And he thinks that the persistence of scientists in their naturalist beliefs is an attack against the importance of God and the meaningfulness of religion. There are two possibilities for understanding the absolute relationship between science and naturalism. The first possibility is to make a utilitarian argument Science provides naturalistic explanations about the world. Therefore, naturalistic explanations are the only possible way to gain a meaningful understanding of the world. This argument fails, however.
Science can never have more than a limited understanding of the world.
The second possibility takes the opposite approach. It is not that science teaches us the necessity of naturalistic explanations. Rather, and here is the point to be explored in the remainder of my paper, naturalistic explanations are an assumption necessary for doing science. Only naturalistic explanations can become part of science because of the way in which scientific discoveries become credible. This multilevel approach is necessary to understand the cognitive features of science, the social structure of science, and the relationship between science and other aspects of human life.