Naturalism vs. Supernaturalism Balance Sheet

by Chris Cogan (Copyright 5/30/2005)

Abstract: Philosophical Naturalism and Supernaturalism are compared on a number of variables, such as proof of possibility, Occam's Razor corresponding epistemological theories, conceptual coherence, success in providing a rational understanding of Existence, and so on. In each case, supernaturalism is found to be wanting. Along the way, some conventional ideas about the validity of the senses, causation, and so on are dealt with in an unusual (if not truly novel) way.

Preface

The "project" here is to provide a fairly nearly complete point-by-point comparison of naturalism and supernaturalism, and thus to present the many reasons for accepting naturalism and for rejecting supernaturalism.

If the reader is expecting some sort of "balanced" view of the differences between naturalism and supernaturalism, the reader would be wise to forget it. Though I do not expect to convince even all rational readers of the basic correctness of my views, at least not upon first serious consideration, I regard a "balanced" or "unbiased" comparison as being essentially impossible in principle, except in a pointless technical sense. It would be like comparing the pleasures of a happy love life with the pleasures of shoving corroded railroad spikes into one's eyes, if you get my drift.

I do claim, however, to have been objective in my descriptions and points made, aside from some stylistic touches that more or less give my own views away. Objectivity does not require neutrality. It does require acceptance of the facts, pleasant or not, which is something that supernaturalists tend to forget in their willingness to trample over logic, science, history, and ordinary reason in their support of the existence of ghosties, gods, "spirits," God, Zeus, or mystical/magical forces such as synchronicity, "elan vital," and bazillions of other supernatural whatsits).

I should note also that that, for the most part, or at least for the most serious claims, the points made for naturalism and supernaturalism are essentially inherent in the respective positions. There are a few issues where the points I make are not such as to make their negations logically contradictory in the ordinary sense, but the main basic points derive directly from the definitional characteristics (including, in the case of supernaturalism, the implicit denial of traits knowable by normal means).

At some point, I may have further items to add, both to the body of this document, and to the summary table at the end, and further commentaries as well. I also expect to do more clean-up editing and possible reorganizing. The current organization doesn't seem quite right, but alternatives that I've tried didn't seem any better, so it may mean I need to get a better "sense" of what I can do to improve it.

I considered calling this a face-off instead of a "balance sheet," but that suggests too strongly that I'm presenting a case for both sides. Instead, what I'm doing is comparing them on what I believe and argue are their actual characteristics and merits, with no real attempt being made to give the arguments of supernaturalists. Most of these arguments are so bad that they are hardly worth considering for more than an instant anyway, since nearly all of them depend on false-alterative fallacies, arguments from ignorance, circular reasoning, mysterianism (used in a form of argument from ignorance), self-refuting claims, and misrepresentations of naturalism (in order to make it seem that supernaturalism is needed to fill some hole or "gap" in Naturalism), appeals to mystical experiences ("I felt God. Therefore God exists." -- but did he feel God, or merely a brain-spasm?), and plain non sequiturs. However, to give supernaturalism the best chance I can, I may later expand this essay or write another one to deal explicitly with the arguments as offered by supernaturalists.

Introduction

Philosophical Naturalism assumes that the natural world (which may be infinitely larger and richer than the known universe) is all that exists. Supernaturalism always assumes both the existence (in some form) of the natural world and a supernatural realm of some sort (usually occupied primarily by God, but not necessarily). However, despite the claims of many to have proven the existence of a supernatural realm and of specific supernatural entities or forces (such as God), no actual convincing proofs or even strong arguments have been advanced. Instead, we see a stream of false-alternative fallacies, arguments from ignorance, circular reasoning, and appeals to subjective experiences (i.e., religious experiences, "direct contact with God," "I just know in my heart," "just knowing," "intuition," and so on).

It occurred to me one day after reading Barbara Forrest's excellent paper on the relationship between philosophical naturalism and methodological naturalism, that a comparison of naturalism and supernaturalism would be worth doing, because, as far as I could see then (and now), there are no legitimate advantages to supernaturalism, either in terms of cognitive justification nor as a philosophy to live by.

My first draft was purely in the form of an essay, but I thought it would be nice to have a "balance sheet" table comparing naturalism and supernaturalism on a point-by-point basis.

In some respects, this has not worked well, because, often, one or the other has little to be said about it with respect to a particular aspect. For example, we don't need to belabor the existence of the natural world, since even supernaturalists are obliged to accept its existence in order to have anyone real to talk to about it. If the natural world does not exist, then neither do supernaturalists.

In all cases below, except in the summary table, the first column pertains to philosophical naturalism and the second to philosophical supernaturalism.

In the summary, the first column indicates the trait on which a comparison is made, and the remaining two columns indicate the summary of my remarks on that trait.

My final concluding remark follows the summary table.

General Characterizations

Before getting into specifics, I think we should give a more or less informal characterization of naturalism and supernaturalism, so the reader will have a surer idea of my use of the terms. Naturalism and supernaturalism, but especially supernaturalism, have various meanings, even in philosophy. The definitions and characterizations I have chosen seem sufficiently general to give the reader something to which he can relate the subsequent discussion and comparison.

Definition, Description, Conceptual Coherence

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism: not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material; "supernatural forces and occurrences and beings" (from: http://www.wordreference.com/definition/supernatural, 5/21/2005) The supernatural realm, is above all, defined as not like the natural world. It is not definable in terms of positive traits. Its one positive "trait" is not really a trait at all, but an alleged relationship: It is described as "above," "beyond," "higher," or "transcending" the natural world. Even here, it is described only by comparison with the natural world, not in terms of positive traits that it has on its own. Even specifying that a supernatural whatsit is infinite is not to define how it is supernatural, but only to use the concept of infinity in an arbitrary way. In what respect is it infinite? Size? But size is spatial. Power, but power is a concept from the natural world, and it's always finite. Infinite power is still a negation of the finiteness of things in the natural world; it's power that's not like the power of anything we know of in the natural world.

Naturalism: (philosophy) the doctrine that the world can be understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations (from: http://www.wordreference.com/definition/natural, 5/21/2005) The natural world is describable in terms of positive facts, positive data about it, and the things in it. We can specify any of a range of definite qualities, and give specific quantities to many of the attributes of the natural world and the things in it. I would also like to offer the view, largely equivalent to the above, that the natural world is simply the world given by our senses, given in the sense of "that's a given," and given in the sense that our senses provide us data about this world. I won't go here into an elaborate support of the validity of the senses, but I will give a brief summary later, in discussing explicit epistemological differences between naturalism and supernaturalism.

Comments: Basically, naturalism refers to the idea that the "natural world" is all that exists or that we know to exist. Supernaturalism is the view that something else exists that is not subject even to the kinds of causal principles of the natural world, something outside of or beyond or higher than the natural world. Usually, the supernatural realm is "populated" with a God, or gods, or "sprits," or "forces."

Metaphysics and Epistemology

Epistemology is the primary branch of philosophy, but even epistemology depends on some metaphysical presuppositions, because whether we can know anything and what we can know, and how we can know it, depends on the existence of a world and a mind and a cognitive connection between the two. For example, if we assume that causation, in a metaphysically general sense, does not occur, then we deny any possibility of there being any connection between anything in the world and ourselves that could be a cognitive link, and thus must deny the possibility of knowledge (and of mind itself, for that matter, since, without causation (in the broadest sense), there cannot eve be temporal continuity or structural integrity). 

Both naturalism and supernaturalism assume some metaphysical ideas, but they have completely different relationships to their claimed realms.

We start with:

Possible Existence

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

It is not known or proved or shown that anything supernatural can possibly exist, even in principle. The supernatural realm does not even have a proof of possibility. Without the proof of possibility, most of the rest of what is said about it is empty nonsense the minute someone thinks of it. This is not some sort of unfair "bias" that favors the natural world; the natural world has already established that it is possible and real; the supernatural has not. If and when it is proved to be at least possible, the "unfairness" will begin to shift. If and when it is proved to exist much of the rest of the "unfairness" will go away. Not only does any particular supernaturalistic claim have a burden of proof specific to that claim (see below), but also the mere possibility of supernatural things has a burden of proof until some specific instance of an existing supernatural thing is proved, or until a good possibility argument can be made. It does not do to simply say, "Well, I don't know of any reason why it couldn't exist." That is merely a profession of ignorance, not a proof of facts about what is metaphysically possible.

The natural world is known to be possible, because it exists. There is no reasonable doubt that the natural world exists (there may be doubts as to what it consists of, whether it exists in the way we tend to think it does, but there is no rational doubt that it objectively exists -- even Berkeley's philosophy granted this kind of existence to the natural world). Some may argue that we can't use the fact that it exists as an argument for its possibility because (they might argue), it has not been established that it does exist. Fine, but the fact that it seems to exist provides a prima facie basis for supposing it to be possible for it to exist. Further, despite the efforts of many, no good argument for its impossibility has ever been found (at least not so that it has become general knowledge in philosophy). Finally, science has effectively proved that the natural world is possible, in the sense of providing a progressively enriched view of it in rational terms. It may be that the natural world does not exist as we usually think it to exist, but it is hardly reasonable, at this point, to argue that it doesn't have objective existence at all. Further, nothing in all of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity support's claims of the non-objectivity of the physical world. All that can be inferred from these theories and the evidence they are based on is that the world is not objective in the sense that the natural world was supposed to be when Newtonian physics was dominant in physics. Further, in most cases, when the claim that some aspects of quantum physics are not objective are made, what is meant is something far different from what is meant by non-objectivity in a philosophical sense: What is often meant is merely that the attributes of a particle, such as its momentum, is not an isolated fact but is determined by the relationship between the means of measurement and the particle being measured, and that what we are actually measuring in some of these cases is not even the same thing as what we would be measuring were we measuring, say, the momentum of a cannonball rolling along a smooth surface. What is called naïve realism in physics may not be acceptable (because it carries with it "Newtonian" presuppositions not all of which are necessarily true), but this does not preclude all reasonable forms of realism. It precludes only that class of realisms that result in these problems. There is no such thing as a rational scientific argument against realism as such, since, if realism is truly false, there can't be anything at all for science to study, not even consistent hallucinations. There is also no rational philosophical argument against a bare form of realism that doesn't commit itself to various theories of perception and so on, since even a denial of realism requires some form of realism.

Comments: This point should be superfluous, but some have claimed otherwise (arguing, as Kant did, that ideas about the natural world had "antinomies" that showed them to be fundamentally invalid in objective terms, and that, therefore, the natural world, as represented by those basic "categories," could not be the real reality, but only a "phenomenal" world, constructed (by no one knows what means) by the human mind according the specifications of these categories (such as ideas of space, time, causation). However, even though Kant denied the possibility of knowledge of reality, he granted a kind of grudging pseudo-reality to the phenomenal world, in that he regarded the way the mind constructed reality to be universally the same for everyone (though how he thought he could even know that other people actually existed, I never bothered to find out; wouldn't they, too, merely be phenomenal, and not really real?), and therefore granted a kind of semi-objectivity to the phenomenal world -- pseudo-objectivity that was quickly rejected by people who accepted his basic dichotomy but who rejected the idea that everyone's mind provided the same kind of reality. For this reason, I regard it as worthwhile to argue that the natural world is possible; even if Kant did not altogether deny its reality, others have.

Logical Impossibility

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Not only is the supernatural not shown to be possible, but it can actually be shown to be impossible. The supernatural is defined or asserted to be immaterial in a fundamental sense, to be nonsubstantial, and yet, the only primary thing that distinguishes what exists on its own from what doesn't exist at all is its substantiality. Substance is the basis of continued existence through time, of the specific identity of an existing thing, and of causation. Without substantiality, all there is is attributes, states, events, processes, etc., of things without the things themselves (like eating without food and without anything to eat it). See Appendix 1.

The natural world is clearly not logically impossible; it exists. See below.

Actual Existence

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

The existence of the supernatural realm is not axiomatic. It is not evident at all, for that matter, but the point here is that it has no status corresponding to the cognitive status of the natural world. If it is possible and if it actually exists must be rationally established, not merely assumed (as it so often is). Attempts at showing that supernatural things are possible usually focus on particular things. Occasionally, someone will attempt to show that the idea of God is logically consistent, for example, but these attempts are, at best, superficial, and rest on various auxiliary assumptions about what is metaphysically possible. The result is not to prove that God (or whatever, is actually possible, but only that there is no contradiction in the terms used in "defining" the thing in question, as these terms are understood by the person making the claims. One example of a problem in this respect is in the defense of the idea of omnipotence of God. It is argued that we don't need to worry about whether God can make a rock so big He can't lift it because omnipotence really only means that God can do just things that are logically possible, not that God must be able to do things that are logically contradictory. However, if we grant this qualification, what do we have left? God is supposed to be supernatural (if anything is!), but we don't have any knowledge of the supernatural to enable us to tell whether or not something that is supernatural can do much of anything. It might be, for all we know, that being supernatural means that "omnipotence" would consist of being able to do nothing more significant than occasionally shift the position of a photon. That might be the absolute maximum that any supernatural thing can do, simply by virtue of being supernatural. But, supernaturalism itself suffers the same kind of problem. For all the supernaturalist can show, it might be a basic metaphysical fact of existing that existing and being supernatural are logically impossible (as I claim in an appendix is actually the case). Thus, even aside from specific arguments questioning the logical possibility of the supernatural, it is neither axiomatic nor otherwise proved that it is possible for supernatural things to exist.

The natural world is axiomatic. We are born into it, are parts of it, and it is given by our senses. The fundamental principle of causation (that a thing's behavior is an expression of its identity) applies to it not merely in casual experiences and observation, but also to the frontiers of scientific investigation. The axioms of existence (something exists), identity (what a thing is actually is what it is), and consciousness (axiomatic background in any specific moment of consciousness of anything) all apply to us (natural world beings) in the natural world. Though we don't need proof of this fact, we do need a validation of it, which we have: The natural world is given to us by our senses, and it exhibits the kind of consistency that suggests that it is not merely an elaborate hallucination or dream, and even hallucinations and dreams are evidence of the existence of a natural world, if not of the natural world that we normally think exists when we are not engaged in methodically doubting things in the midst of philosophical thought. Further, even if we assume that we don't know that the natural world exists, the assumption of a natural world is the logically minimum hypothesis for integrating the data of experience (including subjective experiences, such as mystical experiences of "direct contact with God," etc.). Any other hypothesis requires multiple metaphysical levels in order to provide a basis for the apparent objectivity of the natural world. If the world only exists when it is being perceived (as Berkeley said), then in order to things in it remain in existence when we are not perceiving them, or to have them reappear when we situate ourselves so as to perceive them again. Berkeley's "solution" to this problem was to postulate that God perceives everything all the time, but to do this he had to introduce God. A far simpler hypothesis is to simply suppose that the natural world is real, that it exists essentially independently of our perceiving it, and that that existence is what explains why our dining-room table reappears when we look back at it after looking away. This one idea, of the existence of a natural world with its own consistent causal principles, accounts for all of these things, and it even ultimately accounts for the seeming "deceptiveness" of the senses (by means of scientific theories of how our perceptual mechanisms work).

Comments: While supernaturalism is often taken as axiomatic (especially by those who wish to insinuate that there is something wrong with you if you don't accept the alleged supernaturalism), it is unable to show that it is in fact axiomatic. This is because it fails the tests of axiomaticity, such as whether it is presupposed even in its denial. It is logically self-contradictory to deny the existence of the natural world, because it is assumed that it exists in the very act of seriously stating that it doesn't (which would amount to denying one's own existence as well). There is no such problem with denying the supernatural, because the existence of anything we know to exist does not depend on it. We can exist whether the supernatural does or does not, so we do not dive into this kind of contradictoriness in bare denial of the supernatural as we do in the denial of the existence of the natural realm (which is, by definition, the world we are given us by the senses).

Identity and Causation

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

By definition, the supernatural is not like the natural world, and there is no established specification of the metaphysics of the supernatural other than that it is not like the natural world, it is "above" the natural world (where "above" means "arbitrarily proclaimed to be metaphysically prior to and greater than"). As to causal relations and mathematics, forget it: The supernatural is typically arbitrarily asserted not to be bound by laws of causation, and there is not enough "meat" in the specifics of the supernatural to allow for extensive mathematical description.

The natural world has a coherent metaphysics in which the laws of identity and causation (what a thing does expresses or exhibits what it is) are supreme. The natural world is describable in terms of definite attributes, causal relations, and mathematics.

Comments: Causation, as I use the term here, is a bit deeper and broader than the concept of causation as it is often used in the physical sciences. For one thing, it is not subject to the criticisms of David Hume, since to exist at all is to be something in particular, and to be something in particular is to be causal in some ways and not others.

Cognitive Status

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

We do not experience and deal with the supernatural continuously during our waking moments (and those who claim they do have a burden of proof to show -- even to themselves -- that what they are experiencing is supernatural). Supernaturalism routinely ignores obvious naturalistic explanations (which are often later proven to be true) in favor of a baseless predisposition to automatically attribute any unexplained phenomenon to a supernatural pseudo-explanation.

We experience it and deal with it continuously during our waking moments. It is not something that we supposedly have contact with only through dreams, special feelings, a sense of the immanent, or any other such non-sensory mode. Naturalism does not attempt to evade the implications of observable evidence by "explaining" things on the basis of unobserved and needless supernatural "beings." Absolutely all experience counts as evidence of the natural world.

Comments: Supernaturalism's failure to have any cognitive support is not a minor failure. The failure is so complete, that asserting supernaturalism is like asserting that an alien from another galaxy is the proper suspect in an ordinary murder case, when there is not even any evidence that the alien in question even exists and when there is not the slightest bit of evidence found to suggest that the person was killed by anything other than another human being. This failure has never stopped supernaturalists, of course, and I certainly don't expect any stampede away from supernaturalism for this reason. What I wish to emphasize here is that, if anyone continues to believe in or accept the supernatural, he does so for primarily psychological reasons, not because he has any good reason to do so. Supernaturalism is neither objectively axiomatic nor based rationally on evidence or logical argument based on established premises.

Philosophical Priority

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

There is no contradiction in the proposition that the supernatural does not exist, any more than there is in saying that Quetzalcoatl doesn't exist. Supernaturalism is inherently secondary, derivative (conceptually parasitical on concepts and principles of philosophical naturalism).

Naturalism, because of its epistemological primacy, and because the natural world is given to us by our senses, it is prior to any form of supernaturalism. We can't even question the natural world's existence without assuming it nor can we assert the existence of a supernatural realm (even just to ourselves) without assuming the existence of the natural world. Even we are, at this level, just "things" that exist in the natural world. Any assertion of supernaturalism is thus a kind of add-on. Supernaturalists claim only that there is also a supernatural realm, not that there is no natural world at all.

Comments: As we will see, this priority of the natural world over supernaturalism has important implications, even for those who claim to have good reason for thinking that something supernatural exists. The priority of the natural world arises from the fact that that's where we actually exist. Everything else is secondary to that basic fact.

Associated Epistemological Views

Specific epistemological views differ with respect to the natural and the supernatural. The differences in methods and results are not only important in themselves, but for our evaluation as to whether there is any actual point to either. If a philosophical position is, for some reason, accepted as true, but if it provides us with no cognitively useful implications or principles for living our lives, pursuing knowledge, it is doubtful whether we should even bother with it, even if (for possibly mistaken reasons) we continue to regard it as true in some technical or abstract sense.

Subjectivity vs. Objectivity

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism, strictly speaking, has no epistemological method, aside from believing in things on faith, or because one feels them to be true, or because one feels that one has had "direct contact" with something supernatural. In every argument for the existence of God, for the imposition of supernaturalistic moralities, and so on, there is always, at some crucial point, the interjection of an unsubstantiated premise or a novel epistemological principle (such as the claim that we should adopt the policy not of rejecting what we can't prove or support, but of accepting any idea that we can't positively disprove, thus openly supporting the principle that there is no reason to be concerned with whether such beliefs agree with reality). These marvelous "new" epistemological principles don't generally come from philosophical and methodological naturalists because they are senseless principles, invariably being used to support nonsense and outright falsehoods merely because the believer has manage to keep himself ignorant of the relevant facts. That is, supernaturalism is, both in general, and in specifics such as these, favorable to ignorance, avoiding observational facts that conflict with beliefs, and the shutting down of rational though except insofar as it is needed to crank out more rationalizations for nonsense. Supernaturalist "epistemology" is subjectivism, nothing else. Reason, if explicitly allowed at all, is only to be used as a handy tool for special occasions, not as a general epistemological method or ideal. This is because reason does not allow one as easily to "know" things that aren't so, which is a requirement for supernaturalists, especially if they are starting out and haven't yet developed a firm blindness to facts and logic.

Methodological naturalism's approach to understanding the world is one of objectivity, of methods and rules designed for the specific purpose of determining what is objectively true independently of what a person may want or not want the truth to be. Indeed, one of the more popular criticisms of philosophical naturalism's epistemology is precisely that it does not leave room for whim, for the wishes and desires of the individual. Many supernaturalists lament that naturalism does not encourage a belief in things for which there is no evidential or logical basis, and philosophical naturalists are sometimes accused of being coldly rational, when all they are really trying to do is find out the truth. Incidentally, naturalism's objectivism also extends into moral issues, though many naturalists have not yet grasped that naturalism has these implications. More on this issue later. The point at the moment is that naturalism's epistemological method is inherently objectively based and oriented, so it has application in the real world. Indeed, this is one of the major complaints about it from supernaturalists who would prefer that we live as if we were unable to determine at least some important and useful truths about the world by means that consistently and progressively work.

Comments: Supernaturalism not only is, but promotes, subjectivism and disconnection from cognitive contact with anything real. It encourages people to suppose that whatever they imagine to be real actually is real. Specific systems of supernaturalistic beliefs do protect themselves by denying that any other subjectively-based ideas are true or knowable, but the premise of supernaturalism itself is a "wedge" belief that begins the process of separating the mind from reality in general.

Epistemological Method

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism has no epistemology. Supernaturalism has no corresponding method other than rampant subjectivism: If it feels true, it must be true (even though this "method" is one of the most easily exposed errors in human mental processes). This "method" goes by many variant terms and expressions, some of which, such as "feeling in one's heart," and " direct contact" (allegedly with God, typically, but also with all sorts of other things), and, of course, "faith." Because it is a method with no actual method at all, it can be used to "prove" (or "justify") any idea that a person can so much as somehow vaguely identify well enough to say, "I believe that." Because supernaturalism has no cognitive method at all, no sound procedure (even ill-defined) for reliably establishing true (or approximately true) supernatural propositions, it logically empties itself of objective content and basis and dives headlong into a great black chasm of intellectual fog and nonsense. Supernaturalism, because it has no real method nor, as far as anyone can tell, anything to apply the method to, has no boundaries on the nature of concepts. In supernaturalistic theories, such as Platonism, ideas themselves may be thought to have their own metaphysical existence. If there are constraints set on what concepts or "universals" can be, these constraints themselves are not cognitively based, but derive from such things as the esthetics of the supernaturalist. Thus, the "idea" of a horse is supposedly that of a perfect horse, and, as such, it need not have any particular correspondence to the horses in the real world. And Platonism is one of the better ideas about ideas derived from, or dependent on supernaturalism.

Naturalism has an epistemology (which is found in many variants). It is called methodological naturalism. Naturalism has methodological naturalism, expressed in various ways, but most relevantly here, in the scientific method, the method of performing cognitive activities to verify, test, confirm, clarify, refine, refute, or replace hypotheses and theories. The scientific method depends on objective observation, determining the empirical implications of hypotheses, and using the actual empirical facts to determine whether they may be true or false. It does not depend on one's subjective feelings of "direct contact" with whatever is claimed. Einstein's theories were not tested by whether or not people felt that beams of light would be bent as they past massive objects. Even lowly concept formation is different under naturalistic presuppositions, because it is assumed that the function of concepts is cognitive, and it is not assumed that the world necessarily neatly divides things up into Platonic or other "kinds" that a person may have in mind. Unlike supernaturalism, a rational naturalistic epistemology has to make concepts fit the facts, rather than trying to force-fit the facts to concepts or merely saying that the facts about real horses are irrelevant to the idea of a horse.

Comments: Supernaturalism is not only subjective in its basic nature, but its epistemological method simply is subjectivism. It has no method, other than believing what one feels or is told by some "authority" or guru or prophet or channeler or "psychic," etc. Methodological naturalism is the premise of science precisely because the premise of supernaturalism is absolutely useless as a basis for science. Even if we needed to introduce the idea of intelligent agency in science generally, there would be no reason to suppose that such agency was supernatural. All scientific (i.e., empirical/experiential) evidence can provide in principle is evidence of agency, not of supernatural agency, because there are no specific empirical "markers" that are specific to, unique to, supernatural causation. There is nothing empirical that someone might claim to be specific to supernaturalism that could not also, as far as we could tell, be produced by purely naturalistic causes, and without the introduction of any bizarre metaphysics to do it.

Evidential Requirements

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

The problem is that there are no known or established empirical/ observational/ experiential "markers" for the supernatural. "Feelings" of "direct contact" are irrelevant, as are all the other popular attempts to weasel out of simply admitting that a belief is unjustified but one feels compelled to believe it anyway. The issue may be put this way: What unique empirical or observational or experiential facts necessarily relate only to the actual existence of a supernatural whatsit? And, why couldn't those exact same markers also be markers for something completely naturalistic, perhaps something naturalistic that is currently completely outside our knowledge? By the Principle of Naturalistic Sufficiency, there are no such genuinely distinctive markers for the supernatural, so a special argument will be required for any claim that such a unique marker or set of them has been found. Supernaturalism routinely ignores obvious naturalistic explanations (which are often later proven to be true) in favor of a baseless predisposition to automatically attribute any unexplained phenomenon to a supernatural pseudo-explanation.

Because the natural world is essentially axiomatic, we need no special indicators, special observations, or empirical "markers" to be able to know that we are in contact with the natural world. Even a person who is dreaming or hallucinating is in contact with the natural world in the sense that his consciousness (or semi-consciousness) is being fed data about the present state of his brain. A sleeping person generally is not conscious enough to be aware of this, but scientific research indicates that this is true, nevertheless. In fact, as far as we can tell, any experience that a person has, whether he's fully conscious or not, has or easily can have a purely naturalistic explanation. Naturalism does not attempt to evade the implications of observable evidence by "explaining" things on the basis of unobserved and needless supernatural "beings." Absolutely all experience counts as evidence of the natural world.

Comments: The failure of supernaturalism to provide any evidence that is truly distinguished or distinguishable from evidence for things in the natural world (possibly including aspects of it that we do not yet understand), is a severe problem for supernaturalism. With all of its alleged data being first attributed to the natural world, the supernatural world never really gets a chance at it, since there is never any reason to go beyond the natural world. At most, there may be reasons for going beyond what we currently think we know about the natural world, as when we come up with naturalistic explanations for phenomena (such as lightning, etc.) that have been attributed to supernatural beings (God, Zeus, Thor, etc.) in the past.

Possibility of Knowledge

Supernaturalism	Naturalism
Not only has supernaturalism failed to produce a proof of the bare possibility of supernatural things existing, but they have also failed to provide a proof of the bare possibility of our having any way of knowing of the existence of anything supernatural if it did exist.	The possibility of knowing of the existence of the natural world is not an open question, but, if it were, any single instant of consciousness would be proof of the possibility of the existence of the natural world.

Burden of Proof

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Because the supernatural is not axiomatic, not part of the natural world, not part of what we are given by our senses or other experiential data, it has a fundamental burden of proof that the existence of the natural world does not have. Therefore, unless a proven specific instance of something supernatural is found, there will remain a burden of proof just for asserting the mere and bare possibility of such a thing. This is true even aside from the positive reasons for thinking that the supernatural realm is not merely non-existent but actually logically impossible. So far, the creationists and ID crowd have been marvelously good at ignoring this rather minimal requirement. They have failed to show that it is possible for anything to exist that is also supernatural.

Because the natural world is essentially axiomatic, philosophical naturalism, in its basic form has no burden of proof. Specific forms of philosophical naturalism that make special claims have a burden of proof but only to the extent that they do make special claims. We don't have to prove that the natural world is possible; its existence proves that.

Comments: Many arguments are offered in vain attempts to prove the existence of God, but one of the major weaknesses of virtually all of them is that, even if the logic of them is sound to the last step, where they say, "Therefore, God exists," there is the problem that, even if we assume that something exists that is responsible for whatever facts (or claimed facts) are being used as premises, these arguments don't prove the existence of God or even of anything supernatural. At best, they prove the existence of something naturalistic that happens to be able to do or create whatever it is that is being used as a fact that requires the existence of God. That is, not only do they fail to prove the existence of God, but they don't even prove the existence of anything supernatural. There are a few arguments for the existence of God (and by implication, the supernatural), that do not follow this pattern, but they fail for other reasons, and so end up also failing to prove the existence of anything supernatural.

And yet, unlike the natural world, the supernatural does require special proof.

Occam's Razor

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism is not an alternative to the naturalism in the sense of proposing a completely alternative metaphysics that grants no existence to the natural world at all. Instead, it assumes both the existence of the natural world and tries to include a supernatural realm. As long as there is no further objective answering of questions provided by supernaturalism that cannot be obtained as easily by naturalistic explanations, all forms of supernaturalism will be violations of Occam's Razor because they assume, without cognitive need, the existence of both the natural and the supernatural, thus introducing an explanatory "entity" that serves no purpose. Even the assumption that physical reality is really a virtual reality requires that there be some kind of computational infrastructure that supports the required information about things that we perceive, even when we are not perceiving them. Ironically, this applies as well even to Berkeley's idealism, in which God is posited to maintain things in the physical world whenever we are not observing them: This requires a gigantic information structure which works according to the laws of physics, which amounts to a kind of real world. Of course Berkeley tramples on Occam's Razor by positing that being perceived is the only thing that keeps them in existence, and in positing the existence of God to do all this behind-the-scenes work; my point is only that, if we get rid of the natural world as a literally self-existing "entity," we must still introduce something with its formal characteristics in order to provide an explanation for the natural world's coherence. Why not just posit that the natural world itself provides its own integrity? Berkeley's elaborate system of very bad (and mostly self-refuting) arguments appears designed not to make sense of the natural world but to provide a rationalization for theism, by "refuting" naturalism and thus leaving an opening for something else to "explain" the facts.

The acceptance of the existence of the natural world is parsimonious; it assumes only one kind of basic metaphysical "entity" (whatever ultimately constitutes the natural world). The existence of the natural world is not only axiomatic, but it is also the minimum explanation that can be had for the data of experience. That is, the single postulate of the existence of the natural world as a self-existent, self-consistent, coherent realm of existence is sufficient to explain such facts as that physical objects commonly have both continuity while being observed and that they appear to us again when we re-establish the observational conditions of a previous observation (that is, if I look away from a table and then look back at it, the fact that it is there is most parsimoniously explained on the assumption that it was there all along, not on the assumption that it was re-created for or by us when we looked back at where it had been). There is no other single, coherent, and sensible hypothesis that makes this kind of sense of our experience.

Comments: The Occam's Razor consideration is related to the burden of proof issue in that, in Occam's Razor terms, the simplest obvious "theory" is simply that the natural world is all the world there is or needs to be. For this reason, any additional metaphysical and conceptual "entity" needs special proof because it is not obvious that it is required in order to adequately explain the data. If they were both at the same level in this respect, then they'd both have the same burden of proof. But, since the "hypothesis" that the natural world is all there is or needs to be is both metaphysically and epistemologically minimalist, it wins unless supernaturalism can point out some fact that requires more.

The Validity of the Senses and Perception

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism tends to discount the evidences of the senses, and to regard the senses as invalid, or deceptive, or even generally misleading (because the senses tend to encourage the idea that the natural world is real and important). Commonly, the senses and perception are "refuted" or "shown" to be invalid (in the minds of such supernaturalists) by such means as pointing out that a stick appears bent when placed in clear water diagonally, and that two lines that are actually the same length appear to us to be of different lengths, and so on. Bishop Berkeley is supposed to have made extensive use of such arguments, but, whether he did or not, others have used such arguments. Even Descartes got into the game of questioning the senses. Supernaturalists have fairly routinely made such claims, but, when they haven't, they have still frequently argued for contempt of the natural world as being inferior to, or a poor reflection of, a supernatural realm. Some have even claimed that the entire natural world is illusory. It is not explained how were they able to publish their claims in this very same illusory natural world, if it is as illusory as they claim it to be. In any case, supernaturalists tend to discount or denigrate concern with things in the natural world, including human life in that world, as being, at best, a necessary evil. This has been true for thousands of years, and has not changed to this day (though the successes of naturalism have tended to make natural-world living so attractive that some who might have been seduced by supernaturalism in the past end up remaining essentially naturalistic in our age). With this focus on the natural world, much of the psychological force of the old arguments is lost, but there are still many who cling to some supernaturalism and who consequently feel compelled to support their rationalizations by trying to discredit the pure naturalist theory of perception. This has some important implications for the recent attempts of some supernaturalists to force supernaturalism into science, but I'll deal with that issue later.

Pure naturalism holds that the senses merely provide us with evidence of the world, rather than propositional ideas about the world. Thus, when we come across a case where one line drawn on a page seems longer than another because of its visual context (such as additional lines attached at different angles to the ends of the line in question), the naturalist does not regard the senses as deceiving us, but instead regards us as deceiving ourselves as to what the evidence of our senses indicates about the world. Two major mistakes are common in this respect: Assuming that the senses are telling us solely about the world outside the sense organs, the neural channels, and the automatic processing occurring in our brains. This is silly: Our senses tell us about all of these things, all the time, but for obvious practical reasons, we generally ignore the information about our own physiological processes that is also included in our perceptions. The other mistake is assuming that the perceptual evidence is propositional, and therefore capable of being true or false. Since the data provided by the senses is no more than a summary of data from our own bodies and our world, we provide all of the propositional interpretations, such as that one line is longer than another. Another point to consider here is: If the senses are deceptive, then we can never use them to determine what is and is not the truth about such things a the relative lengths of lines drawn on paper. Why? Because the only means we have of making these determinations all (absolutely all) depend on the use of the senses. We cannot determine that our initial guess about the lengths of two lines is wrong without actually measuring them, which we do by such means as seeing how long each line is when a ruler is placed along it. If our senses are fundamentally deceptive, this method is invalid. Finally, while our interpretations of perceptual data are sometimes wrong in that we are not infallible in that respect, the overall support for the existence and some specific scientific and other claims about the natural world is so strong as to make denying it a form of irrational perversity of the sort exhibited by people who support bizarrely moronic or irrational ideas merely to get people's goats, not because such positions have any actual cognitive basis.

Comments: It may well be wondered if it makes sense to argue that the senses are deceptive when the "evidence" for supernaturalism is at least as deceptive as the senses might be supposed to be. We don't even need to know which supernaturalistic claims are false to know that most of them must be false. If a dozen supenaturalists hold fifteen or twenty incompatible supernaturalistic theories (which is not at all an uncommon occurrence), at most only one of them even can be true. That means we know, even before we get started, that fourteen out of the fifteen are false theories. And, given the general rate of reliability of supernatural claims (and the lack of any independent objective means of determining that any such claims are true), we must, if we are even marginally rational, question whether even just one such theory is true. The problem is still, as always, the lack of evidence.

General Philosophical Status

Supernaturalism	Naturalism
The supernatural world is not the default philosophical base. It is an add-on to philosophy, neither containing nor serving rationally as a philosophical basis in its own right. The supernatural realm, if it could ever be found to exist at all, would still not be cognitively given in anything like the way the natural world is.	Because we are "natural" beings born into the natural world (all of the physical universe and perhaps much more), philosophical naturalism is the default philosophical stance. The natural world is a "given," given to us by our senses, but the existence of the supernatural is not given.

Comments: It is hard, at this point, not to say, "QED" and simply stop, because, even at this point, it should be clear that supernaturalism has little going for it. However, there is more to be said, on the side of naturalism and against supernaturalism, so I will continue.

Historically, supernaturalism has been supported mainly by psychological factors rather than cognitive ones. Even the most abstract philosophical arguments have the kinds of flaws common to arguments that are only constructed as rationalizations, as seemingly rational justifications for beliefs that are held for reasons completely unrelated to the reasons supposedly underlying even the most neutral-sounding philosophical arguments. Even Kant, who rejected all of the conventional arguments for God's existence nevertheless tried to justify a belief in God by means of an argument that he knew to be unsound as a proof, but he apparently felt driven to use it anyway because he was going to believe in God regardless of the facts, and yet still felt a need for some kind of argument.

Ethics, Morality

Foundational Relationship

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Philosophical supernaturalism provides no objective basis for morality. This is partly because there is no evidence of the existence of anything supernatural (and how can an objective basis for morality be something we don't know to be real? --what kind of morality for human beings would that be?). But it is also partly because anything supernatural, even if real and proven would be fundamentally irrelevant to morality, just as it would be for physics or medicine or agriculture. There is no a priori reason why anything supernatural should be, or should be expected to be, relevant (especially in a basic way) to values or morality.

Philosophical naturalism provides an objective basis for morality: Human nature and the nature of the natural world (where human values are achieved of not). Human happiness depends on the more or less successful satisfaction of objective human needs.

Comments: Historically, both in the real world, and in the history of philosophy, supernaturalistic moralities have not been exactly exemplary of any special moral qualities that we would consider to be, in ordinary non-philosophical terms. That is, supernaturalistic moralities have never made life on Earth better than a competing naturalistic morality could make it. There has never been a supernaturalistic morality that has given us any utopias, or even societies that count as general thrusts in that direction. The societies where life is best for ordinary people are decidedly secular societies, at least in the way people actually live (even if they still nominally believe in some sort of supernaturalism). Genuinely supernaturalistic societies, in which people actually do live according to supernaturalistically based moralities such as Dark Ages Europe, do not exactly inspire (in most of us), any great desire to do the same.

Basic Type of Ethical Theory

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Deontological, or duty-based, ethical systems ultimately require (at least in practical terms) that the base of ethics be something supernatural, such as God or gods, or at least something quasi-supernatural (such as "Society," when it is conceived of in the mystical/magical senses used by the Communists and the Nazis, for example). Supernaturalism does not require, but typically encourages, the destructive belief in an afterlife that will supposedly make up for our failures in, or unhappiness in, life on Earth. Even Karmic reincarnation encourages the view that, if you make a mess of this life through massive unrelenting irrationalism, you will get another chance in the next life. Even without an afterlife, supernaturalism may impose bizarre and damaging arbitrary moral rules on human action, rules apparently designed to make people miserable.

Naturalism encourages a teleological view of ethics. If we are natural world beings, living in a natural world, then it is reasonable to seek an ethical system that will enable us to be as happy as possible living in the natural world. Naturalism encourages the use of reason in ethics and in moral action, reason aimed at successful living in this world, the natural world. Naturalism encourages paying attention to the facts about what is and what is not in fact good for people, including especially the moral agent himself. Since, under a naturalistic metaphysics, the purpose of having a morality at all is to serve human needs, not the barbaric whims and lunacies of some imaginary being or beings, it encourages a policy of learning about ourselves and about the world, and of acting in accordance with the best information and judgment we can bring to bear on our decisions.

Support for Morality

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism's undefinability, general unavailability, general conceptual vagueness, and disconnection from the world we actually live in makes it an inherently poor support for genuinely moral living. This is one of the reasons why moralities strictly based on supernaturalistic ideas tend to be so violently and eternally punitive of bad behavior (as defined by such moralities, of course, not necessarily as defined by the needs of successful human life). Without the reality of bad consequences of moral errors and willful immorality, the imagined consequences have to be increased correspondingly, and, since even that is not generally sufficient, secular punishments must be applied as well. Otherwise, people will start wondering if it's really such a bad thing to eat meat on Friday, or if the use of condoms to avoid having babies is such a sin against God, after all (after all, if God is really interested in producing more babies, he can certainly do it without enslaving humans to do it, right?).

Because the natural world is real, not imaginary, not merely alleged, not merely "felt" or "directly contacted" (i.e., imagined), it provides both a vastly richer and more useful support for moral actions, for the promotion of morality. It also provides a psychological reward (in the long run) for moral living.

Comments: Because naturalism does not try to go elsewhere than human life for the basis for morality, it is not required to develop moral theories wildly in contradiction with how human beings actually need to live in order to be happy. Without the reliance on supernaturalism, there is not even any basis for supposing that happiness is not the purpose of morality. Supernaturalistic theories do not usually claim that the purpose of morality is suffering and misery, but they do support rules and purposes that typically have the effect of making people miserable (or of killing them off altogether, in some cases). Supernaturalists denigrate happiness, and with good reason (from their point of view): People who are genuinely happy in their lives tend not to be looking for the kind of succor or other satisfactions that supernaturalistic moralities promise as their means of baiting people into accepting their belief systems. Happy people don't have to try to make themselves feel superior to others by being "moral" while the secular people around them are, at best, morally inadequate, in their view. Happy people don't have the kinds of "holes" in their minds and "souls" that drive people into seeking relief in supernaturalism.

Science

Foundations of Science

Supernaturalism	Naturalism
Supernaturalism has nothing whatever to offer science, except confusion, conceptual clutter, interference with clarity of thought, extraneousness, and misunderstanding of the nature, scope, and limits of science.	The basic premise that the natural world is logically consistent and coherent is fundamental to the scientific method. No hypothesis can be tested if it is assumed at the start that the results of the test are inherently cognitively meaningless.

Comments: Science depends on perception and methodological naturalism. It depends on the notion of consistent causal principles. Even in the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, sciences completely stops at the point where causal indeterminism is asserted. By definition, there cannot be explanations for something that is genuinely indeterministic, so science comes to a complete and absolute and necessary halt at any point where this belief in indeterminism is strongly held. Supernaturalism in any issue in science has the same effect, both in theory and in practice, because the specific nature of the supernatural (if it is assumed) is unknowable.

Scientific Method

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism has no epistemology (except a denial of method), so there is nothing in supernaturalism corresponding to methodological naturalism. For this reason, there is also nothing in supernaturalism corresponding to the scientific method. There is no rule that one must formulate hypotheses that can be (at least in principle) tested by empirical means (even if we do not currently have suitable technology for performing such tests). That is, even if some form of supernaturalism is true, it has nothing to offer science because supernaturalism has no epistemology, no cognitive principles, and no rules about what must not be accepted as a potential explanation.

Methodological naturalism, as an epistemological theory about what knowledge is and how it is obtained and validated has various expressions in human life and action. One major such expression is the scientific method, the method of observing things in the natural world, forming hypotheses, and testing them against further observations (and making modifications to the hypotheses (or, sometimes, to contextual ideas) when tests fail). This general notion that claims about the natural world that could in principle be wrong must be tested against it is central not only to science, but to forensics, technological research and design (where every proposed novel design is, in effect, a hypothesis to be tested)

Contribution to Science

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism provides an interpretive framework for scientific results, but not one that is conducive to science of the practical application of science. For example, the Church denied the observational results of Galileo, thus attempting to thwart science, not help it. In general, wherever supernaturalism has come in contact with science at all, it has been a destructive or retarding force, not one that promotes further research. It also inhibits merely the teaching of science to our children. For example, the theory of evolution is barely touched on in most high-school biology textbooks because of the fear of textbook publishers and school systems that supernaturalists will attempt to have even minimal teaching of the theory removed if it is covered in even the depth that high-school students could generally cope with. Historically, the results of supernaturalism with respect to science and its teaching have been no better (as the cases of Galileo and many others have shown).

Methodological naturalism promotes a rational approach to the questions of understanding how things in the natural world work, and it also provides a framework for the interpretation of the results of science, interpretations that provide a context for further research. Methodological naturalism does not directly contribute scientific results (if it did, we wouldn't need the corresponding science). But it does provide at least the general perspective for interpreting scientific results in such a way as to make them most useful in further scientific research and in applying them to our lives. The quality of interpretation depends not only on the understanding of the science involved, but also on the particular form of naturalism involved, so even naturalistic interpretations of scientific results will tend to be wrong if the people developing the interpretations are not, shall we say, well-informed about philosophical naturalism. For example, there's Niels Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, which, in effect, denies the reality of reality by reducing it to mere observations held together by equations. But this kind of positivism is not representative of philosophical naturalism generally (it is, in fact, more akin to Berkeley's bizarre idealism, in metaphysics).

Naturalism's Sufficiency for Science

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

No experience or collection of empirical has ever been shown to have a supernaturalistic explanation, because any alleged such explanation can always be converted by trivially easy means into an equivalent naturalistic one simply by removing the supernaturalistic aspect of the "entities" involved. Conversion of a naturalistic theory into a supernaturalistic one makes it less satisfactory as an explanation. If we explain something in terms of gravity, we end up with a worse explanation if we explain it in terms of some supernatural force. This is true of every naturalistic explanation: The supernatural "translation" is always a poorer one.

Many supposedly supernaturalistic experiences or pieces of evidence have turned out to have naturalistic explanations that are far preferable. It is a trivial matter to convert any supernatural explanation of any fact or set of facts into a naturalistic equivalent. This is because there is no aspect of a supernaturalistic entity that can be claimed that cannot be, as far as we know, duplicated by some naturalistic agency, at least so far as we can tell by observational and analytical means. For any allegedly necessary supernatural whatsit that's used to explain something we can simply posit a naturalistic whatsit that happens to have the required attributes. For example, if it is claimed that the universe was intelligently created (and if this was proven), and if it was claimed that, therefore God must exist, we naturalists could simply reply that maybe there is a naturalistic species somewhere that is able to create universes like ours for their equivalent of science fair projects. It is only asserted (or simply assumed) that God is the only thing that can create universes. We have no scientific or rational philosophical reason for thinking this to be true, especially if we accept the unsubstantiated premise that universes are created in some way that requires intelligence.

Comments: While, in principle, evidence of agency could be found in the universe (or even in life on Earth), but, also in principle, there is no way to have evidence of supernatural agency, because the only evidence that science can have is empirical/experiential (that is, it has to be something that can be perceived or experienced by a human being, even if only a needle position on a dial or some psychological state or event). As long as this is all that science can use as evidence, it is impossible for it to have evidence that points specifically to supernaturalism rather than merely just something naturalistic that we just don't understand yet.

History, Society

Philosophical positions have effects on our lives, and on the course of history. Naturalism and supernaturalism are no exceptions, and while some forms of naturalism (usually with implicit supernaturalistic overtones, as in the case of Marxism) are not good for human life, and some forms of supernaturalism are relatively benign, the overall comparison of their effects strongly suggests that, even if we assume that some form of supernaturalism is true, we should actually live and run our societies on naturalistic premises. This would be the social philosophy equivalent of methodological naturalism in epistemology.

Effects of on Human History

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Bad (wars, genocide, tyranny, torture, witch hunts, bloody crusades, slavery, slaughtering of "heathens" and "heretics," and so on, without end (so far)).

Good (Agriculture, medicine, freedom, win/win trade, peace, technology, general reduction of slavery, oppression, poverty, disease, and social strife). Philosophical naturalism and its corollary, methodological naturalism, have contributed more to human progress out of the muck and mire (much of it created by supernaturalism) than any kind of supernaturalism could ever do, even if it were given full sway over our lives.

Effects on Human Society Today

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

The supernatural world is not the default philosophical base. It is an add-on to philosophy, neither containing nor serving rationally as a philosophical basis in its own right. The supernatural realm, if it could ever be found to exist at all, would still not be cognitively given in anything like the way the natural world is. Supernaturalism promotes the idea that the harm you do in this world is unimportant as long as you obey the rules of the particular brand of supernaturalism you believe. If one follows the Ten Commandments, many believe, they don't need to worry about any harm they may do. For example, some believe it is okay to blow up an abortion clinic, killing actually-existing people, if it means preventing the abortion of a single-celled biologically human zygote. This and other bizarre losses of rational perspective are not rare in supernaturalistic circles; they are in fact notably common, though many of them are hidden by the fact that their holders are hindered by residual common sense and fear of being caught.

Today, philosophical naturalism is both poorly understood (even by philosophical naturalists, generally) and poorly represented (by many scientists, some intellectuals, and a few ordinary people). Yet, it provides benefits entirely out of proportion to its generality of explicit acceptance as a philosophical position. While it is true that the use of some technology has not been always beneficial, it can hardly be argued that that is the fault of the technology or the science and epistemology that gave rise to it. Indeed, most of the ills associated with technology are in fact also associated with the failure of the human race generally to establish political systems that reflect rational philosophical naturalism, with one class of results being that there is no generally available means of ensuring that the secondary costs of some technology to be borne by those who impose such costs. Costs are a matter of ownership. If you own a stretch of old-growth forest, you will damn well want to see its economic value maintained, which will mean that you will not countenance destructive clear-cutting unless other uses for it have become so socially important that the value of doing so outweighs the costs involved. Conservation is promoted by ownership, not political management by people who will be out of office in two years and who may stand to make a bundle from permitting the cutting of timber at a price far below the actual market value.

Comments: There is a reason why supernaturalism is not good for human life: It is not itself rational and it tends to support irrationalism. This typically leads to the idea that morality has its basis on something supernatural. Because the content of supernaturalism is cognitively arbitrary, the resulting effects on morality are also cognitively arbitrary. In practice, people make up or adopt supernatural theories (including ideas of God, etc.) that suit whatever moral predilections they already have (or they are simply brought up with supernatural beliefs closely intertwined with, and assumed as the basis for, their moral ideas. Since there are no rational means of determining what God (or other supernatural beings) have in mind for morality, this is practically like simply adopting the premise that morality is whatever a person chooses it to be. In practice, this is not a good thing for human life, because the requirements of successful human life depend on living according to moral principles objectively based on the actual basic facts of human nature and objective human needs.

Results as Support for Philosophy

The results of a philosophical position in practice do not strictly prove that that position is true, but it can still be strongly supportive of it, nevertheless (I'm indebted to Barbara Forrest for her essay bringing this reflective support of the results of a philosophical position to my attention). The thing is, if a philosophical position is true, it should be expected to have what we would generally consider good results when applied in practice, and we might expect that philosophical positions that are seriously at odds with the truth to have typically weak or negative practical results. Of course, in principle, a philosophical position might be false and yet still seem to be beneficial in practice, or it might be true and seem to have bad results (particularly in a context with other ideas that are false), but, in at least a general way, the results of a philosophical position are either supportive of a position or of some contrary to it. Therefore, it is worthwhile considering what the results of both naturalism and supernaturalism have been.

Summary Results of Method

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism has been a total failure in producing even a single trivial rationally established fact. There are no vast systems of logically coherent thought such as the established main theories of physics (General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics). There is only: Fog, more fog, contradictions, abstractions disconnected from reality, weaseling, double standards, circular argumentation, and great masses of arbitrary assertions (in which billions of supernaturalists disagree absolutely on even the most general specific aspects of the supernatural).

As Barbara Forrest has pointed out, the method of naturalism has been fantastically successful in enabling us to understand the universe. This vast range of successful application of methodological naturalism via the general procedure of the scientific method provides a very strong kind of pragmatic support for philosophical naturalism.

Significance of Results of Method

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Because supernaturalism has been a total failure in established any fact, it actually has no results, and so the only significance is in the lack of results. Gently put: The lack of results does not disprove supernaturalism, but it does not bode well for it at all.

The enormous success of methodological naturalism does not logically entail, by itself, that philosophical naturalism be true, since, if supernatural things are possible at all, they might exist independently of whether methodological naturalism is or has been successful in a scientific and practical sense. However, this fact, combined with the lack even of a proof of possibility for supernaturalism (and the consequent lack of genuine evidence for it), exclusive philosophical naturalism must be assumed until some sort of radical new argument is found or some evidence comes along that is truly inexplicable in naturalistic terms (not even by "converting" a supernaturalistic explanation to naturalistic terms). Given the generality of the Principle of Naturalistic Sufficiency and the main arguments for it, it seems utterly unlikely or even logically impossible to truly exclude all possible naturalistic explanations for any fact that we can possibly imagine observing or experiencing, so it seems quite safe to say that philosophical naturalism is not only the only tenable general philosophical position that can be justified, but that it will be the only one forever.

Comments: It is almost a cottage industry among people who want to be "cognoscenti" without actually doing any cognition to claim that science is just as subjective as, say, religions or the fads of clothing fashion. However, there is an obvious problem with this: If it were true, none of modern technology would be possible. Not even the average automobile could be function or even be manufactured. The post-modern types who make these claims could not eve send e-mail to each other.

Whatever the degree to which such subjectivism persists in science, it does not invalidate the fundamental objectivity of science. While theories may be wrong in various ways (some of them even fundamental), there is still some important respect in which they are true, if only in a practical sense. For example, Ptolemy's astronomy was fundamentally wrong, and yet, there is a sense in which the mathematical part of it was almost equivalent to that of the better theories we have today about planetary motion. Why? Because his theory allowed actual reliable prediction.

Was it strictly true? No, I've already agreed that it wasn't. But did it objectively serve cognitive purposes? Yes, because we could make a prediction based on the theory and we would know where in the sky the planet would be at a particular future time. And, we'd be right: that's where the planet would be (to a reasonable degree of accuracy). Knowing where a planet will be in six months is a kind of knowledge, even if it is not perfect or based on a truly correct theory.

Similarly, modern technology depends on modern scientific theories being correct, at least in this same sense. We know that if we build computers or cyclotrons or GPS systems or satellite TV or microwave ovens based on these theories, they will work (at least most of the time).

One of the same criticisms of Hume's remarks about causation applies here, but with a modification to make it applicable to the "post-modern" theory: If their claim were true, the probability of any of our sophisticate technology even being made would be so small as to be utterly negligible, and the probability of it working as well as it does would be even smaller. Millions of technological devices work because there is something crucially objective about science and scientific theories, especially when you consider that these theories work many times as well as Ptolemy's theory did (because it is able to correctly represent the positions of the planets as they would be viewed from well above or well below the plane of the ecliptic, whereas Ptolemy's theory only worked for their location in the sky relative to observers on Earth, and it didn't cover such things as their changes in apparent brightness, and so on, which are trivialities to modern physics and astronomy).

None of the amazing successes of modern science in predictive and technological terms (or in the success of devices built for further scientific research) would be possible if there were no more to science's objectivity than there is for clothing fashions and fads in the arts or popular culture.

Similar remarks apply to the pooh-poohing of scientific claims by supernaturalists, as well. Neither the post-modernists nor the supernaturalists, as such, have ever done anything approximating even so much devise a better mousetrap based on their own views. That is supernaturalism has never contributed anything to our knowledge of Existence or to technology or to the advancement of political freedom in the world. Only naturalism has contributed to all three.

Meta-Philosophy

I define "meta-philosophy" as the study of the general nature of philosophy and the actual and proper role of philosophy in human life. Some people suppose that philosophy has no such role, but that's false, even in the case of their own lives, because even people who claim to have no philosophy actually do have one. It just happens to be one that they are not aware of, but it largely rules their lives anyway, but without being subject to examination and correction by them (since they don't even acknowledge that there is anything to examine or possibly correct).

Naturalism and supernaturalism are conducive to quite different fundamental ways of viewing Existence and human life, morality, political theory, even technology and the arts (and, of course, education).

Naturalism and supernaturalism encourage people to adopt two radically different kinds "worldviews," one that explicitly views human happiness in life on Earth (or in the natural realm generally), and one that tends to encourage the view that the real goal of life is some afterlife, or that life is suffering, or that we are helpless pawns of beings and forces that we actually have no control over (praying and rain dances and religious rituals are characterized essentially uniform objective failure rate, and by their actual failure to have beneficial results causally linkable in any objective way with anything supernatural. The attributions of success to such pleading with the supernatural are no more reliable than the attributions of success to the predictions of Jeanne Dixon (which are, in fact, based on what amounts to a form of supernaturalism). For every such "success," there are tens of thousands of failures. This is why, when we are designing airplanes we rely on science and empirical experience, not on praying to the god of airplane engineering.

Nature and Function of Philosophy

Supernaturalism

Naturalism

Supernaturalism encourages the belief that, even if the long-term goal is happiness, there is no such purpose in this life, in the natural world. Therefore, it has no strong opposition to moral and political systems that produce death and life-long suffering. The alleged "dignity of man" that some have claimed on religious grounds was advocated by Aristotle without the slightest need for a religious basis. Even in this respect, supernaturalism is, at best, superfluous.

Naturalism assumes that the function of philosophy is to help people at least understand the world and their lives. More importantly, naturalism holds that the point of human life is happiness, not suffering, not mindless submission to some imagined supernatural being's alleged edicts and rules.

Comments: Naturalism, by itself, and in a bare form, does not guarantee that people will hold rational ideas about anything else, and even supernaturalism does not guarantee that supernaturalists will be irrational about everything. But that's the way to bet, at least in comparative terms. That is, given a random sample of a million naturalists and a million supernaturalists, the way to bet is that the naturalists have the greatest number of rational beliefs, or the most nearly rational beliefs, of the two groups. If you had to bet on one side or the other, and were not simply planning to provide economic support to supernaturalism, you'd want to bet on the naturalists.

Summary of Balance Sheet

Following is a brief summary version of all of the comparisons given above. This should help the reader get a good overall idea of the differences between naturalism and supernaturalism, and provide a summarization of the basis for a rather positive view of naturalism and a rather negative one for supernaturalism.

Comparison Category	Supernaturalism	Naturalism
Definition, Description, Conceptual Coherence	"Defined" by negation and vagueness	Positive Attributes, specific attributes, measurable quantities
Metaphysics and Epistemology
Possible Existence	No possibility shown	Established by existence of natural world
Actual Existence	No existence shown	Given by all experience; axiomatic
Identity and Causation	Not established, and frequent contradictions in ideas.	Inherent in the nature of anything that actually exists
Cognitive Status	Derivative Primaries	Axiomatic Primaries
Philosophical Priority	Add-on: Supernaturalism has no axiomatic basis	Primary: Naturalism is default, with axiomatic basis
Associated Epistemological Views
Subjectivity vs. Objectivity	Subjective	Objective
Epistemological Method	Subjectivism (no actual method at all).	Methodological Naturalism
Evidential Requirements	Meets none	Meets all
Possibility of Knowledge	No	Yes
Burden of Proof	Yes	No
Occam's Razor	No (two metaphysical realms, 2nd needless)	Yes
General Philosophical Status	Poor	Good
Ethics, Morality
Basic Type of Ethical Theory	Deontological	Teleological
Foundational Relationship	Detaches morality from reality and human needs.	Provides objective context and meta-ethical premises
Support for Morality	None	Yes
Science
Foundations of Science	Provides nothing at all for science	Methodological naturalism, metaphysical context
Scientific Method	Irrelevant to science, has no equivalent method of its own	Based on Methodological Naturalism
Contribution to Science	None, and typically actively discourages science.	Provides the philosophical context that makes science possible and that encourages science
Naturalism's Sufficiency for Science	Produces only empty pseudo-explanations, or worse	Allows explanation of whatever can be explained.
Effects on Human Life
Effects on Human History	Bloody ghastly	Good
Effects on Human Society Today	Bloody ghastly	Good
Contributions to Human Happiness	None, generally destructive to humans	High
Results as Support for Philosophy
Summary of Results of Method	Nonexistent or imaginary	Stupendous
Significance of Results	No results, no significance	Important to human life
Meta-Philosophy
Nature and Function of Philosophy	Supernaturalism damages human life	Naturalism serves human life
Conclusion	Supernaturalism bad.	Naturalism good.

Conclusion

Because the natural world exists and is well understood, and because it is doubtful that anything supernatural is even metaphysically possible, and because of the current cognitive status of the two, the only option for a reasonable person is exclusive philosophical naturalism.

Appendix 1

The Impossibility of the Supernatural

Identity distinguishes those things that exist from those that don't, or that exist only as ideas or things imagined, such as square triangles. And, the identity of things that exist is distinguished from those that don't by means of causal relationships. A sphere of solid iron is distinguished from a cube of carbon by its various causal relationships, such as how it rolls smoothly along a smooth surface or doesn't, and so on, for every aspect of a thing's identity. What distinguishes things that exist on their own, rather than as attributes, states, events, processes, relationships, etc., of things is that things that exist on their own are substantial. They are "made of something," unlike shape, color, size, temperature, speed, frequency, and such.

That is, what makes it possible for the things that actually exist on their own to continue to exist is that they are made of self-existing "stuff," which, for lack of a better term, I will simply call substance. This does not mean that the things we see around us are themselves substantial things. They might be like television screen images, which have attributes but which do not exist on their own but only as what I shall generically call phenomena, even though they have identity and causal relationships. They exist, in a sense, but not as things that exist on their own. Similarly, the things we see in the world may be "mere" phenomena of something else that is the actual existing substance.

For example, one hypothesis is that "space" or "the vacuum" exists on its own, but that matter and energy are phenomena that exist in space (like air bubbles in a clear glass paperweight, perhaps). For our purposes, it doesn't matter at what level we come to a substantial something that exists on its own; the important thing is that, in order to be something that exists on its own, a thing must be substantial, or consist of substance. Without this there can be no basis for the causal relationships that exhibit its identity, no identity that is distinct in metaphysical terms from its own non-existence, and so on.

Now, one of the typical defining characteristics of the supernatural is that it is defined as being non-substantial, as being something like "pure spirit," as being immaterial, and not subject to the laws of causation that apply to substantial things. That is, it is effectively defined as pure phenomena with no fundamental metaphysically existing basis, like running with no runner, or eating with no food and no eater, like free-floating redness with nothing that is red, and so on.

But phenomena only exist as phenomena in or of something else. There are no tornadoes without air, no rockslides without rocks, no digestion without something to do the digesting, something that is distinct from the phenomena in the same way that air is not the same as tornadoes, because, while are is involved, it is the phenomena, the movement of the air that makes for the tornadoes.

Sometimes supernaturalists will try to evade the implications of their own claims by modifying their characterization of the supernatural in order to evade a particular criticism, but they usually do this by switching to some other characterization that has the same or similar flaw. And, sometimes they try to evade by claiming that the supernatural is substantial, but substantial in a way that is radically different from the way naturalistic things are substantial. But this is no help; with such a radical redefinition, the result is either something clearly impossible on other grounds, or something merely nonsensical and utterly arbitrary, without the slightest chance of being shown to be something that might actually exist.

Of course, we don't have these problems with the natural world. It may not be substantial in the way we tend to think it is, but there is no question but that it does exist. The question of any such contradictions or absurdities does not arise except with the supernatural because of the requirement that the supernatural be defined as somehow radically different from the natural. This is necessary, because, if it is not, there is hardly any point to it. If there is no radical difference, it merely becomes a poor brand of naturalism given an inappropriate name.

Appendix 2

The Modern Anti-Synthesis: Supernaturalism and Science

An outfit called (misleadingly) The Center for Science and Culture (which used to be called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, but apparently they've dropped even the pretense of doing any actual renewing) seeks to "wedge" supernaturalism into science. At first, they claimed, at least to themselves and potential supporters, that one of the first things they would do is actual science in support of or based on supernaturalism in science.

But, while no science relevant to supernaturalism has ever been produced by any of them (and none of the most well-known of them -- Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, and William Dembski -- have shown any signs of doing much science at all). One of their problems is that they seek to promote supernaturalism by "scientific" means while also attempting to pretend that they are indifferent to what the supernatural whatsit is. Their approach is only applied to biology, even though, in principle, there is no reason why, if supernaturalism is a valid explanatory factor in biology, it shouldn't also be one in physics or chemistry.

Their "program" has been to argue for what they call "intelligent design" as an alternative to naturalistic evolution by purely naturalistic, unintelligent processes. Mostly, they argue for their position by misrepresenting the theory of evolution and by numerous false factual statements about the evidence (such as the nearly insane claim by Wells that there are no known fossils of complex organisms appearing before the so-called "Cambrien Explosion" (which, in any case, was only an explosion in relative terms, as compared to the rate of speciation for most of the previous three billion years).

The need to have their theory support (or at least not contradict supernaturalism means that they must be absolutely vague about what their designer is, and about what the designer's knowledge and power is. If they say that the designer must be omnipotent and omniscient, then they would have to provide scientific evidence for the omnipotence and omniscience. Since there is nothing we can even imagine observing that would prove that something is omnipotent or omniscient (as distinguished from merely very powerful and very knowledgeable), they know that this approach is doomed to ineffectuality. Indeed, they know that it would not even be good propagandistically (propaganda is their main product).

They also cannot assert that the designer they have in mind is merely someone with more advanced technology than ours, partly because the purpose of their organization is explicitly religious, and partly because doing so would be to open up the question of what constraints and powers the designer has. This would be fatal to their religious purposes, because then it would become obvious that, if there is a designer, he/it/they is/are no more supernatural and Godly than a modern recombinant-DNA researcher trying to make a better tomato or new soy bean or an insulin-producing bacterium.

I have in fact developed an "Intelligent" Intelligent Design theory (which I think is false, despite the fact that it's my theory), for the purpose of showing, by their lack of interest in it, that the "intelligent design" advocates have no desire for genuinely scientific theories of intelligent design.

I think my theory is actually false, but the point of it as a scientific theory is that it actually does a fair good job of explaining the data that the theory of evolution explains, by assuming that the designer is constrained by technological limitations (and possibly by knowledge limitations) from doing things that God or any very powerful designer would do. It is necessary to postulate that there are severe constraints on the designer (even if it is God), because, without them, much of the actual real-world data of life on Earth doesn't make sense. For example, successful biological "innovations" appearing in some species do not make it into species that appear later, even though they could well use them. Under this theory, they don't get them because the designer is unable to make wholesale design changes and implement them by "poofing" them into existence, as God could easily do. Instead, the designer must work roughly the same way evolution does, up to a point: "Tweaking" existing genes to produce new ones (such as by duplicating a gene and then modifying the duplicate to perform a new function, over many generations).

Unlike current intelligent design theory, and unlike creationism, my theory does not require the trashing of much of science, or the denial or distortion of the evidence that is now used (properly) as support for the theory of evolution. It actually provides an alternative explanation for the data (with the possible exception of some subtle facts of genetics, I'm afraid).

But the real point here is that, even if the designer turned out to be real, and to have powers that we could not distinguish from omnipotence, it would not prove that the designer was supernatural. Why is this? Because there is simply no explanatory advantage to supposing that this very powerful designer is not only powerful, but supernatural as well. The only part of a powerful supernatural being that would be needed would be the powerful part; he could just as well be naturalistic as supernaturalistic. The supernaturalism part of the theory is as scientifically useless as gonads on a toaster.

That is, there is no reason, even in such an extreme case, for supposing that the agency involved is supernatural. The most we would have to accept, even if we personally met him and watched him perform feats of power, is that he is very powerful. Supernaturalism is not implied by power, nor by any other kind of fact that could be empirically observed.

For a more nearly full development of my scientific theory of intelligent design, see:  http://members.cox.net/ccogan/An_Intelligent_Intelligent_Design_Theory.htm

Notes

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Unfortunately, modern physics and modern physicists have given special meanings to some terms that are in general use with quite different meanings, in both philosophy and ordinary talk about things in the world. Perhaps the most serious of these modifications of terms is the use of the term "space" to refer, not to empty nothingness with no attributes of its own, but to something almost tangibly substantial, something that can be curved, bent, twisted, and that is filled with "zero-point energy," and so on. As I said, this may be the most serious such modification, but other ordinary terms that have been given special meanings include "time" and "objectivity." These redefinitions of such basic terms not only confuse laymen, I believe they confuse even physicists as well, though not to the point where they can't use he equations relating to them in their theories.

The idea that ideas of causation are based on nothing more than "regular succession" would only be true if causation were solely about specific causal relationships that we are seeking to determine by empirical means. I suppose probability theory was not well developed in Hume's time, but the idea that there could even be such a thing as regular succession is utterly nonsensical in a world in which causation is not a real fact of the nature of that world.

Only random (and therefore very infrequent and limited) regularities could possibly occur, and no world could exist at all. Even individual subatomic particles have a causal integrity that would disappear if causation were to be somehow suspended. In such a case, an electron could just as well become a Boeing 747 in one trillionth of a second and a goat in the next trillionth, and so on. There would be no continuity between one instant and the next. Indeed, there could not even be "one instant and the next" because there would be no relationship between any two instants. It would be like taking all the movies ever made, completely digitizing them, and then randomizing not merely the frames of each movie, but all the pixels of all the movies, so that, when shown, each frame would consist of (say) a few million pixels randomly selected from all the billions of frames ever filmed. Almost every frame would be an almost uniform grayish color, and there would be so little "regular" succession from one frame to the next that the idea of causation really would be senseless.

Put in other terms, the idea of a human being, the idea of a world in which humans exist, the idea of being able to perceive things in this world, and the idea that we can use this information to detect and specifically identify regular succession at all, are all ideas that themselves depend on the concept of causation being already assumed (and as an absolute, as well). And, it doesn't help the Humean argument to assume a Kantian view, because even that assumes causation insofar as it assumes that there is a human nature, there is a "world" constructed by the mind, and it behaves in a consistent way (thus making Newtonian physics possible, which, despite Kant's irrational mysticism, was something he at least initially wanted to support as being real knowledge -- of something, if not of the real reality behind the appearances).

Mathematically, the probability of there being, over the span of a person's lifetime, any detectable, identifiable, and confirmable regular succession would be approximately zero (i.e., a decimal point followed by perhaps thousands of zeros before reaching a nonzero digit). Therefore, even if we assume that the only basis the idea of causation was regular succession, the fact that we can and do consistently find regular succession effectively proves the soundness of the concept of causation. We bet our lives on this fact every day, and in every instant (for example, I'm betting that my computer will not arbitrarily turn to gas and then become a rabid cross between a tyrannosaurus and a nuclear bomb in mid-explosion, and you are making a similar (implicit) "bet" every time you use a knife or cross a street or say "hello" to a friend (not Mount Everest temporarily appearing to you as a friend of yours, etc.).

Can Hum, at this point, say, "Well, yes, we do that, but my point is that there is no rational basis for doing so"? Well, he could say this, but it is senseless idiocy, since what is rational is determined by what we have objectively good reason to suppose is true. If causation were not a fact, we couldn't exist (except as the metaphysical equivalent of the randomized pixels described earlier), and so could not even begin to have enough of a mind to be able even to think of the question. Continued existence is the ultimate in "regular succession," so even to continue to exist for billionth of a second, let alone long enough to read Hume's argument and wonder about its soundness, is positive disproof of his claims, and also positive "proof" of causation (in that we can't deny causation without also denying the possibility of even denying causation).

Given the illogic of attempting to assume that causation is not objective, it can hardly be rational to deny it, and it can hardly be coherently claimed that we do not have good reason to accept it. If causation were not a fact, we couldn't even formulate the notion of  "a good reason." Reason itself rests on the axiom of causation (or, more strictly, the axiom of identity, of which causation is a corollary).

See: "Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection," Philo, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Fall-Winter 2000), pp. 7-29), and http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/barbara_forrest/naturalism.html (accessed May 21, 2005)).

Feedback, discussion, comments, questions: Chris Cogan, ccogan@ou.edu