Naturalism

Ch.1, §1: ‘Deserved Respect’ (pp.31–41), continued

Dawkins opposes supernaturalism to naturalism, unsurprisingly enough. He provides the following definitions, the first from Julian Baggini’s Atheism: A Very Short Introduction:

although there is only one kind of stuff in the universe, and it is physical, out of this stuff comes minds, beauty, emotions, moral values – in short, the full gamut of phenomena that gives richness to human life (quoted on p.34)

there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand. (p.35)

He also adds further elaboration from Einstein:

I have never attributed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic (p.36).

The matters touched on here are all matters about which religious people generally, and Christians specifically, differ widely. It would be possible, but facile, to take each element of the description of naturalism given above and wheel out examples of Christians who stood on Dawkins’ side of the great divide. I want to try something rather different, as a bit of a thought experiment. I want to ask how far someone who remained recognisably within the theological tradition I have sketched, which Einstein himself may possibly have had a toehold in (though maybe not), someone who was fully committed to some form of the central claims about God that I have sketched, could go along with ‘naturalism’, as Dawkins described it. Even if in practice many or most of those who stand within this tradition would differ more markedly from Dawkins than the position I am about to set out, this thought experiment will help us understand whether Dawkins’ naturalism/supernaturalism opposition captures what is essential to this fairly mainstream theological tradition of thought about God.

So, at its most naturalist, the kind of theological tradition I have been discussing need imply no commitment to the view that there is any kind of stuff in the universe other than physical stuff. It need imply no commitment to the view that, as science explores the regularities of efficient causation that tie all this stuff into one cosmos, there is anywhere that science cannot go, or anywhere that it will prove inadequate to that task of causal explanation. It need imply, in other words, no rejection of the idea that the physical sciences are capable of talking about everything that there is.

If ‘soul’ is taken to mean some kind of entity consisting of another kind of stuff than physical, separable from the body, then this theological tradition need imply no commitment to the soul. If ‘a purpose or goal’ to ‘Nature’ is taken to refer to a different kind of explanation, one designed to fill gaps, inadequacies, or improbabilities in the explanations offered by science, then this tradition need imply no commitment to purpose or goal. If ‘miracle’ is taken to mean a disruption of the otherwise unvarying regularities that structure the cosmos, a break in natural laws, then this tradition need not even be committed to the miraculous.

However, this tradition does require one to say that when everything has been said by science, its properly total description and explanation given, there remain different things to be said. The world that is adequately described by science can also be ‘read’ in another way – not as an alternative form of explanation, not as a supplement to the gaps left by science, but as a different kind of grasp of, or take on, the whole – more aesthetic than explanatory.

And, yes, that way of seeing the whole suggests that one cannot talk about the world without talking about God, and that talk about the world is therefore incomplete without reference to God, but this reference to God is not doing the same kind of work that reference to kinds of stuff and patterns of explanation do in science. God, for this way of thinking, is not made of or responsible for any mysterious kind of non-physical stuff; God is not a gremlin in the world’s machine, tinkering with its regular running. God is not an ‘oh, and there’s one more thing’ addition to the list of the things that comprise ‘everything that there is’: God, in this tradition, is more like the context for them all.

Yes, this theological way of talking about the world is one that will almost certainly involve some kind of talk about purpose or goal, some kind of teleology to the world – but it does not have to do so in such a way as to get into a direct argument with scientific explanation. Yes, this theological way of talking about the world may involve talk about miracles, as states of affairs which particularly clearly and intensely call for, and call forth, a God-centred way of seeing – but it does not need to have a stake in the inexplicability of the events in question. And yes, this theological way of talking about the world may involve talk about souls, but that will be precisely as another, God-focused way of talking about exactly the same human beings that the naturalist talks about: wholly physical, wholly enmeshed in and structured by the laws of nature, wholly describable by science. Talk about ‘soul’ can properly be another way of talking about the same mind, beauty, emotion, and moral value that science rightly understands as emerging from physical stuff.

[Edit: That last sentence is misleading. I don’t mean that ‘soul’ in this theological tradition could be just another name for the ‘mind, beauty, emotion and moral value’ that science can speak about. Rather, to speak about souls is to say something about the human beings who have such ‘mind, beauty, emotion and moral value’. I was not specifying what would be said, only what it would be said about. I’d echo here what I said about the world as a whole. To talk about ‘soul’ in this context is to recognise that when everything has been said by science, its properly total description and explanation of human life given, there remain different things to be said. The human beings who are adequately described by science can also be ‘read’ in another way – not as an alternative form of explanation, not as a supplement to the gaps left by science, but as a different kind of grasp of, or take on, the whole.]

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