Why I’m Not A Naturalist.

Many people today believe in a worldview called naturalism, meaning the natural or material world is all there is. From this perspective there is no supernatural world. I have thought about this perspective for quite some time, but it has become quite apparent to me that there are too many logically necessary beliefs I would have to abandon to accept it. What follows are some of the problems I have with it.

No reason to trust my mind. This is one of the first thoughts that came up when I began to ask if the natural world is all there is. I was listening to a debate between Irish logician John Lennox and biologist Richard Dawkins when Lennox made an interesting point. He essentially said if the universe originated from a random and arbitrary process like unguided and accidental evolution, then it is apparent that we can’t trust our own thoughts as well as our own experiences. They would simply be chemicals, and any meaning we placed upon them would be just a baseless assertion and wishful thinking. So I began to think, if I were to grant that naturalism was true, why was I trusting the mechanism I was utilizing to reason and reach that conclusion as well as other conclusions? Why was I trusting my mind, and therefore, why would I assume that the universe was intelligible, that it could even be understood? To understand something one must have a mechanism of understanding, in this case, the mind, and faith in that mechanism. While it is apparent the mind is “real,” or at least our conscious experience, it is not apparent that it can or should be trusted if naturalism is the case. So we have a mechanism, but we do not have any reason to have faith in that mechanism. If the natural world is all there is, then if I have thoughts like “I should trust my mind” or “I am a real person,” there is no reason to impose any meaning on those thoughts as they are truly meaningless chemical reactions. It takes blind faith. Therefore, there is no evidence to trust your mind and any thoughts that accompany it under naturalism.

To understand something one must have a mechanism of understanding, in this case, the mind, and faith in that mechanism.

No real meaning. Yet, let’s say you assume the alternative: that we really are just making meaning out of nothing and everything is just an assertion. Why is that not the case? Why can’t we live in a world full of assertions? If we do assume that, then the principle that “there is no meaning” would apply to the claim itself, meaning that claim is just an assertion too. So for it to be the case that there is no meaning it would have to be a meaningful claim. Thus, to claim that there is no meaning is nothing but circular reasoning and question begging because meaning is implied within the statement. And I’m not talking about semantic meaning (as in we have to ascribe meaning to the words that compose the claim or any claim) but epistemological meaning. So it seems to me that there is no other conclusion than to believe there is meaning. If an argument or objection is raised against this, it can be dismissed without justification since logic and reason would be mere assertions as well (only if you grant there is no meaning). These contradictions steer me away from naturalism because for there to be meaning there has to be something outside of the natural world that acts as a fundamental basis for our inescapable conclusion that there is meaning. If the natural world is all there is, then again, our thoughts are just the result of chemical processes, so we can’t trust them which means there is no meaning, but this can’t be the case as proven here. 

No real morality. A lack of meaningful and objective ethics/morality would directly follow from the former point. If there is no real meaning then how could there possibly be any real morals? Morals are how human behavior is governed, but if there is no meaning then there would be no reason to have morals and no way to have morals. If the material world is all there is, then why would murder be wrong? Murder is the taking of an innocent human life, but if there is no meaning, then one cannot say that a human life even has value or that murder is morally wrong. Human rights would not exist. Remember, if naturalism is the case then the world originated from a random, arbitrary, and unguided process, so any rules governing human behavior are mere assertions. Human rights are merely a social construction, and if naturalism is true, they have no basis in reality. For many this is easy to come to terms with until someone does something they deem “morally” wrong. But in reality, genocide, child abuse, discrimination, and picking where you want to eat for lunch are all moral equivalents. Under naturalism they are all amoral actions. A common objection to this line of reasoning is that morals are just socially constructed, but we can still choose to do what is “right” in spite of their relative nature. In actuality many of our morals and laws are socially constructed, but they still find their basis in even deeper laws like the drive for survival, human flourishing, and the avoidance of pain. However, the moral relativist forgets that even these would be social constructs, so there is no foundation for morality whatsoever if the material world is all there is, which would be the case under naturalism.

But in reality, genocide, child abuse, discrimination, and picking where you want to eat for lunch are all moral equivalents. Under naturalism they are all amoral actions.

No real science. This may be difficult to grasp at first as most people who hold to naturalism hold science in extremely high regard, yet under naturalism we can’t trust science. Science relies on the intelligibility of the universe or the idea that the universe can be understood. If we cannot trust our own minds or hold to any objective meaning, then why would we trust science? The universe would not be intelligible as our thoughts would be the result of a couple of chemical reactions in our brains and void of meaning. 

To grasp my point it would be best to understand an analogy: 

There was a man stranded on an island with 3 months worth of food and water with no way of escape. After several hours on the island he found a message written in the sand that said “help will arrive in 3 months.” However, it turns out that the sign had actually arisen from the tide itself. But he still assumed that it could be understood and read. He put his hope in the sign, and he trusted the sign, but he tragically was never saved and died on the island. The tide created the writing mindlessly and arbitrarily with no intention because it came from an unguided and mindless process. It was an accident. This is what many people do today with science. They say that we can understand the universe and look at all of the patterns and formulas and theories to gain understanding, but if it all came from an arbitrary and mindless accident then why does anyone trust science?

It has arisen from a random and mindless process like how the tide “wrote” a message in the sand. In reality, nothing was “written;” it just had the appearance of being “written” as well as the appearance of meaning, but there was no author and no intent behind it. It was not even remotely trustworthy. 

In a similar vein, if the universe has arisen from an unguided, arbitrary, and mindless process, then science is not trustworthy. It is like the writing in the sand formed by the tide. There was no intent, no purpose. It was just a message that made a chance appearance very much like science and the universe. But it would be foolish for the man on the island to trust the message because there is no agent or mind behind it. The man on the island can’t draw any meaningful conclusions from the writing in the sand nor can he act on those conclusions. In the same way, under a naturalistic framework, science cannot be used to draw any meaningful conclusions or act on them.

Yet many still propose today that the universe came from nothing, and they believe that there is meaning in science and that we can trust conclusions we draw from it. But we can’t. So why do people do science if they believe that there was no intended message behind the writing in the sand? They shouldn’t.

In order to trust science and build any sort of hypothesis we need to be able to trust our minds as science relies on them. Moreover, science relies on fundamental rules about reality that act as a foundation, but if there is no reason to believe in these fundamental rules then the foundation of science is faulty. For example, the speed of light is taken as a constant in the theory of relativity, but if naturalism is the case what are we to make of constants? The speed of light is based on the idea that we can observe realities in the real world and then make sense of them using logical rules (correspondence to reality and logical coherence). But in a naturalistic, and thus meaningless, world, constants have no meaning as we can’t trust our minds. Again, for science to work we must trust our minds. Math, logic, and metaphysics, all act as a foundation for science. By reading this essay you are accepting as fact consciousness, faith in your own mind, and the rules of logic. Yet under naturalism why would you accept any of those realities as a fact? Thus, it does not make sense to trust in science under naturalism as you have no reason to trust in the rules that undergird it other than by blind faith.

The problem of consciousness. This is another extremely challenging realm for naturalism. In a solely material world what do we make of consciousness? To understand my point it is important to understand the idea of qualia. Let’s take a computer for example. A computer can sort through a large amount of data, and AI can even attempt to answer philosophical questions. However, it has no awareness of what it is doing. For example, try to have it create “a full glass of red wine.” It won’t be able to. Why? It doesn’t really comprehend what it is doing. For example, if you asked a chatbot to answer a question you have regarding free will, could you really say something like “the AI was pondering the nature of free will?” No because the AI doesn’t understand, place any meaning upon, or have an awareness of what it is doing. We do though. Any mental actions we perform are in part physical (the brain and neurons) and in part non-physical (awareness and meaning), yet we cannot simply split apart what happens during any mental action as the physical and non-physical portions happen simultaneously. For example, I can contemplate free will and have an awareness of my contemplating, and my brain, at the same time, is using my neurons to make connections. The difference between us and the computer as described above is qualia. As opposed to the computer we have a capacity for awareness and the ability to place meaning. The idea of qualia poses a major problem for naturalists in the sense they have to face a major explanatory gap. For example, under naturalism matter is all that exists, so why do consciousness and qualia exist? Also where does it exist? Does my concept of the color red exist physically in my brain somewhere? Let’s take Legos as an example (which is obviously made up of atoms). If I stack the Legos into a specific arrangement will it eventually produce a non-physical, experiential quality like love? In a similar way, how can experiential states like love and qualia be explained if all we have are the “Legos” of matter? If our brains are just atoms and material matter like the Legos, how can something immaterial like consciousness emerge? By simply rearranging the Legos into different shapes until there is some sort of breakthrough? I’d say it is quite obvious to most that this explanatory gap cannot be resolved easily. Under naturalism, I’d say it cannot be resolved at all.