NATURALISM

A philosophical position, empirical in method, that regards everything that exists or occurs to be conditioned in its existence or occurrence by causal factors within one all- encompassing system of nature, however "spiritual" or purposeful or rational some of these things and events may in their functions and values prove to be. 

S.P. Lamprecht in Naturalism and the Human Spirit, Yervant H. Krikorian, 1944, p. 18, quoted in Christian Apologetics in a World Community, W. Dyrness, IVP, 1983, p. 88.

As man has gained increasing mastery over nature through science . . . he gradually has lost his sense of helplessness and with it his need to believe in the supernatural. He has become more and more this-worldly and can say, quite readily "This world is all that there is and it is enough."

 Edward Cell in Thinking and Acting Like a Christian, D. Bruce Lockerbie, p. 25.