Naturalism on Evolution - Research Paper Example

Naturalism on Evolution Naturalism is an approach to religion that is devoid of supernaturalism but deeply entrenched inthe scientific understanding of nature and the world but incorporates the religious perspective of a life well lived. Naturalism rejects all kinds of supernatural beings including deities and asserts that there is no such thing as God or supernatural processes. Naturalists believe that nature is the core and centre of everything in the world and the occurrence of a certain thing or process are as a result of another natural process. In trying to understand nature and seek explanations of natural processes, naturalists use science as their main resource. Some people believe that science and religion are very different and irreconcilable as science is based on rationality as opposed to faith which is irrationality. Other people believe that naturalism is the home of reconciliation between science and religion with yet some irreconcilable discrepancies showing conflict between naturalism and science. Evolution is the scientific explanation of the origin of life in nature that was proposed by Charles Darwin and it remains one of the most contentious and hotly debated issues in religious naturalism. This paper will explore naturalism in religion with a bias in evolution as put across by science and scientific theory of evolution and natural selection. First, the paper will have a brief description of naturalism and then have a look at evolution and the controversies surrounding the evolutionary theory. Naturalists can be described as pragmats who have their basis of reality in empirical logic and do not consider testimony as a source of truth of reality (Anderson 111). All the conscious differentiations of reality are based on the way that human beings identify the various qualities of world experience and how they think and reason about them. The natural world is the centre of the most significant experience and understanding of nature and thus it is the most valuable thing in the assessment of an individual’s well being. The idea of a supreme being is considered to have no grounds and everything is approached from a rational point of view and the harmony of reason and our understanding of the universe as informed by science (Griffin 56). Naturalism is presumably not a religion as such as it stands but it plays a vital role just like a religion does which is that of giving adherent to a world view. It provides explanations of why thing happen the way they happen, it tells us what fundamentally the world is and what is important in the world and the essence of human life and general life in the world. This is to a great extent what other religions do except for a few differences which might arise from worship and rituals which are not necessarily part of naturalism. There have been concerns whether theology is compatible with naturalism which has often elicited different responses and controversies. Theology and naturalism are compatible but not all forms of naturalism are compatible with theology as it is both the science about God and also the science about the human experience of God’s manifestation in individual life, the society or nature (Francis, Robbins & Astley 95). With science being the underpinnings of naturalism as it provides the explanations for the fundamental structure of the universe, one may think that the theory of evolution is one of the major pillars in naturalism. The theory of evolution which was put forward by Charles Darwin stipulates that all life in the universe is related and share a common ancestry. It further says that life originated from non life with more complex organisms forming out of more simple organisms and that human beings have an animal descent (Smith 3). The theory puts it that more complex organism evolve from simple organisms over a long period of time and that there are mutations that occur on the genetic makeup of organisms that may favour their survival in a process called natural selection (Smith 4). This scientific theory is usually controversial and contrary to the usual theories that are found in major religions such as the theory of creation. In matters of life where naturalism presents the theory of evolution, there seems to be a conflict between religion and naturalism which borrows its concept of understanding the universe from science. Most of us think that the human cognitive faculty which are our belief generating processes are for the greater part reliable. The truth is that they are not very much reliable in the upper limits as seen in the more speculative part of physics and also considering that the human cognitive faculty can be greatly skewed or biased by greed, hate , love , lust and so on. We have a weakness as human beings because we think that the purpose of our cognitive system is to provide us with true beliefs which are the same case with a naturalist and the theory of evolution. There must then be a problem for the naturalists who think that human beings are as a result of evolution over billions of years with processes of random genetic variations, mutations and natural selection. If this point of view was true, then it would mean that the ultimate purpose of our cognitive faculty is not to create true beliefs but to generate reproductive fitness to help in giving adaptive advantage. The theory suggests that our species has survived because our behaviours are adaptive but not because our cognitive system is effective in generating true beliefs (Smith 26). The theory does not in any way guarantee that the belief producing process is reliable but it at least guarantees that the reproductive fitness is reliable. Charles Darwin himself on a letter to William Graham cast doubt on the reliability of the human cognitive faculty. In his letter, he stated that he had doubt whether the conviction of the human mind which is a product of lower animals could be trusted at all. In summary, naturalism is highly based on the human understanding of the universe which is a product of the unreliable cognitive faculty of human beings. It would be a fallacy to state or even try to demonstrate in any manner that human thinking or belief such as the theory of evolution is true. Though some people do think that naturalism is the premise of liberal religion and is the place where people who talk about God and those that don’t talk about God can meet, it is evident that naturalism can actually be misleading and highly inaccurate. Works Cited Anderson, Victor. Pragmatic Theology: Negotiating the Intersections of an American Philosophy of Religion and Public Theology. New York: SUNY Press, 1998.Print Francis, Leslie J., Mandy Robbins &Jeff Astley. Empirical Theology in Texts and Tables: Qualitative, Quantitative and Comparative Perspectives. New York: BRILL, 2009.Print Griffin, David Ray. Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts. New York: SUNY Press, 2000.Print Smith, John Maynard. The Theory of Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.Print Read More