I see with that is that it defines “natural” in a way that is both useless, because it literally applies to anything in existence, and doesn’t fit the way people generally use it, that being something more like “how things are when they have not been significantly altered by people”. Under a more typical usage, human activity isn’t natural by definition, not because humans are special in some way but just because the term natural has been arbitrarily created to describe everything except that activity.
You just described exactly why it’s a useless word to throw out there when trying to make any kind of actually rational argument about human behavior. Every time someone stands up and says “natural” at this point we all already know that person does not understand nature and is likely appealing to something supernatural. So as soon as someone pulls out that tired old yarn they get ridicule from me. If they want to be taken seriously, they need to be honest with themselves and with everyone else about what they’re really about and what they really believe, not hide behind weasel-y language and pretenses of naturalism.