Doing what comes naturally

Jeffery Jay Lowder 
It's not that we have any strong antecedent reason on theism to expect God to create conscious beings embodied in silicon bodies rather than carbon bodies. But suppose it turns out that carbon-based based life is the only naturalistically possible form of life with our universe's laws of physics. Then we would have at least some evidence favoring naturalism over theism, since God obviously isn't constrained by the laws of physics. He can do anything that is logically possible. 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/secularoutpost/2014/04/03/arguments-from-reason/#comment-1319101506

Seems to me several things go awry here:

i) There's an equivocation between what's naturally possible and what's naturalistically possible. "Naturalism" is roughly synonymous with atheism or secularism, whereas the "laws of physics" concern what's naturally possible, given a physical universe governed by certain laws.

ii) Not everything that's logically possible for God to do is naturally possible for God to do. Take certain miracles like surviving in a furnace or turning sticks into snakes, and vice versa. Although it's possible for God to do that, this doesn't mean it's naturally possible for God to do that. Rather, that's in spite of what comes naturally. God is bypassing natural cause and effect. God is bypassing natural processes. 

iii) The fact that God is omnipotent doesn't mean that nature is able to do whatever God is able to do. For if God is working by natural means, then that limits his field of action. God isn't limited to natural means. But if he chooses to effect an outcome through natural means, then that's a self-imposed restriction on what he can accomplish by that medium. 

iv) True, God isn't constrained by the laws of physics. But is Jeff suggesting that if our universe only contains carbon-based lifeforms, that's evidence favoring naturalism? But if a universe containing silicon-based lifeforms has different physical laws than a universe containing carbon-based lifeforms, then it's not naturally possible for both kinds of lifeforms to occupy the same universe. Not all possibilities are compossibilities. 

In that event, Jeff has no basis of comparison. He can't say the exclusive existence of carbon-based lifeforms in our universe favors naturalism, for the absence of silicon-based lifeforms requires a different universe. Either God had to choose one or the other, or there's a parallel universe in which that alternative plays out. But it's indetectable from our universe.