Why do we consider human interference unnatural? In practice I guess there is some need to distinguish between “natural” and “artificial” or “synthetic”, but when we think about the nature of things and their intrinsic properties, why does a thing suddenly become removed from nature once humans intervene? When we say nature, why do we exclude ourselves from its definition? If we take it to mean the physical world we live in, doesn’t that include us? Because we exist in this world just like everything else. We are another form of life just like any other that emerged or was put on this planet. The only thing special about us is our intelligence, which isn’t even to say that other animals don’t have it – they do, just that it’s not as developed as ours. So it wouldn’t make sense to say that intelligence in itself makes us unnatural. Why then do we consider our own acts to be so? My only guess would be if something fundamental about us as humans is born out of some unearthly intervention. For example, if we didn’t develop intelligence naturally but rather it was given to us by something not of this world (aliens?) then I’d understand: something otherworldly came in and interfered with our species and gave us this gift that makes us different from everything else. In that way we’d be inherently unnatural. Otherwise I don’t see why we really make this distinction.
And so far this is assuming “nature” just means Earth. If we take nature to mean everything in the universe, then even something like alien interference could still be considered natural, because they’d exist in nature just like everything else, and they’d exist in accordance with the laws of nature. The only way you could truly call something unnatural is if it’s super-natural. And I guess some religions sort of sort that out: if you assume we have a supernatural soul then human nature is thus removed from nature itself, but without religion (and maybe just for the sake of discussion) I wonder if anything can truly be unnatural. Because if nothing separates us from the rest of the universe, then nothing we do, create, modify or “interfere” with can really be considered unnatural.