Is Naturalism Necessary?
This is the final of a series of blogs exploring J. P. Moreland’s introduction to The Creation Hypothesis. A great deal of time has been spent exploring the Kalam Cosmological Argument and various aspects of the Design Argument. The Kalam argument provides reason to believe that an immaterial, transcendent agent more fundamental than the universe istself underlies the origin of the material universe. According to Moreland, the Design argument provides information about the nature and existence of this agent. These together lead to this important conclusion. Moreland states:
Before we even begin to investigate the scientific details of the universe in which we live, we already have reason to reject philosophical naturalism (the view that the space-time material universe is all there is). We also have reason to reject methodological naturalism…(the claim that within science we must adopt a naturalist standpoint in explaining things in science).
Moreland further asserts that unless there is some strong reason to accept this claim, we have not only a right, but a duty to bring to our study of the natural world an a priori belief in a transcendent, powerful Agent who designed and brought into being the universe. Several factors in science help to confirm the Kalam argument and the design argument for God’s existence. Among these are the origin and fine-tuning of the universe, the origin of life and systems of information, the origin of major taxonomic groups, and the origin of human language and linguistic abilities.
It is also Moreland’s claim that these factors and the inference to God justified by them can legitimately be seen as scientific matters. In asserting this, he also clarifies that the important issue is whether the inference to God is a rational one, not whether it is a scientific one. Theology does not need science’s endorsement to be rational.