Liberal naturalism and God

Abstract

In my book God, Value, and Nature, I defend a form of liberal or expansive naturalism.1 The naturalist dimension of my position is pretty orthodox from the point of view of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, for naturalism is the dominant programmatic approach, and it is made clear that this is what we ought to be.2 Why? Because it is the only way of avoiding the metaphysical and epistemological difficulties of the opposing supernaturalist position. Supernaturalism involves the postulation of weird entities and/or realms of being – things like immaterial souls, Platonic forms and divine beings, all of which stand outside the natural world, and cannot be understood to be a part of it.3 The naturalist protests that there is no way of explaining how this supernatural realm relates to our ordinary familiar world, that there is an equal mystery of how we gain knowledge of it, and that we can explain what needs to be explained without making this problematic metaphysical detour. Naturalism is a form of anti-supernaturalism in this respect: the natural