Exploring Naturalism with Tom Clark (The Humanist Hour #101)

In this episode, Bo interviews Tom Clark from naturalism.org. Tom is currently a research associate at the Institute for Behavioral Health with the Heller School at Brandeis University. He is the founder and director of the Center For Naturalism, conducting public education, policy development, and community building to promote worldview naturalism. Tom is also the editor of naturalism.org, which is among the Web’s most comprehensive resources on worldview naturalism, its implications and applications.

Naturalism is simply the understanding that there exists a single, natural, physical world or universe in which we are completely included. There are not two different worlds, the supernatural and natural. Since we are completely included in the natural world, there’s nothing supernatural about us. For instance, we don’t have immaterial souls that survive after death. We are fully physical, material creatures, and everything we are and do can be understood without supposing that we have souls, spirits, or any other sort of immaterial supernatural stuff inside us. Your thoughts, experiences, feelings, decisions, and behavior are all things your brain and body does. How they do all this is of course a very complicated story that’s still being discovered by science, but naturalism says there’s nothing non-physical involved. That the material world has produced creatures that are conscious, can reason, feel emotions, and ask questions is a pretty amazing fact. The “merely” physical isn’t so mere after all. Naturalism re-enchants the physical world.

Interview:
http://thehumanist.com/multimedia/podcast/the-humanist-hour-101-exploring-naturalism-with-tom-clark