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Methodological naturalism (MN) or Scientific Naturalism is a philosophical tenet that states that life exists in a single natural universe, as supported by science. MN describes life as a mechanically unfolding process; where everything is caused and possesses an effect.
History
The term MN itself probably doesn't go much past the 1980s; Phillip E. Johnson acknowledges taking it (or "methodological atheism") from Nancey Murphy, a theologian with training in the philosophy of science. Arguably, MN itself goes back to the Ionian pre-Socratic philosophers of the 4th century BCE; see, e.g., Jonathan Barnes's introduction to Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin), which describes them as subscribing to principles of empirical investigation that strikingly anticipate MN. Benjamin Wiker traces the historical development of the modern materialist perspective starting with the choice of the Epicureans to focus exclusively on the natural realm as a necessary step toward their goals; see his book "Moral Darwinism; How We Became Hedonists".
Naturalism vs. Tradition Religion
MN as a world view is based on the premise that knowledge about what exists and about how things work is best achieved through the sciences, not personal revelation or traditional religion.
MN believes that life is the evolved product of physics and Darwinian natural selection. Nothing about life escapes being included in the physical universe, or escapes being shaped by the various processes – physical, biological, psychological, and social – that science describes. MN believes that there exists no immaterial souls, spirits, or disembodied selves which stand apart from the natural world.
Cause vs. Effect
MN believes that each human being is an unfolding natural process, and every aspect of that process is caused, and is a cause itself. It states that what we are and do is connected to the rest of the world because our bodies and minds are shaped by conditions that precede us and surround us.
Representational naturalism is the proposition that human knowledge and intentionality are parts of nature, to be explained entirely in terms of scientifically understandable causal connections between brain states and the world.
The existence of a supernatural cause of the simplicity of the laws of nature is obviously inconsistent with ontological naturalism.
Scientific anti-realism, when combined with meta-philosophical naturalism, leads to the conclusion of philosophical anti-realism, since philosophical theories are, according to metaphilosophical naturalism, merely a species of scientific theories.
Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong, but insists that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied by the same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either nonexistent, unknowable, or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses.
Naturalism of this sort says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural which by this definition is beyond natural testing.
Subsequent scientific revolutions would remove much of the remaining theistic baggage from scientific investigation culminating in the development of modern biology and geology which rejected a literal interpretation of the prevailing origin beliefs of the wider society's religion.
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