In class we discussed naturalism, I just want to talk about a few key points that naturalism brings to the table. To the logical mind naturalism seems to be the best way to go. As we know, many people do not like to have a logical mind, even though we were taught in class to try to be logical in everything we believe in. I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to having a logical mind, as bad as it may sound I like to believe in the unbelievable and miracles.
However, I do believe that naturalism is what we need in order to evolve more as a human race. It leads us to logical understandings and logical ways of getting further into our vast universe in which we barely know anything about yet. In a way naturalistic people have paved the way for science and how to progress our knowledge. Naturalism asserts that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural universe, that the universe is a product of these laws and that the goal of science is to discover and publish them. This means that there is nothing outside of our universal laws and if there is it does not affect our universe in any way. Through research and having a naturalistic view, we can create equations that will always work (most of the time), and predict what will happen within the physicality of our universe. Physics is the best way to describe how we can predict much of what will happen, and that is the best concept we have created so far for understanding our world and universe.
However there is a very interesting argument to naturalism that comes from Plantinga from 1993. Plantinga’s argument attempted to show that to combine naturalism and evolution is self-defeating. He states something like this: The human mind, through evolution, has come from lower tiered animals that have since evolved into humans. So why would we trust our cognitive capacities that perhaps have come from a monkey. Would anyone trust the mind of a monkey on creating laws and theories that are attached to our world? So the theory of evolution in a way, does not agree with naturalism because of where humans come from. I realize that the human brain is much more developed than that of a monkey’s, however there is a debate to be had here. What if all the the laws and theories that humans have come up with are obsolete to a bigger picture that we cannot see because of our inferior brains and cognitive capacities.
Naturalism has arguably brought us very far and still progressing in how we shape the universe in our minds, perhaps naturalism is the path to better version of a human later on in evolution and we are also shaping the way for a more smarter, and advanced human being, just the way apes were evolved into the humans we have today. An interesting concept to think about.
jalisak
9 Dec 11 at 10:07 am
For some reason i cannot fully believe in evolution, it is just weird to me. I have never done much reading or research about it but i don’t see it possible especially since god did not say he created adam and eve from monkeys. But the naturalistic point of view seem like common sense to me, i meam from science and acquired knowledge you know what is possible and whats not possible and i just do not think it is possible hunans ancestors are monkeys.
CandyGirlLOL
9 Dec 11 at 1:35 pm
I urge you to read and research about it. Evolution is complete fact, I mean you cannot even deny it, there is physical proof through geologic records. Small steps on evolution, such as natural selection, can even be observed in our life time. We did not evolve from moneys, also. We just share a common ancestor, most likely bonabos, were both of our species separated phylogenetically over a span of 7 million years. I mean there is solid proof, you cannot just deny that.
George Apostolopoulos
12 Dec 11 at 12:03 am
That evolution is a ridiculously strong theory I can accept completely. I also happen to think it’s right. That it cannot be denied, though, is entirely unscientific, and that sentiment kind of scares me. Every scientific theory is premised with “given the currently available information/data…”. To say that the data will never be able to suggest something at all different is entirely irrational. See my post on the Uniformity Principle for why I think so. To say that it is extremely unlikely that it will is another story, and I can accept that. Every scientific theory is logically, and, therefore, inherently falsifiable. Falsifiability means that it can be wrong, and that there might be unknown reasons to later deny it.
mlwalla
11 Dec 11 at 5:47 pm
This sentence is so good:
“What if all the the laws and theories that humans have come up with are obsolete to a bigger picture that we cannot see because of our inferior brains and cognitive capacities.”
I like your thoughts. I think we are evolving as well (I kind of mention it here: http://phil224f11.eripsa.org/12/09/last-post-2/). I think the world will be so different in 20 years if it doesn’t end first ;)
pkelias
11 Dec 11 at 11:34 pm
I think that the theories that we have right now for science make up a very good picture of the natural laws. We are a process of evolution, and so we cannot trust the conclusions that we come up with? How then can we be sure about God, then? This same argument defeats any reason to hold any kind of knowledge at all. And anyways, I disagree entirely, because scientific theories ARE just theories. They have been worked out due to strict observations that happen around the world, and if an experiment cannot be successfully duplicated 100% of the time, then it holds no merit, or all variables have not been controlled for. If we started noticing that a lot of theories held errors, or some VERY strong theory (that happens necessarily and cannot be argued against) came about, then another scientific revolution would happen, and we would be back to square one.
That evolution argument was absurd.
George Apostolopoulos
12 Dec 11 at 12:10 am
You can be logical and not a naturalist. Naturalists are not the only logical people in the world, though I bet a lot of them think that they are.
That said, the argument against evolution isn’t particularly strong. That we may have evolved from lesser animals has little to say about what we can conceive of now. The idea is that evolution implies that we’ve somehow become better, more evolved, in some aspects, than those animals. Why not think our ability to understand things has gotten better? I’d say the evidence that we can reason about things much better than ‘lesser animals’ is pretty hard to ignore. Most religions I know of agree that we’re smarter than other animals, too.