Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age > Status Update

"We can ask whether the efforts of the Presocratic philosophers amount to a move in the direction of anything like modern naturalism. In a word – 'no'. While we have only fragmentary textual evidence for the views of most of these thinkers, it is safe to say that the underlying explanatory principles that they identified were in a broad sense theistic. The relevant opposition was between nature as governed by the capricious activities of anthropomorphic deities versus nature as a manifestation of orderly divine principles. For Presocratic thinkers and their Greek and Roman successors, the cosmos was thought to be permeated by the divine. The opposition in play is between competing theological conceptions."

Despite the popularity of the notion, it is difficult to trace the development of "science" as understood today directly to Aristotle. His concept of "nature" was never opposed to "supernature" so much as "violence," which was defined as mankind's manipulation of natural objects.

For instance, throwing a rock up in the air does violence to nature insofar as rocks naturally tend downward, as is their proper place. This explains some of the early disapproval and opposition among Aristotelian thinkers concerning the "Scientific Method." Experiments intentionally and repeatedly did "violence to nature." For Aristotle, human interference with natural processes rendered them "unnatural" (out of their proper place), and thus could not be used to truly reveal nature as he understood it.

One of the clearest indicators that Greek philosophical metaphysics did not give rise to the rigid natural/supernatural distinction so prevalent today is one of the first pejoratives they threw at Christians: "Atheists." They did so due to the sharp distinction Christianity made between the Creator and the creation. For Greek thinkers (almost without exception)*, nature was "full of gods" who were reponsible for animating everything, leading objects to act in accordance with their nature. Christianity, however, rendered the world an "artifact" that was open to exploration, research, and dominion.

*(Epicureans are an obvious and oft quoted exception, of course. The rigidly falling parallel atoms so central to their materialistic system, however, can't really account for anything ever actually occurring (contrary to all experience everywhere), and their ad hoc "swerve" was demonstrably just that, ad hoc. Regardless, "swerve," random as it mindlessly must be, can not establish (neither give nor maintain) the truly intelligible order upon which science is founded.)

Even when the natural/supernatural distinction was first articulated in the middle ages, it meant something far different than it does now. "Natural" meant the way God (directly or indirectly through angels and commands) usually caused an object(s) to behave. "Supernatural" was God intentionally doing something noticeably different with an object(s) than usual.

"The imagined ancient champions of naturalism [the Greeks] turn out to have religious commitments that are directly implicated in their natural philosophies. The rise of Christianity, often identified as having impeded what would otherwise have been the natural development of Greek science, turns out to have been the agent of naturalism."

One noticeable trajectory toward today's materialistic bent, was the explanatory use of "natural laws." Rather than creation directly obeying it's Master, more and more God was said to have given "laws" to the way various objects, properties, and processes (like gravity) behave. This was a one-step abstraction, but it was an important one. Phenomenon now had the power within themselves, by their very "natures," to carry out their telos.

The originators of the laws of thermodynamics directly related them to theology. Only God can create and destroy energy, and entropy implies both a beginning and a Beginner not subject to it.

"The triumph of naturalism [defined as "anti-supernaturalism"] was impossible while the long-standing historical alliance between belief in the supernatural and the principle of the uniformity and intelligibility of nature remained intact. To advance their agenda, proponents of naturalism promoted a twofold strategy that exploited existing tensions within Christianity. This required, first, the adoption of a sharp natural/supernatural divide, accompanied by an alignment of the former, rather than the latter, with the uniformity of nature. Instead of underwriting the uniformity of nature and its laws, ‘the supernatural’ might then be understood as fundamentally incompatible with uniformity. This was a radical change of perspective, given the general consensus among the Victorian scientific establishment about laws of nature. However, an even more important factor behind the success of the naturalist vision of the world has simply to do with generational change and a concerted ideological campaign on the part of advocates of naturalism." As Matthew Stanley has shown, the naturalist camp was remarkably successful in gaining control over the training of scientists, in infiltrating the bastions of the scientific establishment, and eventually, in winning a virtual monopoly over the educational curriculum for children starting from the youngest age.

I want to emphasize that last point very, very strongly.

Atheistic naturalism and all it's godless woes WON THE DAY THROUGH PAIDEIA (the education of our children). Conversely, for the sake of convience (both temporal and monetary), parents abdicated the responsibility of bringing up their children in the "paideia of the Lord" (Eph 6:4) to the state.