Naturalism is, ironically, a controversial philosophy. Our modern civilization depends totally for its existence and future survival on the methods and fruits of science, naturalism is the philosophy that science created and that science now follows with such success, yet the great majority of humans (at least 90% of the U.S. population) believe in the antithesis of naturalism--supernaturalism. Our culture persistently indulges and celebrates supernaturalism, and most people, including some scientists, refuse to systematically understand naturalism and its consequences. This paper proposes to show that naturalism is essential to the success of scientific understanding, and it examines and criticizes the claims of pseudoscientists and theistic philosophers that science should employ supernatural explanations as part of its normal practice. Along the way I will speculate briefly on the reasons why such individuals are today advocating what would appear to be such an oxymoronic conjunction as supernaturalistic science (or worse, theistic science). Also, quite a bit of this essay is devoted to examining basic concepts in metaphysics and the philosophy of science, since there seems to be some confusion about them.
Definitions
Naturalism is
"a species of philosophical monism according to which whatever exists or happens is natural in the sense of being susceptible to explanation through methods which, although paradigmatically exemplified in the natural sciences, are continuous from domain to domain of objects and events...[thus, there cannot] exist any entities or events which lie, in principle, beyond the scope of scientific explanation" (Danto, 1967, p. 448);
"the view that nature is all there is and all basic truths are truths of nature" (Audi, 19 ...