Naturalism

I enjoyed reading this article. I found it in Justin Taylor's blog. If you want to understand the progression and some history on the rise of Naturalism then read ahead. It's pretty long but worth the time.

Birkett writes,

"The problem with an argument for God's existence based on the intricacy of the natural world is that it depends on the human's evaluation of how good the secondary cause are. If a human viewer decides that, actually, the secondary cause look pretty convincing on their own, then that person may well decide that there is no need for a first cause. The 'first cause' becomes not a cause at all, but an unnecessary speculation.

With William Paley, scientific theism was alive and well. It might seem that
God was firmly part of the understanding of the natural world. Paley's
argument, however, effectively restricted and reduced the role that the
creator was understood to have. What is a true statement of the Bible
(God has created a world in which parts work together ingeniously)
was turned around into an argument (we know God exists because we can
observe a world in which parts work together ingeniously)." Her later statement

which Birkett mentions paved the way for the naturalistic view point held today by many.

At the Clash we learned that God needs to be the foundation which you build the rest of your "house of knowledge". This articles helps to reaffirm this. We begin with God when trying to understand the world, not the other way around or else our foundation will crumble.

Click here to read the rest.