How to Make Naturalism Safe for Supernaturalism: An Evaluation of Willem Drees's Supernaturalistic Naturalism

Naturalism is often considered to be antithetical to theology and genuine religion. However, in a series of recent books and articles, Willem Drees has proposed a scientifically informed naturalistic account of religion, which, he contends, is not only compatible with supernaturalistic religion and...

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1. VerfasserIn: Rottschaefer, William A. (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
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Veröffentlicht: Wiley-Blackwell 2001
In: Zygon
Jahr: 2001, Band: 36, Heft: 3, Seiten: 407-453
weitere Schlagwörter:B epistemological naturalism
B Wilfrid Sellars
B Supernaturalism
B ontological naturalism
B weak underdetermination
B strong underdetermination
B Naturalism
B limit questions
B Willem Drees
B Underdetermination
B Methodological Naturalism
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Zusammenfassung:Naturalism is often considered to be antithetical to theology and genuine religion. However, in a series of recent books and articles, Willem Drees has proposed a scientifically informed naturalistic account of religion, which, he contends, is not only compatible with supernaturalistic religion and theology but provides a better account of both than either purely naturalistic or purely supernaturalistic accounts. While rejecting both epistemological and methodological naturalism, Drees maintains that ontological naturalism offers the best philosophical account of the natural world and that, in addition, it provides the opening for a supernaturalistic understanding of religion and theology, one that best fits the condition of epistemic and moral distance from the transcendent characteristic of religious wonderers and wanderers. In this paper I examine Drees's claim and argue that it is seriously flawed. I show that Drees's naturalism is, in fact, both methodologically and epistemologically naturalistic. I also show that his attempts to limit naturalism to the sphere of the natural world by means of the phenomena of limit questions and underdetermination fail. Arguing for a more optimistic, but also, I contend, more empirically accurate account of human epistemic and moral capacities, I propose a full-fledged scientifically based naturalistic account of theology.
ISSN:1467-9744
Enthält:Enthalten in: Zygon
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/0591-2385.00371