Varieties of Naturalism

                        Naturalism and Religion

Naturalism can be briefly defined as the belief that the only reality is the physical universe of energy/matter, as gradually discovered by our intelligence using the tools of experience, reason, and science. People are naturalists because (1) they already believe from common sense that the natural world exists; (2) they are impressed with science's ability to produce reliable knowledge about what nature is like, and (3) they conclude that the supernatural cannot be reasonably supported by any means. On the other hand, many supernaturalists remain comfortable with the supernatural because they either (1) believe that experience, reason and science can be used to reasonably support belief in the supernatural; (2) believe that some other special form of knowledge besides experience/reason/science justifies belief in the supernatural, and/or (3) decide that experience/reason/science cannot prove supernaturalism false, so believing in the supernatural remains justified.

Naturalism is based on Reasonable Belief

The divide between naturalists and supernaturalists at this basic stage is often caused by a fundamental difference in attitude towards the proper use of experience, reason and science in forming and maintaining beliefs. There are four basic options to take regarding reasonable belief, and naturalists should accept only the third and fourth propositions.

• If experience/reason/science cannot show that X is false, then I am reasonable for believing X. [Example: It cannot be proven that God doesn't exist, so I'll believe in God if I want to.] Taking this option can seem to protect religion, because reason and science cannot prove that the supernatural does not exist. Logic by itself cannot prove the non-existence of X, so long as X is not self-contradictory (like a square circle). Science cannot prove that any hypothesis about some non-observable X is false, so long as X remains compatible with all empirical knowledge. Not surprisingly, religions that encounter science usually adapt their theologies so that they are always compatible with all empirical evidence that science has discovered so far, and many theologies additionally try to be compatible with science's current theories as well. However, as Karl Popper argued in the context of the "demarcation problem", a theory (such a religion) that is designed simply to be compatible with all empirical knowledge loses credibility and enjoys no advantage over the unlimited number of rival theories that may be designed with equivalent maximum compatibility. Recommendation: Neither naturalists nor supernaturalists should prefer this proposition.
   
• If experience/reason/science cannot prove that X is true, then I am forbidden to believe X. [Example: It cannot be proven that God does exist, so I won't believe in God even if I want to.] Taking this option leads away from religion, to be sure, but it leads towards the opposite view that (6) Reality only consists of what science knows about (you can jump to "Naturalism and Science"), which is only one variety (and perhaps not the best variety) of naturalism. The major difficulty with this option is that much of reality remains to be explored and explained by science. Should we be forbidden from believing something just because science is silent about it? Many beliefs, made reasonable through long practical experience, have not yet been subjected to scientific scrutiny. Moral beliefs are like this. Also, scientists form reasonable beliefs about hypotheses before they are subjected to complete confirmation (if scientists didn't have at least some small degree of belief about hypotheses they'd like to test, they would not bother testing them). Recommendation: Neither naturalists nor supernaturalists should prefer this second proposition.
   
• If experience/reason/science shows that X is the best theory at present, then I ought to believe X now. [Example: Science shows that evolution is the best theory, so I ought to believe evolution rather than divine creation.] This option requires that scientific explanations demonstrate their greater credibility over religious explanations. Any religion that wants to enjoy support from experience, reason, and science should accept this third proposition, and naturalism should as well. However, this third proposition requires an attitude of humility from both religion and science. Religion must make the constant effort to win the intellectual battle with science, and naturalism must continually offer reasonable alternatives to supernaturalistic hypotheses. Furthermore, much of reality has not yet been satisfactorily explained (or even explored) by science. This means that supernaturalists can try to offer supplements to current scientific knowledge. On this proposition, (4) Science is able to give increasingly reliable knowledge about reality, or (5) Science is the only source of knowledge about reality (you can jump to "Naturalism and Science"). Recommendation: Both naturalists and supernaturalists should accept this proposition.
   
• If experience/reason/science cannot give enough reasonable support to X or to not-X, then I ought to withhold belief from both. [Example: No hypothesis about the cause of the universe's creation (a supernatural God, or some natural cause) yet enjoys sufficient reasonable support, so I don't believe any of them.] This fourth proposition requires that belief in X is based on sufficient reasonable support. The third proposition above requires that the best theory win, while this fourth proposition adds that a winner must at least be sufficiently reasonable, regardless of whether it is better than the rest. After all, believing in aliens may be more highly justified than believing in fairies, but belief in aliens does not yet enjoy enough rational support (certainly not to the same level as, for example, believing in the existence of planets around other stars). Recommendation: Both naturalists and supernaturalists should accept this proposition.

Many naturalists suppose that the second proposition is the best, because it most emphatically elevates experience, reason, and science over all other sources of belief. However, the third proposition should not be ignored by naturalists, because (a) this option only demands allegiance to science where science has actually investigated and theorized about reality, and (b) reality consists of more than just what science currently knows. The primary difficulty with the third proposition is that this option appears to leave room for belief in the supernatural, because supernatural religions try to describe realities beyond the reach of current and future science. For example, supernatural religions often argue that only they can offer explanations for why a natural universe exists at all. The third proposition therefore requires supplementation by the fourth proposition, resulting in this supreme proposition about reasonable belief:

Both naturalists and supernaturalists should accept this supreme proposition about belief. Here are two examples for applying this supreme proposition:

Example One: "Experience/reason/science gives sufficient reasonable support to the theory of Darwinian natural selection, and that this theory enjoys more reasonable support than any rival hypothesis competing with this theory (such as Lamarkian evolution or divine creation of species). Therefore, I believe that Darwinian natural selection is (fallibly) correct, and that rival hypotheses are incorrect." On this example, this person reasonably accepts Darwinian natural selection and rejects as false all other competing theories about evolution. This person is a "believer" in Darwinian natural selection, and a "disbeliever" or "skeptic" about rival theories. Of course, this stance is revisable in light of future additional empirical evidence and fresh theorizing.

Example Two: "Experience/reason/science gives insufficient reasonable support to any theory, scientific or religious, about the ultimate cause of the Big Bang origin of the universe. Therefore, I withhold belief about whether any of these theories are correct or incorrect." On this example, this person reasonably withholds any belief about the truth or falsity of these rival theories.  This person is a "non-believer" or "agnostic" or "skeptic" about all of these theories. Of course, this stance is revisable in light of future additional empirical evidence and fresh theorizing.

Are Naturalists Atheists, Agnostics, or Skeptics?

A naturalist does not believe that any hypotheses about supernaturalism currently enjoy sufficient reasonable support. By the definition of reasonable belief, disbelief, and nonbelief that has been explained above, the naturalist does not believe any hypotheses about supernaturalism. A naturalist is a non-believer and a skeptic about any supernaturalistic hypothesis.

There are two main types of non-believers: atheists and agnostics. You can read an article about "Atheism and Agnosticism". Let's begin with agnosticism. An agnostic is someone who "does not know whether supernaturalism is true or not," according to the common definition and the roots of the term in Greek: a "gnostic" is someone who possesses knowledge, so an "a-gnostic" is someone who does not possess knowledge. In the context of religious knowledge, the agnostic about religion would therefore be someone who does not possess knowledge about religious claims. On this vague definition, there are many agnostics: agnostics include babies, most small children, adults who remain uncommitted to any particular religion, adults who have lost cognitive capacity, etc. However, a better definition of the agnostic would be "someone who has considered reasons offered for belief in supernaturalism, has not yet been convinced by those reasons, and therefore is presently a non-believer." While more accurate, this lengthy definition needs more work, because the atheist is also someone who has considered reasons offered for belief in supernaturalism but remains a non-believer. Where is the difference between an agnostic and an atheist?

Sometimes "atheist" and "agnostic" are defined so that if you are an agnostic then you cannot also be an atheist. For example, suppose an atheist is "someone who claims to know that no god exists" and agnosticism is defined as "someone who claims that they do not know whether any god exists or not". If an atheist is a "gnostic" -- someone who claims to have knowledge -- then the atheist should have excellent reasons for knowing that nothing supernatural exists. However, no one can ever know with certainty that nothing supernatural exists. Logic itself dictates that it is impossible to prove by experience, reason, or science that nothing supernatural exists. "You can't prove a negative", the saying goes. Well, actually you can prove that certain things don't exist by proving that other things do. For example, you can prove that there is no elephant in the room by exhaustively searching and proving that all elephant-sized spaces in your room are either empty or already filled by other things. Also, it is possible to prove that something does not exist if its existence would require violations of logic. For example, if "roundness" and "squareness" are logically incompatible, then nothing that is both round and square exists. This logical requirement has made a large impact on religion. For example, Christian theologians now typically describe God's all-powerful nature as "the ability to do any logically possible thing" and the like.

Considering only supernatural entities that don't require violations of logic, it is impossible to exhaustively search such a transcendent "space" using experience, reason, or science. No reasonable person should claim to be certain that nothing supernatural exists. If an atheist is "someone who claims to absolutely know that no god exists" then there could be no reasonable atheists. But there are reasonable atheists, because the genuine definition of an atheist is not "someone who claims to absolutely know that no god exists." We haven't yet found a more reasonable definition of atheism.

How can we accurately identify reasonable atheists and distinguish this group of non-believers from the other group, the agnostics? Let's return to simpler, common-sense notions of these two groups. To be different from an atheist, the agnostic must be someone who is more tempted to accept supernaturalism, without becoming an actual believer in supernaturalism. And on the other side, the atheist must be someone who has very little, if any, temptation to believe any supernatural hypothesis. Separating the atheist, the agnostic, and the supernaturalist from each other evidently requires that we conceive of belief as having degrees from zero belief to full belief -- from a complete lack of belief in X, to a middle range of a partial belief in X, to a complete conviction in X. The agnostic would thus be someone occupying the middle range: someone who has some sort of "partial belief" in supernaturalism: an agnostic believes that supernaturalism enjoys some degree of reasonable support that is enough to tempt belief but not yet enough to convince. An agnostic is someone who would say, "Supernaturalism has some significant reasons to support it, and may possibly be correct, but I'm not yet fully convinced." By contrast, the atheist is far less impressed by reasons offered for supernaturalism. An atheist would instead be someone who would say, "Supernaturalism has very few (or no) significant reasons to support it, and even though supernaturalism can't be proven false, I'm so far quite unconvinced."

This difference between the atheist and the agnostic can be more clearly drawn by considering whether the agnostic can be a naturalist. An atheist can easily be (and should be) a naturalist, since naturalism is the most reasonable worldview after supernaturalism is rejected for lack of sufficient reasonable support. But what about the agnostic? Can an agnostic also be a naturalist? Probably not. Recall that an agnostic is someone who would say, "Supernaturalism has some significant reasons to support it, and may possibly be correct, but I'm not yet convinced." And also recall our general proposition about reasonable belief:

If experience/reason/science gives sufficient reasonable support to X, and X enjoys more reasonable support than any rival hypothesis competing with X, then I should believe that X is (fallibly) correct, and I should believe that rival hypotheses are incorrect. Where there is insufficient reasonable support for X, then I ought to withhold belief from X.

Naturalism and supernaturalism are competing hypotheses about how we should understand reality, and naturalism and supernaturalism are here understood as incompatible. If one is correct, then the other must be false. (Some metaphysical systems theorize that there might be significant overlap, if nature is partly divine, but we will not pause to consider those systems here.) Naturalists believe that experience/reason/science gives sufficient reasonable support to naturalism, and they believe that naturalism enjoys more reasonable support than supernaturalism -- that is why naturalists do not believe any supernaturalist hypothesis. However, an agnostic is someone who has some partial degree of belief in supernaturalism, and therefore the agnostic can only have a partial belief (at most) in naturalism. The agnostic is not a convinced naturalist. The agnostic must be someone who cannot agree that experience/reason/science gives sufficient reasonable support to naturalism. Only the atheist, and not the agnostic, can be a naturalist.

If no agnostics can be naturalists, does that mean that all naturalists must be atheists? Not necessarily -- its depends on the supernaturalist hypothesis which is under debate. Consider the kind of supernaturalism which holds this hypothesis C: God is responsible for the creation of each particular species of life. Since the naturalist believes instead that evolution by natural selection is the far superior hypothesis explaining the existence of particular species of life, the naturalist claims that C is false, and so this naturalist disbelieves a God that creates species. But also consider the kind of supernaturalism which holds this hypothesis U: God is responsible for the Big Bang origin of the universe. Suppose a naturalist does not believe U, but not because this naturalist already believes a rival naturalist hypothesis about the cause of the Big Bang. In this case, our naturalist does not believe any hypothesis about a cause for the Big Bang (even the idea that there was a cause) because she believes that none of them have sufficient reasonable support. This naturalist does not believe U, but not because she believes that U is false, but rather because she does not find sufficient reasonable support for U. Our naturalist is therefore "agnostic" about U.

A naturalist can therefore be an atheist concerning some hypotheses about God, and can also be agnostic concerning other hypotheses about God. In either case, the naturalist is skeptical about such supernatural hypotheses and a non-believer about any god. This skepticism is the basis for all forms on non-belief. The confusing distinctions made between weak/strong atheism, or between positive/negative atheism, are entirely unnecessary and unhelpful. 

Are There Any Naturalistic Religions?

Naturalists believe that supernaturalism is not justified by either experience, reasoning, or science. However, there are a few types of religion that are not based on belief in the supernatural. Some types of Buddhism, and varieties of Taoism and Confucianism, are often offered as examples. In the West since the 1600s, philosophers and theologians have explored Pantheism, Panentheism, Process Theism, Religious Naturalism, Religious Humanism, and Nontheism. These alternatives to supernaturalism believe that the natural universe itself has divine aspects or inspirational features. Gods may be found in nature, or God may be the same thing as all of nature, or God may be the right label for our highest moral ideals. Many of these alternatives to supernaturalism try to be quite compatible, or even reliant upon, the knowledge provided by science, and therefore they fall into category (3) or (4) as listed in "Naturalism and Science".

This website does not advocate any sort of naturalistic religion, and does not offer arguments against them, either. Explorations of naturalistic religions have long been a fruitful area of philosophical creativity, so you are encouraged to visit the websites mentioned above.

Basic Arguments for Naturalism

The most basic argument for naturalism is as follows:

1. Nature exists.
2. There are no good reasons to believe that anything supernatural exists.
Conclusion: Only nature exists.

Regarding premise 1, supernaturalists could try to argue that nature does not exist. Most supernaturalists have never tried this tactic. The obvious reason is because any definition of the "supernatural" depends on already possessing a conception of, and belief in, the natural. Otherwise how could the supernatural be contrasted against anything, and how could the supernatural be given credit for creating the natural world? The paradigm supernatural religions (western religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) require belief in both the natural and supernatural worlds. The less obvious reason why supernatural religions are not skeptical towards nature is because those other religions (such as some varieties of Hinduism and Buddhism), which do argue that nature is not real, still try to explain the illusion, by giving ultimate spiritual reality the credit for generating the illusion of nature. By treating nature as a deceptive product of genuine spiritual reality, these religions actually bring nature and spirit into very close relationships, tending to result in theologies that look more like pantheisms. Instead of sharply dividing spirit from nature, these eastern theologies tend to unify them. Genuine supernaturalisms instead depend on sharp dichotomies between the supernatural (has no physical properties, need not obey natural laws, not constrained by space/time) from the natural (only has physical properties, must obey natural laws, contained within space/time). 

Supernatural theologies spend far more effort on arguing that premise 2 is false, by attempting to persuasively argue that people should believe that the supernatural exists in addition to the natural. There are three main types of theologies which pursue distinct strategies.

Theology In The World: According to this kind of theology, religion is compatible with science because supernatural hypotheses should compete with naturalistic hypotheses for rationally explaining the features and events of the natural world. To the extent that hypotheses about the supernatural are better able to explain things going on within nature, belief in the supernatural is reasonable. Even if the supernatural is no longer needed to explain the origin of the earth, or the evolution of life, maybe there are some mysterious things in the world (consciousness, or weird quantum effects, maybe) that still need the supernatural.

Theology At The Edge: According to this kind of theology, religion is compatible with science because supernatural hypotheses are necessary to explain the most general features of nature as a whole and to explain the very existence of nature itself. Supernatural hypotheses should not try to compete with natural hypotheses for rationally explaining the features and events of the natural world. Even if the supernatural is no longer needed to explain anything in the world, it is still needed for dealing with dark mysteries surrounding us when science's knowledge stops at the very edge of nature itself.

Theology Over The Edge: According to this kind of theology, religion does not have to be reasonable or compatible with science, but just faithful. It is entirely irrelevant whether any supernaturalistic hypotheses successfully explain anything. For some theologians over the edge, they still respect reason enough that they proudly design their theologies to be evidence-proof and defend religious belief on the basis that at least supernaturalism cannot be proven false. For some other theologians over the edge, having lost all respect for reason, the more irrational and absurd one's religious faith is, the better.

Naturalism vs. Supernaturalistic Theologies

A naturalist is someone who is skeptical about supernaturalism. Naturalism does not rest on proving that supernaturalism is false. Theological defenders of religion who construct hypotheses about God sometimes announce that their hypotheses cannot be proven false, implying that therefore their hypotheses must be true.

A more complex argument for naturalism is as follows:

1. We all already accept the existence of ourselves and the natural world around us.
2. Experience/reason/science provides much reasonable and practical knowledge about ourselves and the natural world around us.
3. Arguments for the existence of anything beyond nature fail (so far) the reasonable and practical test of experience/reason/science.
4. No other alleged source of knowledge of anything beyond nature is reasonable or practical.
Conclusion: Only nature exists.

This argument for naturalism assumes, of course, that peoples' beliefs should be grounded on what is reasonable and practical. Religious fanatics and dogmatists are sometimes driven to the extreme view that neither reason nor utility should be trusted in religious matters. If neither reason nor utility are relevant to judging religion, then logic and argument itself becomes irrelevant. If someone (usually not a theologian, since theology depends on reasoning too) declares that the naturalist rashly assumes the validity of experience/reason/science, naturalists can only reply that they do not want to abandon sanity. The real issue is not whether experience/reason/science are sources of reliable knowledge, but whether they should be supplemented with some additional alleged source(s) of knowledge.

The theologian can try to dispute premises 1 and 2, but only the most fanatical and mystical religions abandon common-sense and reason to this extreme. The typical Christian theologian, for example, usually looks elsewhere to argue against naturalism. If the theologian rejects premise 4, then the burden of proof is on the theologian to persuade naturalists to accept any alternative mode of knowledge. Since that burden of proof is not on the naturalist, we will not pursue this question further here. The theologian may instead dispute premise 3 first, and the naturalist does have the argumentative burden of explaining why arguments for the existence of anything beyond nature fail (so far) the reasonable and practical test of experience/reason/science. The naturalist's explanations fall into two broad categories: explanations why arguments against supernaturalism are successful, and explanations why arguments for supernaturalism are failures. We next turn to these explanations.

Arguments against Supernaturalism

There is no general all-purpose argument that the naturalist could use to prove that nothing supernatural exists. As explained above, it is impossible to exhaustively search such a transcendent "space" beyond nature using experience, reason, or science. No reasonable person should claim to be certain that nothing supernatural exists. However, the simple claim that "something supernatural exists" is by itself meaningless. Existence is not a predicate -- nothing is being attributed to the supernatural by such a simple claim, so we have no idea what is being claimed. No concept or idea is conveyed by "the supernatural exists," so trying to believe such a vague thing is pointless, and trying to argue against it is similarly pointless. Of course, when religious people claim "the supernatural exists" what they really mean is their own specific notion of God. A supernaturalist must offer some characterizations to define their notion of the supernatural. Each characterization of God (such as, "God is like this..." or "God does that...") is a hypothesis about the supernatural. Taking a person's hypotheses about God together, they add up to a theory about God. Such theories are meaningful, in the sense that they convey enough positive ideas to make it possible to argue for or against that God.

Therefore, any argument that a naturalist could make against the supernatural would have to be an argument against some particular theory of God. So the naturalist could argue against the Taoist notion of "The Way" or against the Hindu notion of "Brahman" or the Jewish notion of "Yahweh" or the Islamic notion of "Allah" or the Christian theistic notion of "God", etc.

There are three fundamental ways that a naturalist can argue against a specific theory of the supernatural. First, a supernaturalist theory may not be well-supported by experience/reason/science -- there is not enough evidence for that theory to make it believable (examples given in sections below). Second, the falsity of a supernaturalist theory may be well-supported by experience/reason/science -- there is enough evidence to conclude that this theory is probably false (examples given in sections below). Third, the falsity of a supernaturalist theory may be proven by reason alone --  such a supernatural thing's existence would require violations of logic. Every major religion has a supporting theological industry devoted to explaining away apparent logical inconsistencies raised by its theory of the supernatural. Theologians are usually very careful to say either that (a) their god doesn't violate logic (requiring careful refinements of hypotheses about god, such as "God can do anything logically possible", see "Omnipotence"), or (b) their god dictates logic anyways, so god is exempt from logical conditions; or (c) their god is so transcendent that it cannot be adequately conceived by humans, so that logic cannot apply. The naturalist’s arguments for naturalism and against supernaturalism never ask for any exemption from logic.

This website only deals (briefly) with arguing against one specific theory of supernaturalism: monotheism. More sections below instead explain why arguments for supernaturalism in general fail.

Three Arguments against Monotheism

The theologies of monotheistic religions (including Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) share a theory of God: God is a personal, eternal, and perfect supernatural being that is responsible for creating and sustaining everything else. Among the perfections usually attributed to this God by revelation (direct inspiration, prophets, scripture, etc) are perfect knowledge, perfect power, and perfect goodness. Other sorts of perfections attributed to this God are designed by theologians largely to answer questions about why this God exists or why God does not require violations of logic (God is the only necessary being, God needed no creator, God created the universe from nothing, etc.).

In the next section, three arguments against monotheism are sketched: The "Problem of One Real Evil" argument, the "Problem of Too Many Evils" argument, and the "Problem of Free Will" argument. In all three arguments, "God" refers to the specific monotheistic God: God is a personal, eternal, and perfect supernatural being that is responsible for creating and sustaining everything else, and has perfect knowledge, perfect power, and perfect goodness. These three arguments all raise questions about God's plan and design of creation, and in many ways they turn the "Argument from Design" on its head by questioning whether monotheism's conception of "Divine Providence" is reasonable.

Monotheistic theologians must believe that God is ultimately responsible for most, if not all, features of the world and events in the world. Does God actually foresee, plan, and directly execute every little thing in all of creation? Maybe not (see arguments 2 and 3 below, for example). But God must surely have the capacity to prevent great evils -- evils so horrible that no good being, much less a perfectly good being, would want to happen. And since God is all-knowing and all-powerful, God would prevent such monstrous evils. But a horrible evil is not necessarily a Real Evil -- since something that we regard as a horrible evil might actually be required by God's grand design for the universe. For example, hurricanes might be a necessary consequence of the sort of atmosphere required for the planet that God placed us on -- a planet without hurricanes might be a planet without much good weather, for all we know. An evil that people regard as horrible might actually be permitted by God, if required for the plan's greater good. You can read more about the "Problem of Evil" counter argument. The One Real Evil argument is used by someone convinced that some particular horrible evil is so evil that God could not need it to accomplish the divine grand plan.

The monotheistic theologian's response to this One Real Evil argument is not to reject premise 1 or premise 2 (they just come from definitions to get the argument going). Instead, the theologian denies premise 3 by claiming that no Real Evil has ever happened -- no horrible evil is a Real Evil -- because every horrible evil is actually required by God's grand design for creation. When the naturalist complains that she cannot understand how some horrible evil (the Holocaust, for example) could be required by a perfectly good God, the theologian's answer is simple: yes indeed, the naturalist fails to understand God's grand design for creation, and lacks faith that there even is a divine grand design, to no one's surprise.

However, the honest theologian will admit that religious people sooner or later confess to inadequate understanding of God's grand design. But this necessary admission hides a terrible price for the theologian. The theologian must either admit (1) that he conceives of horrible evils as actually good, or (2) that he cannot personally conceive how some horrible evil is actually good, even if God can. The terrible price to pay is that both options expose the theologian as someone unable to really know the difference between good and evil. Monotheists are notorious for claiming that their religion bestows exclusive knowledge of good and evil -- they can know, while naturalists cannot know, objective moral truths about right and wrong. But the theologian is trapped in a severe dilemma. If he selects option (1), then he cannot view evil as so very different from good, since any evil is actually good, from the divine perspective and his own. If he selects option (2), then he cannot say with any certainty whether a horrible evil is really evil from the divine perspective. Either way, the theologian (and the ordinary religious believer upon reflection) must surrender any confidence that he can confidently distinguish good from evil. This surrender deflates the monotheist's pretensions to always knowing good from evil, and diminishes the argument that religion is the only way to know objective moral truths. You can read about this "moral argument" for God in "Naturalism and Morality". 

The theologian might try to create a distraction from this terrible dilemma by complaining that the atheist can't distinguish good from evil either, since the atheist does not believe in divinely ordained absolute rules of good and evil, right and wrong. The theologian is complaining that this argument fails because the atheist cannot know premise 3 -- that One Real Evil has happened. If the atheist really does have to claim that premise three can be absolutely known as certain truth by all people, then the atheist would have a lot of explaining to do about how absolute moral truths can be known. Now, some atheists do think that some absolute moral truths can be knows, while others deny this. But this issue is irrelevant for this One Real Evil argument: here, the atheist need not claim to know that the premise "One Real Evil has happened" is absolutely true. The argument only asks each religious person to wonder whether One Real Evil has happened, and if that person honestly admits that at least one Real Evil has probably happened, then the argument does its work against monotheism.

This "Too Many Evils" argument effectively asks whether the universe's design can reasonably support the existence of a monotheistic god. After all, any bad flaws in the design must be attributed to the designer, even if the monotheist prefers to emphasize good aspects of creation. This second argument is far less popular among naturalists/atheists, because a single case of a genuinely mystifying horrible evil is sufficient to throw great doubt upon monotheism (see the "One Real Evil" argument above). Adding more cases of horrible evil after the first only helps to estimate how far God (if it exists) departs from all-goodness. You can read more about the "Evidential/Inductive Problem of Evil" counter argument here.

This "Too Many Evils" argument against God can show why naturalism is at least as plausible as supernaturalism for explaining the world, since naturalism has little difficulty accounting for both the good and bad aspects to nature. Only a perfect design can establish the existence of a perfect creator -- little evils can add up to a less-than-perfect god. This evidential argument therefore also makes plausible some rival religious hypothesis that, for example, Shmod exists rather than God, where Shmod is just like God except partly evil. Monotheism might survive the "One Real Evil" argument by claiming that no one can know god's plan and making a complete mystery of its god, but it cannot seriously maintain itself as the only alternative to naturalism when compared against the immense variety of alternative supernaturalisms that can far more easily account for evils. Indeed, since the plausibility of any single supernaturalist theory must be regarded as low, and there are so many alternative hypothetical supernaturalisms, the reasonable alternative is to be content with naturalism.

To dispute this Too Many Evils argument, the theologian can reject either premise 1 or premise 2, because premise 3 is obviously true. Rejecting premise 1 requires the theologian to explain how any universe, no matter how evil it contains, is still a perfect world and is the best that a perfect God could manage. Rejecting premise 1 would mean a complete abandonment of natural theology -- the effort to make god's existence plausible by examining god's actual creation of this world. If just about any world will suffice as perfect, natural theology becomes a useless tautology and belief in a divine design is exposed as mere blind faith.

Rejecting premise 2 requires the theologian to explain how God's grand good plan for this world must require so many evils, since we can easily imagine worlds with fewer evils. The theologian must explain why the evils in the world are just the right amount of evil, such that no lesser amount of evils would have been sufficient to carry out the divine plan instead. This effort to justify such an explanation why this world is the "best of all possible worlds" is called "theodicy" (see "Leibniz on the Problem of Evil"). If the theologian cannot make this explanation plausible, then monotheism is exposed as a religion grounded on mere blind faith. Furthermore, even if successful, the theologian may be unable to really distinguish good from evil, because horrible evils must be regarded as good from the divine perspective (this problem is raised above in argument one). The monotheist theologian can try the rhetorical tactic of complaining that in order for this argument to work, it is the atheist who must figure out how much evil is too much evil. This is a fruitless tactic, since it is the theologian's burden to explain why there are so many evils, and the theologian presumably must know more about God and the divine grand plan than the atheist. This tactic is just a diversion to hide how the theologian cannot quantify the ratio of evil to God. The theologian is forced into this admission because he must ensure that every evil can be explained away and that none of them count against God. How does the theologian explain away so many evils? There are four primary strategies that monotheistic theologians have used.

First, the monotheistic theologian can claim that there is no way for any human mind to be confident that God has sufficient reason to permit some evils. This is just the old line of "well, God might have a grand good plan for everything, for all we know..." tactic of ignorance. The theologian is here saying to the atheist that no one can calculate the odds that a theistic God really exists, based on the finite evidence of evil that we know about. Therefore, any complaint by the atheist about evil in the world is intellectually presumptuous. The atheist replies: (1) If a monotheist on his own admission can't know, based on any real evidence, whether there is a grand design of greater good, then the monotheist is exposed as having just dogmatic faith. That faith is rescued from the problem of evil at the price of surrendering natural theology, because the monotheist can no longer try to prove God's existence based on the way that the world is designed for us. If the atheist can't show that God probably doesn't exist because the design has bad flaws, then the monotheist can't appeal to the world's design to show that God probably does exist, either. (2) If all people are really incompetent to assess whether God has sufficient reason to permit some evils, then no one can really know whether something is really evil or not. Any apparent evil is really for the best (from God's perspective -- even the devil's evil), for the theist -- taking the theist down the road to moral quietism: "everything is all for the best -- nothing is really evil, so just relax." Now, the monotheist theologian will reply that God's commandments still tell us how to distinguish good from evil. Yet it remains the case that God's commands don't cover everything, like disastrous earthquakes (indeed, in the Bible, God causes some natural disasters). For those terrible events that occur, that are not covered by God's commands, how can we tell if they are really good or evil? The monotheist can't really tell -- and that destroys the monotheist's pretensions to always knowing good from evil, and diminishes the argument that religion is the only way to know objective moral truths. You can read about this "moral argument" for God in "Naturalism and Morality". 

Second, the theologian can avoid the pitfalls of the first tactic of ignorance, by instead claiming that the religious person can be confident that God has sufficient reason to permit all evils. However, this second tactic dramatically accelerates the theist towards moral quietism, as evil and good blur together. Indeed, not only is natural theology now irrelevant, but the moral argument for God begins to fall apart too (this challenges William Lane Craig's claim that the design argument and the moral argument are mutually supportive -- actually, they are mutually self-destructive). Consider: the monotheist is now saying that we should view God has sufficient reason to permit everything that happens in the grand design -- no event happens without God's approving permission. What about human sins? If the atheist points to human sins that cause great suffering (Hitler's evil decisions, for example), then the theist can reply that God either (a) permits human free will to make evil decisions, for the greater good of people having free will (so they can freely choose God, for example); or (b) directly causes Hitler's actions so that God controls all events for the grand design (Jonathan Edwards went to this theological extreme: God really performs all sins). On this monotheistic dilemma, either letting people sin is no big evil, or controlling people's sin is no great evil. If sinning is no big evil, or God's sinning is no big evil, what then is the big difference between good and evil, from our limited human perspective? The moral argument for God claims that we know absolute moral truths about good and evil, so we need to postulate God. But if God is ultimately responsible for all sin, our capacity to figure out any big difference between good and evil is radically undermined. Now the theologian is now trapped in a trilemma: either no one knows what really is good or evil, or God authorizes evil, or God performs evil. All three options lead to this conclusion: humans cannot really know what God believes is truly moral, so no moral argument for God can work.

Third, the monotheistic theologian can claim that the infinitely good rewards in the afterlife more than counterbalance any mortal suffering (bypassing the atheist's argumentative analogy of a evil parent who harms a child but gives her lots of ice cream afterwards). Indeed, William Lane Craig goes so far as to say that any mortal suffering is "incommensurable" with heavenly rewards. In ordinary English, the monotheist theologian seems to be saying that no suffering in this life can be held against God -- the worst human suffering is really not that bad, from the divine perspective. The atheist replies: (1) If no suffering is really that bad, how can the monotheist really disapprove of it? The monotheist is going down the road to moral quietism again. (2) The monotheist is again making an assumption, that an afterlife exists -- which just begs the question about God's existence, and exposes the faith-based presumptions of theism.

Fourth, the monotheistic theologian can claim that the real point of the grand design is for people to know and love God -- whether people are suffering or happy is mostly irrelevant. This is a powerful move (Luther and Calvin agreed) and it temporarily helps the monotheist to avoid the "problem of evil" arguments. However, the theologian is still required to explain why this world is the most perfect world for people coming to freely know and love God. Let an "evil" be now defined as anything that severely obstructs a person from freely knowing and loving God. Then the "problem of evil" returns in a new form, because it is not difficult to think of horrible obstructions for some people to freely knowing and loving God. For example, some people never reach their first birthday; some people don't develop sufficient intelligence to consider any ideas about God; some people live through such terribly impoverished lives that they cannot raise their thoughts to religion; some people never learn about God. Thus the theologian is driven back to the options already elaborated above.

Monotheistic religions have always had a contentious relationship with the notion of free will. See another article about "Free Will". Their theologies do not agree on whether free will even exists, or whether God would want to create people with free will. Some theologies are comfortable with "Fatalism". Furthermore, many naturalists are uncomfortable with the notion of free will, worrying that free will could violate the naturalistic view that all events are caused by prior physical events, and so they prefer "Determinism" or "Compatibilism".

This Free Will argument is only effective against monotheistic theologies which hold that God's design for the world includes people who use free will to make some decisions, raising this problem of "Foreknowledge and Free Will". Considering only these theologies further, their theologian must reply to the Free Will argument by rejecting premise 1 or premise 2.

The monotheistic theologian can reject premise 1 only by supplying a highly sophisticated interpretation of God's perfect knowledge. There are two primary interpretations explored by theologians: (a) God knows all truths, but a person's decision does not become a truth until it is made -- so God cannot be faulted for lacking any knowledge about decisions; (b) God knows all truths, but knows these truths in some timeless or eternal sense in which God's knowledge has no "before" or "after" -- so God cannot be faulted for lacking any knowledge about decisions. Naturalists don't care what interpretation is placed upon God's knowledge, but can only watch with amusement as theologians try to explain such convoluted interpretations to the faithful.

The monotheistic theologian could reject premise 2 by supplying some other meaning to "free will" to replace the common sense notion that free decisions are somehow unpredictable. After all, we do not attribute free will to inanimate objects or to machines, precisely because we realize that their behavior could be predicted pretty accurately by a sufficiently intelligent observer. If God knows everything we are going to do before we do it, then from God's perspective we look like machines -- why would God think that we have free will? Could God have free will? There is a fundamental tension between the common sense notions of freedom and predictability -- when one increases, the other must decrease, and vice-versa. Determinism and compatibilism do not resolve this tension, but ignore it, by abandoning such common sense notions for philosophically sophisticated notions. Because the naturalist is similarly engaged in this debate with other naturalists, there is little time to pity the theologians, and naturalism cannot claim any clear advantage in this problem.

Failed Arguments for Supernaturalism

The naturalist finds that the reasons given for various supernaturalist hypotheses all fail to provide sufficient support. Some supernaturalist hypotheses fail because experience/reason/science instead support rival scientific explanations. Other supernaturalist hypotheses fail because they simply lack sufficient support from experience/reason/science, without any competition from naturalistic science. 

Supernaturalist hypotheses which fail because experience/reason/science instead support rival scientific explanations

1. God's creation of stars, sun, earth around 6,000 years ago: Replaced by astronomy and geology.
2. God's creation of human beings and other species: Replaced by Darwinian evolution.
3. God's involvement in the "miracle" of reproduction: Replaced by DNA and genetics.
4. God's responsibility for "miraculous" visions and other hallucinatory "revelations": Replaced by abnormal psychology and brain neurology.
Etc., etc.

Because science has so thoroughly replaced "creationism" accounts with rational accounts, the naturalist needs no supernaturalist hypothesis for any phenomena. Many supernaturalists try to gain refuge from science by emphasizing very unusual phenomena. "Experiential" or "evidential" arguments for the supernatural make unreasonable appeals to mystical experiences, revelations of communication, testimony from scripture, and the like. Naturalists now can turn to scientific explanations for all such strange religious phenomena (including out-of-body experiences, delusional experiences, mass psychosis, etc.) You can visit other websites about these types of arguments: Religious Mysticism, Epistemology of Religion, and Panentheism.

Supernaturalist hypotheses which fail because they lack sufficient support from experience/reason/science

Arguments for supernaturalism sometimes appeal to experience (the "argument from mystical experience"), or to reason (the "ontological argument") or to science (the "cosmological argument"), or to combinations of experience, reason, and science (such as the "teleological arguments" from design or the "argument from morality"). The naturalist does not find that any of these arguments succeed in providing much reason to accept any supernaturalist hypothesis. This website on naturalism cannot attempt to cover the many varieties of arguments for and against God. Fortunately, many other websites accomplish such surveys and offer guides to further reading. You can visit this Wiki website and an atheist website about various arguments for God's existence. You can also read an article about "Atheism and Agnosticism".

As an introduction to philosophical argumentation between naturalism and supernaturalism, three prominent arguments favoring supernaturalism over naturalism are presented here. These arguments, only sketched here in simple forms, try to show that naturalism has inadequate rational justification, and that only supernaturalism has sufficient rational justification. None of these arguments require that a person first reject scientific knowledge. Instead, these arguments are based upon certain alleged limitations to scientific knowledge and naturalism.

How should the naturalist reply to this argument?

Second, the conclusion does not follow from these premises because this argument relies on an additional unstated premise or two, which may be false. In this argument, supernaturalism demands an explanation for the existence of nature. Many theologians make this demand because they are applying a "principle of sufficient reason" which declares that every event or entity requires a reasonable explanation for its existence, or for the way that it is. Now, supernaturalism offers the existence of supernatural being(s) to explain nature. But what explains the existence of such supernatural things? Who made God? Confronted by this question, the supernaturalist usually then abandons the principle of sufficient reason (or modifies it to only say that every event requires a reasonable explanation -- as God is not an event), and retreats to the theological notion that God is precisely that being whose existence and/or essence does not require further explaining. What sort of being is this? The theological answer is typically that a "necessarily existing" being, whatever that is, does not require further explaining. Even if the idea of a "necessary being" could be made clear (dubious in itself, since we encounter no such being in ordinary experience), and even if rational argumentation could prove the existence of a "necessary being" (even more dubious, as the history of such arguments embarrassingly displays), we can still wonder whether such a necessary being would have to be a supernatural being. In other words, the naturalist might admit that only a necessary being could supply an ultimate explanation for everything, and then the naturalist can go on to hypothesize that this necessary being is in fact the entire natural reality. On this naturalist hypothesis that nature is necessary, the big-bang start to our universe was NOT the beginning of all reality -- our visible universe is only one small part of an infinity of multiple universes (collectively named the "megaverse"). Many cosmologists are taking the "multiple-universe" theory seriously, and someday this hypothesis might be reasonably established by new evidence and scientific testing. You can learn about "Scientific Method".

Supernaturalists try to block this naturalist hypothesis of the megaverse by claiming that either (a) the Big Bang theory reveals that our universe had an origin in time, so that we can still ask what caused our universe's origin; (b) even if other universe(s) existed before our universe and caused our universe, such an infinitely existing megaverse violates reason and must be rejected as incoherent; or (c) natural existence might be infinite yet still need explaining, because non-existence is easier for reason to accept than existence, so the naturalist still hasn't explained why only natural existence really exists instead of nothing at all. The naturalist can make the following replies to (a), (b), and (c). In reply to (a), the naturalist can point out that some interpretations of Big Bang cosmology suggest that our universe had no specific origin in time, because time itself came into existence with the universe, or because quantum mechanical effects made the universe from nothing and prevent any "first moment" to the universe (so it makes no sense to ask what preceded the Big Bang or what could have caused the Big Bang). In reply to (b), the naturalist can explain that even though conceiving an infinite amount of time is humanly impossible (generating the simplistic paradox that theologians can use to conclude that there has to a beginning to the universe, since nothing could really ever happen if an infinite number of preceding events had to happen first), the notion of an infinite past violates no rules of mathematics or logic, and therefore an infinitely old megaverse remains an ontological possibility. Besides, most supernaturalists anticipate that this problem of conceiving infinity can be turned around and aimed at their God, so theologians usually do not want God to exist in ordinary time, but to instead exist in some eternal time or timelessness, or in a mixture of ordinary time and timelessness (as if these rival options were easier for humans to conceive than ordinary infinite time). You can read "God and the Beginning of Time" by William Lane Craig for details. It is inconsistent and hypocritical for the theologian to complain about the difficulty of conceiving an infinitely old megaverse, when the sort of "timelessness" enjoyed by God is even harder for humans to conceive. In reply to (c), the naturalist can reply that no supernaturalist has yet given a good argument why non-existence or nothingness is easier for reason to accept than natural existence, so that natural existence requires explanation but nothingness does not. Quite the contrary -- since absolute nothingness is really difficult or impossible for the human mind to conceive (what exactly would you be thinking about if you tried?), therefore natural existence is far easier to think about. We are evidently far better acquainted through experience with natural existence, after all, and reason has a far easier time thinking about the relations between existing things. You can read about "Nothingness" here. Furthermore, if theology complains about the irrationality of thinking that the universe could just come from nothing at all (some naturalists try this hypothesis), this taint of irrationality partly arises from the very notion of nothingness in the first place. If nothingness is such a problem for reason according to theology, how could theology ever have supposed that nothingness is easier for reason to understand than natural existence? The naturalist remains free to hypothesize that the megaverse is all that has existed and all that ever will exist, and thus the naturalist does not need to explain why only the megaverse of nature exists instead of nothing at all.

Third, because the naturalist could offer the hypothesis that the infinite megaverse is a necessarily existing being, premise 3 does not follow from premises 1 and 2. Although the supernaturalist would immediately complain that the naturalist has yet to show that the infinite megaverse has greater reasonable support than supernaturalism, such a comparison is irrelevant to this argument, since this argument rests on the accusation that only supernaturalism can offer any hypothesis explaining nature. The fact that naturalism can offer a viable rival hypothesis causes this argument to fail.

How should the naturalist reply to this argument?

First, there is very little reason to suppose that premise one is true. It is true that if certain fundamental properties of our universe (such as the electromagnetic force's great strength compared to gravity's force, or the mass of the neutron compared to the proton and electron) were slightly different, then the type of earthly organic life that we presently understand would not be possible. However, for all we know, other kinds of life could flourish under quite different fundamental properties of nature.

Second, premise two could be false if the very existence of intelligent life were somehow necessary for explaining why some fundamental properties of nature are the way they are. The naturalist should be highly skeptical of this strange notion, which does not yet have adequate evidence to support it. Curiously, some defenders of this hypothesis view it as a way to understand how God is involved in the universe, which seems illogical, because if correct, this hypothesis defeats a needed premise in the basic "Fine-Tuning Argument" for supernaturalism. Paul Davies's 2007 book Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life explores these matters. The naturalist can avoid this entire controversy by accepting premise 2 as probably correct, and view life as a lucky accident of an uncaring universe. Furthermore, the naturalist can appeal to the notion of the megaverse in order to make it easier to understand that among the many (infinite?) diverse universes, we happen to live in one hospitable to life, so our luckiness appears less mysterious. If so many diverse universes have been created, the existence of a universe like ours becomes far more probable.

Third, there is very little reason to suppose that premise three is true. It has already been pointed out that quite different forms of life may be possible, for all we know. The theologian could refine premise three by supposing that a supernatural being has an overriding aim to ensure the existence of forms of life just like us. This refined supposition would need much additional argument to support it, and such argument eventually resorts to suspiciously theological or scriptural dogmas for premises, since there is no obvious reason why a very intelligent and powerful god would bother creating life (perhaps life is an accidental by-product of the creation of what this god really wants). Alternatively, the theologian could refine premise three by hypothesizing an all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly good supernatural being, which would supposedly want to create and care for living things. You can read about "Divine Providence". The introduction of divine goodness exposes the theologian to the "Problem of Evil" counter argument against the existence of such a god. Without exploring the cogency of this counter argument here, it can at least be pointed out that many other sorts of gods could equally be hypothesized as responsible for controlling the existence of life in our universe, such as a committee of powerful but indifferent gods that enjoy experimenting with life, or a god that is quite evil. Furthermore, this universe is actually quite inhospitable to life as we know it, since locations favoring organic life seem to be very rare. We tenuously cling to existence on the surface of an unpredictable planet lost among countless solar systems where earth-like planets are quite scarce. Perhaps there is a good deal of life scattered across the galaxies. Yet our universe is not designed for long-term habitation, since it will either eventually surrender to gravity and collapse back into a "Big Crunch," or it will expand forever into a thin soup of useless energy that compels life to succumb to the law of entropy. It is easy to imagine a far more hospitable universe for life.

Fourth, premise 4 violates logic and common sense. If the probability that Mafia Families control the stock market is higher than the probability that Girl Scouts control the stock market, is it reasonable to conclude that the Mafia control the stock market? We should believe only those hypotheses that enjoy sufficient reasonable support over their rivals. The hypothesis of an all-knowing and all-powerful supernatural being does not gain sufficient reasonable support merely by having a higher probability (if it does) than the hypothesis that we live in a lucky universe. The theologian might try to argue that since the odds of mere luck seem low, the bare hypothesis of any supernatural being should still be preferred as more probable, and since no third hypothesis is logically possible (that is, either naturalism or supernaturalism is correct), then a reasonable person must at least believe in a bare supernaturalism (leaving out any details about the supernatural being or beings). This theologian will not be congratulated by any believers of the world's religions, since the argument now fails to establish the existence of their god. Leaving the theologian to the mercies of that demanding audience, the naturalist can simply return to the notion of the megaverse. If so many diverse universes have been created, the existence of a universe like ours becomes highly probable. The naturalist need not commit to believing in the megaverse hypothesis -- its mere suggestion causes the seemingly impressive probability of an all-knowing and all-powerful god to shrink in comparison, so that this "Fine-Tuning Argument" fails.

How should the naturalist reply to this argument?

The naturalist replies that all three premises are false. Naturalism can better account for moral truths, moral knowledge, and the ability of human beings to be moral. For an exploration of naturalism's alternative account of morality, you can proceed to "Naturalism and Morality". 

copyright 2007 by John R. Shook