It has become standard practice for scientists to avoid the possibility of references to God by adopting methodological naturalism, a method that assumes that the reality of the universe, as it can be accessed by empirical enquiry, is to be explained solely with recourse to natural phenomena. In this essay, I critique the Christian practice of this method, arguing that a Christian's practices should always reflect her belief that the universe is created and sustained by the triune God. This leads (...) me to contend that the Christian should adopt a theologically humble approach to the sciences, with which she humbly acknowledges that special divine action is not discernible by empirical science. To further my critique, I consider three ways in which the practice of MN can be particularly problematic for Christianity. (shrink)

Methodological naturalism has been defended on both intrinsic and pragmatic grounds. Both of these defenses agree that methodological naturalism is a principle of science according to which the scientist ought to eschew talk of causally efficacious disembodied minds. I argue that this is the wrong interpretation of methodological naturalism. Methodological naturalism does not constrain the theories that scientists may conjecture, but how those theories may be justified. On this view, methodological naturalism is a principle of science according to which supernatural (...) methods of justification, such as faith, are eschewed. (shrink)

In his book Między ukryciem a jawnością [Between Hiddenness and Openness] (2023), Professor Jacek Wojtysiak argues that on the assumption of atheistic naturalism, no convincing explanation can be given for the ‘great fact of faith,’ that is, the phenomenon of the historical persistence and universality of the belief in the existence of God. The purpose of this paper is to challenge this thesis. Drawing on selected theories from the field of the Cognitive Science of Religion, I sketch a naturalistic explanation (...) of how religious belief arises. (shrink)

As relações entre ciência e religião são complexas. Um dos problemas que se apresentam dizem respeito a por que não constam, na ciência e na história moderna, referências e explicações que apelem a entidades como Deus, anjos e demônios. Duas respostas – entre outras – podem ser dadas ao problema. A primeira é que, dada a natureza da ciência, o sobrenatural está excluído a priori de seu meio. A segunda é que a ciência não contém explicações sobrenaturais, a posteriori, porque (...) tais explicações não se mostraram adequadas durante o desenvolvimento da ciência moderna. Contudo, se não há nenhum impedimento a priori para as explicações sobrenaturais na ciência, sustentaremos, seguindo os argumentos de Dawes e Schick, que a melhor resposta ao problema parece ser a solução a posteriori. Porém, discordamos que sustentar tal posição acarrete o cientismo. Contra o cientismo seguimos os argumentos de Feser. (shrink)

This article challenges Philip Kitcher’s recent proposals for an ‘enlightened secularism’. I use William James’s theory of the emotions and his related discussion of ‘temperaments’ to argue that religious and naturalistic commitments are grounded in tacit, inarticulate ways that one finds oneself in a world. This indicates that, in many cases, religiosity and naturalism are grounded not in rational and evidential considerations, but in a tacit and implicit sense of reality which is disclosed through phenomenological enquiry. Once the foundational role (...) of these temperaments is appreciated, it emerges that enlightened secularism relies upon a facile conception of the nature of religious belief – one that lessens its chances for success. The article ends with some positive proposals for incorporating phenomenological insights into debates about science, religion, and secularism. (shrink)

Creationists have long argued that evolutionary science is committed to a dogmatic metaphysics of naturalism and materialism, which is based on faith or ideology rather than evidence. The standard response to this has been to insist that science is not committed to any such metaphysical doctrine, but only to a methodological version of naturalism, according to which science may only appeal to natural entities and processes. But this whole debate presupposes that there is a clear distinction between the natural and (...) the supernatural, and thus that naturalism is a meaningful doctrine. I argue that this assumption is false. The concepts of the natural and the supernatural are in fact hopelessly obscure, such that the claim that science is committed to methodological naturalism cannot be made good. This is no victory for anti-naturalists however; explicitly supernaturalist theories, such as Creationism, can be ruled out of scientific consideration as a priori incoherent, given that they presuppose for their intelligibility that there is a meaningful natural-supernatural distinction. This is not the case for standard scientific theories however, as they are not explicitly naturalistic theories; they do not postulate natural or physical entities or processes as such. (shrink)

As relações entre ciência e religião são complexas. Um dos problemas que se apresentam dizem respeito a por que não constam, na ciência e na história moderna, referências e explicações que apelem a entidades como Deus, anjos e demônios. Duas respostas – entre outras – podem ser dadas ao problema. A primeira é que, dada a natureza da ciência, o sobrenatural está excluído a priori de seu meio. A segunda é que a ciência não contém explicações sobrenaturais, a posteriori, porque (...) tais explicações não se mostraram adequadas durante o desenvolvimento da ciência moderna. Contudo, se não há nenhum impedimento a priori para as explicações sobrenaturais na ciência, sustentaremos, seguindo os argumentos de Dawes e Schick, que a melhor resposta ao problema parece ser a solução a posteriori. Porém, discordamos que sustentar tal posição acarrete o cientismo. Contra o cientismo seguimos os argumentos de Feser. (shrink)