In comparing my own views (with my dislike of "naturalism" as a term)
and the views of Terry-and-others (with their dislike of "MIRM" as a term),
I've found some important similarities. For example,
1) The two definitions seem to be analogous:
** "naturalism" is "everything in nature without God's action"
{note: with deistic naturalism, there can be "nature with God's creation"
or "nature with God's observation" but no "nature with God's action"}
** and "MIRM" is "one event in nature without God's action"
2) Also analogous are the reasons for theists to reject each concept:
** nature (which depends on theistic action) is under God's control
** nature-events depend on theistic action, and are under God's control
In both cases, many people believe the concept that "some events (or
even all events) in nature occur without God's action." Therefore, it is
useful to have a term (naturalism or MIRM) that accurately describes this
concept.
And in both cases, many theists (probably including myself, due to my
recent re-analysis) believe the concept is not true and should be rejected.
Therefore, it is useful to have a term (naturalism or MIRM) that can be
denied, and a replacement-term that accurately describes what we do believe.
*******************************
So what terms should we use?
For reasons explained in my initial "naturalism or materialism" post, I
think "[philosophical] naturalism" is a horrible term to use for the theory
that "everything in nature occurs without God,", but that "[philosophical]
MATERIALISM" is an excellent term to use for this theory.
For similar reasons, I think "Matter in Natural Motion" is bad; if we
use "natural" to mean "unsupervised by God" then we are putting our stamp
of approval on the concept that "natural = without God"; this is not wise.
Allan described a reason to dislike "Matter in RANDOM Motion" (MIRM),
because many motions (of planets, a falling apple,...) aren't very random.
But "...UNGUIDED motion" is also sometimes misleading -- would it convey
the proper idea for an archer's arrow?
"...THEISTICALLY-UNSUPERVISED motion" or just "...UNSUPERVISED motion"
seems accurate (for describing the atheist/deist concept) but is awkward.
Or "...NORMAL Motion"? This isn't a strong description for an atheistic
concept of "theistically unsupervised" events.
To construct language that will be useful for communication/education,
we need terms that allow an accurate description of people's "prior
concepts", and terms that allow an accurate description of the "new
concepts" that we want to introduce and teach. The first part of this is
discussed above.
The second phase of communication/education is to accurately describe
our theistic concepts of nature. My suggestion is that we use a continuum
that ranges from "Normal-Appearing Theistic Action" to
"Miraculous-Appearing Theistic Action", NATA-----MATA.
Choosing between "normal-appearing TA " and "natural-appearing TA" is
difficult. Tentatively, I prefer "normal" because it avoids an implication
that "nature = only what appears normal" and that THE RESULT of a
miraculous creation of a 1-celled organism (by MATA), if it occurred, would
not be part of nature. "Normal" is a more neutral term (or so it seems to
me, but maybe this will be challenged) with minimal implications about
"what nature is and isn't," so this important question can be considered on
its own merits.
******************************************************
Of course, there are other possibilities. For example, Loren sent me a
message (as explained in the next T/D-1 post) suggesting that
>It might help if we add another point to the spectrum:
>
>1) Matter in Random Motion (or Matter in "free" Natural Motion)
> (still subject to God's will, plan, sustenance, and concurrence).
>2) Empirically "ordinary" guided natural motion.
>3) Empirically extra-ordinary guided natural motion.
> (Everything happened within the bounds of natural law, but
> statistically the final result was quite remarkable.)
>4) Miraculous action.
This would be another way to think about (and talk about) a NATA-MATA
continuum (and also MIRM), and this might offer some advantages.
******************************************************
By the way, an idea I toyed with on Friday -- that
> Maybe we can use the status of naturalism (and natural & nature) as
>words overpopulated with meanings, in order to more effectively think,
>communicate, and educate.
-- seems like a bad idea, on second thought. (In fact, I was having
second thoughts near the end of this "re: naturalism..." post on Friday.)
I think it is better to consciously/intentionally/explicitly avoid the
use of "naturalism" -- and to explain *why* we don't want to use this term.
Thus, "methodological naturalism" would become "methodological
materialism", and so on.
Craig