the conflict between theism and naturalism: methodological or metaphysical?

For several decades, many theist philosophers and theologians have been trying to argue against naturalism. they understand naturalism to be a thesis implying that there is no supernatural entity – including a deity – in the world. it apparently seems they are right. metaphysical naturalism is the idea that all the entities of the world are natural, and it evidently implies that there is no supernatural entity in the world. however, the conflict between theism and naturalism is more complicated. in this paper, i try to show that the conflict between theism and naturalism is in fact methodological rather than metaphysical. i try to argue for the position via two different routes. first, naturalism has an important epistemological or methodological aspect according to which, the only way towards acquiring knowledge of the world is through scientific methods. it seems that metaphysical naturalism can both historically and conceptually be grounded on this methodological aspect of naturalism. the thesis that link the two aspects of naturalism together is the one known to be the completeness thesis or causal closure of the world. there are some arguments against this view, and in this paper, i try to disarm some of them. second, methodological naturalism can be shown to oppose any a priori metaphysical constraint on inquiring into the world. the best evidence for this claim, i will argue, can be found through noam chomsky’s naturalistic argument against physicalism and the arguments posed against methodological physicalism – the position that employs the physicalist ontological constraint as a methodological rule, and is mainly defended by hartry field and jeffrey poland. at the end of the paper, i will contemplate on some of the implications of the position for philosophy and theology.