Re: [asa] Theological Naturalism - 'The Nature of God' = Naturalism

> Anytime a person questions or speaks to "the nature of God" they are
> utilizing a type of theological naturalism. It is theological naturalism
> because they are applying the concept of 'nature' to something that
> both created and therefore exceeds nature; what some here call 'the
> supernatural.' Once a person speaks about 'the nature of' the Divine,
> they are compromising their views as a scientist because they are
> considering an extra-scientific Thing.

Our efforts to understand God are afflicted by our limits as humans;
thus, to some extent talking about the nature of God is imposing undue
constraints. This is not to say that we cannot know anything about
God but rather that all our theology is imperfect. However, this has
nothing to do with the term "nature of God." That phrase uses
"nature" in a different sense. The nature of something is its
essential character, and it is perfectly appropriate to speak of God's
nature in this sense. This has nothing to do with "natural" versus
"supernatural".

> "theological naturalism, a phrase he [Hunter] uses to describe the
> restriction of science to naturalism for religious reasons."

I think this may conflate two things. I expect physical laws to
provide adequate physical descriptions of what happens in the vast
majority of cases for religious reasons. However, restricting science
to the study of such secondary cases seems to me to not be so much a
religious issue as a practical or semantic issue.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
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