Naturalism and Scientism Summarized

The following is an apologetic for Naturalism, written by the founder of the Center For Naturalism and naturalism.org, Thomas W. Clark:

”For a philosophical and scientific naturalist such as myself, the traditional Christian god is ruled out simply because the existence of the supernatural in general is ruled out. If you stick with science as your guide to what’s ultimately real, and critique your assumptions in open philosophical inquiry, there are no good reasons to believe that reality is split between two categorically different realms, the natural and the supernatural. Instead, science reveals that the world is of a piece, what we call the natural world. Disbelief in God, therefore, is a corollary of the rationally defensible claim that nature is all there is, the basis for the worldview known as naturalism.

Naturalists are driven by the immodest desire to plumb the depths of reality, to know what objectively exists, to understand how things fundamentally work, and to have maximally transparent explanations of phenomena. In this project our primary commitment is epistemic, to a philo-scientific way of knowing that we justifiably believe gets us reliable beliefs about the world. I call this a philo-scientific epistemology because it combines openness to philosophical critique with a reliance on scientific criteria of explanatory adequacy as vetted by that critique and the actual practice of science. Naturalism holds that science and philosophy are continuous, interpenetrating and collaborative in our investigation of reality; neither is foundational to the other. The naturalist mainly wants not to be deceived, not to make errors of logic or method or assumptions when understanding the world. Science, kept presuppositionally and methodologically honest by philosophy and real-world experience, has given us increasingly reliable explanations of how things work as judged by our growing capacity to predict and control phenomena. Such is the naturalist’s pragmatic test of knowledge: we are not deceived because we successfully predict.”

Because naturalists are driven by the quest for reliable knowledge, we are not in the business of defending a particular picture of what finally exists, a particular ontology. If the best, most transparent explanations of a phenomenon, for instance consciousness, should end up in some sort of mental-physical dualism, so be it. If, in our astrophysical explorations, we discover that a race of super-beings created the observable universe, so be it. We are ontological non-dogmatists, letting the ontological chips fall where they may just so long as the theory specifying the ontology is the best one going. We jealously reserve the right to be mistaken in our view of what exists, given that theories often change under pressure from further investigation.”

Thomas W. Clark; Founder of Center For Naturalism; Intro toToo Good to Be True, Too Obscure to Explain: Cognitive Shortcomings of Belief in God

I have noticed several inverted uses of the words “epistemic” and “ontological” amongst the writings of the materialist illuminati. Traditionally, epistemic means reference to knowledge, while ontologic means reference to existence. If we take those definitions as valid, then Clark has certainly braided the two together in his fundamentals. And I think that it does appear to be the case that Clark and the naturalists are interested in the truth statements which they think science can give them, not in the actual outcomes of the exploration of material existence.

As with all Scientism-ists, Clark seems blissfully unaware of the necessary compact that science has with itself: Don’t experiment on that which you cannot measure. In other words, voluntary materialism. Clark believes that science can determine, scientifically, that there is no non-material existence, despite the inability of materialist science to explore that question, or at least that if science cannot do that, then it is not important. Non-scientific, non-empirical knowledge is not "transparent" and cannot be real knowledge. This opens up a number of philosophical issues pointing to logical errors, such as the insufficiency of induction and deduction as approaches to Truth, which is the implied objective of Naturalism.

Is this ignorance due to incomplete knowledge of the philosophical roots of science, or is it willful ignorance? Clark makes a claim for possession of what he calls philo-scientific knowledge, which underpins his naturalism. But the philosophy of science stops when the actual work of science starts: the philosophy being the First Principles of Rational Thought, and Voluntary Materialism, while the work of science is the pursuit of material causes for material effects.

Science is, in fact, preceded by and founded upon philosophical statements, statements which cannot be proven by scientific methodology, yet which are taken as true – axiomatic – in order for science to be considered a valid pursuit. If the principle of cause and effect is not valid, then science could not make claims about valid causes for valid effects (and philosophers could not whine about uncaused causers). The validity of cause and effect is questionable as a “law”, as Hume demonstrated, as are both induction and its progeny, deduction. Yet all these are philosophical presuppositions which underlie science without any hope of proving them true using science as the vehicle of proof.

The unfettered belief in science as the mediator of all knowledge is a contemporary statement of A. J. Ayer’s Positivist Idealism at its worst, and is in fact extremely close to Phyrronian skepticism, if one realizes that science can tell us nothing that is not contingent. Given that, then we can actually know nothing for certain, except as a poor shadow of true knowledge, a contingent vapor that can evaporate overnight as new scientific findings replace it. So Naturalism is a belief in, well, nothing, really. Certainly not certainty.

And this is confirmed in Clark’s paper on death, where he argues with other Atheists over the nothingness that comes after death. Nothingness, Clark argues is too generous. We don’t positively fall into nothingness, what happens to us is: nothing. This is not too fine a point for a Naturalist to argue, apparently, and still the scientific studies that support this argument are somehow missing and not referenced at all.

It becomes apparent that Naturalism is not science-related at all, then. Naturalists use a ghost of an idea of what science should be, at least in their Naturalist minds, and then claim that as a basis, not for their individual ideas, but for the general existence of Naturalism.

” From the point of view of this project, the existence of the supernatural is simply unmotivated, an explanatory non-starter or superfluity. The supernatural, after all, is just that which cannot find a place in an empirically well-supported theory. If it did, it would cease to be supernatural – it would be immediately naturalized by its observational and theoretical connections to other natural phenomena, those entities and processes that do have a place in the theory. The project of gaining secure empirical knowledge therefore undermines the plausibility of and need for supernatural explanations. Indeed, the single most salient point (perhaps the only point!) of agreement among philo-scientific naturalists – an argumentative, fractious crew – is about the non-reality of the supernatural”

The “project of gaining secure empirical knowledge” is another statement of Positivist Idealism. This objective is not just paramount for the Positivist, Naturalist, Atheist, it is the only objective that is allowed under their concept of reality. The need for solely materialist explanens is demonstrated in Clark’s assessment of the Naturalist approach to God:

” The traditional Abrahamic god, a prime exemplar of the supernatural, is a patently unexplained explainer and thus necessarily absent from an ontology driven by the demand for explanatory transparency. Whether God is brought in to explain the creation of the universe or the design of life, in neither case can the supernaturalist provide an account of God’s nature or how he operates. But good explanations don’t simply posit the existence of some entity or process to fill a purported explanatory gap, in this case a creative, designing intelligence; they must supply considerable additional information to achieve explanatory adequacy. A good theistic explanation would have to, for example, supply concrete specifications for God – his motives, characteristics, powers and modes of operation – to shed light on how and why he created certain species and not others, for instance. It would also have to show his relationship to antecedent and surrounding conditions: his historical provenance, his ontological status (mental, physical, or what?), and, not to put too fine a point on it, his current location. Further, an adequate theistic explanation would have to provide independent intersubjective evidence for God’s existence beyond his posited role as creator-designer. Without such evidence, in principle available to any impartial observer, there are no reliable grounds to suppose he exists.

Again Clark asserts without proof that there can be no supernatural, or it would be explainable naturally. This is more than an uncomfortable dichotomy, it is a direct contradiction of defined terminology, a confusion of non-comparables. It is both a self-contradiction (paradox), and a category fallacy. These logic errors are standards in the scientism philosophy; Clark merely decorates the fallacies with ever more outrageous, egregious demands. The illogic, again, goes either unnoticed or purposefully ignored, either of which is inexcusable.

Contrary to his initial claim, Clark does derive his philosophy from his concept of science and its limitless abilities to explain. Scientism thus derived is fatally flawed by its own logical failures. But possibly the Naturalist, Scientism-ist, Atheist like Clark does not recognize logic or rational thought as valid, because they do not derive directly from, nor can they be verified by, Science. Logic and rationality are both… non-material, non-measurable, have no mass/energy or length/width/height. Under the aegis of clark’s scientism, logic and rationality do not exist because they cannot be proven.

” If, as the naturalist contends, the most reliable grounds for believing in something’s existence is that it plays a role in our best, most predictive explanations, then there’s no good reason to believe in the supernatural, since nothing supernatural plays such a role.”

But then he denies that:

” Of course the naturalist doesn’t claim to be able to disprove the existence of the supernatural, but lack of disproof is not proof of existence. If it were, one’s ontology would necessarily expand to include all logically conceivable entities, however scant the evidence for them – an unwieldy universe indeed.”

A strange pair of statements, especially considering that Clark had originally taken the position that ontology doesn’t matter to him.

” Belief in God, a cognitive cul-de-sac, is ruled out by the naturalist’s desire for explanatory transparency, a transparency exemplified by science.”

If by transparency Clark means a clear view of Truth according to his need for a philo-scientific epistemology, then science certainly does NOT provide such a thing, and actual scientists will attest to that. Even PZ and sometimes Massimo claim that truth is not found in science.

Clark is out on a limb of his own creation here. A. J. Ayer, the proponent of Positivism a half century ago in his book, "Language, Truth and Logic", issued this statement:

"For the admission that there were some facts about the world which could be known independently from experience would be incompatible with our fundamental contention that a sentence says nothing unless it is empirically verifiable."

This contention is untenable. First, experience is not exclusive to sensory input as the Naturalists would have us believe; in fact, more experience is subjective than objective. Second, language contains a vast store of meanings that are not empirically verifiable. Third, knowledge is not necessarily restricted to language restraints. Moreover, the Positivism of Ayer has long since been demoted in philosophical circles, and it is doubtful that he reached much acceptance in the scientific realm either.

A definitive book that logically dismantles Positivism was written by Brand Blanshard: ”Reason and Analysis”. This marvelous work systematically dismantles the rationalizations that form Scientism and Naturalism. The necessity of understanding logic and rational thought processes before trying to create a philosophy (or worldview) remains an absolute must, if one cares enough to be rational first, philosophical second.

Clark fails this.

As a summary statement of Clark’s "philo-scientific epistemology" hypothesis, the following statement serves:

”If you’re interested in objectivity, the choice between the relatively rigorous epistemic demands of naturalism and the more relaxed demands of theism is obvious. If you want a picture of the world more or less as it is, insulated as much as possible from the distorting effects of your own all-too-human psychology, you will stick with science. Not that science is infallible, but it fully recognizes and tries to reduce the influence of wishful thinking when representing reality.”

The demands of Naturalism cut short the availability of reality that is observable. This defect is not recognized, because it is a presupposition that is unstated, being an axiom. The axioms that the undetectable cannot exist, that uncaused causers cannot exist, that science is the only valid way of knowing, these are not provable using science. So these axioms to Scientism are not adequate knowledge under the arbitrary restrictions placed on reality by Scientism itself and its faithful adherents, such as Clark. The result is an epistemology that has strangled itself in logical defects a priori.

The logical failures of Scientism are seen everywhere within the myopic boundaries imposed by Scientistic Naturalism. Here’s one last example: logic itself is not validatable or provable using science. What is apparent is the lack of knowledge within Scientistic Naturalism of both science and its logical foundations, and the limitations of science due to the epistemological failures of induction and deduction as sources of absolute knowledge. While this ignorance is correctable, the Truth assertions made under the influence of this ignorance render Scientistic Naturalism to be a form of faith, a religious cult of science worship.