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Two HUMANISTIC NATURALISM Two HUMANISTIC NATURALISM Humanistic Naturalists should be strongly inclined to reject Big Bang Cosmol­ ogy. They should be horrified by its development, for they are committed to a philosophical outlook which appears, at least at first, to be completely refuted by Big Bang theory. Humanistic Naturalism had its heyday during the early and mid twentieth century, but the view is as old as some of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. Prominent twentieth century philosophers who are identi­ fied by themselves or others as Humanistic Naturalists were George Santayana, John Dewey, Morris Cohen, Sterling Lamprecht, Roy W. Sellars, John H. Randall, Jr., Sidney Hook, Ernest Nagel, Corliss Lamont, Bertrand Russell, Samuel Alexander, J. B. Pratt, William P. Montague, Paul Kurtz, Kai Nielsen, Daniel C. Dennett, and many others. Among recent naturalists, Nielsen men­ tions A. J. Ayer, C. I. Lewis, W. V. 0. Quine, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, P. F. Strawson, Donald Davidson, David Armstrong, and J. J. C. Smart. 1 Many prominent scientists like Carl Sagan are or have been Human­ istic Naturalists, and we will examine some of their positions in later chapters. Members of this philosophical family tend to share a common metaphysi­ cal, methodological, ethical, and anthropological outlook, though they do not completely agree with or perfectly resemble one another in every respect. Humanistic Naturalists subscribe to most ifnot all of the following philosophi­ cal doctrines; but individual Naturalists may reject, de-emphasize, or ignore a few of these family traits. As less and less of these traits are affirmed, the legitimacy of calling a position "Naturalism" becomes more and more doubtful. Because most natural scientists regard themselves as Naturalists, David Griffin tries to reconcile science and religion with what he calls a "naturalistic theism," by dropping almost everything Naturalists have ever meant by the term. His "minimal naturalism" retains only metaphysical trait D below, and he modifies it significantly by making divine causation a regular part of all natural causation.2 Naturalists are likely to regard this as a purely verbal victory, but Griffin also launches more fundamental and substantive attacks on Naturalism's "scientific" status. So will the following pages, even with respect to D below. Humanistic Naturalists tend to believe: A. Only nature exists; the supernatural does not exist. B. Nature as a whole has no purposes, values, or traits of personality. C. The most general features of nature like time, space, and the basic physical stuff within them exist infinitely, eternally, and necessarily. D. All events have natural causes; there are no supernatural causes. E. Scientific method is the only legitimate method for discovering truth. F. A Humanistic ethics and "philosophy of man" are adequate.3 Rem B. Edwards - 9789004496033 Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:20:43AM via free access 30 WHAT CAUSED THE BIG BANG? The first four of these claims are metaphysical, and the fifth is method­ ological. By "metaphysical" claims, I mean those pertaining to the most univer­ sal or fundamental features of reality, the traditional meaning of the term. Unlike Kai Nielsen, who calls only a priori versions of such claims "metaphysi­ cal,"4 I recognize both a priori and empirical approaches to such claims. Natu­ ralists do not avoid metaphysics just because they profess to be empiricists. Humanistic Naturalists try to combine the fifth methodological claim with the sixth ethical and anthropological thesis. The first five of these have the most obvious importance and direct relevance to Big Bang Cosmology. 1. Family Traits of Humanistic Naturalism Historically, the philosophical outlook ofHumanistic Naturalism was developed expressly as an alternative to Theistic Supernaturalism, which takes just the opposite position on every point. Consider first how Naturalists themselves have expressed their fundamental beliefs. A. Nature as All Existence Humanism believes that nature or the universe makes up the totality of existence and is completely self-operating according to natural law, with no need for a God or gods to keep it functioning. Corliss Lamont5 Nature in which all interactions exist. John Dewey6 We find insufficient evidence for beliefin the existence ofa supernatu­ ral; it is either meaningless or irrelevant to the question of the survival and fulfillment of the human race. As nontheists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity. Nature may indeed be broader and deeper than we now know; any new discoveries, however, will but enlarge our knowl­ edge ofthe natural. Humanist Manifesto IF What, then, are the controlling principles ofnaturalism? Essentially those ofscience: the beliefs that nature is an all-inclusive, spatiotemporal system and that everything which exists and acts in it is a part of this system. Roy W. Sellars8 The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Carl Sagan9 This first humanist principle, the rejection ofthe supernatural world­ view, is shared with materialism and naturalism. Paul Kurtz10 Rem B. Edwards - 9789004496033 Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:20:43AM via free access Humanistic Naturalism 31 There is nothing beyond nature. There is no supernatural reality, spiritual beings, or any purely mental realities. Kai Nielsen11 The claim that "Only nature exists; the supernatural does not exist" is essential to being a Naturalist. Doubters about this may be skeptics, agnostics, or positiv­ ists; but they are not Naturalists. This claim invites the question: What is nature? Sometimes "nature" is conceived so broadly that it covers the whole ofreality, in which case a real God who transcends our world would be an object in nature. "Nature" or "the universe" usually refers to our system of spacetime, but Frank J. Tipler defines "the universe"as "all that exists." Without the additional premise that our system of space time is all that exists, this definition implies that an existing transcendent God belongs to the universe. Tipler, for instance, insists that God is a natural entity and that theology is a branch of physics. 12 He actually wants to naturalize God and treat God as purely immanent in and ultimately produced by spacetime as we know it-in conjunction with infinitely many other spacetime universes that actualize all possibilities. Philosophical Naturalists deliberately use "nature" in a more limited way to exclude even an immanent God, to say nothing of Heaven, Hell, Angels, and all other-worldly entities. Nature is all; nothing more exists. For atheistic Natu­ ralists, especially in their debates with Theists, "nature" denotes this world, the visible universe in its totality; there is no other world; and no other-worldly entities are real. Nature, the cosmos, the totality of our public spatiotemporal universe, is the only reality. The creative, transcendent, and eternal God of traditional western Theism supposedly caused nature, the totality of spacetime, to come into being. By definition, supernatural entities can only exist outside of and before our system of spacetime; but no such beings exist, Naturalists insist. We can only speak metaphorically at best, or unintelligibly at worst, they contend, of their exis­ tence, and no reliable scientific evidence supports belief in supernatural entities. "Before time" is a temporal metaphor; and "outside space" is a spatial meta­ phor; but these metaphors have no literal or intelligible extensional meaning or reference. Scientific method, they contend, does not and cannot verify the existence of other worlds or other-worldly entities, so nothing warrants belief in their existence. B. Nature as Purposeless Our world has been made by nature through the spontaneous and casual collision and the multifarious accidental, random and purposeless congregation and coalescence ofatoms. Lucretius 13 [Naturalism} excludes cosmic purpose, a meaningful totality, and any variation ofthe Platonic form ofthe good. Roy W. Sellars 14 Rem B. Edwards - 9789004496033 Downloaded from Brill.com10/07/2021 07:20:43AM via free access 32 WHAT CA USED THE BIG BANG? This cosmos, unbounded in space and infinite in time, consists funda­ mentally of a constantly changing system of matter and energy, and is neutral in regard to man's well-being and values. Corliss Lamont15 To a naturalist, evidence for purpose, needs, organization, and ends in nature, is discovered in the behavior ofspecific things and organisms. No reference to the purpose of the whole is empirically relevant to the purposes he discovers by natural observation and experiment. Sidney Hook16 Humanism asserts that the nature ofthe universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. Humanist Manifesto I17 Nature for the humanist is blind to human purposes and indifferent to human ideals. Paul Kurtz 18 Most if not all Naturalists insist that "Nature as a whole has no purposes, values, or traits of personality." They hold that no valuational, personal, or psychological attributes apply directly to nature as a whole; and nature does not indirectly express the purposes or personal will of either a God who transcends the world or a God who is immanent in the world. Impersonal nature has no values, pursues no goals, makes no judgments about good and evil or right and wrong, has no aims or intentions, does not care what happens, takes no attitudes towards anything, whether favorable or unfavorable, thinks no thoughts, knows not what it does, has no awareness or consciousness of its own, and does not consciously and purposefully try to do what it does or try to achieve anything at all. All personal, psychological, or "anthropomorphic" attributes must be excluded from our thinking about nature as a whole, no matter how appropriate these categories are for thinking about local earthly organisms within nature like animals and human beings, and no matter how impressive and powerful the creative natural forces are that bring living things into being. Cosmic-level teleology has no reality.
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