Nature and what?

A recent meta-analysis on the old question of nature vs. nurture (Meta-Analysis of Twin Correlations and Heritability) concluded that overall the variation of human traits and disease is 49% due to genetic factors and 51% due to environmental factors. There is a similar question about nature vs. culture in anthropology and education.

Evolutionary theory is fraught with the combination of innate and environmental effects. The emphasis has been on the innate that is reproduced with the environment providing whatever is missing (as in the conditions that ensure the next step of evolution).

Naturalism throws a wrench in all of this because it says there is nothing outside of nature. The universe has no environment so ultimately it’s all nature. Nurture, culture, and the like must be reduced to nature.

I dispute naturalism but what exactly is the alternative? It is that the universe is an open system. We say it is open to God but that does not get to the heart of it. A closed system can be just as open to the transcendent God who creates and sustain it.

An open universe is open to more than God; it is open to spirit, mind, intellect (commonly called intelligence). If we want to be the most precise (and the least accurate), an open universe is open to information in the sense of Shannon (for example see Shannon and Weaver’s book, The Mathematical Theory of Communication).

Not coincidently the intelligent design and various creationist movements have been hammering home the necessity of intelligence and information for the fine tuning of the earth and the universe, the diversity of life-forms, and the basis for natural science. Not surprisingly those caught up in naturalism aren’t listening. They are living in a closed world, deaf to the larger reality.