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Glenn Branch

Glenn Branch is Deputy Director of the National Center for Science Education, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization that promotes and defends accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence.

Published on the Secular Web


Modern Library

Review of Naturalism and Religion

In this article National Center for Science Education deputy director Glenn Branch reviews Graham Oppy's scholarly and meticulous, yet still accessible, Naturalism and Religion. After defining naturalism as the thesis that all causal entities and causal powers are natural, and that the best means for identifying those entities and powers is the scientific method, Oppy goes on to define a religion as a belief system that, among other things, is committed to the existence of non-natural causal entities and/or powers, and thus is incompatible with naturalism. As might be expected, Oppy argues that naturalistic big pictures balance the virtues of scientific theories best given all of the available evidence. At mid-way Oppy assesses well-known theistic arguments against naturalism from Alvin Plantinga and Michael Rea and then goes on to consider general Thomistic critiques. The book then turns to the extent to which science does, and does not, conflict with religion. After assessing a number of arguments against the explanatory power of naturalism, the final chapter highlights the combination of the minimal ontological commitments and great explanatory power of naturalism: we know that natural causal entities and powers exist, but have little evidential reason to posit the existence of anything more.