Quotes About Naturalism

Agnostic philosopher Antony O'Hear agrees: 'there are aspects of our experience and existence more fundamental than science, and on which science depends for its possibility. So science cannot be used, as it often is, to undermine those features of our natures.'35 The idea that the mind is 'nothing but' the brain is ultimately a deduction from the assumption of naturalism.

If modernist naturalism were true, there would be no objective truth outside of science. In that case right and wrong would be a matter of cultural preference, or political power, and the power already available to modernists ideologies would be overwhelming.

Evolutionary naturalism takes the inherent limitations of science and turns them into a devastating philosophical weapon: because science is our only real way of knowing anything, what science cannot know cannot be real.

Modernist discourse [...] incorporates semantic devices - such as the labeling of theism as 'religion' and naturalism as 'science' - that work to prevent a dangerous debate over fundamental assumptions from breaking out in the open.

As students grow more and more accustomed to assuming materialism and naturalism in their academic work, the concept of creation by God gradually tends to become less real to them. It is not so much that any single finding undermines their faith; rather, the day-to-day practice of thinking in naturalistic terms about academic subjects makes it awkward to think differently when it comes to religion.

C. S. Lewis depicts another source of our misconceptions about Heaven: naturalism, the belief that the world can be understood in scientific terms, without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations.

Naturalism by its purpose engineers the displacement of the miracle and puts in its place explanations that defy reason. Those who smirk at His walking on water have forgotten the miracle He has already performed in the very composition of water. Think

scientific naturalism has proven incapable of accounting for a whole range of human experiences, from simple self-awareness to love.

On the contrary, to know that you are an individual not put here for some mysterious reason by some supernatural means, and that you are not protected by unknown powers or beings; to know that you are a product of millions of experiments in the evolutionary process and not the result of a seed thrown on this planet by extraterrestrials—that, to me, is very exciting.

Another important historical factor is the fact that this already very simple religion was further simplified and purified by the early philosophers of ancient China. Our first great philosopher was a founder of naturalism; and our second great philosopher was an agnostic.

The very idea of supernatural magic - including miracles - is incoherent, devoid of sensible meaning.

It is often said that science must avoid any conclusions which smack of the supernatural.

To say that something happened supernaturally is not just to say 'We don't understand it' but to say 'We will never understand it, so don't even try.

An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes 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. If

He has no theistic beliefs, but shares the poetic naturalism that the cosmos provokes in

To say that something happened supernaturally is not just to say 'we don't understand it' but to say ' we will never understand it, so don't even try.

Richard Dawkins

Nature does not make leaps.

I have never seen either angels or goddesses, so I am not interested in painting them.

Empiricism in the sciences is a method; naturalism in philosophy is a metaphysics; and the latter neither follows from nor underlies the former.

Darwinism is not merely a support for naturalistic philosophy: it is a product of naturalistic philosophy.

Naturalism is the view that the physical world is a self-contained system that works by blind, unbroken natural laws. Naturalism doesn't come right out and say there's nothing beyond nature. Rather, it says that nothing beyond nature could have any conceivable relevance to what happens in nature. Naturalism's answer to theism is not atheism but benign neglect. People are welcome to believe in God, though not a God who makes a difference in the natural order.

Science and religion...have been perennially at war. The one studies nature and produces progress. The other explores supernature and produces confusion and darkness. In fact, progress is directly proportionate to the victory of naturalism over supernaturalism.

Naturalism Naturalism is the belief that only natural explanations (as opposed to supernatural ones) should be considered. Because a designer is defined as supernatural—beyond nature—naturalism rules out this explanation, regardless of evidence.