I have just ordered this book but not read it yet. My friend Victor Stenger, author of "The New Atheism, Taking a Stand for Science and Reason," has just written four paragraphs about this book that readers may find interesting. Here they are:
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In their short book "Naturalism," philosophers Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro attempt to show that naturalism is intellectually incoherent. The authors are theists [thus, non-naturalists] who teach at Notre Dame University and St. Olaf College, respectively. They claim that a duality of the physical and the mental is necessary to explain mental causation, that is, how mental events cause physical events.
This strikes me as rather backward. If, as naturalism asserts, mental events arise from physical events in the brain, then there surely is no problem since we then have physical events causing physical events, just as when a cue ball hits an eight ball and causes it to go into a pocket. On the other hand, if mental events have their own non-physical nature, then we have the problem of explaining how something nonphysical can cause physical events. Goetz and Taliaferro do not provide us with even a speculative model for how that can happen.
Of course, mind-body dualism is a widespread "commonsense" belief among laypeople. Goetz and Taliaferro seem to think common sense is sufficient to adopt the dualist view.
Goetz and Taliaferro also claim to show the philosophical coherence of divine agency. So what if it is philosophically coherent? That says nothing about its reality. A fantasy computer game in which heroes come back to life after being killed is philosophically coherent; it wouldn't run on a computer if it wasn't logical. But the world is still not that way.
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In my view the case for naturalism is very simple. Naturalism says nature is all that exists. If supernaturalism or some other extra-naturalism does not exist, then naturalism is true. Supernaturalists now have the obligation to demonstrate that the supernatural exists in addition to nature if they are to reject naturalism. They have never been able to do this. Naturalism is therefore true because it has never been logically or empirically refuted, i.e., naturalism is true by default because supernaturalism or any other extra-naturalism has never been proved to exist. Simply claiming that the existence of the human mind is evidence for supernaturalism is hardly an adequate demonstration. Other animals have minds that exist; these minds differ in degree with ours but not in kind. Claiming that duality is true (the brain and the mind are different kinds of things and the latter is not dependent on the former for its existence; indeed, most supernaturalists believe the human mind is a manifestation of the human soul or spirit and is independent of the body; indeed, they believe it is immortal) as evidence for non-naturalism requires evidence or reasonable proof for the independent existence of the mind. Again, this has never been forthcoming.
Even if duality WERE true, this would only require rejection of naturalism in favor of some extra-naturalist philosophy, not evidence specifically for the existence of supernaturalism and its theistic and miraculous by-products. "Naturalism's" authors apparently conclude their book by affirming the existence of both supernaturalism and theism from simple denial of monism (the claim that mind is a consequence of brain only). This is simply presumptuous, illogical speculation. Simple denial of monism to affirm supernaturalism and theism is insufficient. Instead, positive evidence for the existence of dualism is necessary to first demonstrate extra-naturalism; then, the subsequent demonstration of both supernaturalism and theism require much, much more. Naturalism, however, because it is simplest alternative, is true by default because there is no reasonable, empirical, or logical alternative.
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