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Naturalism

Terms in this set (48)

What is a worldview?
It is a set of presuppositions (assumptions that may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic makeup of our world.
Why bother with worldview?
"To be fully conscious intellectually we should not only be able to detect the worldview of others but be aware of our own - why it is ours and why, in light of so many options, we think it is true." James Sire
What is prime reality -- the really real?
Matter, God, gods
What is the nature of external reality, that is, the world around us?
Is it created or autonomous, chaotic or orderly, matter or spirit; subjective, personal relationship with the world or its objectivity apart from us.
What is a human being?
A complex machine, a sleeping god, a person made in the image of God or a naked ape?
What happens to us at death?
Is it personal extinction, transformation to a higher state, reincarnation, heaven or hell?
Is it possible to know anything at all?
Some say yes because we are... made in the image of God, some say yes because.... it is just the way we evolved... some say no.
Can we know what is right or wrong?
A reflection of the character of the god(s) who made us or there is no such thing as right and wrong, it is based on what is good for us, cultural norms, social constructs.
What is the meaning of human history?
There is none, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, meaning is whatever we choose it to be or for others it is to realize the purpose of the gods or God.
What personal, life-orienting core commitments are consistent with this worldview?
We cannot avoid assuming some answers to these questions. We will adopt either one stance or another. Refusing to adopt an explicit worldview will turn out to be itself a worldview or at least a philosophical position.
People in our culture through the educational system have been taught a bias against those who have a religious faith.
However, a case can be made that all worldview are based to some extent on faith and unproven assumptions or evidence to the contrary.
All world views attempt to answer the following questions:
-Origins: where do we come from?
-Meaning: do our lives have meaning?
-Morality: is there a standard of morality whereby life is to be lived?
-Destiny: What happens to us when we die?
Key components to a solid worldview:
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1. It has a strong foundation in correspondence; it will have factual support and it will reject that which is know to be false. An acceptable worldview will match with the observed world.
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2. It should have a high degree of coherence or internal consistency. To be internally consistent it cannot have contradicting deductions, regardless of what "experiential needs" are met in the process.
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3. It has explanatory power. The collation of facts leads to initial postulations, from whence we devise our theories and our hypotheses. How well does a worldview explain (power), and how complete is the evidence in support of the view (scope)?
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4. It avoids two extremes. It will be neither too simple nor too complex. Resist the temptation to make our explanations too complex. On the other hand, an explanation should become so simplistic that it commits the reductive fallacy. All things being equal, the simplest, most economical, and yet fully orbed worldview is to be preferred.
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5. It has more than one line of evidence, not just one knock out argument. Cumulative evidence converges from several sources of date.
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6. A solid worldview is not complete in itself until it is able to refute, implicitly or explicitly, contrary worldview. The law or non contradiction (that a statement and its opposite cannot both be true) applies not only within a worldview but also between worldview.
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7. A solid worldview can be verified or falsified.
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8. A worldview must promote practical and workable consequences.
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9. A solid worldview must be existentially relevant. It must address the internal needs of humanity.
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10. A worldview needs to be predictive. It needs to be able to make some accurate predictions of what their research into the macrocosm and microcosm will yield. It will accommodates and incorporates emerging data.
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James Sire defined a worldview as: "a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set or presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false) that we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we love, and move and have our being."
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The Seven Dimensions of Religion:
1. The ritual dimension
2. The mythological or narrative dimension
3. The doctrinal dimension
4. The ethical dimension
5. The social or institutional dimension
6. The experiential dimension
7. The material dimension
1. The ritual dimension: religion express itself through rituals like worship, prayers, offerings
-it can be very formal and elaborate
-it involves both an inner and outer aspect and often the outer comes to dominate the inner
- it need not involves gods or goddesses
-the meaning of a ritual must be understood in reference to the environment of belief in which it is performed
2. The Mythological or Narrative dimension:
-Myth means story, but does not imply truth or falsity
-Myth involves more than just stories about the gods, it can refer other events in history that have significance for faith
-Myths enable members of different societies and subgroups within societies to make sense of their lives and their world
3. The Doctrinal Dimension:
Ethics concern the behavior of the individual and to some extent, the code of ethics of the dominant religion controls the community. However, people do not always live up to the standards they profess.
4. The Ethical Dimension:
Ethics concern the behavior of the individual and to some extent, the code of ethics of the dominant religion controls the community. However, people do not always live up to the standards they profess.
5. The social or institutional Dimension:
Religion also has a communal and social significance. It can become an institution within a social community.
6. The Experiential Dimension:
This can involve what is perceived to be contact with and participation in the invisible world through ritual. It also involves the hope of, or realization of, experience of that world. It can include strong feeling generated by a symbol like a flag or the playing of one's national anthem.
7. The Material Dimension:
Things and places representing or manifesting the sacred. This may include the physical places of worship or the objects used during the act of worshipping.
There are four main types of religious stories each of which presents a symbolic story of the origins and destiny of human beings and the challenges they face in striving to realize their sacred destiny:
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1. Myths of Nature:
These are stories about the powers of nature that govern human destiny, which portray them as either personal beings (gods, spirits and/or sacred ancestors) or impersonal powers. These religions tend to view time as cyclical always returning to the moment before creating. The key problem of life is time. Time is the enemy. Time brings decay, sickness, decline, and death. Returning to newness of life is the recitation of the myths and the performance of rituals reenacting creation. Many indigenous religions are examples of this.
2. Myths of Harmony:
The universal Dao, which all beings share, is the source of harmony in the universe at work but hidden in all the forces of nature. All of creation works through combinations of complementary opposites of yin and yang, of dark and light, of earth and heaven, of female and male. The ideal of human life is balance and harmony. The problem of existence is the disharmony that occurs when the element of society and or the universe are out of balance. Daoism and Confucianism are examples of this kind of religion.
3. Myths of Liberation:
In India, life was seen in relationship to the cycles and rhythms of nature, however, these were ultimately to be escaped, not affirmed. The problem of life is human entrapment in an endless cycle of suffering and rebirth; the highest goal was to overcome these bonds. The ultimate goal of Hinduism and Buddhism is to destroy the illusions fostered by our selfish desires so that humans can be freed from the wheel of death and rebirth (samsara)
4. Myths of History:
History comprises the realm of human experience from which the metaphors for religious experience are primarily drawn. All religions communicate their tradition by telling stories, only the religions of the Middle East, beginning with Judaism, Christianity, and then Islam make "story" itself the central metaphor of religious expression. Stories have beginnings and ends. The problem in life for each of these religions is "sin" - failing to follow God's law. The ideal goal of life is for humans to be in harmony with the will of God. Time is where one meets God and journeys with Him through life. (Esposito, Fasching, and Lewis)
Some Key components of Naturalism:
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1. Matter exists eternally and is all there is.
God does not exist. Carl Sagan, late astrophysicist often said, "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will" Nothing comes from nothing. Something is. Therefore something always was.
2. The cosmos exist as a uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system.
It is not affected by anything external to itself. Humanist Manifesto II 1973 stated, "we find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural. A closed system is determined, but it does not remove our sense of free will or responsibility for our actions.

-Mantra: Science is the only avenue to truth
-Problem: Such a statement cannot itself be proven to be true by its own avenue to truth -- the scientific method.
3. Human beings are complex machines; personality is an interrelation of chemical and physical properties we do not yet full understand.
-That would make our minds machines. Can machines think? Are we free to think and act?k Some would say yes, because it holds out the possibility for significant human action, and it provides a basis for morality Unless we are free to do other than we do, we cannot be held responsible for what we do.
-Ernest Nagel, "a mature naturalism attempts to assess man's nature in the light of his actions and achievements, his aspirations and capacities, his limitations and tragic failures, and his splendid works of ingenuity and imaginations."
-Mantra: What is needed today to solve humanity's problems is rational and logical thinking. Education is needed to end belief in the metaphysical and spiritual.
-Problem: How can our thoughts be trusted to reflect reality if they are nothing more than the product of chemical and biological elements?
4. Death is extinction of personality and individuality
Humanist Manifesto II states, "As far as we know, the total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body." Ernest Nagel said, "Human destiny is an episode between two oblivions."
5. History is a linear stream of events linked by cause and effect, but without an overarching purpose.
Prof. Lodewijk Woltjer, astronomer at Columbia University wrote, "The origin of what is -- man, the earth, the universe -- is shrouded in a mystery we are no closer to solving than was the chronicler of Genesis." Richard Dawkins, neo-Darwinian evolutionists, wrote, "Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purposes, has no purpose in view.
- Mantra: There is no ultimate purpose. Each individual determines his or her own purpose in life.
-Problem: If there is no ultimate purpose, then even individual purposes are meaningless. In addition, how does anyone know there is no ultimate purpose meaning unless he or she has an ultimate perspective?
Ethics is related only to human beings.
Values are man made. Humanist Manifesto II, "We affirm that moral values derive there source from human experience. Ethics are autonomous and situational and need no theological or ideological sanction. Ethics stems from human need and interest. To deny this distorts the whole basis for life. Human life has meaning because we create and develop our future."
-Mantra: All morality is relative.
-problem: How do we know if the person making that statement is telling the truth? Is there such a thing as truth?
-problem: How does "ought" derive from is? How does one get from the fact of self-consciousness and self-determination, the realm of is and can, to the realm of what ought to be or be done?
-Mantra: There is no absolute truth.
-Problem: Such a statement itself claims to be an absolute truth.
-Mantra: Humanity is, by nature goods.
-Problem: Such a statement lacks meaning since there is no moral reference point in secularism by which to gauge goodness. Also, if humanity is good by nature, then why doesn't goodness come more naturally to people?
7. The theory of evolution
Contends that complexity of life arises out of simplicity and non-life without the aid of intelligence or design.
-Problem: The law of entropy, which is an indisputable law of nature, says that complex things disintegrate to a state of simplicity. Organisms develop due to the information in within the every living cell that direct every process. What is the source of that information?
-Naturalism in practice: Secular Humanism
It is one form of humanism which is the overall attitude that human beings are of special value; their aspirations, their thoughts, their yearnings are significant. Secular humanists obviously embrace the Humanist Manifesto
-Naturalism in practice: Marxism
"Man is the supreme being for man" From this theme, that Marx created his revolutionary imperative to "overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being." What do those terms mean? What is the basis for comparison?
Some challenges for naturalism:
1. To find meaning and purpose in living
2. Does naturalism give us an adequate reason for us to consider ourselves valuable? Are accidents of nature valuable?
3. Could a being whose origins are so iffy trust our own capacity to know?
Humanity's Problem:
Ignorance and superstition. People depends on the escapist promises of religion, rather than facing problems squarely and believing that humankind has the potential to create a world in which peace and justice will prevail.
The Solution:
Education! It is in extending the scientific method of rational inquiry into all aspects of life, while at the same time maintaining a sense of compassion for the individual.
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