Naturalism: A Critical Analysis presents a rigorous analysis and critique of the major varieties of contemporary philosophical naturalism. It advocates the thesis that contemporay naturalism should be abandoned in light of the serious difficulties raised against it. The contributors draw on a wide range of topics including: epistemology, philosophy of science, value theory to basic analytic ontology, philosophy of mind and agency, and natural theology.
For some time now, philosophical naturalism has played a dominant intellectual and sociological role in academe. Currently, throughout a large sector of professional philosophy, philosophical naturalism determines the way philosophy is to be done, what counts as good methodology, and what is taken to be a worthwhile topic for study. This book provides a thorough and searching critique of philosophical naturalism which is squarely within the analytic tradition and which avails itself of the new and exciting literature in philosophy of religion that has burst onto the scene in the last decade.
Naturalism: A Critical Analysis accomplishes three things. First, it argues that naturalism fails to deal adequately with a number of desiderata; second, it shows that to the degree that naturalism is a consistent paradigm and is ‘located’ within the physicalist story, it should be a form of strict physicalism; and third, it provides an account of the contemporary resurgence of philosophical theism by advertising to evidentiary considerations in the natural world itself (e.g. Big Bang cosmology) which serve as signposts of transcendence.
William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy and J. P. Moreland is Professor of Philosophy both at Biola University, La Mirada, California.