Scientific Naturalism and Christian Theology

Come from the Same Roots of Causality

I

Free will and the will that is not contra-causal are the subject of the
metaphysics of naturalism. Metaphysical Naturalism (MN) accepts free will,
denying--where scientific naturalism (SN) asserts--that free will needs to be
"contra-causal" to be called free.

It is not, nor can it ever be, contra-causal. To wish it so, to want it so, to
propose that it must be so before it can be called free is to contradict the very
nature of naturalism's epistemic roots.

What is "contra causality"? To have contra-causal will, you would have to have the
power to move the wind and the stars; the power to control your genetic pool--
before you are conceived; the power to manipulate your environment by supernatural
means (since we are obviously able to manipulate it by natural means, yet this
isn't good enough for SN, which denies anything supernatural); and to manipulate
the behavior and activities of every minute detail of reality that touches your
own existence.

Because you do not and cannot have this power, SN says free will is not free
because it is always influenced by something; the wind, the stars, your genetic
pool, your environment, your prior actions, and the behavior and actions of all
other people who have ever lived and who are living now, and whether or not you
have a sore toe, a headache, have had too much caffein, alcohol, or milk--or are
in need of some, and whether you are depressed, or manic, etc.

Even normality as measured by the strictest determinations of medicine and

psychiatry effects us, according to SN, in such manner as to prevent our will from
being free will. Normality no matter how it is determined is still the effect of
all the previous causes of the being of any human.

In short SN asserts that the butterfly effect prevents what would otherwise be
independent and free will, i.e., the freedom to think or not, and what to conclude
from thought, and how to conclude it. The phrase "butterfly effect" is a
"reference to the [ ] theory that a change in something seemingly innocuous, such
as a flap of a butterfly's wings, may have unexpected larger consequences in the
future, such as the path a tornado will travel."
We are caused by the flapping of all the butterflys' wings, whether those wings
are literal, or metaphorical.

So while you may believe you are exercising free will, SN says the "you" that
exists at the moment of exercising your will shows proof that "we are fully caused
creatures" by all things that have gone before. "Naturalism holds that everything
we are and do is connected to the rest of the world and derived from conditions
that precede us and surround us," it says. [see same link as above]

The most notorious concept of our being "fully caused" is called, in Christianity,
by the name "Original Sin." Christianity has always believed in "full causation"
of the human being through Original Sin, but gives it an "out" through
"redemption." For this reason Christianity believes in free will.

SN states its aim as being the obliteration of anything but scientism in its
metaphysical description of the state of being human, yet it supports the most
illogical of all epistemologic arguments of Christian theology, proving that even
SN cannot escape epistemological mistakes that put it on par with the worst logic
of supernaturalism. What SN does it takes away the ability to be "redeemed" from
our "full causation" by removing the concept of freedom from the concept of will
power.

SN does not disprove the Christian epistemology of Original Sin, it upholds it by

using the same logic of "full causality"!

But in its defence, it must be explicitly stated that SN denies anything

supernatural. It cannot therefor uphold the idea of Original Sin as a religious
concept, but by using the very logic of Christian theology it gives Christianity
very good reason to support the epistemology of SN while denying its metaphysics,
in the very same way SN denies the metaphysics of religion.

Scientific Naturalism is Not Scientifically, But Epistemologically, Wrong

II

While it is entirely true that humans are shaped by such things as their gene pool
and their environment, and by all the other things that science is beginning to
teach us about our biology, this does not constitute what SN calls "full
causation." It is not necessary for the will to be able to change these things for
the will to exist as free will. Free will does not mean independence from
existence.

Yet it is the independent, libertarian will that SN says is not free because it is
not free from the reality of reality. "Naturalism," it say explicitly, "is the
understanding that there is a single, natural world as shown by science, and that
we are completely included in it."

Of course we are "completely included in it." While religion argues that we are
also included in a supernatural world, it does not deny being "included" in the
physical world. As a matter of fact, being released from this "complete inclusion"
in the natural world is the goal of religion. SN seeks to bind us to it with no
power to "fully cause" our own metaphysical existence.

SN does not state that the will is impotent. To the contrary, it states that since
we know, or can know, the elements of reality that "fully cause" us to be who we
are, that we can somehow control our lives better through of will power that it
describes as "not free."

SN is a humanist movement. It supports "compassion" for criminals in their

treatment and sentencing: compassion, not justice. Criminals are still human, have
the capacity to learn from their wrongs and from their time incarcerated. Most
will get out of prison. Ignoring "compassion" for justice does not mean going back
to bread and water, chains and leg irons, beds of straw, lack of proper medicine,
or anything that is not proper in the treatment of humans who have the free will
to become better for the justice of their sentence. Proper treatment is justice,
not compassion.

What SN means by "compassion" is stated this way: " Seeing that we are fully
caused creatures - not self-caused - we can no longer take or assign ultimate
credit or blame for what we do. This leads to an ethics of compassion and
understanding, both toward ourselves and others. We see that there but for
circumstances go I. We would have been the homeless person in front of us, the
convict, or the addict, had we been given their genetic and environmental lot in
life." [emphasis added]

This is all true, except for the "credit and blame" part. If the credit and blame
are moral attributes of action, it is never true that they do not belong to us. If
they are attributes of the chaos of reality over which we have no control, it is
metaphysically unthinkable to assign credit or blame.

It is a case of barking up the wrong tree for SN to take note of "being fully
included" in reality. No one has ever, to my knowledge, denied this. SN denies
that we are included in any sort of super naturalism, and with that idea,
metaphysical naturalism is in complete agreement.

If the unstated, implicit, and possibly unconscious goal of SN is some form of

humanism be it termed "philosophical", "modern", or "secular", then it is not an
honest doctrine, since it states its goal this way: "By understanding
consciousness, choice, and even our highest capacities as materially based,
naturalism re-enchants the physical world, allowing us to be at home in the
universe." SN is a doctrine to "re-enchant" the world!

If its goal is to free us from supernaturalism, it forgot to "fully include"

humanity in the reality of the fact that we would be absolutely nothing if not for
reality itself. "In order to control nature, one must learn to obey nature."

It is in obeying nature that we find our will is free, and it is that freedom that
has taken us out of the "inclusion" of being strictly bound to the earth, and
opened the gateways to being "included" in the rest of the universe.

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