Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses

Most of us have a worldview, an overarching context for life that helps to shape our beliefs, goals and actions. This book explores the science-based worldview known as naturalism, a comprehensive and fulfilling alternative to faith-based religion and other varieties of dualism. Taking empirical science as the route to reliable knowledge, naturalism holds that we inhabit a single, natural world; there is no separate supernatural realm. We are fully physical beings whose origins lie in cosmic and biological evolution, thus we are entirely at home in the universe. By understanding and accepting our complete connection to the natural world, naturalism provides a secure foundation for human flourishing, an effective basis for achieving our purposes and addressing our deepest concerns. We don t need belief in the supernatural to sustain us. Nature, it turns out, is enough.