Naturalism under a neo atheist definition

Question

The Free Dictionary defines Naturalism (in regards to philosophy) as...

"A scientific account of the world in terms of causes and natural forces that rejects all spiritual, supernatural, or teleological explanations."

Yet there is still the definition of atheism that will not go away that posits atheism as the mere lack of belief in one or more deity(s). While it would be safe to say that most of the people who hold such a view of atheism are naturalist would this be a internally coherent world view.

Basing ones world view on a definition that is neither a for or against position in regards to the existence of one or more deity(s) and still accepting or assuming a naturalistic epistemology that discards the for position.

Would this be an internally coherent position or would this just be a poor definition of atheism? (Or maybe even not specific enough)

Now, I'm sure there is no absolute definition of atheism and that this new definition may not represent everyone who may call him/herself an atheist but this definition seems to be more and more prevalent so it is to me at least interesting to inquire about its ramifications.

Answer 1

I don't see why "teleology" is ruled out in the definition of naturalism. There's plenty of goal-directed processes in nature to which biologists and other natural scientists appeal. What you mean to rule out is the idea that God's eye is on the sparrow, everything happens for a purpose and so on, but that isn't the only thing one could mean by "teleology". Aristotle doesn't think any of those things, for instance, but his philosophy of nature is the paradigm case of a teleological worldview. If you're interested, I can dig up a piece by Ernst Mayr about different senses of teleology in contemporary biology.

Answer 2

There are a wide variety of ways someone can end up calling themselves an Atheist, but what you've described is pretty common among researchers in the life sciences. You've put some things as premises that I don't think really are for these folks, though. I think it goes more like this:

• I am not going to believe in stuff without evidence / a good model supporting it
• I am going to take a scientific account of the world. I will not yet reject supernatural stuff
• I now observe what is a good model with good evidence: chemistry, physics, the chemical basis of life, etc.
• I also observe that every supernatural model I can find is a poor one with lots of conflicting evidence if it even makes any predictions at all
• Therefore I reject the supernatural stuff hypotheses
• I am tired of testing variations on that hypothesis, so I will henceforth take a scientific approach assuming that I don't need to test the supernatural hypotheses any more
• Also, I now call myself an atheist

Edit: note that I'm not suggesting that these steps are explicit for most people. Rather, the first three are the cognitive process you tend to be led through, mostly without realizing it, when you start taking a lot of science classes. It's easy enough to fill in the rest on your own, as you incidentally encounter all manner of supernatural explanations that don't work. (Some of course don't ever bother thinking about supernatural explanations; I'm merely claiming that the above is common not universal.)

Answer 3

The claim that theism is a belief but atheism is not a belief but a "lack of belief" always strikes me as an exercise in doublethink. In the context I see it, it seems to be used to say "I'm open to reason, but also there's no way I can be wrong".

A simple probabilistic model

If we model belief with a probability then this "lack of belief" which is not a belief must be at 50%. More explicitly, if it is not a belief in any sense then neither

P(x) > 0.5, nor, P(¬x) > 0.5      

with x being a statement of the kind, "there is a God", but we have

[XM]:  P(x) = 1 - P(¬x)

so P(x) = 0.5

This assignment of probability captures the askers statement of

... a definition that is neither a for or against position in regards to the existence of one or more deity(s) ...

This clearly causes problems for anyone thinking God is unlikely. Of course it possible to reject the (probabilistic version of the) law of excluded middle (XM), but you'd need a good reason to do so.

As either:

1. You are a naturalist and assign a very low probability (or even, a priori a 0) to statements like "there is a God". It is very common take naturalism as an a priori principle and there to assign a zero.

2. You remain fully uncertain at 50% and not a proper naturalist, but at least you're not believing in anything.

Which answers the askers question:

Would this be an internally coherent position or would this just be a poor definition of atheism?

But the definition of atheism is far from unrecoverable.

For example, one option would be to take atheism to correspond with a probability anywhere less than or equal to 50%: where people are undecided through to rejecting Gods absolutely. In this case it would be wrong to say "it's not a belief" but, as you include the 50%, value you could get away with saying "it's not necessarily a belief"

Edit: a slightly less, but still rather, simple probabilistic model

Now lets consider statements of the kind, "there is a God and his it is the Christian God", which I will assume for the sake of argument is the same as "the Christian God exists". These would extend the result above in the following way:

P("the Christian God exists") = 
P("there is a God and it is the Christian God") = 
 P("there is a God") P("if there is a God it is the Christian God")

The quantity P("if there is a God it is the Christian God") can only ever be smaller than or equal to one. So, you can disbelieve in the Christian God, even all existing specifications of a God, and still assign a probability 0.5 to the statement "there is a God". The probability above sets an upper bound for the probability assigned to any particular specification of a God.

Of course, many naturalists would assign a much lower probability to x ("there is a God") in which case I maintain that they hold a belief in the statement "there is not a God".

Answer 4

Some atheists believe in a form of "mandatory" naturalism. That is, they believe everything has a natural explanation---and unexplained phenomenon are simply events which lack a complete explanation at this time.

Others have a more "skeptical" naturalism, where everything is assumed natural in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary. This view seems to predominate among educated atheists.

In practice, it can be difficult to tell these positions apart by casual observation. In both cases, the standard reaction to any mystery will be a scientific or forensic investigation.

It is debatable whether these attitudes constitute axioms/dogma, circular reasoning, or justifiable beliefs. That would depend on the specific beliefs of each atheist.

And, for the record, your definition is fatally flawed because it is possible to be an atheist and reject naturalism. One could believe in ghosts, the zodiac, planar energy, transcendence, or magic without believing in any sort of deity. If gravity and electromagnetism require no god, why should telekinesis and astral projection?