ABSTRACT
Science deals with an external reality, usually taken for nature, writ large, that is equivalent to the totality of material things or the physical universe. Such a nature, or universe, has been taken either for an entity not to be reduced to something else or for something essentially dependent for its existence on a supernatural factor, usually called God. Viewing nature as a self-explaining entity can translate itself into either a materialistic or a pantheistic ideology. In the former, spiritual experiences are taken to be the result of the processes of matter. In pantheistic theology, both nature and mind (spirit) are considered to be manifestations of some divine principle, which pervades all nature but is ultimately not different from it. The view that nature depends on God can be either theistic or deistic. In theism (essentially Christian theism in the Western world), God is not only the Creator, but also the Sustainer, who can interfere with nature by, say, working miracles in support of an information (revelation), which is superadded to what man can deduce about God from a philosophical reflection on nature. In deism, God is thought to have removed himself from nature’s workings and from human affairs after the moment of creation.
