Review of Naturalism: A Critical Analysis (Amazon Review)

In a 2012 debate entitled The Great Debate: Has Science Refuted Religion, physicist Sean Carroll made a rather bold claim in his opening remarks (at about the 12:30 mark):

"The argument is finished.  The debate is over.  We've come to a conclusion.  Naturalism has won. If you go to any university physics department, listen to the talks they give or the papers they write--go to any biology department, go to any neuroscience department, any philosophy department, people whose professional job it is to explain the world, to come up with explanatory frameworks that match what we see--no one mentions God.  There's never an appeal to a supernatural realm by people whose job it is to explain what happens in the world.  Everyone knows that the naturalist explanations are the ones that work."

Naturalism: A Critical Analysis edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland is essentially a direct challenge to Carroll's claim.  The book is a collection of essays by academic philosophers in university departments that do not "know that naturalist explanations are the ones that work."  They instead level a host of ontological, epistemological, ethical, and theological arguments against the veracity of naturalist explanations.  In this review I will attempt to explain what some of those arguments are.

Review of Naturalism: A Critical Analysis edited by William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland (Part 5)

This is part 5 of my series of essays on Naturalism: A Critical Analysis. This essay will focus on Stuart Goetz's chapter, which discusses the implications of libertarian free will on naturalism.  You can follow the following links for the other essays in the series: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Chapter 7: Naturalism and Libertarian Agency
by Stuart Goetz 

Goetz's primary argument against naturalism is that libertarian free will falsifies naturalism.  If free will exists, then naturalism is false.  Formally, we can put the argument like this:

(1) If libertarian free will exists, then naturalism is false
(2) Libertarian free will exists
Therefore (3) Naturalism is false

I will clarify a few terms then discuss the argument.

Libertarian Free Will
 
Libertarian free will is the idea that choices are not predetermined or fully coerced by law-like forces.  Libertarian free will (or libertarianism for short) entails that those who have free will are agents--they are self-directing entities who make choices for reasons.  In Goetz's words, "According to libertarianism, a choice is an undetermined mental action which is explained teleologically in terms of a purpose or goal of its agent" (157).