Naturalism.org

In a review of Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion for Christianity Today, Notre Dame philosopher Alvin Plantinga argues that naturalism is “self-defeating and cannot rationally be believed.” If, as naturalists claim, there’s no god guiding the evolutionary process, then there’s no reason to think our cognitive faculties are reliable in giving us true beliefs about the world. Since we can’t trust our cognitive faculties, any conclusion we reach about the world is untrustworthy, including the claim that evolution is unguided. Therefore naturalism about evolution (and everything else) is self-defeating and must be given up. For us to trust our own beliefs (and we must, mustn’t we?) God must exist, and must have guided evolution. 

In a wonderfully written monograph (a book, really), Metaphysics By Default, Wayne Stewart presents an independently developed thesis directly parallel to the argument in Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity (DNS).  Without having encountered my paper, he uses very much the same thought experiment to support the intuition of generic subjective continuity, what he calls “existential passage”  (see in particular Chapter 9).&

Introduction

"For only death annihilates all sense, all becoming, to replace them with non-sense and absolute cessation."

-- F. Gonzalez-Cruzzi, "Days of the Dead" in The New Yorker, November 1993

Punitive and ineffective criminal justice policies find attitudinal support in the belief in free will, the idea that offenders are essentially self-made and therefore deserving of harsh punishments, including death.  Changing beliefs about free will can soften punitive attitudes and build support for addressing the actual causes of crime.  To change beliefs about free will and build support for criminal justice reform, it is proposed that public education on causality and crime be undertaken by a credible group of multi-disciplinary experts.

Negatives stemming from the free will myth

Economic and social inequality

Negatives stemming from the free will myth

Retributive attitudes supporting harsh criminal sanctions

Local vs. ultimate control

A naturalistic understanding of spirituality

The spiritual experience - the experience of meaning, connection and joy, often informed by philosophy or religion - is, from a naturalistic perspective, a state of the physical person, not evidence for a higher realm or non-physical essence. Nevertheless, this understanding of spirituality doesn’t lessen the attraction of such an experience, or its value for the naturalist. We naturally crave such feelings and so will seek the means to achieve them consistent with our philosophy.