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Does doing science commit you to atheism? Methodological versus ontological naturalism

Emeka Anyaoha Fellow
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Scientific methodAnalyticIslamicKalamAl-Ghazali#methodological-naturalism#occasionalism#ontological-naturalism#science-and-religion
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A student of mine who's a devout Christian asked me last week whether studying physics would make her an atheist, because, she'd been told, science assumes there's nothing but nature.

I gave a muddled answer about how lots of scientists believe in God. I'd like to do better.

I've since come across the distinction between methodological naturalism (in science we look for natural causes and don't invoke the supernatural in explanations) and ontological naturalism (only natural things exist). Is that the right distinction for her question? Does one lead to the other? And are there other senses of "naturalism" I should know about before I talk to her again?

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  1. Lars Eriksen

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Yes, that's exactly the right distinction, and it's the one most often blurred.

    Methodological naturalism is a rule about how to investigate: when you explain something in physics, you look for natural causes, and you don't write "God did it" in the paper. Ontological naturalism is a claim about what exists: nothing beyond the natural world.

    The two are logically independent. You can follow the method rigorously and hold any metaphysics at all. Plenty of first-rate physicists have been believers; Georges Lemaître, who first proposed what became the Big Bang theory, was a Catholic priest. And you can be an ontological naturalist who thinks some sciences use bad methods.

    The confusion runs in both directions: some religious critics say science presupposes atheism, and some defenders of science say it establishes atheism. Neither follows from the method alone.

    Two further senses worth knowing: ethical naturalism (moral facts are natural facts) and epistemological naturalism (theory of knowledge is continuous with psychology and the sciences). So your student can learn physics with a clear conscience. Whether she later concludes anything about God will depend on arguments that physics alone doesn't supply.

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Other answers

  1. Abdulrahman Al-Bassam

    Fellow

    A historical example your student might like. Ashʿarī theologians held that God directly creates every event, and that what we call causes are only the regular sequence in which God customarily acts, His ʿāda, habit. Al-Ghazālī's example is that the cotton burns when touched by fire, not because fire has its own power. On that view you can still study the regularities with complete rigour; you're studying God's habits. That's methodological naturalism held by people who were about as far from ontological naturalism as you can get.

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  2. Arvind Poojary

    Fellow

    I'll add the atheist's half, for honesty. Lars is right that the method doesn't entail ontological naturalism. But some of us think the method's long record of success is evidence for it: again and again, things once explained by spirits turned out to have natural explanations. That's an inductive argument, not a presupposition, and it can be resisted. Your student should know the argument exists and that it's an argument, not a rule of science.

    Helpful · 3
  3. Emeka Anyaoha

    Fellow

    I'll give her Lars's distinction, Abdulrahman's fire and cotton, and Arvind's inductive argument, and let her decide. That's more respectful than reassuring her or warning her.