Neville’s Ontological Creative Act: Two Interpretations

Abstract

From the swirling stars above, to the end-directed design of life below, to the perceptions and emotions that color the world within—as more and more phenomena prove susceptible to scientific description, explanation, prediction, and control, the naturalistic metainduction grows increasingly plausible: perhaps nature is self-enclosed, so that everything that makes a difference within the world is itself part of the world; perhaps there are no disembodied agents—neither ghosts nor gods—whose actions influence our shared day-to-day world. Because neither the expansion of science’s adequacy nor the concomitant pressure toward philosophical naturalism show signs of abating, the recent emergence of religious naturalism marks a significant moment in religious thought. Defined minimally, religious naturalism involves (1) a commitment to a naturalistic cosmology and (2) an affirmation that living in a religious way is good, important, or appropriate. Of course, this vague definition leaves room for enormous variation, and, indeed, religious naturalists vary significantly in how they interpret both of the above criteria.1 One of the most significant disagreements concerns the extent to which God-talk or reference to a transcendent ground or source of nature is employed. Thinkers who advance conceptions of Ultimate Reality—whether using Tillich’s ground of being language or Spinoza’s natura naturans2—in expressing the religiousness of their religious naturalism risk destabilizing the self-enclosure of their naturalistic cosmologies. In contrast, those who reject theological refer-