Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 266 views

    Deism and Dualism

    Uploaded by

    David Pai de Salomão
    Deism and dualism are two approaches that have attempted to integrate naturalism and theism but ultimately fail. [1] Deism proposes that God created the natural world but does not intervene in its ongoing processes, but this makes it not a true theism. [2] Dualism proposes separate realms for the natural/material and spiritual/human experience, but it is unclear how these interact and it does not resolve the fundamental incompatibility. [3] Both deism and dualism require separating naturalism and theism into different domains of time or space, admitting their inability to truly co-exist.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Deism and Dualism

    Uploaded by

    David Pai de Salomão
    266 views4 pages
    Deism and dualism are two approaches that have attempted to integrate naturalism and theism but ultimately fail. [1] Deism proposes that God created the natural world but does not intervene in its ongoing processes, but this makes it not a true theism. [2] Dualism proposes separate realms for the natural/material and spiritual/human experience, but it is unclear how these interact and it does not resolve the fundamental incompatibility. [3] Both deism and dualism require separating naturalism and theism into different domains of time or space, admitting their inability to truly co-exist.

    Copyright

    © Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Deism and dualism are two approaches that have attempted to integrate naturalism and theism but ultimately fail. [1] Deism proposes that God created the natural world but does not intervene in its ongoing processes, but this makes it not a true theism. [2] Dualism proposes separate realms for the natural/material and spiritual/human experience, but it is unclear how these interact and it does not resolve the fundamental incompatibility. [3] Both deism and dualism require separating naturalism and theism into different domains of time or space, admitting their inability to truly co-exist.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    266 views4 pages

    Deism and Dualism

    Uploaded by

    David Pai de Salomão
    Deism and dualism are two approaches that have attempted to integrate naturalism and theism but ultimately fail. [1] Deism proposes that God created the natural world but does not intervene in its ongoing processes, but this makes it not a true theism. [2] Dualism proposes separate realms for the natural/material and spiritual/human experience, but it is unclear how these interact and it does not resolve the fundamental incompatibility. [3] Both deism and dualism require separating naturalism and theism into different domains of time or space, admitting their inability to truly co-exist.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 4

    Deism and Dualism 1

    Deism and Dualism: Failed Attempts to

    Integrate Naturalism and Theism

    Brent D. Slife, Brigham Young University

    Scott has just made a case that naturalism and theism are incompatible

    philosophies. I emphasize “philosophies” because they are not realms or realities, with

    naturalism associated with the natural and theism associated with the spiritual. They are,

    instead, competing systems of ideas, or even ideologies. Still, we are quite aware that the

    popularity of these intellectual systems in Western culture has led many to attempt their

    rapprochement. In other words, naturalism and theism have commonly been assumed to

    be combinable, despite their incompatibility. I just want to take a few minutes to review

    briefly the two main lines of attempted combination – deism and dualism.

    Perhaps the most common approach to combining naturalism and theism is some

    form of deism – God created the naturalistic order of the world but this divinity is no

    longer involved in its ongoing operation (cf. Borg, 1997; Johnson, 1995; Richards &

    Bergin, 1997; Wacome, 2003). With this conception, no reference to God would seem

    warranted or needed in formulating or conducting psychology’s methods because the

    laws or principles of psychology are currently autonomous and working essentially

    independently of Him. The obvious problem, however, is that a deism is not a theism.

    That is to say, this kind of deism obviates those religions that believe in a presently

    active, rather than a passively deistic God.

    Consequently, a variety of dualisms have been brought to bear in attempting to

    solve this problem. Rene Descartes (1641/1952) perhaps framed the prototypical dualism

    with his claim that the mind or soul permitted God’s actions and influences but that the
    Deism and Dualism 2

    body was mechanistically autonomous. In this sense, God was only inactive for part of

    the world. Donald Wacome (2003), in the book Science and the Soul, illustrates a

    variation of this form of dualism when he holds that God is involved with some entities

    of the world but not with others, as in this passage:

    Christians, unlike deists, believe that God miraculously intervenes in his creation,

    but our essential commitment is to God’s intervening in human history; in human

    experience; and, above all, in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—not to

    God’s intervening in nature as such. We accept a great variety of explanations of

    things coming about by natural processes that are what they are in the world God

    has created without feeling the need to postulate divine interventions (emphasis

    added, p. 200).

    Here, Wacome (2003) distinguishes his position from deism because he believes God is

    currently active in the events of humans (e.g., their history, experience). However, he

    then postulates a deism of nature where God created the processes of nature but they now

    “come about by natural processes.” This conception is a great example of the modern

    attempt to integrate theism and naturalism, because God is active in human experience

    but inactive in nature, where the laws of nature and naturalistic philosophy take over.

    Of course, any such dualism begs the usual interactional questions: How do the

    two realms – soul and body, human experience and nature – interact? What if, for

    example, there is good reason to believe that our minds are our brains? Where does the

    soul and our experience leave off and our biology and nature begin? If the mind

    agentically or spiritually controls the body, then the “natural processes” discussed by

    Wacome do not control the body. If, on the other hand, the laws of our biological nature
    Deism and Dualism 3

    control our brains, as many neuroscientists seem to contend, then these laws, not God or

    our human agency, govern our human experience. We cannot have it both ways because

    the two are incompatible.

    Some will undoubtedly say here that God is not only the creator of these laws but

    also their sustainer. However, this is little more than a technical variation on dualism.

    As Griffin (2000) and other scholars have long shown, the notion that God upholds the

    laws does not allow God to be “active” in any meaningful theistic sense because God’s

    upholding of the laws means that He cannot act otherwise than the laws. Because this

    ability to “act otherwise” is the basis of any freedom of action, God enjoys no such

    freedom. Moreover, God cannot minister to His children uniquely or modify his actions

    in the light of changing circumstances because the laws of nature are themselves the same

    for everyone, regardless of their situations.

    Now I realize that we won’t solve the mind/body problem today. I also know that

    there are hundreds of variations on these combination themes, with each variation

    attempting to bring together two seemingly commonsensical ideas for many in our

    Western culture – naturalism and theism. The problem with all these variations on

    dualism and deism is that do not, in principle, resolve the incompatibility of these two

    philosophies; they, in fact, interface the two by recognizing their incompability. In other

    words, the extent to which they work is the extent to which they assign these two

    philosophies to separate realms, separate corners of the universe – Descartes separating

    the soul from the body, and Wacome separating human experience from nature.

    Deism, in this sense, is merely dualism across time, with God having been active

    at one point in time (as creator) but now, at another point in time, being essentially
    Deism and Dualism 4

    passive – two separate realms of time. Indeed, this separation of the naturalistic (no

    divine intervention) from the theistic (active and current divine intervention) in both

    deism and dualism is a tacit admission of their incompatibility. Whether separated in

    time or in space, the fundamental premise of deism and dualism is that the two

    philosophies apparently cannot co-exist in the same time and place. No dualism or deism

    would be necessary if they were really compatible. The important point, for our present

    purposes, is that natural science methods of psychology have been formulated to

    investigate one side of this dualism – the godless side (Hedges, in press; Slife & Hopkins,

    in press), making their conceptual foundations incompatible with the God-filled side of

    theism.

    You might also like