Naturalism Explains Nothing
It isn’t like naturalism can explain some of what theism can, just that theism explains more stuff or similar stuff better or both. In fact, naturalism explains nothing.
Here’s why.
Any natural reality is a finite or restrictedly intelligible reality, which means it inevitably invites questions concerning its existence or characteristics or both that it cannot answer from within itself — that is, via its nature. Hence no natural entity is completely self-explanatory; that is, capable of answering all coherent questions about itself, from within itself.
Now, the provocative claim: if nothing is self-explanatory, then nothing is ultimately explained. Either things derive their intelligibility from something that is completely intrinsically intelligible — something that can explain itself from within itself (because it has an unrestrictedly intelligible nature) — or reality is rock-bottom absurd.
I want to be sure the reader understands the point. It is not like we even have partial explanation if naturalism is true; pushing questions down to deeper levels, removing mystery along the way before bottoming out in brute fact. That is illusion and deceit. In fact, simply deferring explanation without ultimately cashing it out expands, rather than contracts, mystery. It wraps an increasing number of objects in question marks. The punch of line of reality would be interrogative rather than declarative, if naturalism were true. Which just means everything is unexplained.
This thesis is best illustrated by the classic example of the earth resting on the back of a turtle.1 Why is the earth stable, somebody wonders? Because it’s resting on a turtle. OK, neat. But how is that turtle stable? Because it’s resting on another turtle. From there, it’s either turtles all the way down or we reach some terminating turtle.
Either option leaves the phenomena in question absurd. If it’s turtles all the way down, we’re just infinitely deferring giving any adequate explanation at all; infinitely resisting the answering of a coherent question. If none of the members in the explanatory chain have the inherent power of stability, then positing an infinite number of such members equates to there never being a sufficient condition for the effect. Which means it just wouldn’t be there in the first place.
More obvious is the problem with a finite or terminating chain of turtles. Suppose we get to some final turtle and it’s just there and it’s just stable — and that’s it. No further intelligibility to be found. Anywhere. But notice, the absurdity of this Brute Turtle traces back up the chain rendering the entire situation absurd. What might have initially seemed like an explanation has been exposed as illusory. Again, it is not even that we have moved the mystery to another location; rather, we have just enlarged the mystery. Before, we just had the earth to explain. Now, we have the earth and all these damn turtles.
I suggest there is no relevant difference between the above example and the naturalistic project. No turtle can ultimately account for the stability of the earth: it is not the right sort of thing. Mutatis mutandis, no natural entity can account for why there is anything contingent: it is not the right sort of thing.
Nor will insisting upon necessary natural reality help — least not without explaining how that natural reality is necessary. For example: saying there is some necessary initial stable turtle doesn’t solve the stability problem. If anything, it makes matters worse. Before we just had to explain contingent turtles, now we have contingent turtles and — apparently — some necessary turtle, which cannot explain its necessity. The problem is worsened because of the posit of necessity in this instance, not alleviated.
Now, just switch the relevant things around. If the naturalist wants to try to explain contingency by positing some necessary physical entity or state, this too cofounds, rather than solves, the issue, because there is nothing about the nature of any natural reality that could explain how that something is necessary in the first place. The mystery is expanded. Before, we just had to explain contingency, now we have contingency and all this damn necessity.
I want to be sure the reader understands the point. Contingency demands necessity concerning explanation — there, I do not disagree. Here, I am just saying that calling something necessary (natural or otherwise) isn’t going to cut it, since it makes sense to ask why something is necessary in the first place. For the naturalist, they can never offer any non-arbitrary account of this.
Why so? Simply because the only thing that could be a (metaphysically) necessary reality is something — as perennial wisdom discerned — purely actual, immaterial, eternal, and whose essence just is its existence. And that could only be God. That is just what it means to be God.
To put everything in a nutshell, then. Only something truly necessary could terminate explanation concerning contingency. Only something purely actual (qualitatively unbounded, non-composite) could be necessary. The only possible self-explanatory existent is God. If nothing can be explained unless everything requiring extrinsic explanation traces back to that which is inherently self-explained, then either God exists and reality is completely intelligible or God does not exist and reality is absurd.
Reality is not absurd.
Ergo, God exists.
Let me see if I understand... So what makes God different from, more than, a necessary turtle is that while the necessary turtle's necessity is brute (unexplained), God's is explained (not brute) because he's "purely actual, immaterial, eternal, and whose essence just is its existence."? And we're not inventing something purely actual, immaterial, eternal, and whose essence just is its existence. That is what is required to explain the existence of contingent things. And anything purely actual, immaterial, eternal, and whose essence just is its existence must, by definition, be God. Am I right?