The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism

by Quentin Smith
Originally Published in: Philo: A Journal of Philosophy, Volume 4, Number 2

Beautiful is the human and appearing in darkness 

When wondering he moves his arms and legs, 
And silent his eyes roll in purple caves. 
At vespers the stranger is lost in black November 
   devastation, 
Under rotten branches, along leprous walls, 
Where earlier his holy brother walked, 
Drowned in the faint string music of his madness. 
from "Helian," Georg Trakl

Abstract: The metaphilosophy of naturalism is about the nature and goals of

naturalist philosophy. A real or hypothetical person who knows the nature,
goals and consequences of naturalist philosophy may be called an “informed
naturalist.” An informed naturalist is justified in drawing certain conclusions
about the current state of naturalism and the research program that naturalist
philosophers ought to undertake. One conclusion is that the great majority of
naturalist philosophers have an unjustified belief that naturalism is true and an
unjustified belief that theism (or supernaturalism) is false. I explain this
epistemic situation in this paper. I also articulate the goals an informed
naturalist would recommend to remedy this situation. These goals, for the
most part, have as their consequence the restoring of naturalism to its original
state (approximately, to a certain degree, given the great difference in the
specific theories), which is the state it possessed in Greco-Roman philosophy
before naturalism was “overwhelmed” in the Middle Ages, beginning with
Augustine (naturalism had critics as far back as Xenophanes, sixth century
B.C.E., but it was not “overwhelmed” until much later). Contemporary
naturalists still accept, unwittingly, the redefinition of naturalism that began to
be constructed by theists in the fifth century C.E. and that underpins our basic
world-view today.

THE DESECULARIZATION OF ACADEMIA THAT EVOLVED IN

PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENTS SINCE THE LATE 1960s

 By the second half of the twentieth century, universities and colleges had
been become in the main secularized. The standard (if not exceptionless)
position in each field, from physics to psychology, assumed or involved
arguments for a naturalist world-view; departments of theology or religion
aimed to understand the meaning and origins of religious writings, not to
develop arguments against naturalism. Analytic philosophers (in the
mainstream of analytic philosophy) treated theism as an antirealist or non-
cognitivist world-view, requiring the reality, not of a deity, but merely of
emotive expressions or certain “forms of life” (of course there were a few
exceptions, e.g., Ewing, Ross, Hartshorne, etc., but I am discussing the
mainstream view).

 This is not to say that none of the scholars in the various academic
fields were realist theists in their “private lives”; but realist theists, for the
most part, excluded their theism from their publications and teaching, in large
part because theism (at least in its realist variety) was mainly considered to
have such a low epistemic status that it did not meet the standards of an
“academically respectable” position to hold. The secularization of mainstream
academia began to quickly unravel upon the publication of Plantinga’s
influential book on realist theism, God and Other Minds, in 1967. It became
apparent to the philosophical profession that this book displayed that realist
theists were not outmatched by naturalists in terms of the most valued
standards of analytic philosophy: conceptual precision, rigor of
argumentation, technical erudition, and an in-depth defense of an original
world-view. This book, followed seven years later by Plantinga’s even more
impressive book, The Nature of Necessity, made it manifest that a realist theist
was writing at the highest qualitative level of analytic philosophy, on the same
playing field as Carnap, Russell, Moore, Grünbaum, and other naturalists.
Realist theists, whom hitherto had segregated their academic lives from their
private lives, increasingly came to believe (and came to be increasingly
accepted or respected for believing) that arguing for realist theism in scholarly
publications could no longer be justifiably regarded as engaging in an
“academically unrespectable” scholarly pursuit.

Naturalists passively watched as realist versions of theism, most

influenced by Plantinga’s writings, began to sweep through the philosophical
community, until today perhaps one-quarter or one-third of philosophy
professors are theists, with most being orthodox Christians. Although many
theists do not work in the area of the philosophy of religion, so many of them
do work in this area that there are now over five philosophy journals devoted
to theism or the philosophy of religion, such as Faith and
Philosophy, Religious Studies, International Journal of the Philosophy of
Religion, Sophia, Philosophia Christi, etc. Philosophia Christi began in the
late 1990s and already is overflowing with submissions from leading
philosophers. Can you imagine a sizeable portion of the articles in
contemporary physics journals suddenly presenting arguments that space and
time are God’s sensorium (Newton’s view) or biology journals becoming
filled with theories defending élan vital or a guiding intelligence? Of course,
some professors in these other, non-philosophical, fields are theists; for
example, a recent study indicated that seven percent of the top scientists are
theists.[1] However, theists in other fields tend to compartmentalize their
theistic beliefs from their scholarly work; they rarely assume and never argue
for theism in their scholarly work. If they did, they would be committing
academic suicide or, more exactly, their articles would quickly be rejected,
requiring them to write secular articles if they wanted to be published. If a
scientist did argue for theism in professional academic journals, such as
Michael Behe in biology, the arguments are not published in scholarly
journals in his field (e.g., biology), but in philosophy journals
(e.g., Philosophy of Science and Philo, in Behe’s case). But in philosophy, it
became, almost overnight, “academically respectable” to argue for theism,
making philosophy a favored field of entry for the most intelligent and
talented theists entering academia today. A count would show that in Oxford
University Press’ 2000–2001 catalogue, there are 96 recently published books
on the philosophy of religion (94 advancing theism and 2 presenting “both
sides”). By contrast, there are 28 books in this catalogue on the philosophy of
language, 23 on epistemology (including religious epistemology, such as
Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief), 14 on metaphysics, 61 books on the
philosophy of mind, and 51 books on the philosophy of science.

And how have naturalist philosophers reacted to what some committed

naturalists might consider as “the embarrassment” of belonging to the only
academic field that has allowed itself to lose the secularization it once had?
Some naturalists wish to leave the field, considering themselves as no longer
doing “philosophy of mind,” for example, but instead “cognitive science.” 
But the great majority of naturalist philosophers react by publicly ignoring the
increasing desecularizing of philosophy (while privately disparaging theism,
without really knowing anything about contemporary analytic philosophy of
religion) and proceeding to work in their own area of specialization as if
theism, the view of approximately one-quarter or one-third of their field, did
not exist. (The numbers “one-quarter” and “one-third” are not the result of any
poll, but rather are the exceptionless, educated guesses of every atheist and
theist philosophy professor I have asked [the answers varied between “one-
quarter” and “one-third”]). Quickly, naturalists found themselves a mere bare
majority, with many of the leading thinkers in the various disciplines of
philosophy, ranging from philosophy of science (e.g., Van Fraassen) to
epistemology (e.g., Moser), being theists. The predicament of naturalist
philosophers is not just due to the influx of talented theists, but is due to the
lack of counter-activity of naturalist philosophers themselves. God is not
“dead” in academia; he returned to life in the late 1960s and is now alive and
well in his last academic stronghold, philosophy departments.

Naturalist philosophers need to rethink their goals. In part this involves

clearly distinguishing between philosophical goals and cultural consequences
of the attainment or pursuit of these goals. In the previous paragraph, I talked
about “the predicament” of naturalist philosophers. The cultural predicament
needs to be distinguished from the philosophical predicament. The cultural
predicament is of concern to a person who psychologically desires that
academia maintain its state of mainstream secularization. Academia has a
mainstream secularization if and only if the mainstream of academic work
(publishing, teaching, research projects, etc.) either assumes or argues for
naturalism. Academia (by which I mean the set of colleges and universities) is
desecularized to degree n if and only if academic work consists to degree n of
assumptions of or arguments for supernaturalism. Once this degree reaches a
high enough point (or interval of points, with the boundaries being vague), it
becomes false that academia has a mainstream secularization. Since the late
1960s, philosophers have allowed or brought about the situation where
academia does not have a mainstream secularization.

Despite the fact that this cultural predicament is what many naturalist
philosophers find dissatisfying, this predicament and dissatisfaction does not
concern naturalist philosophers insofar as they are philosophers. Naturalist
philosophers share with theist philosophers the desire to obtain knowledge for
its own sake, whatever the truth happens to be (e.g., be it naturalism or
theism). Whether the truth be naturalism or theism is irrelevant to these people
qua philosophers; all that matters to them insofar as they are philosophers who
are philosophizing is truth or, more fully, knowledge. Why should naturalist or
theistic philosophers care whether academia is mainly secularized or not?
There are at least two reasons. First, normative goals, both individual and
cultural, are among the objects of comprehension or belief in the
understanding of naturalism and theism and their respective truth values.
Whether or not academia ought to be mainly secularized is a normative issue
that philosophers, be they theists or naturalists, care about if they understand
the normative component of the objects of their comprehension or belief.
Second, at any given time that a philosopher is philosophically inquiring about
naturalism and theism, she will be in a certain epistemic state, such that if she
ocurrently understood the proposition, academia ought to be mainly
secularized, she will either find it more plausible than implausible, more
implausible than plausible, or neither of these two alternatives (e.g., equally
plausible with its negation, or having an uncertain epistemic status). The
naturalist finds the proposition, academia ought to be mainly secularized,
more plausible than not. (Given the ambiguity and vagueness of the word
“naturalist,” this characterization of “the naturalist” is stipulative, but it is
intended to capture a part of what many or most philosophers believe “she is a
naturalist” means or implies.) The naturalist philosopher will have arrived at
this epistemic state through pursuing the philosophical (not social activist)
goal of obtaining knowledge about the truth or falsity of naturalism. In fact, it
is because she arrived at this state rather than some other epistemic state that
she is characterized as a “naturalist” philosopher.

Having arrived (through pursuing this philosophical goal) at the

naturalist epistemic state I described, the philosopher finds there are cultural
consequences of arriving at this state due to the normative component of the
objects of belief of this epistemic state. The philosophical goal of pursuing
knowledge about the truth of naturalism contributes to bringing the
philosopher to an epistemic state where a cultural consequence is that the
person desires and (if conditions are appropriate) endeavors to bring about a
certain state of culture, in this case, a mainly secularized academia. But since
the person, insofar as she is a philosopher, is continuing to pursue knowledge,
her epistemic state will always be changing in some respect and, not being
naïve, she will recognize that she may well hold a false belief about
naturalism and secularization. This recognition not only requires that the
commitment to the belief in naturalism be tentative, but also that the pursuit of
the naturalist cultural goal be tentative and conditional upon the fact that the
most important philosophical aspect of pursuing this cultural goal in
a philosophically governed way is producing better arguments (to put matters
in a simplified way) than the theist, which requires an openness to a fair-
minded evaluation of good arguments for theism. When a philosopher
engages in a philosophically governed act of achieving a cultural goal, her
action is considerably more tentative and open to opposing views than a social
activist who does not pursue this cultural goal in a philosophically governed
way. Human history is the partly philosophically ordered wreckage created by
humans pursuing their goals in all sorts of ways. Nonetheless, this sort of
wreckage is (philosophically) better than one that contains no partially
philosophically ordered aspects. By “wreckage” I mean a mostly disordered
whole relative to one kind of order, philosophical order.

These distinctions enable me to characterize the current philosophical

and cultural goals of naturalists who desire a mainly secularized academia.
The current practice, ignoring theism, has proven to be a disastrous failure.
More fully, naturalist philosophers’ pursuit of the cultural goal of mainstream
secularization in a philosophically governed way has failed
both philosophically (in regards to the philosophical aspects of this
philosophically governed pursuit of the cultural goal) and culturally. The
philosophical failure has led to a cultural failure. We have the following
situation: A hand waving dismissal of theism, such as is manifested in the
following passage from Searle’s The Rediscovery of the Mind, has been like
trying to halt a tidal wave with a hand-held sieve. Searle responds to about
one-third of contemporary philosophers with this brush-off: Talking about the
scientific and naturalist world-view, he writes: “this world view is not an
option. It is not simply up for grabs along with a lot of competing world
views. Our problem is not that somehow we have failed to come up with a
convincing proof of the existence of God or that the hypothesis of afterlife
remains in serious doubt, it is rather than in our deepest reflections we cannot
take such opinions seriously. When we encounter people who claim to believe
such things, we may envy them the comfort and security they claim to derive
from these beliefs, but at bottom we remained convinced that either they have
not heard the news or they are in the grip of faith.”[2] Searle does not have an
area of specialization in the philosophy of religion and, if he did, he might, in
the face of the erudite brilliance of theistic philosophizing today, say
something more similar to the non-theist Richard Gale (who does have an area
of specialization in the philosophy of religion), whose conclusion of a 422
page book criticizing contemporary philosophical arguments for God’s
existence (as well as dealing with other matters in the philosophy of religion),
reads “no definite conclusion can be drawn regarding the rationality of
faith”[3] (if only for the reason, Gale says, that his book does not examine the
inductive arguments for God’s existence). If each naturalist who does not
specialize in the philosophy of religion (i.e., over ninety-nine percent of
naturalists) were locked in a room with theists who do specialize in the
philosophy of religion, and if the ensuing debates were refereed by a naturalist
who had a specialization in the philosophy of religion, the naturalist referee
could at most hope the outcome would be that “no definite conclusion can be
drawn regarding the rationality of faith,” although I expect the most probable
outcome is that the naturalist, wanting to be a fair and objective referee, would
have to conclude that the theists definitely had the upper hand in every single
argument or debate.

Due to the typical attitude of the contemporary naturalist, which is

similar to the attitude expressed by Searle in the previous quote, the vast
majority of naturalist philosophers have come to hold (since the late 1960s) an
unjustified belief in naturalism. Their justifications have been defeated by
arguments developed by theistic philosophers, and now naturalist
philosophers, for the most part, live in darkness about the justification for
naturalism. They may have a true belief in naturalism, but they have no
knowledge that naturalism is true since they do not have an undefeated
justification for their belief. If naturalism is true, then their belief in naturalism
is accidentally true. This philosophical failure (ignoring theism and thereby
allowing themselves to become unjustified naturalists) has led to a cultural
failure since theists, witnessing this failure, have increasingly become
motivated to assume or argue for supernaturalism in their academic work, to
an extent that academia has now lost its mainstream secularization.

 THE JUSTIFICATION OF MOST CONTEMPORARY NATURALIST

VIEWS IS DEFEATED BY CONTEMPORARY THEIST
ARGUMENTS

A more systematic articulation of this situation can be given. To do so, I will

first need to outline some epistemological ideas about justification and
defeaters. These ideas serve my purpose of explaining in a brief and simple
way the current academic situation, but, since epistemology is both a highly
controversial field and a conceptually precise and argumentative rigorously
field, I cannot (if only for reasons of space) engage in critical argumentation
against other epistemological theories. I shall have to leave it to
epistemologists who hold different theories than the one I briefly outline to
either “grasp the general gist of what I am saying” or else to conceptually
translate the ideas I outline into their own epistemological theories.

I begin with the notion of justification. A person is justified in believing

that p because that person’s belief that p is based on her belief that q (and, in
addition, some other conditions, to be mentioned later, are met). A belief that
p is “justified” in a derivative sense, i.e., if it is the belief that p mentioned in
the preceding sentence. A proposition is “justified” in a derivative sense if it is
the proposition p mentioned in the preceding sentences. Arguments can be
treated as complex propositions, e.g., by placing a conjunction (expressed by
“and”) between the premises and including the conclusion, as well as the
inference relation (expressed by “therefore”) in the same proposition as the
conjoined premises. I often use “justifies” in a derivative sense.

Some of the other conditions that must be met for a person to be

justified in believing that p are stated in the following way. A person is
justified in believing that p because that person’s belief that p is based on her
belief that q and 1) q’s being true would be an epistemically good reason for
the person to believe that p, and 2) any defeater which is an adequate ground
for believing q is not an adequate reason for p or that q is not true is
cognitively inaccessible to the person.

A defeater is cognitively inaccessible to the person if the defeater

involves evidence, theses, arguments, etc. that the person lacks the ability to
comprehend and believe, or the person is prevented from believing the
evidence, theses, or arguments, etc., by the person’s situation. A clear case of
such prevention would be that the person is in a situation where the evidence,
theses or arguments have not been discovered yet due to a relevantly
legitimate reason, e.g., the person requires modal logic to understand an
argument, the person lacks expertise in logic and modal logic has not yet been
discovered by those with expertise in logic. Something x is cognitively
accessible to the person if the person ocurrently or dispositionally believes x
or the person could come to justifiably believe x with the epistemic resources
available to the person. Epistemic resources include information in books and
articles, information from experts available to the person, information from
what the person could come to know through empirical investigation (given
the relevant tools, e.g., telescopes) or reasoning (given the relevant tools, e.g.,
systems of logic, mathematics, set theory).

(If it made sense to say that theistic or naturalist belief is a properly

basic belief, we could rephrase our arguments so that “justified belief in
naturalism,” for example, meant that the belief, a naturalist belief is a
properly basic first order belief, is a justified second order belief.)
 It will be of interest to characterize the current epistemic situation, as
seen from the viewpoint of a real or hypothetical person who knows that
naturalism is true. I shall call such a person an “informed naturalist.” The
informed naturalist will perceive the gloomy state (at least gloomy to her) that
resulted from allowing, since the late 1960s, a mainly secularized academia to
return (in part) to its traditional desecularized state, a gloomy state that
resulted due to the failings of contemporary naturalists and successes of
contemporary theists in the field of philosophy. The epistemic situation of
most contemporary naturalists can be explained in terms of this viewpoint if
we define the following symbols.

N (a thesis). Naturalism, i.e., the thesis that there exist inanimate or animate
bodies, with animate bodies being either intelligent organisms or non-
intelligent organisms, but there exists nothing supernatural. The example of
something supernatural of most interest to contemporary analytic philosophers
is an unembodied mind that is the original and/or continuous creator of the
universe and has the omniattributes described in perfect being theology.
[4] Other examples of hypothesized supernatural realities that govern or create
in some sense the universe are the governing mind posited by the Stoics or the
“Absolute I” posited by the early Fichte.

Note that N does not imply that there are no abstract objects, such as Quine’s
sets, Armstrong’s universals, Tooley’s laws of nature, or Moore’s or
Butchvarov’s values. Nor does N imply that there are abstract objects. This
issue is left open by N since my interest is in contrasting N (defined in terms
of bodies and intelligent organisms) with supernaturalism. If abstract objects
exist, uncreated by and not related in any way to a supernatural reality, they
are natural, but the naturalist need not posit their existence. Given this, (i.e.,
that if there are abstract objects, they are natural) it follows that naturalism
and supernaturalism are the only two possible ontologies. This requires us to
allow the possibility that the governing supernatural realities be understood
polytheistically or in other religious or philosophical ways that are not
explicitly mentioned in N. (Despite this, Gorgias would object that these are
not the only two possible ontologies since he argues that nothing exists.
However, since this implies his argument does not exist, we have no need to
refute it. More generally, any theory that is clearly and explicitly self-
contradictory or nonsensical cannot be counted as a “possible ontology,” or at
least I so stipulate.)

A (a defeated justifier). A is the argument that contemporary science and

naturalist philosophy are known to be probably or certainly true, even though
A includes no counterarguments against contemporary arguments for theism.
 DA (a defeater for the justifier A). DA is a sound argument that
argument A is unsound. 
 
 
B (a defeated justifier). B is an argument that, contemporary
science and naturalist philosophy, when conjoined with an
evaluation of contemporary theist arguments for not-
N, (where “not-N” implies naturalism is not true) justify not-N. 
 
 
DB (a defeater for the justifier B). DB is a sound argument that
argument B is unsound. 
 
 
C (an undefeated justifier for N). C is the argument that,
contemporary science and naturalist philosophy, when conjoined
with an evaluation of contemporary theist arguments for not-N,
justify N.

 According to the informed naturalist, the predicament of at least ninety-nine

percent of contemporary naturalists is represented in the following columns.
We can state very briefly the arguments different philosophers believe in
terms of our symbols. The mentioned belief states are arguments believed to
be sound by the relevant parties.

 Belief State of Most Contemporary Naturalists

1.A. 
2.A justifies N.

3.Therefore, N is justified.

 Defeater Recognized by Informed Naturalists

4.DA. 
5.DA defeats A.

6.Therefore, A does not justify N.

 Belief State of Most Contemporary Theists

7.B. 
8.B justifies not-N.

9.Therefore, not-N is justified.

 Defeater Recognized by Informed Naturalists

10.DB. 
11.DB defeats B.

12.Therefore, B does not justify not-N.

Since both A and B are defeated, most contemporary naturalists, as well as

most contemporary theists, hold defeated beliefs about the truth-value of
naturalism. The informed naturalist knows the complex argument C that
constitutes the defeater of B and the justification of N, as well as meets other
conditions explained later in this paper.

 Belief State of Informed Naturalists

13.C. 
14.C justifies N.

15.Therefore, N is justified.

Some naturalists believe they are informed naturalists. But whether they are in
fact informed naturalists is not an issue I am addressing in this paper. This
paper is a metaphilosophy of naturalism, not a philosophical argument that
naturalism is true. Such philosophical arguments can be found in other papers
and books. In this paper, I am (in part) characterizing the contemporary
epistemic situation about naturalism from the point of view of a real or
hypothetical informed naturalist.

How might “uninformed naturalists,” the majority of contemporary

naturalists, respond and remain unperturbed by this representation of the
viewpoint of an informed naturalist? They may say: why can’t Searle,
Davidson, the Churchlands and other naturalists leave it to, say, Gale,
Grünbaum, Fales, Oppy, Le Poidevin, Martin and a handful of others to know
how B is defeated and how C justifies N? Why cannot most naturalists leave it
to the naturalists who specialize in the philosophy of religion to know the
argument that contemporary science and naturalist philosophy, when
conjoined with arguments about contemporary theism, justify naturalism?

The problem with this response is that Davidson, Searle, the

Churchlands and most other naturalists would not know that naturalism is true
since they would not know the defeater DB of the theistic justifier B of
supernaturalism (or not-N). Knowledge is indefeasibly justified true belief and
most naturalists have a true belief (assuming naturalism is true) and a defeated
justification A for their belief. In order to have an indefeasibly justified true
belief in naturalism, and thus knowledge that naturalism is true, they need to
know DB, which defeats B, and C, which justifies naturalism. (Strictly,
speaking, knowing C is sufficient for an indefeasibly justified true belief in
naturalism, since C includes DB as a proper part.) Philosophers such as Searle
or Davidson do not need to devote their main research time
toformulating and developing the arguments constituting DB (philosophers
such as Gale, Grünbaum, Fales and Martin, for example, can be involved in
this research project). Rather, they must come to know DB (as developed by
naturalists who specialize in formulating arguments against B), or they must
know at least enough of DB so that their belief that B is false is indefeasibly
justified. DB is cognitively accessible to philosophers such as Searle or
Davidson and this fact (along with the others mentioned) renders their belief
in naturalism unjustified. The informed naturalist would say that these
uninformed naturalists are not fully doing their epistemic duties with respect
to naturalism and that this is a contributing cause of the current cultural and
philosophical predicament of naturalist philosophers, namely, that they have
allowed academia to lose its mainstream secularization. The informed
naturalist could rephrase this in terms of a virtue theory of epistemic
justification. The uninformed naturalists are unjustified in believing N because
they have not exercised a certain intellectual virtue; the uninformed naturalists
believe N without first appropriately trying to determine or learn if post-1967
arguments by theists are successful. The informed naturalist, then, would
think it is her responsibility to point this out to uninformed naturalists with the
motive of attempting to help uninformed naturalists in this respect, just as
uninformed naturalists are able to point out other things to informed
naturalists to help them out in areas of thought other than DB.

Intuitively speaking, this applies to naturalist scientists in an approximately

analogous sense in which naturalist philosophers are epistemically obligated
to know at least in general outline the most important contemporary scientific
theories, such as the Darwinian theory of evolution and Big Bang Cosmology.
An extra problem with naturalist scientists is that they are so innocent of any
understanding of the philosophy of religion that they do not even know that
they are innocent of this understanding, as it witnessed by their popular
writings on science and religion.
 The current epistemic situation is in fact even much worse than this.
The informed naturalist would say that whatever most naturalists purport to
know to be naturally the case (or seem to themselves to know to be naturally
the case) is such that its being known entails the being known of naturalism,
and therefore that most contemporary naturalists do not know any natural
truths. I am not here saying the clearly false statement that (for example)
“knowing that the universe is expanding” entails “knowing naturalism is
true.” Rather, I am saying that “knowing that the universe is naturally
expanding” (i.e., is expanding solely via a natural process, where one’s
understanding of “naturally” and “natural” contains an understanding of what
I have said about N earlier in this paper)” entails “knowing that naturalism is
true.” One reason for this entailment is the following: If I know that the
universe is naturally expanding, I know that supernaturalism is false since I
know that a thesis logically implied by supernaturalism, that all processes and
things constituting the universe are caused or governed by some supernatural
reality, is false. Since naturalism and supernaturalism are the only two
possible ontologies (see my earlier discussion of N), it follows (from the fact
that I know supernaturalism is false and that I know some possible ontology is
true) that I know naturalism is true, even if I only know this generally,
as some ontology that is not-S is true, where S is supernaturalism. This
knowledge need not be occurent; it could be dispositional. The problem with
uninformed naturalists is that they know such things as that “the universe is
expanding” but do not know such things as “the universe is naturally
expanding.” They know certain truths, but they do not know whether they are
natural truths or supernatural truths.

The naturalist situation, as viewed by an informed naturalist, is more

deserving of sadness than of blame. If naturalism is the true world-view, and a
“Dark Age” means an age when the vast majority of philosophers (and
scientists) do not know the true world-view, then we have to admit that we are
living in a Dark Age. Since we ought to be knowledgeable rather than
ignorant, and since we can be more knowledgeable, it follows that we ought to
attempt to end the present Dark Age. But exactly what ought we do to
“become more knowledgeable in the relevant respects”? According to the
informed naturalist, there are four things we ought to do.

 FOUR GOALS OF THE INFORMED NATURALISTS

The four goals are to i) retrieve naturalism from its de facto reclassification by

medieval philosophers. This is a reclassification (which may have been a
result of some other deliberately chosen goal) from its original, accurate,
classification in Greco-Roman naturalism, and this reclassification was
effected by the medieval philosophers. This reclassification still prevails
today. ii) Reclassify the philosophy of religion as a subfield of naturalism, viz.
skepticism about naturalism, so that the position in the various fields of
philosophy formerly occupied by “the philosophy of religion” is replaced by
the field “the philosophy of naturalism.” This does not imply an attempt to
“define theism out of philosophy” or to prevent theists from offering theistic
arguments. Rather it involves a) viewing the role of theistic arguments in
philosophy in a different way than they are currently viewed, b) having an
indefeasibly justified true belief that that this different way of viewing the role
of theistic arguments in philosophy is the correct way, c) helping theists to
come to know that this is the correct way and d) having this reclassification
take place consistently with the freedoms of inquiry, thought, speech and
expression of one’s beliefs, and having all relevant activities conform to the
principles I distinguished in my earlier discussion of “philosophically
governed versus social activist behavior.” iii) A third goal is to understand in
outline an actually extant version of original naturalism (Greco-Roman
naturalism) that these original naturalists justifiably believed to be an
informed naturalism and which contemporary informed naturalists justifiably
believe is approximately the best that could be done by naturalists in the
epistemic situation of Greco-Roman philosophers. iv) The fourth goal is to
justifiably reformulate, and answer, the two basic ontological why-questions
that medieval philosophers took over from the Greco-Roman naturalists, and
which have (for the most part) remained ever since “questions asked in the
field of the philosophy of religion.” The successful accomplishments of these
four tasks will restore academia to the mainstream secularization it possessed
before the post-1967 breakdown in the field of philosophy.

1. The first task that the informed naturalist would place on the
contemporary naturalist agenda is to retrieve naturalism from its de facto
reclassification by the medieval philosophers and, second, reverse this
“reclassification move.” Naturalism originally began with the pre-Socratics,
most clearly with Leucippus and Democritus, but also with Anaximander,
Aneximenedes, Heraclitus, Protagoras, Empedocles, Theodorus, Diagorous,
Critias and others (the two main exceptions being the monotheists
Xenophanes and Anaxagorous). Some of these pre-Socratics sometimes used
the word “god” (theos), but insofar as the existence of a so-called god or gods
was embraced, they meant by “god” a non-human intelligent organism that
was a part of and governed by (rather than governing) natural processes. The
first task is based on the fact that naturalism began as a distinct, holistic
world-view, was in effect subsumed as a skeptical subfield of natural theology
by the medievals (for example, in some cases it might appear in the
“objections section” under the heading “arguments for God’s existence based
on natural reason”), and today is “torn in half” into two domains of thought.
One of these two domains is “atheism,” which is a negative philosophy, “God
does not exist,” that is attributed to the small number of naturalists who have a
specialization in the philosophy of religion. The second domain, different than
“atheism,” is a positive philosophy which, mainly, but not exclusively,
involves using “non-reductive physicalism” as the topic or presupposition of
most naturalists who work in the areas of philosophy of mind, philosophy of
science, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc. and who (for the most part)
are uninformed about the philosophy of religion. The naturalist goal is to
terminate the isolation of these two domains of thought from each other and to
reinterpret them. Atheism should be considered as a defense of naturalism
against skeptical attacks, and thereby to play a foundational role in justifying
the presuppositions of positive naturalist philosophy. As a subfield of the
philosophy of religion, atheism is usually classified as a body of counter-
arguments against the cosmological, teleological and ontological arguments,
and counter-arguments against the arguments from religious experience and
(alleged) miracles. The first task is in part to remove atheism from its
placement as a subfield of the philosophy of religion, where it is merely an
extrinsically important theory that is parasitic on the intrinsically important
theory, theism. This theistic classification of atheism implied that atheism is
important merely as a skeptical attack on theism that serves the theistic
purpose of stimulating further development of the argumentative defense of
theism. But, according to the informed naturalist, atheism should now to be
integrated with the specialized naturalist research programs (philosophy of
mind, epistemology, etc.), as a defense of their naturalist assumptions against
skeptical attacks, so that the result of the integration is a single, holistic world-
view.

2. This retrieval is also a reversal. The aim is that theism

be justifiably reclassified as a subfield of naturalism, namely, as a skepticism
about the basic principles of naturalism whose refutation serves to stimulate
and further develop the naturalist program. “Philosophy of religion”
disappears, to be replaced by a new subfield of naturalism, namely,
“skepticism about naturalism,” with skeptical arguments being put forth and
argued against, with the aim in mind of further developing the argumentative
foundations of the naturalist world-view.

How should this process occur? To avoid any misleading appearance

about the nature of this process of reversal, I should emphasis again that I am
not talking about “suppression of the freedom of thought and expression of
theists” or “unjustifiably defining the philosophy of religion out of existence.”
Rather, the reversal involves following the relevant distinctions I earlier made
between philosophy and social activism, respecting the freedoms of thought,
inquiry, expression, etc., and helping theists come to have an indefeasibly
justified true belief that this reversal ought to take place.

If my earlier remarks about philosophy and cultural activism are reread, one
may see that they imply that if it turns out that some supernaturalists come to
know that supernaturalism is true, then naturalists ought to become
supernaturalists and ought to be helped to become supernaturalists by the
supernaturalists who know supernaturalism to be true.
 3. The accomplishment of these two tasks of the informed naturalist,
retrieving and reversing the medievals de facto reclassification of original
naturalism, would result (as the third goal of the informed naturalist) in a
contemporary reflection of the original naturalism of the pre-Socratics. More
exactly, it would reflect Greco-Roman naturalism from the period from about
600 B.C.E. to the sixth, fifth or fourth century C.E., depending on whether we
wished to identify the end of original naturalism with the time when
neoPlatonism became the pre-eminent philosophy, or later, when Augustine
did his work, around 400 C.E., or whether we wished to pick an exact year,
say, 529 C.E., which is the year a Christian, the Roman Emperor Justinian,
shut down the Athenian Academy, ending officially permitted promulgation
of non-theist world-views. (Perhaps 529 is a late date, since among the last of
the heads of the Athenian Academy, successively Marinus, Isidorus and
Damascious, only Marinus, in the late fifth century a.d., clearly defended a
non-theist philosophy in his commentary on Plato’s Parmenides.) The last
significant Greco-Roman naturalist philosopher was Sextus Empiricus (c. 250
C.E.). But naturalist philosophy still flourished up to about 300 B.C.E. in the
Epicurean school and the school of Pyrrhonist Skeptics (founded by
Aenesidmus of Knossos around 43 B.C.E., continued with Agrippa, and with
Sextus Empiricus being its last main, philosophically creative, proponent). By
the time Plotinus was flourishing in Rome (c. 250 C.E.), neoPlatonism was
becoming the predominant Greco-Roman philosophy and naturalism was on
the way to being “overwhelmed.” The most reasonable estimate is probably
that Greco-Roman naturalism lasted as a vital field from approximately 600
b.c.e to approximately 300 C.E.

Since we are not living in the midst of a period where informed

naturalism prevails, and since the only extent period of wide scale naturalism
that contemporary informed naturalists would believe was justified, in the
then prevailing epistemic situation, lasted between 600 B.C.E. and 300 C.E.,
the only way to understand a real example of a naturalism of this sort is to
outline some of the relevant ideas of this earlier naturalism. As I suggested
earlier, understanding a real example is our third goal. The most clear-cut
naturalist school, the atomist school of Leucippus, Democritus, Nausiphanes,
Anaxarchus, Epicurus, Lucretius, etc., included justified naturalists (in the
sense I explained). They argued against the religion of their time and put a
naturalist world-view in its place. But this is not news to the reader. It is
neither necessary nor desirable to briefly outline their philosophies as a whole,
since that is available in history of philosophy books and articles and in any
case will not capture what is most germane to informed naturalism. Rather, I
shall outline the parts of their philosophy that have the most significance for a
discussion of informed naturalism, namely, their treatment of religion as a
skeptical subfield of naturalism and (pertaining to the fourth goal of the
informed naturalist), their raising and answering the two most basic
ontological why-questions within an entirely naturalist framework.
 4. The two most basic ontological questions are now considered, due to
the lasting influence of the medieval philosophers, as belonging to the field of
the philosophy of religion. But they originally belonged to the naturalist
philosophy that prevailed prior to Augustine or Plotinus. The two most
fundamental ontological why-questions used to belong to Greco-Roman
atomism but since the Middle Ages have been treated as theistic questions,
namely, the questions (in one way of formulating them) “why is there
something rather than nothing?” and “why are there these things rather than
other things?” Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, and other Greco-
Roman naturalists treated and attempted to answer their own formulations of
the two most basic ontological why-questions within a naturalist context,
without thinking they needed to discuss anything they considered “religious”
or supernatural at all, but, beginning with the medieval philosophers these
questions were de facto defined as questions belonging exclusively to the field
of natural theology. When Hume discusses these questions, he does so
primarily in a treatise on natural theology (he even entitles it Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion) and his practice is followed by subsequent
philosophers, where the act of trying to answer the basic ontological why-
questions was an act that took place within the field of the philosophy of
religion.[5]Furthermore, ever since the Middle Ages, theists have convinced
naturalists in general that these questions, if meaningful, have only two
possible answers, “Because of a supernatural creative act” or “For no reason;
they are brute facts.”

Informed naturalism includes possible answers to the two most

ontologically basic why-questions, questions the answers to which allow
naturalism to provide an explanatorily complete ontological explanation of
what exists. An ontological theory is explanatorily complete if there are
positive answers to the most basic ontological why-questions, where a
positive answer offers a reason or reasons rather than the reply “for no reason,
it is a brute fact” (a negative answer). For example, if the most basic answers
to the ontological why-questions in a certain naturalist theory permit the two
most basic why-questions, formulated in the following way, to be positively
answered, then that theory is explanatorily complete. 
 

 
Q1. Why do these things exist and why do these laws of nature
obtain rather than some other possible things and other possible
laws of nature? 
 
 
Q2. Why is it the case that there is not only nothing? (The reason
for formulating the question this way will become apparent when
 I discuss the atomists.) 
 
 

For the informed naturalist, a metaphilosophical thesis about

philosophical naturalism is that it is (at the very least) epistemically possible
for the ontological explanations belonging to a naturalist philosophy to be
complete. That is, Q1 and Q2 are neither meaningless naturalist questions, nor
have only naturalist answers that are logically self-contradictory, nor are
pseudo-questions in the sense that it is logically impossible that there be any
other response to them than “for no reason; it is a brute fact.” This enables us
to state clearly the fourth goal of the informed naturalist, which is based on
the previous three goals: 4) What needs to be done is that these two most basic
ontological why-questions must be retrieved from the philosophy of religion
and restored to their original place, the place they had in the atomism of
Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and others, which was naturalist ontology.

Since this fourth goal is based on the first three goals, and is the least
understood goal in contemporary times (where most naturalists assume that
theists are correct in thinking these two why-questions, if answerable, have
answers that belong to the philosophy of religion), if will be most fruitful to
outline this goal at the greatest length.

The early Greek atomists interpreted the naturalist question “Why is it

not the case that there is only nothing?” in a way that seemed to them to fit in
with their atomism. For Leucippus, as with his disciple Democritus, “nothing”
referred to empty space and “something” to atoms, which move into
(previously) empty spaces. This reminds us of some quantum cosmologists
such as Ed Tryon who use “something” and “nothing” in approximately the
same way, mutatis mutandis. “Nothing” refers to the quantum vacuum and
“something” to the real as distinct from virtual particles. Part of the difficulty
of addressing the question about why is it not the case that there is only
nothing is figuring out what “nothing” means. The contemporary analytic
theist cannot pretend to be significantly more enlightened in this respect than
Leucippus, since the theist typically says nothing is a possible world in which
there are no concrete objects, such that this possible world is an abstract
object, a maximal state of affairs or proposition. But surely, it might be
objected, a maximal proposition or state of affairs is something, an abstract
thing, and thus is not nothing. In both cases, we have a relativizing of
“nothing” to the non-existence of a certain kind of thing, atoms or concrete
objects. This difficulty regarding the meaning of “nothing” has not yet been
resolved in a satisfactory way.

We can see why I formulated Q2 rather than the more familiar analogue
“why is there something rather than nothing?” The formulation, “Why is
there something rather than nothing,” begs the question against Leucippus and
Democritus by assuming without argument something they deny. They would
criticize this question as based on a false presupposition, viz., that there is or
even can be something without nothing. There can be no beings (atoms, which
move) without non-being (empty space). More precisely, there cannot be
things that move and fill up what had been an empty place (nothing) unless
there are empty places.

The second basic ontological why-question, why are there these things
and laws rather than others, can be answered in one of two ways by the
atomists. The universe (“the All” or “the unlimited”) is a causally
deterministic, discrete, infinitely old sequence of atomic events; each of these
atomic events, of the smallest discrete size, has its sufficient cause in the prior
state of that size (in conjunction with causal laws). The uncaused “swerve” is
a later invention of Epicurus in his attempt to explain free will; at that time,
philosophers did not know the conceptual distinction between compatibilism
and hard determinism. Further, we should not suppose they had a clear
conceptual distinction between causal laws and instances of these, as we have
today. Rather, this seems to be what they vaguely had in mind. Given this, we
can say this much: Each basic law is a regularity, i.e., atomic events of a
certain type nomically causing other atomic events of a certain type. The
obtaining of a basic law at any given time is a causal consequence of the
obtaining of the law at an earlier time. In this way, not only the states of the
universe are causally explained, but also the causal laws. Notice how Aristotle
strawmans Democritus and mis-states his causal explanation as a temporal
pseudo-explanation in Physics VIII. 252 a.32. Aristotle’s strawman
Democritus is represented as holding that “something happens in a given way
because it has always happened that way.” Note that Aristotle drops causality
from the explanation Democritus gave. If we state Democritus’ theory the
right way, in terms of a causal explanation, the burden of proof is then on
Aristotle to tell us why the statement, “for any given time t, the causal law L is
caused to obtain at that time, and it is caused to obtain at that time by the
obtaining of L at an earlier time t* < t,” is not an answer to the question, “why
does the law obtain at all times (in an infinite past)?” The supernaturalists
often respond at this point by equivocating, claiming their real question is not
“why does the law obtain at all the times in an infinite past?” but “why does
this law actually obtain, rather than some other law that could have obtained,
but which in actuality does not obtain?” which is not a question about
temporality but about modality.

The atomists have a ready response to the modal question: each

possibility is actualized. In terms of contemporary modal logic, we could say
their position is (very tacitly!) formally similar to the modal system Triv,
discussed most prominently in Hughes’ and Cresswell’s[6] book. Triv is (Lp
--> Mp) + p --> Lp. The symbol L means necessarily and M means possibly.
To be more exact, Triv is the system D + p --> Lp. One of the theorems
of Triv that is very clearly relevant to the atomists’ theory is Mp ? p ? Lp,
where “?” means material equivalence. It follows from this that if p is
possibly true, then p is actually true, and if p is actually true, then p is
necessarily true. Hughes and Cresswell, however, say that Triv reduces modal
notions to extensional notions. However, once we recognize that even strictly
logically (in C.I. Lewis’s sense of “strictly”) equivalent propositions can be
different propositions, and can be expressed by non-synonymous sentences
(e.g., “A triangle is three-sided” and “A triangle is three-angled”), then we can
say that Triv expresses intensional concepts not expressed in any extensional
logic. “Necessarily” no more expresses the same concept as “possibly” than
“three-sided” expresses the same concept as “three-angled.” The atomists’
“necessities” are understood in most cases a posteriori, although we should
not attribute our contemporary explicit conceptual distinction between the a
priori and the a posteriori to them.

A surviving fragment from Leucippus has been the subject of much

debate and Taylor[7] has provided a plausible interpretation of a part of it. The
fragment reads: “Nothing happens at random, but everything for a reason and
by necessity.”[8]

Taylor indicates that mat?n (“in vain”) is sometimes used to mean

“without reason,” in the sense of “without a rational explanation” as in
Plato’s Theatetus 189d. Leucippus’ first clause would then read: “Nothing
happens without a rational explanation,” which is (a version of) the principle
of sufficient reason. Taylor suggests the rest should be read as “but everything
happens for a reason [with a rational explanation] and by necessity.” Taylor
explicates the expression about necessity as meaning that the reason for which
something happens is that it has to happen. But this is a dubious
interpretation, for it would make the fragment end redundantly: “Nothing
happens without a rational explanation, but everything happens with a rational
explanation and with a rational explanation,” since (on Taylor’s view) the
reason is the necessity. But Taylor’s redundant conjunction suggests we need
a different reading: “Nothing happens without a rational explanation, but
everything happens with a rational explanation and necessarily.” For example,
the “rational explanation” would be a causal explanation and the “necessarily”
would mean than this chain of causally explained events necessarily exists.

The atomists discuss the two basic ontological why-questions and provide
answers (with more or less degrees of explicitness) in a purely naturalistic
context, without reference to anything supernatural or religious and without
saying the “real importance” of their answers is that they “imply atheism.”

The atomists did not treat atheist arguments, or arguments against the
religion of their times, as a subfield of natural theology; rather, atheist
arguments were rebuttals of skepticism about naturalismthat comprised one of
the fields of naturalism, along with epistemology, philosophy of the mind,
ethics, etc. The atomists did discuss religion, but religious belief  was not
sufficiently interesting to warrant anything more than a few rebuttals of its
skeptical attack on the atomistic world-view. The Roman atomist, Lucretius,
discussed atheism in the course of presenting his cosmology and sociological
theory, and gave an explanation that was most similar to Democritus’ (even
though Lucretius purported to be explaining Epicurus, who himself purported
to be explaining Democritus, who himself adopted his basic ideas from
Leucippus.) Lucretius writes: “Let us now consider why reverence for the
gods is widespread among the nations. . . . The explanation is not far to seek.
Already in those early days people had visions when their minds were awake,
and more clearly in sleep, of divine figures, dignified in mien [way of carrying
and conducting oneself] and impressive in stature.”[9] In other words,
reverence for gods is widespread because people’s epistemic faculties are not
functioning properly, to borrow a phrase from Plantinga. (As a minor aside,
“mien” is indeed a word in the English language, as the translator knows but
which many philosophers have denied to me. For example, see page 900 of
the 1974 edition of Webster’s New World Dictionary, edited by David
Guralnik.)

Epicurus merely said that the persons called “the gods” were in fact
extraterrestrial, intelligent organisms, composed entirely of atoms, who were
governed by the laws of nature, and who had no influence or even interest in
human affairs. They were like happy Martians who were indifferent to
Earthlings (except Epicurus’ extraterrestrials existed in the interstices between
“worlds,” where a world is very roughly a planetary system).

Democritus did not have such a sanguine view. Democritus, who was
basically alone in his time (as were other pre-Socratic philosophers) in
rejecting religion and embracing naturalism, was said by Hippocrates to have
had a less than a rosy-eyed view of human affairs: “This man ridiculed
everything as if all human interests were ridiculous.”[10] Democritus’ pursuit
of naturalist knowledge and his naturalist normative goals was presumably a
second level interest that provided this perspective on first level interests.
(Otherwise his interest in ridiculing everything is itself ridiculous; if all
human interests are ridiculous, Democritus’ interest in ridiculing all human
interests is ridiculous. Perhaps his interest is ridiculous because it fails to
attain the obviously unattainable goal of transcending the human condition).
In any case, Democritus’ remarks on religion certainly made religious
interests seem ridiculous: he said that people mistook an appearance of there
being mortal and destructible phantoms, an appearance that traveled about and
could be seen and heard, as the “god.”[11] Since this appearance does not fit
the definition of a deity, Democritus concluded, people’s religious beliefs
were false. Now it may well be that the religious views Democritus’ criticized
were not supernaturalist views, as I defined supernaturalism, but false
naturalist views (“there are traveling phantoms,” etc.). But if my symbols are
used to represent the formal structure of his and other atomists’ thinking, so
that B (for example) represents a religious justifier they criticized, even if
these religious justifiers are not “supernaturalist” in my sense, we may call the
atomists’ arguments against religious justifiers defeaters of justifiers of
religious beliefs, and thus to provide the original naturalists with their version
of DB (where DB is the defeater of an argument B for the truth of certain
religious beliefs.).

The atomists also formulated versions of the following theses, where B,

DB and the other symbols stand for the pertinent theories of their time. They
argued (and it seemed to them that):

1.DB (An argument DB against the religious justifier B of their

time).
2.DB defeats B.
3.C (which includes an argument that the basic why-questions
have naturalist answers and provides those answers).
4.C justifies N.
5.Therefore, N is justified. 
 
 

Leucippus and Democritus were the first to put forth a naturalist

argument of this sort. An informed naturalist today might think that the formal
model they implicitly provided is one we need to adopt today in order to
return philosophy to its mainly secularized state and thereby bring it back in
line with the rest of the academic fields. The informed naturalist would think
this would be the best way to advance human knowledge. Of course, this is a
subject on which naturalists and anti-naturalists will differ. The differences
were great even in Greek times, to the point where the activity the naturalist
and anti-naturalist philosophers share in common, the free pursuit of
knowledge as an end in itself, was sometimes not valued.

            For example, the leading supernaturalist of Greco-Roman times, Plato,

seemed quite perturbed at the atomists’ line of thinking. As Aristoxenus
reports in his Historical Notes: “Plato wished to burn all the writings of
Democritus that he could collect, but Amyclas and Clinias the Pythagoreans
prevented him, saying that there were no advantage in doing so, for already
the books were widely circulated.”[12]However, Plato need not have worried,
since Julius Caesar accidentally burned Democritus’ books in 48 B.C.E.,
[13] which may have something to do with the fact that atomism was
“overwhelmed” by Roman neoPlatonism by 300 C.E. All that was then left
were fragments of the atomists’ writings and Lucretius’ On the Nature of
Things. It may not be entirely rhetorical to ask: Could it be that it is Caesar’s
fault that western philosophy is a “series of footnotes to Plato,” as Whitehead
said, rather than a naturalistic “series of footnotes to Democritus [and
Leucippus]”? It seems that Aristoxenus would have taken this position with
whole-hearted earnestness:[14]

Plato, who mentions almost all the early philosophers, never once alludes to
Democritus, not even where it is necessary to controvert him, obviously
because he knew that he would then have to match himself against the prince
of philosophers.[15]

[1]Edward J. Jarson and Larry Witham, “Leading Scientists Still Reject

God,” Nature 394 (July 23, 1998), 313. Some referees for this paper
commented at length that philosophy, not science, is the appropriate place for
discussions of theism, and that I was not respecting the borderline between
science and philosophy. I would respond that this criticism presupposes a false
belief about the relation between philosophy and science. See the last section
of Quentin Smith, “Problems with John Earman’s Attempt to Reconcile
Theism with General Relativity,” Erkenntnis 52 (2000): 1–27, and Quentin
Smith, “Absolute Simultaneity and the Infinity of Time,” in ed. Robin Le
Poidevin, Questions of Time and Tense (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998): 135–168.
[2]John Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1992): 90–91.
[3]Richard Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 387.
[4] Wes Morriston plausibly argues in “Omnipotence and the Anselmian
God,” Philo vol. 4, no. 1, (Spring-Summer 2001): 7–20, that God is not
omnipotent and thus does not possess this omniattribute. I believe the same
holds for other omniattributes; for example, God is not omniscient since God
does not know the true, irreducibly indexical proposition, I am Quentin Smith.
A better definition of God in the tradition of perfect being theology is that
God possesses the highest degree of the relevant great-making properties that
enables them to be jointly possessed by the greatest possible being.
Nonetheless, it seems to me that there is a sound post-Mackie and post-
Plantinga logical argument from evil; see “A Sound Logical Argument from
Evil,” 148–157 in Quentin Smith, Ethical and Religious Thought in Analytic
Philosophy of Language (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997).
One reviewer of this book said that he could not see the difference between
this argument and Mackie’s. The difference is explained on page 156, where it
is also explained why Mackie’s argument is unsound.
[5] Happily, there are some exceptions. These questions have been treated in a
non-theistic context by some naturalists, such as Milton Munitz, Chris
Mortenson, Robert Nozick, Peter Unger, Derek Parfit, and others, but most
naturalists today ignore these questions on the tacit assumption that they
belong to “the philosophy of religion” and that naturalists should instead work
on questions that belong to other fields, such as philosophy of science or
philosophy of mind.
[6] G.E. Hughes and M.J. Cresswell, A New Introduction to Modal
Logic (London: Routledge, 1996), 65.
[7] C. Taylor, The Atomists (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999),
188–195.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe, trans. R.E. Latham. (Baltimore:
Penguin Books), 206–207.
[10] Hipp. I. 13. Dox. 565. I am quoting from Milton Nahm’s Selections from
Early Greek Philosophy (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1964), 158.
[11] Sext. Emp. IX.19. See page 206 of Nahm’s Selections from Early Greek
Philosophy.
[12] D.L., IX. 34 ff. See page 154 of Nahm’s Selections from Early Greek
Philosophy.
[13] Caesar burned his own military ships to prevent the Egyptian general
Achillas, with his army, from capturing Caesar’s fleet, but the flames
unexpectedly spread to the library at Alexandria and burned not only
Democritus’ books but the only copies of many classic books written before
48 b.c.
[14] D.L., IX. 34 ff. See page 154 of Nahm’s Selections from Early Greek
Philosophy.
[15] I am grateful to David Woodruff, William F. Vallicella and Austin Dacey
for providing exceptionally extensive and penetrating comments on and
criticisms of a penultimate draft of this paper, which motivated many changes
to be made. Many of their suggestions about how to improve their paper were
incorporated in the final draft, such as one of Woodruff’s detailed suggestions
about how to improve my outline of the notions of justification and defeater,
his and Vallicella’s several remarks on how the earlier draft did not make
sufficiently clear the “philosopher/cultural activist” distinction, Vallicella’s
criticism of the validity of the penultimate draft’s argument that most
contemporary naturalists do not know any naturalist truths, Dacey’s way of
more carefully distinguishing between uninformed naturalists coming to know
atheological arguments versus formulating these arguments themselves, and
many other suggestions. An indication of the help they gave and the influence
they had on this paper is indicated by the fact that Woodruff’s referee report
was as long as my penultimate draft (the length of a long article), Vallicella’s
report was almost as long, and the fact that Dacey’s (as well as Woodruff’s)
report included a line by line commentary on the writing style as well as
substantial arguments about the theories.