Ask the Pastor 120

What is Naturalism?

Simply stated, naturalism is the belief that nature is all that there is and that there is no such thing as the super-natural. Atheists are naturalists and nature always existed or at least matter always existed and then through natural processes became what is now known as nature. This is closely related to materialism where everything that exists is material, there is no spiritual and therefore no God. A person does not have to be an atheist to be a naturalist because there are those known as Deist who believe that there is a God who created all things but then backed away from creation and let it operate according to natural laws. It is like a watch maker who makes the watch, windup the watch and lets it go to unwind. There are not many deists anymore because there cannot be salvation because that would mean that God did intervene in the world and His intervention was miraculous. Most often, however, a naturalist/materialist is an atheist, there is no God and therefore there is no such thing as miracles or life after death. One of the major problems with both of these is that they do not explain human emotions or human thoughts. For them, human thinking and feeling is nothing more than the material interactions of the human brain and its nervous system. To any honest thinking person, this is a hard sell because we all know that when we have an emotion of love, hate, joy, sorrow etc., that emotion cannot be put under a microscope and examined as a material substance. In the dialectic of Socialism, one will eventually come to realize that nature and the material is all there is, there is no God and there is no salvation outside of mankind themself. As Bible believing Christians, this must be rejected, as there is a spiritual realm and there is the God who has intervened in our world and has provided for everlasting life through faith in His Son.

Have questions about the Bible? Send them to Dr. Greg Koehn at gak4850@gmail.com and read the answer here in this article.