The subject of this series is rooted in Dr. Quentin Smith's contentions about "informed" vs. "uninformed" naturalists. "A [ ] person who knows the nature, goals and consequences of naturalist philosophy may be called an “informed naturalist," Smith wrote, in "The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism." http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm " [T]he great majority of naturalist philosophers have an unjustified belief that naturalism is true and an unjustified belief that theism (or supernaturalism) is false."
This unjustified state of affairs in our beliefs--if you are, like myself, a novice on the subject--is because we do not know the arguments against naturalism that contain the logic to "defeat" our own beliefs, whether or not we can argue those beliefs. An "informed" naturalist is one who can defeat the defeator logic. In the last part of this series, Part 5, tomorrow, we will examine these "defeator" arguments, and attempt to briefly examine the logic and some of the actual arguments.
But as I may assume most of my readers have come here through the magic portal of a link on a Yahoo Answers (YA) answer, I may also assume that most of you are in the same novitic, uninformed, unjustifed state of true belief as I am, and which I hope to be able to get myself out of.
Today in part 4 we are going to look at some of the "popular" arguments we regularly either run into or use against these popular "defeators." We naively debate and argue with our populist theist adversaries and we are in turn populists naturalists. Being populist does not make either side wrong, not in theory or in practice. But it makes we naturalists wrong in the sense that if naturalism is the natural epistemic state of mind at birth, as we say atheism is present at birth, then we have a moral obligation to know more than we allow ourselves when we learn only our own theories, our own arguments, our own internal "defeator" arguments and the means by which to overcome them.
We need to learn the strong arguments of the theists, those over which we seem to have no responses that are stronger in logic that can defeat the theist defeators of naturalism. Smith's paper is not "a philosophical argument that naturalism is true." It is, in fact, about the lack of epistemic integrity in the uninformed naturalist. He offers the syllogism of the defeating arguments, and the one syllogism which can be the defeator of theistic arguments. But for the actual theistic arguments themselves we must look else where.
But as most of us have been populist (uninformed) naturalists all our lives, in other words, since we do not write papers and books containing indefeasable arguments for the supposition that naturalism is indeed true, we turn instead to the only position we know, that of the populist. A populist is someone who is not necessarily trying to reach other uninformed naturalists as a matter of course or of policy or of a specifically plotted device for being "popular."
A populist naturalist is quite simply one who is "uninformed" and has, therefore, an unjustifed true belief in the philosophy of naturalism. I count myself as one, but my attention in the future will be specifically to learn those defeators which counter my true belief and which, by not comprehending them, makes my own true beliefs unjustified.
Today, we look at some of the defeators--and some of the populist arguments on both sides--to see, by example, just what this "uninformed" state consists of. All of the defeator arguments have what Smith labels "undefeated justifiers" for naturalism, meaning that as "undefeated justifications" they give us the epistemic integrity to have "justified true beliefs"--if only we can come to learn how to achieve them.
These are only a minute amount of the academic and mostly populist arguments we encounter and use in our own silly and amusing debates on YA and other places, perhaps in face to face debates with friends or family members. If we can learn to defeat with justification the arguments of the theists, whether "populist" or not, we can help turn the tide against the justifications for theism, and do it from the non-academic "real" world we live in, where once the Ancient Greeks ruled supreme with the "undefeated justifiers" of the naturalism which they discovered and which came to be defeated by Augustine and Plotinus (see previous posts).
If we can come to learn the academically epistemic justifications used by theists, and learn to counter them with undefeated justifiers of our own, then we will have served our selves and our philosophy by helping to not only preserve it, but to revive it. We will also have served to preserve the world from the darkness where a “'Dark Age' means an age when the vast majority of philosophers (and scientists) do not know the true world-view..." says Smith. "A hand waving dismissal of theism" is not enough to stop the rising tide of the populist door-knockers, the Bible-thumpers, and the other evangelicals who ride the wave begun and maintained by smarter theists who know the way to defeat naturalisism.
Let's look at some of the populist defeators we must work against, and tomorrow we will attempt to discover the more erudite, better educated, and strong defeators of our own necessary holistic world view.
J. Gresham Machen, "Christianity and Culture," Princeton Theological Review 11 (1913): 7.
"False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation to be controlled by ideas which prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root."
http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~echong/talks/06/Atheism06quotes.pdf
Bertrand Russell, "Selected Papers of Bertrand Russell," Random House, 1927, p. 3.
"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins---all these things, are so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built."
Russell begins with a defense of naturalism as defined by the Pre-Socratics: Man's origins are the outcome of accidental "collocations" of atoms. But then he falls into the near-nihilism of the maudalin fallacy of thinking philosophy must accept that the species called Man is doomed to extinction--if his soul is to be saved from the same extinction.
"'God' as traditionally defined is a systematic contradiction of every valid metaphysical principle. The point is wider than just the Judeo- Christian concept of God. No argument will get you from this world to a supernatural world. No reason will lead you to a world contradicting this one. No method of inference will enable you to leap from existence to a 'super-existence.'" Leonard Peikoff; "The Philosophy of Objectivism."
Peikoff's argument would be irrefutable, and is in fact justifiably true, but is left unjustified. Piekoff offers in this particular quote no "undefeatable justification." It is justifiably true, and many naturalists may use it to back up their own justifications and logic; but as it stands it goes unjustified.
To the uninformed naturalist, Piekoff's argument is justified. To the informed theist, it will become fodder for arguments which naturalists and Objectivists ought to be able to counter with justified defeators.
"[T]heistic realism holds that the design and works of God are manifestly evident in nature, particularly Creation, so that evidence and reason lead inevitably to belief in God." http://creationwiki.org/Theistic_Realism
"Theistic realism is a philosophical justification for intelligent design proposed by Phillip E. Johnson in his book, 'Reason in the Balance.' According to Johnson, true knowledge must begin with the acknowledgment of God as creator because he believes that the unifying characteristic of the universe is that it was created by God. Theistic realism, therefore, relies on a God that is real, personal, and acting in the world, through mechanistic creationism.
"Theistic realism was developed by Johnson to be a counter to methodological naturalism. To Johnson, any attempt to understand nature without acknowledging the creator is doomed to fail. As he and his supporters describe it, theistic realism holds that the universe and life cannot be explained completely naturalistically. Methodological naturalism (MN) refers to any method of inquiry or investigation or any procedure for gaining knowledge that limits itself to natural, physical, and material approaches and explanations. ..." http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Theistic-realism
Interview with Phil Johnson http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9501/reason.html
"I must confess that on reading [Johnson's book,] my jaw did sag somewhat. I have myself recently published a book with the title Evolutionary Naturalism . I had no idea that that which Johnson describes was the topic on which I was supposed to be writing! I am fascinated (and troubled) by the God question, but that I was denying God's existence was news to me. Naively, I thought that naturalism was about a particular attitude that one takes to understanding, refusing to appeal to the supernatural (miracles) in the physical world, but saying nothing definitive about whether there is a world beyond this. Perhaps God exists. Perhaps not. But, wonderful book though 'Evolutionary Naturalism' may be, on these issues it says nothing."
from "Reason Magazine"; "Naturalistic Fallacy" Michael Ruse October 1996 Print Edition
http://www.reason.com/news/show/30010.html
If a respected, published scientist and author on the subjects of evolution and of naturalism can be defeated without knowing it, it makes Quentin Smith's contention even more important. We, as "true believers" in the naturalistic, objective philosophy that the world is self-sufficient and uncaused, existing because existence exists, not because "ex nihilo" God created the world in six days (or created it at all,) then we must become informed naturalists with logical justifications that theists cannot defeat, at least not without sounding like the contradictory and uninformed skeptics of naturalism which they will become--when we learn to intellectually defend our own position from being redefined as Michael Ruse found his own book redefined by Johnson.
Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
Showing posts with label realist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label realist. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
The Loss of Secularism in Naturalism, Part 3: The Rise of Realist Theism
Part 2 of this blog concerning the loss of secularity in the field of naturalism lead to Quentin Smith's contention that many committed naturalists do not understand even the false propositions about God.
"[A] problem with naturalist scientists," Smith writes in PHILO, http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm "is that they are so innocent of any understanding of the philosophy of religion that they do not even know that they are innocent of this understanding, as it witnessed by their popular writings on science and religion."
This would, perhaps, appear to the "uninformed" naturalists to be condescending of their knowledge in their own field. Smith defines an "uninformed" naturalist as one who has an unjustified belief in his/her own subject field; "unjustified" because the uninformed academic is one who has ignorance of "defeater" arguments against naturalism. In other words, the arguments used by theists to counter the arguments of naturalism often contain logic which overwhelms and defeats the arguments of naturalism, to the degree that such arguments make naturalism appear to be the skeptical argument against theism.
This was not always the case, he says. Naturalism in its original form began with the Pre-Socratics, and in the middle ages, during the rise of theism, was used by theists precisely as the skeptical argument. This continued until the second half of the twentieth century, "when universities and colleges had been become in the main secularized."
From physics to psychology, arguments were for a naturalist world-view, where theology and religion in academia sought to understand the meaning and origins of religious writings, "not to develop arguments against naturalism."
Then, in 1967, Alvin Plantinga http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/plantinga/home.html of the U. of Notre Dame, published "God and other Minds," a realist-theist view of existence. Until then, says Smith, realist theists kept their theism out of their work partially because theism, especially in its realist manifestation, was thought contain such low epistemic value that the standards of an "academically respectable" position to hold were missing.
The Pre-Socratic original forms of naturalism held sway until the theistic influences of Plotinus and Augustine. Plantinga then "defeated" naturalism in its modern form with his realist theist arguments, concretizing naturalism as the skeptical attitude toward theism, as the medeivals had made it, rather than, as Smith says it ought to be, "the philosophy of religion as a subfield of naturalism, viz. skepticism about naturalism." In other words, the "philosophy of religion," not religion itself, ought to be the skeptical attitude toward naturalism.
Plantinga's success then opened the door for other theists, realist and otherwise, to begin de-secularizing the science of knowledge that, whether "of theology or religion aimed to understand the meaning and origins of religious writings, not to develop arguments against naturalism." [Smith]
Smith makes it clear that his paper is not the time or place to rehash the history of what the Greeks believed, but his paper is meant for reading by better scholars than may be reading this blog. For the purposes of information, and to familiarize my readers with the ideas of the Greeks, these short descriptions are included before I go on. Smith's list of contributors is longer than the list I present here.
1. Leucippus: (a. 450 B.C.) developed the principle that all qualitative differences in nature may be reduced to quantitative ones; he distributes these through infinite space. These small particles of "Being" are separated from one another by that which is not-Being, i.e. by empty space. "Becoming", or the coming into being of things, is essentially the result of the motion of these atoms in space and their accidental coming together.
2. Democritus : (c 460-360 B.C.) developed the first important materialist philosophy of nature, unless we are to count that of Leucippus. His influence was transmitted by Lucretius' poem till the centuries of the Renaissance when scholars' attention began to turn toward the study of nature. He taught that all substance consists of atoms, that is, of indivisible and imperceptibly small particles.
3. Empedocles: about 490-430 B.C.E. attempted to reconcile the teaching of the permanence of Being of the Eleatics with the experience of change and motion as emphasized by Heraclitus. and therefore of the mixings of the elements. He was thus led to introduce a theory of value into the explanation of Nature.
4. Anaximander: (6th Cent. B.C.) With Thales and Anaximenes he formed the Milesian School of Greek Philosophy; with these and the other thinkers of the cosmological period he sought the ground of the manifold processes of nature in a single world-principle or cosmic stuff which he identified with "the Infinite". He was the first to step out of the realm of experience and ascribed to his "Infinite" the attributes of eternity, imperishability and inexhaustability.
5. Anaximenes: (6th Cent. B.C.) sought a cosmic material element which would explain the manifold processes of the natural world and declared this to be air. Air, he felt, had the attribute of Infinity which would account for the varieties of nature more readily than water, which his predecessor Thales had postulated.
6. Heraclitus: 536-470 B.C. held that there is nothing abiding in the world. All things and the universe as a whole are in constant, ceaseless flux, nothing is, only change is real, all is a continuous passing away. Heraclitus thus foreshadowed the modern conception of the uniformity of natural law.
7. That uniformity principle states that what happens once in nature will, under a sufficient degree of similarity of circumstances, happen again and as often as the same circumstances recur.
[1-7 are condensed from the "Dictionary of Philosophy," Runes, 1942. http://www.ditext.com/runes/index.html 1-7 are not intended to be an exhaustive list either of the Pre-Socratic contributors to naturalism, nor to the descriptions of their contributions. Better, exhaustive descriptions of their contributions can be found in many places on the web, if not in books, which are my own favorite means of gathering information. But as I do not live at the library, I make do with the internet!]
The medievals reduction of naturalism may not have been deliberate. Smith does not make it clear what the intentions of Augustine and Plotinus were, but says that reduction of the high esteem for naturalism still prevails today in the modern form of naturalism, i.e., the naturalism of the modern secular scholar is not the naturalism of the Pre-Socratics. It prevails today especially in the "uninformed" naturalist who holds the "the unjustifed belief," rather than the belief that is justified by being "informed" of the arguments of the theists, arguments that defeat the "uninformed" arguments.
One cannot, in an argument, turn to defeat the theist unless he/she is in informed of the arguments used by the theist which attemtp to defeat the naturalist world view. Such a defeat is possible, Smith contends. He outlines four goals for the informed scholar by which naturalism may be retrieved "from its de facto reclassification by medieval philosophers."
It is imperative that naturalists take back the field, reversing the roles of the naturalist and theist to the roles given them by the Greeks, not to the de facto reclassified naturalism of the modern scholar. Smith lays out four very major tasks for the informed naturalists, tasks which will reverse the concretization of naturalism as the handmaiden of today's desecularized realist theist role the humanities.
For example, naturalism ought not appear as an objection to arguments for God’s existence, objections to theism such that God's existence is based on natural reason; "natural reason" should be the default position, and all other philosophies of religions would then become skeptical objections to naturalism.
Smith's Four Goals of the Informed Naturalist will be closely examined tomorrow.
A direct link to PHILO, The Center for Inquiry, and Purdue University is in the left column of this website.
Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
"[A] problem with naturalist scientists," Smith writes in PHILO, http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm "is that they are so innocent of any understanding of the philosophy of religion that they do not even know that they are innocent of this understanding, as it witnessed by their popular writings on science and religion."
This would, perhaps, appear to the "uninformed" naturalists to be condescending of their knowledge in their own field. Smith defines an "uninformed" naturalist as one who has an unjustified belief in his/her own subject field; "unjustified" because the uninformed academic is one who has ignorance of "defeater" arguments against naturalism. In other words, the arguments used by theists to counter the arguments of naturalism often contain logic which overwhelms and defeats the arguments of naturalism, to the degree that such arguments make naturalism appear to be the skeptical argument against theism.
This was not always the case, he says. Naturalism in its original form began with the Pre-Socratics, and in the middle ages, during the rise of theism, was used by theists precisely as the skeptical argument. This continued until the second half of the twentieth century, "when universities and colleges had been become in the main secularized."
From physics to psychology, arguments were for a naturalist world-view, where theology and religion in academia sought to understand the meaning and origins of religious writings, "not to develop arguments against naturalism."
Then, in 1967, Alvin Plantinga http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/plantinga/home.html of the U. of Notre Dame, published "God and other Minds," a realist-theist view of existence. Until then, says Smith, realist theists kept their theism out of their work partially because theism, especially in its realist manifestation, was thought contain such low epistemic value that the standards of an "academically respectable" position to hold were missing.
The Pre-Socratic original forms of naturalism held sway until the theistic influences of Plotinus and Augustine. Plantinga then "defeated" naturalism in its modern form with his realist theist arguments, concretizing naturalism as the skeptical attitude toward theism, as the medeivals had made it, rather than, as Smith says it ought to be, "the philosophy of religion as a subfield of naturalism, viz. skepticism about naturalism." In other words, the "philosophy of religion," not religion itself, ought to be the skeptical attitude toward naturalism.
Plantinga's success then opened the door for other theists, realist and otherwise, to begin de-secularizing the science of knowledge that, whether "of theology or religion aimed to understand the meaning and origins of religious writings, not to develop arguments against naturalism." [Smith]
Smith makes it clear that his paper is not the time or place to rehash the history of what the Greeks believed, but his paper is meant for reading by better scholars than may be reading this blog. For the purposes of information, and to familiarize my readers with the ideas of the Greeks, these short descriptions are included before I go on. Smith's list of contributors is longer than the list I present here.
1. Leucippus: (a. 450 B.C.) developed the principle that all qualitative differences in nature may be reduced to quantitative ones; he distributes these through infinite space. These small particles of "Being" are separated from one another by that which is not-Being, i.e. by empty space. "Becoming", or the coming into being of things, is essentially the result of the motion of these atoms in space and their accidental coming together.
2. Democritus : (c 460-360 B.C.) developed the first important materialist philosophy of nature, unless we are to count that of Leucippus. His influence was transmitted by Lucretius' poem till the centuries of the Renaissance when scholars' attention began to turn toward the study of nature. He taught that all substance consists of atoms, that is, of indivisible and imperceptibly small particles.
3. Empedocles: about 490-430 B.C.E. attempted to reconcile the teaching of the permanence of Being of the Eleatics with the experience of change and motion as emphasized by Heraclitus. and therefore of the mixings of the elements. He was thus led to introduce a theory of value into the explanation of Nature.
4. Anaximander: (6th Cent. B.C.) With Thales and Anaximenes he formed the Milesian School of Greek Philosophy; with these and the other thinkers of the cosmological period he sought the ground of the manifold processes of nature in a single world-principle or cosmic stuff which he identified with "the Infinite". He was the first to step out of the realm of experience and ascribed to his "Infinite" the attributes of eternity, imperishability and inexhaustability.
5. Anaximenes: (6th Cent. B.C.) sought a cosmic material element which would explain the manifold processes of the natural world and declared this to be air. Air, he felt, had the attribute of Infinity which would account for the varieties of nature more readily than water, which his predecessor Thales had postulated.
6. Heraclitus: 536-470 B.C. held that there is nothing abiding in the world. All things and the universe as a whole are in constant, ceaseless flux, nothing is, only change is real, all is a continuous passing away. Heraclitus thus foreshadowed the modern conception of the uniformity of natural law.
7. That uniformity principle states that what happens once in nature will, under a sufficient degree of similarity of circumstances, happen again and as often as the same circumstances recur.
[1-7 are condensed from the "Dictionary of Philosophy," Runes, 1942. http://www.ditext.com/runes/index.html 1-7 are not intended to be an exhaustive list either of the Pre-Socratic contributors to naturalism, nor to the descriptions of their contributions. Better, exhaustive descriptions of their contributions can be found in many places on the web, if not in books, which are my own favorite means of gathering information. But as I do not live at the library, I make do with the internet!]
The medievals reduction of naturalism may not have been deliberate. Smith does not make it clear what the intentions of Augustine and Plotinus were, but says that reduction of the high esteem for naturalism still prevails today in the modern form of naturalism, i.e., the naturalism of the modern secular scholar is not the naturalism of the Pre-Socratics. It prevails today especially in the "uninformed" naturalist who holds the "the unjustifed belief," rather than the belief that is justified by being "informed" of the arguments of the theists, arguments that defeat the "uninformed" arguments.
One cannot, in an argument, turn to defeat the theist unless he/she is in informed of the arguments used by the theist which attemtp to defeat the naturalist world view. Such a defeat is possible, Smith contends. He outlines four goals for the informed scholar by which naturalism may be retrieved "from its de facto reclassification by medieval philosophers."
It is imperative that naturalists take back the field, reversing the roles of the naturalist and theist to the roles given them by the Greeks, not to the de facto reclassified naturalism of the modern scholar. Smith lays out four very major tasks for the informed naturalists, tasks which will reverse the concretization of naturalism as the handmaiden of today's desecularized realist theist role the humanities.
For example, naturalism ought not appear as an objection to arguments for God’s existence, objections to theism such that God's existence is based on natural reason; "natural reason" should be the default position, and all other philosophies of religions would then become skeptical objections to naturalism.
Smith's Four Goals of the Informed Naturalist will be closely examined tomorrow.
A direct link to PHILO, The Center for Inquiry, and Purdue University is in the left column of this website.
Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Loss of Secularism in Naturalism, Part 2: Unjustified True Beliefs
"Most of us have a worldview, an overarching context for life that helps to shape our beliefs, goals and actions. This book explores the science-based worldview known as naturalism – a comprehensive and fulfilling alternative to faith-based religion and other varieties of dualism."
So begins the description of "Encountering Naturalism," by Thomas W. Clark, founder and director of the Center for Naturalism and creator of Naturalism.Org. http://www.naturalism.org/ This "worldview," this "overarching context for life" was described in the "Syntopicon" http://www.thegreatideas.org/syntopicon.html as "the search for the single intelligible object," which I took as the title for my first book. [See "Academy Publications" on this page.] Such a world view often goes by the title of "cosmology," and as a matter of fact it was the description of cosmology in the "Syntopicon" that I took. Many books have been written on the cosmology of religions, and of the way that science itself searches for a "worldview," a single intelligible object.
""Public schools can neither foster religion nor preclude it. Our public schools must treat religion with fairness and respect and vigorously protect religious expression as well as the freedom of conscience of all other students. In so doing our public schools reaffirm the First Amendment..." Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley But the manner in which this is done can easily violate the Second Amendment and the historical separation of church and state which the Supreme Court cited as Original Intent in 1878.
It would seem this ought to be enough to remove theist ideas from secular-based education, but the situation, as Smith makes clear, is hardly that simple, and constitutes the "uninformed" ranks of educators. As a matter of fact, the situation is so misunderstood even by the naturalist philosophers that their misunderstanding has allowed their secular subject to be overrun by realist theists.
Smith defines an "uninformed" naturalist as one who has an unjustified belief in his/her own subject. Such unjustified belief he attributes to ignorance of "defeater" arguments against naturalism. Unjustified belief is not limited to the naturalists only. He says that "most contemporary naturalists, as well as most contemporary theists, hold defeated beliefs about the truth-value of naturalism." Knowledge of naturalism can only be indefeasibly justified true belief when the believer has knowledge of the arguments which can defeat it. So, even an ardent naturalist can have an unjustifed belief when he/she cannot state the arguments that lead to an undermining of the principles of naturalism. It is only when one knows the arguments against his own beliefs and rejects them and can argue against them that a belief can be justified.
It would seem there are those who fit the category of "informed" naturalists, (but I have not read this book; I can only extrapolate from the review.) In Victor J. Stenger's "Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe," Norman Levitt, Professor of Mathematics, Rutgers University writes, " Responding with meticulous thoroughness to the hype of journalists, the hucksterism of theocratic spin-doctors, and the wishful thinking of a few atypical scientists desperate to salvage a remnant of traditional theology, Stenger courageously reminds us that science endorses no other option than to come to terms with a universe that owes us no favors and refuses to let us cheat reality." [From the back cover.]
Stenger's book, released by Prometheus Books in 2003, was written after Smith's entry in PHILO. At any rate, Smith's criticism of uninformed naturalists was used in "Atheism: From the University to Society," by Edwin K. P. Chong as a "relevant quote." http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~echong/talks/06/Atheism06quotes.pdf So it would appear that there are "informed" naturalists in academia--Smith never claims there are none--and perhaps their ranks are growing.
So let's take a look at Smith's "defeated justifiers," one at a time, and discover how they affect each of us who may have "unjustified true belief" about our single intelligible object.
The first one Smith calls "A (a defeated justifier). A is the argument that contemporary science and naturalist philosophy are known to be probably or certainly true, even though A includes no counterarguments against contemporary arguments for theism."
To constitute a "justified true belief," "three conditions are necessary, and jointly sufficient for "knowledge," writes Brett Watson, in "The Nutter Log." http://www.nutters.org/log/jtb Belief itself is the first one: "[Y]ou do not know something unless you also hold it as true in your mind; if you do not believe it, then you do not know it."
Truth itself is next: "[T]here can be no knowledge of false propositions; belief in a falsehood is delusion or misapprehension, not knowledge." But for the novice thinker, it would be easy here to mistake what one normally thinks of as "knowledge," i.e., general information that one thinks may come in relevant someday, for the "knowledge" as defined by Watson. "Knowledge" in this context is what you hold true in your thoughts. In this context, "knowledge" of false propositions as something handy to hang on to for use in debates or just to amaze or amuse your friends, is not "knowledge." I know many of the arguments used to justify the existence of God. But I do not hold them as the truth about God. I only hold as truth that such arguments exist. In this way, knowledge of false propositions does not mean that I cannot "know" about what I consider to be false propositions about God. It only means that I cannot hold those false propositions as my own truths.
This fact leads to Smith's contention that many committed naturalists do not understand even the false propositions about God.
"A [ ] problem with naturalist scientists is that they are so innocent of any understanding of the philosophy of religion that they do not even know that they are innocent of this understanding, as it witnessed by their popular writings on science and religion," Smith says.
Third in our understanding of "justified true belief" is justification itself: "[T]he belief must be appropriately supported; there must be sufficient evidence for the belief," writes Watson.
And so, in our search for the world view, the single intelligible object, or what Ayn Rand called in another context a "sense of life," we discover that when one does not know the arguments that can defeat one's beliefs, those beliefs are unjustified.
It would seem just as self-evident that many people, perhaps most people in this world do not care to know the opposing arguments well enough to be "informed." When such is the case, when someone believes in God, for example, but does not study the critics of his beliefs yet knows such criticisms and arguments exist, then "unjustified true beliefs" not only lose their truth, but their justification as well.
When a belief has lost its justification, it is called faith. Nearly every philosopher and theologian through out history has said in one way or another, explicitly or implicitly, that faith is the abnegation of reason. Yet, if one is to have a "justified true belief," it is reason that must be used to justify it.
That is why the Deist Founders of the United States, who vehemently hated any organized religion, also devoutly believed in God, because in their logic there could be no other device by which Man was given his Reason.
The Founders were Naturalists only to a degree, which is why Thomas Jefferson wrote of the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence, and why the signers let him get by with those words. It is even been said that Franklin, who was looking over young Jefferson's shoulder the entire time, may have suggested the wording himself.
They certainly shared the Naturalist position "that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature." http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html B.A.G.Fuller
They did not hold the Naturalist's concommitant principle "that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny." ibid [italics added]
But this is the justified true belief advanced by the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism, and that specific stated philosophy as justifed true belief is the purpose for the existence of the Academy. This is the Academy's overarching worldview and single intelligible object.
Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
So begins the description of "Encountering Naturalism," by Thomas W. Clark, founder and director of the Center for Naturalism and creator of Naturalism.Org. http://www.naturalism.org/ This "worldview," this "overarching context for life" was described in the "Syntopicon" http://www.thegreatideas.org/syntopicon.html as "the search for the single intelligible object," which I took as the title for my first book. [See "Academy Publications" on this page.] Such a world view often goes by the title of "cosmology," and as a matter of fact it was the description of cosmology in the "Syntopicon" that I took. Many books have been written on the cosmology of religions, and of the way that science itself searches for a "worldview," a single intelligible object.
But when it comes to a single worldview of naturalism, Dr. Quentin Smith, http://www.wmich.edu/philosophy/index.php?content=smith_faculty_profile author of "The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism", http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm says there are two views held in academia, which he calls "informed" and "uninformed". This division, in his view, is the reason for the rise in theist philosophy taking the place of, and sometimes overwhelming, the secular purposes inherent in the subject of naturalism. This secularity which, with exceptions including religious-based institutions, he says was the hallmark of twentieth century colleges and universities.
"Due to the typical attitude of the contemporary naturalist," Smith writes, "[ ] the vast majority of naturalist philosophers have come to hold (since the late 1960s) an unjustified belief in naturalism. Their justifications have been defeated by arguments developed by theistic philosophers, and now naturalist philosophers, for the most part, live in darkness about the justification for naturalism. They may have a true belief in naturalism, but they have no knowledge that naturalism is true since they do not have an undefeated justification for their belief. If naturalism is true, then their belief in naturalism is accidentally true. This philosophical failure (ignoring theism and thereby allowing themselves to become unjustified naturalists) has led to a cultural failure since theists, witnessing this failure, have increasingly become motivated to assume or argue for supernaturalism in their academic work, to an extent that academia has now lost its mainstream secularization."
With the rise of the evangelical movement in the U.S. it is little wonder that theism has crept back into our colleges and universities. We hear talk everyday, somewhere--in magazines, newspapers, tv or radio--that some form of religious education ought to be taking place in our lower schools as well, from elementary to high schools.""Public schools can neither foster religion nor preclude it. Our public schools must treat religion with fairness and respect and vigorously protect religious expression as well as the freedom of conscience of all other students. In so doing our public schools reaffirm the First Amendment..." Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley But the manner in which this is done can easily violate the Second Amendment and the historical separation of church and state which the Supreme Court cited as Original Intent in 1878.
It would seem this ought to be enough to remove theist ideas from secular-based education, but the situation, as Smith makes clear, is hardly that simple, and constitutes the "uninformed" ranks of educators. As a matter of fact, the situation is so misunderstood even by the naturalist philosophers that their misunderstanding has allowed their secular subject to be overrun by realist theists.
Smith defines an "uninformed" naturalist as one who has an unjustified belief in his/her own subject. Such unjustified belief he attributes to ignorance of "defeater" arguments against naturalism. Unjustified belief is not limited to the naturalists only. He says that "most contemporary naturalists, as well as most contemporary theists, hold defeated beliefs about the truth-value of naturalism." Knowledge of naturalism can only be indefeasibly justified true belief when the believer has knowledge of the arguments which can defeat it. So, even an ardent naturalist can have an unjustifed belief when he/she cannot state the arguments that lead to an undermining of the principles of naturalism. It is only when one knows the arguments against his own beliefs and rejects them and can argue against them that a belief can be justified.
It would seem there are those who fit the category of "informed" naturalists, (but I have not read this book; I can only extrapolate from the review.) In Victor J. Stenger's "Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe," Norman Levitt, Professor of Mathematics, Rutgers University writes, " Responding with meticulous thoroughness to the hype of journalists, the hucksterism of theocratic spin-doctors, and the wishful thinking of a few atypical scientists desperate to salvage a remnant of traditional theology, Stenger courageously reminds us that science endorses no other option than to come to terms with a universe that owes us no favors and refuses to let us cheat reality." [From the back cover.]
Stenger's book, released by Prometheus Books in 2003, was written after Smith's entry in PHILO. At any rate, Smith's criticism of uninformed naturalists was used in "Atheism: From the University to Society," by Edwin K. P. Chong as a "relevant quote." http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~echong/talks/06/Atheism06quotes.pdf So it would appear that there are "informed" naturalists in academia--Smith never claims there are none--and perhaps their ranks are growing.
So let's take a look at Smith's "defeated justifiers," one at a time, and discover how they affect each of us who may have "unjustified true belief" about our single intelligible object.
The first one Smith calls "A (a defeated justifier). A is the argument that contemporary science and naturalist philosophy are known to be probably or certainly true, even though A includes no counterarguments against contemporary arguments for theism."
To constitute a "justified true belief," "three conditions are necessary, and jointly sufficient for "knowledge," writes Brett Watson, in "The Nutter Log." http://www.nutters.org/log/jtb Belief itself is the first one: "[Y]ou do not know something unless you also hold it as true in your mind; if you do not believe it, then you do not know it."
Truth itself is next: "[T]here can be no knowledge of false propositions; belief in a falsehood is delusion or misapprehension, not knowledge." But for the novice thinker, it would be easy here to mistake what one normally thinks of as "knowledge," i.e., general information that one thinks may come in relevant someday, for the "knowledge" as defined by Watson. "Knowledge" in this context is what you hold true in your thoughts. In this context, "knowledge" of false propositions as something handy to hang on to for use in debates or just to amaze or amuse your friends, is not "knowledge." I know many of the arguments used to justify the existence of God. But I do not hold them as the truth about God. I only hold as truth that such arguments exist. In this way, knowledge of false propositions does not mean that I cannot "know" about what I consider to be false propositions about God. It only means that I cannot hold those false propositions as my own truths.
This fact leads to Smith's contention that many committed naturalists do not understand even the false propositions about God.
"A [ ] problem with naturalist scientists is that they are so innocent of any understanding of the philosophy of religion that they do not even know that they are innocent of this understanding, as it witnessed by their popular writings on science and religion," Smith says.
Third in our understanding of "justified true belief" is justification itself: "[T]he belief must be appropriately supported; there must be sufficient evidence for the belief," writes Watson.
And so, in our search for the world view, the single intelligible object, or what Ayn Rand called in another context a "sense of life," we discover that when one does not know the arguments that can defeat one's beliefs, those beliefs are unjustified.
It would seem just as self-evident that many people, perhaps most people in this world do not care to know the opposing arguments well enough to be "informed." When such is the case, when someone believes in God, for example, but does not study the critics of his beliefs yet knows such criticisms and arguments exist, then "unjustified true beliefs" not only lose their truth, but their justification as well.
When a belief has lost its justification, it is called faith. Nearly every philosopher and theologian through out history has said in one way or another, explicitly or implicitly, that faith is the abnegation of reason. Yet, if one is to have a "justified true belief," it is reason that must be used to justify it.
That is why the Deist Founders of the United States, who vehemently hated any organized religion, also devoutly believed in God, because in their logic there could be no other device by which Man was given his Reason.
The Founders were Naturalists only to a degree, which is why Thomas Jefferson wrote of the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence, and why the signers let him get by with those words. It is even been said that Franklin, who was looking over young Jefferson's shoulder the entire time, may have suggested the wording himself.
They certainly shared the Naturalist position "that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature." http://www.ditext.com/runes/n.html B.A.G.Fuller
They did not hold the Naturalist's concommitant principle "that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny." ibid [italics added]
But this is the justified true belief advanced by the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism, and that specific stated philosophy as justifed true belief is the purpose for the existence of the Academy. This is the Academy's overarching worldview and single intelligible object.
Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
Monday, August 11, 2008
The Loss of Secularism in Naturalism, Part 1
Between the blocks of time I use writing this blog, answering questions on Yahoo Answers (under an assumed moniker,) and attending to the more mundane aspects of living such as feeding the wild animals right outside our back window, mowing the grass, preparing dinner for my partner and myself, attending AA meetings or watching 24 hour new networks or my favorite dramas, I read.
It has come to my attention that naturalism is a bigger deal in the world of academics than I could have imagined. I am not in formal academics; I have no "classroom" but this one and Yahoo Answers. Now I discover, through an article written by a local, esteemed philisopher that naturalism as a secular activity in academia was once the norm, whereas now it is being pushed out by the arguments of philosophical theists who argue that existence cannot be self-sufficient and the given.
Dr. Quentin Smith http://www.wmich.edu/philosophy/index.php?content=smith_faculty_profile writes that naturalist philosophers desire to search for knowledge for its own sake, going so far as to claim they want the truth "whatever the truth happens to be (e.g., be it naturalism or theism)." "The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism", http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm
But, Smith writes, because academics in the second half of the 20th century had, for the most part, become secularized, that all of academia, aside from a few exceptions, was in the search for objective truth whether it turned out to be naturalism or theism.
"[D]epartments of theology or religion aimed to understand the meaning and origins of religious writings, not to develop arguments against naturalism."
As many of my readers are also users of Yahoo Answers, let me state that one of the big debates has been why the atheists assume such a large role in the Religion and Spirituality forum, and why the so-called philosophy students in the Philosophy forum often argued so vigorously for theist answers. The atheists in the R&S forum often made the claim, as did I, that even atheists have souls, that we have "spirituality," and that when not prodding the theists to make them angry, the goal was simply to set the record right, to state that theists didn't have all the answers, that religions were "set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit," as the American patriot Thomas Paine stated so boldly in his book, "The Age of Reason." (1794)
While all this and more may be true, it seems there is more going on being the curtains of academia that lead to the face off between the theists and the seculars. What this is, writes Smith, is apparently not even known explicitly by some of the academic seculars.
"Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism [ ] began to sweep through the philosophical community...", in effect, developing the very arguments for creationism that will lead to the death of naturalism if we naturalists don't wake up and begin taking back the epistemic high road.
Realist theists may be identified in this context as anyone who proposes a rational theory of creationism or intelligent design. Rational theism, according to Phillip E Johnson in his book, "Reason in the Balance," is true knowledge (!), starting with the belief of God as the Creator. "Theistic realism relies on a God that is real, personal, and acting in the world through mechanistic creationism." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_realism
To demonstrate how low the realist theists believe naturalism has gone, and perhaps not without some validity if we are indeed losing ground to their arguments, a site called "the evangelical outpost" (sic) http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/ finds plenty to laugh at concerning their opposition.
"Christian thinkers ranging from the profound to the banal have argued that philosophical naturalism is internally inconsistent and contradictory," it posts, calling naturalism a "naked emperor." http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001271.html "But we Christian critics now have a handful of unwitting allies in our cause. A small group of atheist philosophers, including Daniel Dennett and Brian Leiter, have instituted a new organization that will prove to be our best ally in the effort to expose the self-refuting philosophy: [ ] The website provides such a parody of naturalistic ideas that it couldn't be anything other than an elaborate prank."
Yet I assure you it is no "elaborate prank." The esteemed list of contributors to the site, called The Center for Naturalism http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/ would convince anyone of that. (They are listed on the home page.)
"Naturalism is the understanding that there is a single, natural world as shown by science, and that we are completely included in it," states the Center. That much is probably as easy to accept for the theists as for any atheist. But the next words are hardly the words of science, but of a type of humanism that seems more like the victim falling on his sword rather than as a leader in scientific thinking.
"Naturalism holds that everything we are and do is connected to the rest of the world," says the Center, without any scientific description of that "connection." It could just as easily refer to the butterfly effect. "Each of us is an unfolding natural process [ ] and seeing just how we are caused gives us power and control, while encouraging compassion and humility."
Is this an apologetic for what naturalism in science is supposed to be?
I was never under the impression that this was the nature of naturalism. My understanding of it is that it is the scientific view that existence is self-sufficient, the given, describable in axiomatic concepts and defendable as the default position versus some theory of ex nihilo where "nothingness" was at one time the condition of existence. My understanding of naturalism has nothing to do with social policies "encouraging compassion and humanity." While those may be outstanding values to encourage in the proper conditions, it strays far from a black-and-white, concretized description of naturalism as an epistemological position derived from logic.
Everytime some young student in Yahoo asks where the world or the universe came from, whether challenging the naturalists or seeking a sincere answer, the question automatically takes the default position that "nothingness" was once the conditon of the universe.
There are contradictions inherent in this default position, and for the rest of the week it will be the task of this blog to uncover those contradictions. In the mean time, until tomorrow, let me paste the definition of Naturalism from the Dictionary of Philosophy. http://www.ditext.com/runes/index.html This definition was written by B.A.G. Fuller, a Harvard professor whose clarity of grammar and syntax rivals that of Thomas Jefferson, and is just as often as difficult to digest on the first reading.
"Naturalism, challenging the cogency of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but is self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing, that the world-process is not teleological and anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic events), and only incidentally productive of man; that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny."
This has always been my working definition of naturalism, and I see nothing in it that refers even implicitly to an apologetic for its nature, and certainly nothing even remotely close to being social policy for compassion and humanity.
"And how," asks Quentin Smith, "have naturalist philosophers reacted to what some committed naturalists might consider as 'the embarrassment' of belonging to the only academic field that has allowed itself to lose the secularization it once had? Some naturalists wish to leave the field..."
That does not surprise me. What surprises me is that naturalism has lost the secularization it once had.
Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
It has come to my attention that naturalism is a bigger deal in the world of academics than I could have imagined. I am not in formal academics; I have no "classroom" but this one and Yahoo Answers. Now I discover, through an article written by a local, esteemed philisopher that naturalism as a secular activity in academia was once the norm, whereas now it is being pushed out by the arguments of philosophical theists who argue that existence cannot be self-sufficient and the given.
Dr. Quentin Smith http://www.wmich.edu/philosophy/index.php?content=smith_faculty_profile writes that naturalist philosophers desire to search for knowledge for its own sake, going so far as to claim they want the truth "whatever the truth happens to be (e.g., be it naturalism or theism)." "The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism", http://www.philoonline.org/library/smith_4_2.htm
But, Smith writes, because academics in the second half of the 20th century had, for the most part, become secularized, that all of academia, aside from a few exceptions, was in the search for objective truth whether it turned out to be naturalism or theism.
"[D]epartments of theology or religion aimed to understand the meaning and origins of religious writings, not to develop arguments against naturalism."
As many of my readers are also users of Yahoo Answers, let me state that one of the big debates has been why the atheists assume such a large role in the Religion and Spirituality forum, and why the so-called philosophy students in the Philosophy forum often argued so vigorously for theist answers. The atheists in the R&S forum often made the claim, as did I, that even atheists have souls, that we have "spirituality," and that when not prodding the theists to make them angry, the goal was simply to set the record right, to state that theists didn't have all the answers, that religions were "set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit," as the American patriot Thomas Paine stated so boldly in his book, "The Age of Reason." (1794)
While all this and more may be true, it seems there is more going on being the curtains of academia that lead to the face off between the theists and the seculars. What this is, writes Smith, is apparently not even known explicitly by some of the academic seculars.
"Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism [ ] began to sweep through the philosophical community...", in effect, developing the very arguments for creationism that will lead to the death of naturalism if we naturalists don't wake up and begin taking back the epistemic high road.
Realist theists may be identified in this context as anyone who proposes a rational theory of creationism or intelligent design. Rational theism, according to Phillip E Johnson in his book, "Reason in the Balance," is true knowledge (!), starting with the belief of God as the Creator. "Theistic realism relies on a God that is real, personal, and acting in the world through mechanistic creationism." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theistic_realism
To demonstrate how low the realist theists believe naturalism has gone, and perhaps not without some validity if we are indeed losing ground to their arguments, a site called "the evangelical outpost" (sic) http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/ finds plenty to laugh at concerning their opposition.
"Christian thinkers ranging from the profound to the banal have argued that philosophical naturalism is internally inconsistent and contradictory," it posts, calling naturalism a "naked emperor." http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/archives/001271.html "But we Christian critics now have a handful of unwitting allies in our cause. A small group of atheist philosophers, including Daniel Dennett and Brian Leiter, have instituted a new organization that will prove to be our best ally in the effort to expose the self-refuting philosophy: [ ] The website provides such a parody of naturalistic ideas that it couldn't be anything other than an elaborate prank."
Yet I assure you it is no "elaborate prank." The esteemed list of contributors to the site, called The Center for Naturalism http://www.centerfornaturalism.org/ would convince anyone of that. (They are listed on the home page.)
"Naturalism is the understanding that there is a single, natural world as shown by science, and that we are completely included in it," states the Center. That much is probably as easy to accept for the theists as for any atheist. But the next words are hardly the words of science, but of a type of humanism that seems more like the victim falling on his sword rather than as a leader in scientific thinking.
"Naturalism holds that everything we are and do is connected to the rest of the world," says the Center, without any scientific description of that "connection." It could just as easily refer to the butterfly effect. "Each of us is an unfolding natural process [ ] and seeing just how we are caused gives us power and control, while encouraging compassion and humility."
Is this an apologetic for what naturalism in science is supposed to be?
I was never under the impression that this was the nature of naturalism. My understanding of it is that it is the scientific view that existence is self-sufficient, the given, describable in axiomatic concepts and defendable as the default position versus some theory of ex nihilo where "nothingness" was at one time the condition of existence. My understanding of naturalism has nothing to do with social policies "encouraging compassion and humanity." While those may be outstanding values to encourage in the proper conditions, it strays far from a black-and-white, concretized description of naturalism as an epistemological position derived from logic.
Everytime some young student in Yahoo asks where the world or the universe came from, whether challenging the naturalists or seeking a sincere answer, the question automatically takes the default position that "nothingness" was once the conditon of the universe.
There are contradictions inherent in this default position, and for the rest of the week it will be the task of this blog to uncover those contradictions. In the mean time, until tomorrow, let me paste the definition of Naturalism from the Dictionary of Philosophy. http://www.ditext.com/runes/index.html This definition was written by B.A.G. Fuller, a Harvard professor whose clarity of grammar and syntax rivals that of Thomas Jefferson, and is just as often as difficult to digest on the first reading.
"Naturalism, challenging the cogency of the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but is self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing, that the world-process is not teleological and anthropocentric, but purposeless, deterministic (except for possible tychistic events), and only incidentally productive of man; that human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny."
This has always been my working definition of naturalism, and I see nothing in it that refers even implicitly to an apologetic for its nature, and certainly nothing even remotely close to being social policy for compassion and humanity.
"And how," asks Quentin Smith, "have naturalist philosophers reacted to what some committed naturalists might consider as 'the embarrassment' of belonging to the only academic field that has allowed itself to lose the secularization it once had? Some naturalists wish to leave the field..."
That does not surprise me. What surprises me is that naturalism has lost the secularization it once had.
Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm (service mark) of the Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, which is the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®
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