Reddit reply in r/AcademicQuran: examples of puzzlement in secular quranic studies — November 6, 2025 · nnc7944 | Ali Shukri Amin

Your summary is correct.

You are conflating methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism.

>Plus, it's a contradiction in terms to refer to "considering a supernatural explanation within a naturalist paradigm". Naturalism methodologically excludes supernatural considerations; they cannot be seriously considered

Methodological naturalism does not allow for the consideration of something supernatural. It is happening at the evaluation level. Philosophical naturalism is happening at the conceptual level. It's theoretically possible for someone who is a philosophical naturalist to come to a solitary conclusion that indicates something is supernatural. A philosophical naturalist thinks that we shouldn't pursue metaphysics or theology as a way to determine truth objectively, as a methodology. A methodological naturalist is also a philosophical naturalist, but with the added layer of not considering a supernatural explanation at all - not just dismissing the supernatural as a reliable way to *determine* or *derive* truths but outright dismissing the possibility of a supernatural *occurrence*.

I agree that methodological naturalism is not required in HCM but my initial statement was that anyone using the HCM has accepted philosophical naturalism at least insofar as they are using the method and philosophical naturalism will almost always agree with the conclusions of methodological naturalism.

>If your definition of "naturalism" is "the material world is real", then Islamic religion is itself naturalist.

Abrahamic religions are not naturalist philosophies. Abrahamic theologians mostly agree that the natural world itself is insufficient as a way to arrive at objective truths absent tethering ourselves to a transcendental source of objective truth (i.e. the One God).

Of course there are a wide variety of thinkers in the Abrahamic faiths, and I'm no expert on Judaism & Christianity (I do know at least one pope recently seemed to have a naturalistic bent). In Islam, the Ash'arites subscribed to a highly modified version of atomism and some were Platonists. Ibn Taymiyyah postulated that we did not need an ontological system to describe reality in order to tether belief in God. Regardless, no mainstream Islamic philosopher that I know of (Mutazilah, Sunni, Shia, Ibadi) state that the material world was alone sufficient to arrive at objective truth without recourse to God.

Believing the outside world is real is not the question here. The question is WHY you believe the outside world is real as opposed to not. If you think the outside world is itself self evident and sufficient to reach conclusions about on its own, without recourse to an immaterial plane (the noumenon) you are a *philosophical* naturalist. Here I am talking at the level of first principles and epistemology, not at the level of a science or a methodology.

If you think, absent God, or the Forms, or whatever else one decides is the noumenon; that the material world cannot be sufficiently justified as a source of truth - you do not subscribe to naturalism. You're either a Platonian or follower of Abrahamic faith or something else.

If you think the material world cannot be sufficiently jusrified as a source of truth independently but also find none of the theories posited by the above category, you are a radical skeptic. This includes solipsists and Pyrrhonians.

If you believe that the material world is self-evident without recourse to an immaterial plane and also do not have a reason why you believe this, this is a blind faith assumption.