The question about naturalism vs science has come up in several recent debates I've been having over email with Matthew and Prudence Louise. Matthew will post one soon on his Medium page, and I'll post a notice about it. This article was written in response to that debate, as I recall. And an upcoming debate with Prudence on naturalism and consciousness goes into detail on this too. See also my first debate with Prudence (link below).
Briefly, naturalism is a philosophical extrapolation from the success of science, an extrapolation that excludes supernaturalism, but not, as I'm arguing, a stance of anti-naturalness.
What you say about life still being overall entropic shows that life isn't supernatural, I'd say, not that it's not anti-natural in intention. Our anti-natural stance is tragically heroic, at best, because nature's wildness will indeed win out in the end (unless a most grandiose scenario of transhumanism proves true).
The human powers of anti-naturalism amount to what makes us "behaviourally modern," as anthropologists put it. They're the qualities of personhood (self-awareness, intelligence, imagination, autonomy, creativity, ambition), and culture. We use symbols that enable us to model alternatives to the natural flow of things. For instance, we envision ideals and we pursue them to nature's detriment.
Our anti-naturalness is fundamental so it's open to be studied by the gamut of human modes of inquiry, from the sciences to the arts. The key is to distinguish this stance against nature, from metaphysical supernaturalism. I mean for this to be a middle position that deflates supernaturalism, and that's consistent with the naturalistic upshot of science.
