ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Concept

Naturalism

Intro

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Naturalism is the view that nature is all there is. No God, no souls, no angels, no afterlife, no miracles. Whatever exists is part of the physical world that science studies, and the rest is mistake or myth.

Most modern atheism is some flavor of naturalism. When someone says "I only believe in what science can show me," they are usually working from a naturalist starting point even if they have never used the word.

It comes in two flavors that often get tangled. Methodological naturalism is just a research rule: when you do science, look for natural causes. Plenty of Christian scientists work this way. Metaphysical naturalism is a worldview: it claims natural causes are the only causes, full stop. The first is a tool. The second is a faith-claim about what is real.

Christian apologetics spends a lot of time on naturalism because most contemporary objections to faith are downstream of it. If naturalism is the air everyone breathes, then arguments for God, the soul, free will, and objective morality all have to push against it.

In full

The metaphysical view that nature is all there is, no transcendent God, no supernatural beings, no non-physical minds, no immaterial souls. The major modern alternative to theism, and the position most Christian apologetic engagement is responding to.

Two distinct claims

Carefully distinguished:

Methodological naturalism

The practical-research commitment: when doing science, restrict explanations to natural causes. Many Christians accept methodological naturalism as a useful research strategy without committing to metaphysical naturalism.

Metaphysical naturalism

The worldview claim: nature is all there is, there is no God, no soul, no transcendent reality. Stronger and more contested.

The conflation of these two is a source of confusion, methodological naturalism in science is consistent with metaphysical theism; only metaphysical naturalism is incompatible with theism.

Variants of naturalism

Strict materialism / physicalism

Only physical / material entities exist. Mind = brain; consciousness = neural states; mental causation = physical causation.

Defenders: Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained, 1991); Patricia Churchland (Brain-Wise, 2002); Paul Churchland (The Engine of Reason, 1995).

Non-reductive physicalism

Mental properties are real but ultimately depend on / are realized in physical states; cannot be reduced to but cannot exist without physical substrate.

Defenders: Jaegwon Kim; David Chalmers (somewhat); some philosophers of mind.

Property dualism

Mental and physical are distinct properties of one substance (brain). Mental properties are real but not reducible to physical properties.

This is not metaphysical naturalism strictly, Chalmers calls his view "naturalistic dualism", but it pushes back against strict physicalism.

Eliminative materialism

Mental states (beliefs, desires, qualia) don't really exist; "folk psychology" is a false theory; only neural-physical states are real.

Defenders: Patricia Churchland; Paul Churchland.

Liberal naturalism

A broader naturalism that allows for non-physical entities (numbers, propositions) but excludes the supernatural.

Defenders: David Papineau; some who want to be naturalists without being strict physicalists.

Major naturalist commitments

Modern metaphysical naturalists typically hold:

  1. No God, atheism (or agnosticism)
  2. No soul, humans are physical organisms; consciousness emerges from / supervenes on / is identical with brain states
  3. No free will (in libertarian sense), choices are determined by physical-causal chains
  4. No objective moral truth (or at most, naturalistic-grounded objective morality)
  5. No purpose / teleology in nature, nature is mechanism, not goal-directed
  6. No supernatural, no miracles, no afterlife, no transcendent reality
  7. Universe is closed, physical causes have only physical effects

Naturalism in modern philosophy of religion

Naturalism is the dominant position in modern Western academic philosophy. Its influence reaches:

  • Philosophy of mind, physicalism / functionalism dominate
  • Philosophy of science, methodological naturalism is taken-for-granted
  • Ethics, moral naturalism / error theory / non-cognitivism / sentimentalism replace traditional realism
  • Metaphysics, most analytic-metaphysics work is naturalistically friendly
  • Religious studies, naturalistic explanations of religion are mainstream

Christian-philosophical critique of naturalism

1. The argument from reason / reliability of reason

If naturalism is true, our cognitive faculties are produced by unguided evolution. Evolution selects for survival, not truth. Therefore on naturalism, we have no reason to expect our reasoning to be reliably truth-tracking, including the reasoning that produced naturalism.

This is C. S. Lewis's argument in Miracles (1947) and Plantinga's EAAN (1993). See Argument from the Reliability of Reason and Argument from Reason.

2. Naturalism cannot ground objective morality

Moral obligation seems to require a moral lawgiver / objective ground. Naturalism's options (nihilism, subjectivism, cultural relativism, naturalistic moral realism) all face severe problems. See Atheism Moral Neutrality Failure and Moral Argument.

3. Naturalism cannot explain the universe's existence

Why does the universe exist? Naturalism either:

  • Posits the universe as a brute fact (violating PSR)
  • Pushes the question back to multiverse / quantum vacuum (which themselves require explanation)
  • Refuses the question (which evades rather than answers)

See Cosmological Arguments.

4. Naturalism cannot explain consciousness

The "hard problem of consciousness" (David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind, 1996): even if we explain all functional / behavioral aspects of cognition, why is there subjective experience at all? Naturalism seems to lack resources to explain qualia / subjective experience.

See Modal Argument from Mind.

5. Naturalism cannot ground rationality / mathematics

Mathematics's unreasonable effectiveness in describing reality (Eugene Wigner, 1960) is hard to explain on naturalism. Why should our minds be calibrated to apprehend the cosmos's mathematical structure?

See Argument from Intelligibility.

6. Naturalism requires self-undermining commitments

Naturalist epistemic commitments (truth, evidence, rationality, knowledge) presuppose a transcendent order that naturalism's metaphysical commitments cannot ground. Without God, the truth-claim becomes problematic. (Cornelius Van Til; Reformed presuppositional tradition.)

7. Naturalism's historical inheritance

Modern Western moral and political categories (universal human dignity, individual rights, anti-slavery, justice for the poor) were historically grounded in theistic worldviews. Tom Holland (Dominion, 2019) argues that secular humanism is parasitic on Christian capital. See Atheism Moral Neutrality Failure.

Common naturalist responses to Christian critique

"Naturalism is the simplest view"

Response: simplicity is a virtue only among rival views that equally explain the data. If naturalism fails to explain consciousness, morality, rationality, the universe's existence, etc., simplicity is a vice not a virtue.

"Theism just pushes the question back to God"

Response: God is not one more contingent thing requiring explanation. God is a necessary being, part of the very content of theism is that God's existence is self-explanatory. The "what caused God" objection is a category error.

"Science has been naturalism's vindication"

Response:

  • Science's methodological-naturalism success doesn't prove metaphysical naturalism
  • Science has not refuted theism; many of science's pioneers were theists
  • Science's metaphysical assumptions (intelligibility, mathematical order, reliable cognition) are themselves more easily grounded in theism than naturalism

"Naturalism is morally adequate / can ground human flourishing"

Response: see Atheism Moral Neutrality Failure. Atheist moral realism (Sam Harris, Erik Wielenberg) faces severe metaphysical problems; subjectivism / relativism is unlivable; nihilism is honest but empty.

Naturalism as a counterposition in apologetics

Almost every Christian apologetic engagement assumes naturalism as the foil:

Naturalism in raw notes

ris3n's notes engage naturalism extensively:

  • Theist Arguments, multiple anti-naturalist arguments
  • Science and Evidence, naturalism-vs-design across multiple notes

See also