Naturalists and Supernaturalists

[dga471 (Daniel)]

@ProfBravus

Certainly there are many much more thoughtful, careful, well-grounded approaches, and I don’t mean to dismiss all of those.

I still think - with the tighter specification that we are talking about natural processes and entities - the naturalist/supernaturalist distinction can be helpful… and clearer in some ways than a term like ‘evolutionary creationism’, which @deuteroKJ mentioned above.

Several people on this site including @swamidass and myself have been more comfortable with the simple descriptor of “Christian who Affirms Evolutionary Science” (CAES/CASE). This can also be widened to “Christian who Affirms Mainstream Science” (CAMS). By that I mean that I do not reject any findings or methods of mainstream science as it is practiced today. I will support and actively encourage scientific research into biological and human evolution, the origin of life, the origin of the universe, searches for extraterrestial life, fundamental physics, theories to explain fine-tuning, neuroscience, and so on. That being said I am still not comfortable with the “naturalist” label, because it tends to be associated with certain metaphysical and philosophical commitments which I don’t agree with and are not necessitated by affirming mainstream science at all. The CAES/CAMS descriptor is simpler and does not commit us into any problematic theological, philosophical, or scientific positions that have been advanced in the past.