Natural causality and regularity of the world

What it is: Naturalism supposes that the world exhibits investigable regularities and causality accessible to research.

How the position understands it: The intelligibility of the universe depends on patterns, laws, causal relations, and observable or inferable structures.

Basis and context: This principle supports empirical science, modeling, and prediction.

Debates and variations: Different naturalisms diverge on the status of laws, emergence, and indeterminacy.

Supportive

Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus

naturalism,epicurus,skepticism,religion

Natural explanations and a critique of religious fear.

Reference: Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus and related texts.
Content: The author defends natural explanations of the cosmos and seeks to free people from fear of interventionist divine forces.
Use in debate: It is a classical antecedent of naturalism and religious skepticism.

Sean Carroll, The Big Picture

naturalism,sean-carroll,emergence,worldview

A contemporary defense of a broad naturalistic worldview.

Reference: Sean Carroll, The Big Picture.
Content: Carroll articulates a naturalistic worldview that combines science, emergence, human meaning, and the absence of the explanatory supernatural.
Use in debate: It is an important contemporary synthesis of philosophical naturalism.

Contrary

Psalm 19:1

bible,old-testament,creation,against

Creation is read as a witness to divine glory.

Reference: Psalm 19:1.
Content: The text describes the heavens as declaring the glory of God.
Use in debate: It is used to resist strictly non-theistic readings of nature.

Thomas Aquinas, Five Ways

thomism,theism,metaphysics,neutral

Philosophical arguments that move from the world to God.

Reference: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, First Part, question 2, article 3.
Content: The Five Ways begin from aspects of the natural world and conclude in God.
Use in debate: They are often invoked against closed metaphysical naturalisms.