So why not super-naturalism?
Because super-naturalism is an attempt to explain the world without the tools of science and rational thinking. I do not mean that no one in the ancient world thought rationally or even scientifically – I mean that the world was largely hidden to us. We used intuition and story to make sense of the world. It turns out that this can take us so far in an accurate direction before we are swamped by unfounded assumptions and lose our way among inaccurate suppositions. Unable to make sense of the world we observed, we assumed that there was another world – populated by gods and monsters who were the ones responsible for the mystery and chaos around us.
We cultivated these creatures as a way of learning about ourselves, our world and our place in it. We formed religions and ways of life based on the certainty that we now knew important truths about the world, about ourselves, and about the purpose of life. And yet, the gods and spirit beings as described in traditions and ancient texts are obviously myths, and the quality of the facts and values they communicated turn out to range from inconsistent to simply wrong. Yes, there is some deep truth and enduring wisdom in among the myth and history. But it is mixed in with lots that is not helpful, much that is hurtful, and lots that we eagerly reject.
All the same, sometimes these religions seem to work. And by work, I mean that there is embedded in these belief systems observations about how humans can be made to behave, how we can structure our internal life and our interactions with our larger community that people find useful or acceptable, sometimes even noble or uplifting. This is in stark contrast to mere facts. The fact of evolution, the facts of chemistry, astronomy, geology. Not only do we have lots to learn, but much of what we have discovered is still new, still tentative, still incomplete. If naturalism is a new religion, the texts are not yet complete, and some have not even been started yet.
Naturalism – and I don’t mean the worship of nature, or our natures, or even any kind of worship at all. What I mean is that the best way to learn about the world, learn about ourselves, is to study it. Religions’s claims need to be tested. Newton gave us the laws of motion, but he also believed that equatorial gold had special alchemical properties. The laws of motion have proved invaluable, alchemy not so much. Both came from genius, but only one has stood the test of scientific scrutiny.
This scrutiny, this ability to question – free from the charges of impiety and blasphemy – what is really new and powerful in what is practiced as the scientific method. This is what is threatened by the demands of various faiths that their “revelations” be accorded priority, or at least equal weight, when seeking to understand the world (which includes us). Science advances when smart people question assumptions, each other, experimental results. We learn about the world when we are willing to see what is there, without ruling out certain possibilities before the fact, or rejecting certain conclusions no-matter the facts. Because we are not very good at this as individuals (or even as cultures), the community of skeptical voices should be wide and deep.
Where super-naturalism falls down is an unwillingness to change bedrock assumptions. When a creationist says that they cannot abandon the idea that everything came from nothing some 6,000 years ago, they are simply defining the real incompatibility between super-naturalism and science – an inability to follow the evidence. When a more liberal apologist claims that religion is a different way of knowing, just as valid as science, they purposely confuse what it means to know.
While it may be true that, through trial and error, humans have affirmed that this or that religious principle bears good fruit, this does not validate religious thought as a way of knowing about things in the real world. As a way of knowing, religion has a pretty poor track record. To just consider the Christian religion, it is wrong about the age, shape and movement of the earth (6,000 years old, flat and at the center of the universe). If you do not believe those things and consider yourself Christian, it simply means that you have edited out teachings you can’t believe in (like slavery, the subjugation of women and capital punishment for things like disobedience). It turns out that what the religion “teaches” (what it knows) changes somewhat from culture to culture and age to age. Seen from this perspective, perhaps religion is more like a mirror than a window – but a mirror with a memory, so that what religion teaches lags somewhat behind what we know.
There is another sense of the word knowing, however, where religion does excel. Religion comes with a story and a narrative. What is more, religion is prescriptive and self-referential in a way that science tends not to be. Religion confidently demands that we change our mind and alter our behavior to conform to the will of the gods. Fellow believers can be assumed to share a similar perspective and ethic. This shared belief system provides the foundation for community, common action and cultural values.
Naturalism has none of this. Of course, religion knows no will of the gods ether – it simply has a claim that it cannot back up. At most, it has a history, a tradition of belief and behavior that has been in some sense successful. Naturalism is perceived as a threat because it strips away the pretense of divine authority for religious claims without providing much in the way of alternative narrative, values and sense of place. I suspect that if naturalism is to take the place of religion, people are going to have to embrace naturalism, and then tease out the implications in a kind of natural philosophy that covers much the same ground as religion, without the supernatural elements and claims to absolute truth.
