ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on a distinction between "idea" and "concept" that follows Whitehead's usage, but also does not depart very far from Kant's views. It addresses the relationship between Whitehead and religious and theological thought by applying "nature" above the problems of religious and theological naturalism. The chapter examines whether any animal lacking the ability to conceptualize experience could be a religious naturalist. It claims that the idea of nature connects the rest of experience with the experience of reflecting. The chapter asserts that the problem of freedom includes the problem of experience and existence, and exhausts the problem of act and being. It emphasizes Whitehead as a radical empiricist. The chapter examines the question of nature, and philosophical and religious naturalism, by examining the relation between experience and existence, as radical empiricists. When science dismisses or eliminates those other modes of experience, it does a disservice to everyone, especially to science, and ceases to be, in our sense, naturalistic.
