Naturalism

The term naturalism is usually contrasted with supernaturalism to emphasize that things and occurrences in the world can be understood in terms of the laws of nature, without invoking supernatural entities as do most traditional religions. Many philosophers, both ancient and modern, have subscribed to a naturalist philosophy, as do a great many professional scientists. Most naturalists are either atheists, that is, they deny the existence of any God; or they are pantheists, that is they picture a God who pervades all of Nature.

Much of the inanimate world, and even many features of living creatures, including human beings, may be adequately explained in terms of the physical entities and principles discovered by science. Traditional religions speak about the human condition as something special, with characteristics that are too unique and subtle to be reduced to the basic ingredients of matter. They insist that there are human attributes such as thought and feeling, formulations of right and wrong, the sense of justice and the quest for truth, the capacity to reason and to create poetry, that we may bracket into the notion of the human spirit. And the human spirit, say most religions, transcends matter and energy, atoms and photons. It is not within the scope of science to analyze it to its ultimate material components.

Until the rise of Darwinian evolution in the latter half of the nineteenth century, even biologists kept religion and God as separate from science. However, the theory of evolution brought in two elements that blatantly contradicted traditional religious belief systems. First, the theory of evolution explains that Man did not appear fully constituted on the planet; rather, he emerged ever so slowly from lower forms of life. Secondl, the variety of organisms in the world resulted from chance factors which instigate the emergence of different plants and animals. The success of Darwinism led some biologists to imagine that some day science would replace all of the symbols and artifacts of religion.

The goal of science is to explore every aspect of the natural world. Science strives to account for all of the richness and variety in the phenomenal world in terms of fundamental entities, immutable laws, and universal principles. Naturalism is characterized by complete faith in the potential and total success of the methodology of science in efforts to understand every aspect of the phenomenal.

Naturalism is characterized by a confidence in science's potential to understand such aspects of the phenomenal world as are important to our existence; or at least that through the methods of science, we can understand them better than through any other mode. This confidence arises from the proven successes of the scientific methodology during the past four centuries.

To some, the extraordinary successes of the sciences have lowered confidence in some of the tenets of traditional religions. Insofar as these pertain to explanations of the phenomena in the physical world, science has replaced most religious claims. However, the religious framework also includes other elements besides explanations of phenomena, such as feelings of reverence, a sense of sacredness, profound gratitude, and an ethical framework. These do not arise from scientific discoveries, theories, and explanations, but they are no less important for individual serenity and collective sanity.

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