Summing up, what’s the significance of naturalism?
A. The bottom-line significance of naturalism lies in its profound redefinition of who we are, and the consequences of that redefinition for ourselves personally and for society at large. We are no longer souls that happen to have bodies; we are, instead, fully physical creatures whose brains do everything that the soul was supposed to do. In declaring our complete causal connection to the natural world, naturalism shows us to be at home in the cosmos. We are what the universe is doing here and now, and we can trace our lineage back through the eons to the Big Bang. Seeing our natural nature and origins, and understanding that persons and society are unfolding causal processes, traditional beliefs about credit and blame and success and failure are called into question, and we become more compassionate. We become more effective as well, since instead of supposing individuals are the ultimate source of behavior, we take into account the actual causes of their character and actions, wheth
