Naturalism (or materialism) teaches that there is nothing but nature and human beings are little more than a complex venus fly trap. A fly lands on the trip wire and SNAP, the fly begins struggle against being digested alive. A Homo Sapien has more and more complex trip wires, but essentially, we are the same. Ther are two divergent views within the naturalistic camp that, in the Spirit of fairness, we will deal with separately. The first being the particular brand to which I held, the second being a little more complex and a little less inteligable.
The particular brand of Naturalism to which I clung was the kind which teaches that a human, being no more or less than a bundle of localized actions and reactions was solely a creature of nature, and as such, whatever a person did was natural. In fact, there was no such thing as unnatural. If there is only nature, then there can be nothing un-nature-ish. This of course meant that there was no right or wrong, no heaven and hell, no judgement and no freedom. Now, at first this seemed to be clipping along at a right old speed down the road to do-whatever-I-want-ville (of course my desires because illusory, but no freedom never really bothered me as long as I got to do what I wanted). This meant that I needn’t feel all of those guilty feelings about the lies that I told, or the cheating that I occasionally did on my homework. You shouldn’t feel guilt for what was only natural. But of course, ?Idid begin running into problems, Others needn’t feel guilty about lying to me and suddenly, the guilt that I thought to alleviate suddenly became a natural thing, and not being something that needed to go away. Guilt was a natural as a sunflower’s stretch for the sun orthe clubbing of baby seals.
But here’s the clincher, there was no hell for me, that seemed fine (though I wasn’t exactly convinced I would go there if there was one, having had an unnaturally inflated view of myself), but there was no hell for the people that I thought deserved it. There were people that I hoped would get more justice than could be allotted to them on earth. Even though I would have to say that the raping and killing of children was just natural, the death penalty just did not seem to be enough. The spilt blood and suffering of children seemed to cry out for more.
And to finish of the liturgy of the Irish boxer, I must kick naturalism while it is down. The particular fly that I had bitten was naturalism, and that was only natural, but someone else’s natural response was to insist that naturalism is not true. Why should I trust my natural response, if I am just a bundle of responses. If I am right than I can’t be trusted. If I can’t be trusted, then I certainly ought not to be trusted to declare my own untrustworthyness.
