Darwinism is not merely a support for naturalistic philosophy: it is a product of naturalistic philosophy.

All the most prominent Darwinists proclaim naturalistic philosophy when they think it safe to do so.

Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place.

The second advantage claimed for naturalism is that it is equivalent to rationality, because it assumes a model of reality in which all events are in principle accessible to scientific investigation.