Encountering Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses - Softcover

Thomas W. Clark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0979111102 ISBN 13: 9780979111105

Publisher: Center for Naturalism, 2007

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas W. Clark is founder and director of the Center for Naturalism and creator of Naturalism.Org, among the most comprehensive online resources on scientific naturalism and its implications. He lectures and writes on science, naturalism, ethics, free will, criminal justice, consciousness, addiction, and related philosophical and social concerns.

Review

"This little book takes all those deep questions about life, meaning, purpose and death, and shows how you don't need religion to make sense of them - indeed how the naturalist way of thinking about the deepest issues is kinder and truer." --Dr. Susan Blackmore, author of The Meme Machine and Conversations on Consciousness

Don't misjudge the importance of Encountering Naturalism by its small size and inexpensive cost. It is packed with insights about naturalism and its implications for free will, for life's meaning and purpose, and for social and political issues. A must read for anyone wanting a fuller and deeper understanding of this important philosophical perspective. --Dr. William R. Murry, author of Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the 21st Century

Encountering Naturalism is a wonderfully readable plunge deep into the implications of a thorough going naturalism. The naturalistic surface -- with its rejection of miracles and mysteries -- is well-mapped; but for anyone who wishes to explore the questions, perils, opportunities, and vistas far beneath that surface, there is no better or more engaging guide than Thomas W. Clark. --Bruce Waller, philosopher and author of The Natural Selection of Autonomy

Edition details

• Publisher: Center for Naturalism
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0979111102
• ISBN 13: 9780979111105
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 103