“Naturalism as a world view is based on the premise that knowledge about what exists and about how things work is BEST (my emphasis) achieved through the sciences, not personal revelation or religious tradition.” They are open and consistent, from what I have read of their view. However, if “best” is means that counts as knowledge is restricted to ONLY what science can say, then why is it not the center for scientism. Ultimately physics “runs the show” in this view, so if you look at the world through the sciences you will organize or study larger groups and different arrangements of molecules and atoms without adding new properties. This means that “love” is just a chemical in your brain, you don’t have free will, and God, angels, and souls (life after death) can not exist. Further, there is no “self” to make decisions or cause behavior. Again, the Center for Naturalism acknowledges all these things because they are consistent with their view. This is somewhat refreshing because Evolutionary Naturalists tend to simply assume Naturalism is true without explaining much of what their view entails. This runs against the stream of what is considered basic knowledge of human persons for much of human history. It is counter-intuitive (that I don’t really have freewill. Of course none of these reasons is sufficient to show Naturalism to be false. But it seems like a big bullet to bite, and I wonder how many people can really hold to this consistently in day to day living.
Naturalism is a philosophy that in its inclusivistic form rules out large bodies of beliefs that most people have; however, most of Western civilization today assumes at least one belief that presupposes Naturalism. In general western culture assumes that what counts as knowledge must be scientific or at least rooted in science, and this is clearly a point where Naturalism is already apart of our culture. So, the Center for Naturalism is probably trying to help people become consistent with their belief systems and assume that what needs to go is all this nonsense about having choices, punitive punishment, life after death, and God among other things like that you are conscious. The problem is that Naturalism has already limited what counts as knowledge to scientific data. Given this situation, Naturalism is true by definition because science no longer, generally speaking, considers data outside matter. For example, Science can never answer questions about the fact that pains hurt. Pains don’t hurt scientifically (empirically, although I don’t deny that there is a close relationship). Science can explain that there are simply various fibers that stimulate a brain state. “Hurting” entails much more than the physical universe and pains hurt. Minimally, hurt entails an owner to hurt, and the sensation of painfulness. I don’t have time to spell this argument out fully here, but if you post a comment requesting information, I will argue this more fully in another post and present both sides of the argument as well.
Naturalism as it relates to neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory can be seen as a cumulative case argument with an inference to the best explanation. So, the real question is DOES SCIENCE best explain what is going on? IF so, then Naturalism may be correct (IF there really is NO ENTITY that exist outside physical matter). IF there is at least ONE ENTITY that cannot be explained, then Naturalism is false. The best general strategy is to call into question what is the best explanation like the Intelligent Design guys are going. At least this seems a good starting point because if the ID arguments are possibly true, then one cannot simply stipulate away the existence of souls, freewill, personal responsibility, and consciousness. If the ID arguments are possibly true, then there is reasonable doubt to support at least more investigation. In my view, Naturalism is begging the question more than they are self-defeating. They have starting points for their view that could come to no other conclusion than their view. It seems that the current formulation of Naturalism is self-defeating, but it seems POSSIBLE that they might be able to reformulate it so that it is not. But it is possible that I might win the lotto too, so I am not sure mere possibility offers too much hope for strict Naturalism.
My thanks go to the The Evangelical Outpost (EO) for bringing the Center for Naturalism to my attention. Although I agree with many of his thoughts, I believe there are a few things in his article that given an imprecise perception (Naturalism for Dummies: Contradictions, Causal Connections, and the Center for Naturalism). Naturalism is not self-evidently self defeating, and one should not one should not simply go around claiming without argument that Naturalism is self defeating (even IF it is. Plantinga’s argument may go through, and at the very least one should link to a version of it before making dramatic assessments (even IF true). Further, Plantinga’s conclusion is that “The conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that the conjunction of naturalism with evolutionary theory is self-defeating: it provides for itself an undefeated defeater. It is therefore unacceptable and irrational.” So, maybe it is not exactly correct to claim that Naturalism is self defeating, but the CONJUNCTION of Naturalism and Evolutionary theory is self-defeating. However, the Center for Naturalism affirms a evolutionary stance and I do not know of any Naturalist’s who don’t; so this might be an accurate criticism at the end of the day. My motivation is that as Christians I think we should be as fair as possible, even if they are not fair to us. Sadly, I think that, more often than not, many Christians are not willing to read a "for Dummies" assessment. Instead, it seems that many Americans simply pick a side without even engaging in the issues (many are not even aware of deeper issues). Cheers to you Evangelical Outpost for trying to help some Christians, but it would be help to link more to full argumentation of the issues.
One other brief critique of Joe’s post, which is really my only true criticism is that when Joe says “Think about what is being claimed: A human is indistinguishable from nature and comprised completely of physical matter; not one molecule in our bodies is sentient. Yet somehow when you combine all of these non-sentient molecules in the shape of a human being, a unique property magically arises.” (http://www.evangelicaloutpost.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1257) I do not think that the Naturalist actually is claiming that a new property emerges. At least the Naturalist is not claiming this “out loud,” but there is some hocus pocus. It seems to me that the claim is more like “Can you believe it? Somehow it really seems like we have consciousness (or some other mental property), but we don’t. That is amazing.” It has a mystic-phyicalist-Buddhist flavor.
In Conclusion, Naturalism is a major bullet to bite that contradicts much of history, intuition and seems hard to live by. It is extremely difficult for me to deny that I am a self with a mind that can “hurt,” etc. Naturalism may be self-refuting, but let’s not take a tone that makes Naturalist’s seem foolish or un-intelligent. On the other hand, verificationism was definitely self-refuting and there were a lot of brilliant people who believed and defended it for years before it finally crashed. What will history show? So, the Center for Naturalism has a web site to help you choose Naturalism to be the guiding principle of your belief system, and that appears to be a self-defeating proposition if they are correct.
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