Scientific naturalism: a great truth that got distorted

Scientific naturalism in the generic sense is the doctrine that there can be no supernatural interruptions of the world’s causal processes. This idea, which emerged in Greece in the 6th century BCE, was formulated most adequately in Plato’s theistic version. However, in appropriating Greek philosophy, Christian thinkers first modified and then rejected its naturalism. Scientific naturalism emerged again in the 18th and 19th centuries, but because of ideas retained from the supernaturalistic mechanism that became associated with science in the 17th century, naturalism appeared in a distorted version, one that is inadequate for science itself as well as incompatible with Christian faith or any other significantly religious view. The great truth of scientific naturalism needs to be rescued from this distorted version of it.