> "While naturalism has often been equated with materialism, it is much
> broader in scope. Materialism is indeed naturalistic, but the
> converse is not
> necessarily true. Strictly speaking, naturalism has no ontological
> preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories
> of reality:
> dualism and monism, atheism and theism, idealism and materialism are all
> per se compatible with it. So long as all of reality is natural, no other
> limitations are imposed. Naturalists have in fact expressed a
> wide variety of
> views, even to the point of developing a theistic naturalism."
> ("naturalism", Britannica.com, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1999.
> http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/6/0,5716,56426+1,00.html).
This is a strange and interesting quote. I've never heard of any
philosopher speaking (seriously or otherwise) of "theistic naturalism",
simply because it's taken to be an implicit contradiction in terms.
While the EB author is right under weird definitions (namely, that one has a
concept of God as a natural object, or a divine notion of nature [something
like pantheism]), those definitions are nearly never used (because other
terms are more suitable -- e.g., "pantheism").
It reminds me of the issue : is "2 + 2 = 4" necessarily true? It seems so,
and deeply clearly so. But this assumes (rightly) the common definitions of
terms. Someone might mean by saying "2 + 2 = 4 is NOT necessarily true"
simply that if we have a different meaning for any of the terms, that
sentence may evaluate to a false proposition.
This is right, but it's nonetheless true that the proposition in FACT
expressed by "2 + 2 = 4" IS necessarily true.
In the same way, "theistic naturalism" is self-contradictory, but only if
one stays within the common range of definitions of "theism" and "nature".
The concept expressed is incoherent; but if one adopts new definitions, so
that the term "theistic naturalism" expresses a different concept, that
other concept may not be incoherent at all. This will be confusing, though
(substantial definition/language changes usually are, particularly when
unnecessary or unannounced).
Thanks for the interesting quote, Steve.
John