For Kantians Only?: Arthur Petersen on Transcendental Naturalism, Climate Change, and God

Gijsbert van den Brink

doi:10.16995/zygon.20031

For Kantians Only? Arthur Petersen on Transcendental Naturalism, Climate Change, and God

Gijsbert van den Brink^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Religious Beliefs and Ethics

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

In this article, after expressing my appreciation for the novelty, timeliness, and openness of Arthur Petersen’s approach in his Climate, God and Uncertainty, I discuss a main concern raised by the book, namely, its heavy reliance on a Kantian dualism between knowledge and faith. Drawing on Immanuel Kant’s contemporary Thomas Reid, and helped by present-day scholarship on Reid, I propose an alternative epistemology, which, if accepted by Petersen, would enable him to include not only (hopefully) Kantians but also the majority of adherents of the great monotheistic traditions (that is, all of them who think it is possible to know God) in his camp. This is of crucial importance, since Petersen’s plea for a nature-sensitive spirituality that breaks the collective patterns of behavior that have led to the contemporary climate crisis by addressing the deepest layers of human existence is very timely and worthwhile.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	642-654
Number of pages	13
Journal	Zygon : Journal of Religion and Science
Volume	60
Issue number	2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.16995/zygon.20031
Publication status	Published - Jun 2025

Bibliographical note

Published online: 2025-08-12.

A previous version of this essay was presented at a book symposium of the International Society for Science and Religion during the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Funding

A previous version of this commentary was presented at a book panel organized by the Science, Technology and Religion Unit of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) at the AAR Annual Meeting 2024, San Diego, USA, November 24, 2024. The International Society for Science and Religion has published a recording of the book panel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7hWwrhnmyE.

Funders	Funder number
American Academy of Religion

Keywords

Classical theism
climate change
common sense philosophy
Foundationalism
God
Kant
religious epistemology
Thomas Reid
transcendental naturalism

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10.16995/zygon.20031Licence: CC BY

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Cite this

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title = "For Kantians Only?: Arthur Petersen on Transcendental Naturalism, Climate Change, and God",

abstract = "In this article, after expressing my appreciation for the novelty, timeliness, and openness of Arthur Petersen{\textquoteright}s approach in his Climate, God and Uncertainty, I discuss a main concern raised by the book, namely, its heavy reliance on a Kantian dualism between knowledge and faith. Drawing on Immanuel Kant{\textquoteright}s contemporary Thomas Reid, and helped by present-day scholarship on Reid, I propose an alternative epistemology, which, if accepted by Petersen, would enable him to include not only (hopefully) Kantians but also the majority of adherents of the great monotheistic traditions (that is, all of them who think it is possible to know God) in his camp. This is of crucial importance, since Petersen{\textquoteright}s plea for a nature-sensitive spirituality that breaks the collective patterns of behavior that have led to the contemporary climate crisis by addressing the deepest layers of human existence is very timely and worthwhile.",

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