4/8/2005

Debate over naturalism

The Intelligent Design faction is constantly harping on the issue of naturalism. However, they have a point, but it would be better stated by those no carrying religious baggage. In fact, everything they touch they will distort with their theological scamming.
The following quote from the Naturalism website shows the dilemma generating the dialectic: a hard stance on free will.
There would be no problem with the assertion of this form of argumenttion if it were not made into the defining terms of modernity, the enlightenment, and gosh knows what else. This is not the way to defend oneself against anti-Darwinists. In fact, the greater tradition of humanism has a far more sophisticated way of dealing with this. What happened to the Geisteswissenschaften?
Even a superficial examination of the history of modern philosophy would suggest that this kind of polarized discourse with Bible Belt theologians taking one pole is a sad degeneration of some of the mainline discourses of the modern tradition.
That's what you get when a cadre of science fanatics makes a religion out of Darwinism using outdated science methodology from the nineteenth century.
Most students have never even heard of Kant's answers to dogmatic Newtonianism still surviving to haunt all other specialties.

Naturalism.org on free will


Guiding Philosophy
Based on knowledge derived from the physical and social sciences, the world view that is naturalism holds that human beings are fully included in nature. Science tells us that we are connected and united, in each and every aspect of our being, to the natural world. There is, under naturalism, nothing supernatural about us which places us above or beyond nature, but this is something to be celebrated, not feared. Practically speaking, naturalism holds that an individual’s development and behavior are entirely the result of prior and surrounding conditions, both genetic and environmental. Naturalism, therefore, denies that persons have traditional, contra-causal free will - that something within them is capable of acting as a first cause. But this isn't a problem, it's just how things are.