Metaphysical naturalism and Materialism aren't the same view, though they're often used interchangeably in lay discussions, which was my point. They have some overlap (though naturalism does not require materialism) and are both a type of monism, but they have some pretty striking differences. Here is a discussion that talks about it in lay terms:
Metaphysical naturalism vs. materialism? : Philosophy • Rational Skepticism Forum
Without complications . . .
From:
materialism definition - Google Search
Materialism - PHILOSOPHY - the doctrine that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.
I disagree, by definition, you cannot distinguish between the two, but you may make a distinction of sub-beliefs not intended in this thread. True that "Naturalism" does not imply materialism today, but Metaphysical or Ontological Naturalism implies the Materialism or Physicalism, and in . . .
From: thhttps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/is case is compatible with science.
The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944; Kim 2003).
So understood, “naturalism” is not a particularly informative term as applied to contemporary philosophers. The great majority of contemporary philosophers would happily accept naturalism as just characterized—that is, they would both reject “supernatural” entities, and allow that science is a possible route (if not necessarily the only one) to important truths about the “human spirit”.
Today the use is more specific . . .
"Many ontological naturalists thus adopt a physicalist attitude to mental, biological and other such “special” subject matters. They hold that there is nothing more to the mental, biological and social realms than arrangements of physical entities.
The driving motivation for this kind of ontological naturalism is the need to explain how special entities can have physical effects. Thus many contemporary thinkers adopt a physicalist view of the mental realm because they think that otherwise we will be unable to explain how mental processes can causally influence our bodies and other physical items. Similar considerations motivate ontologically naturalist views of the biological realm, the social realm, and so on.
It may not be immediately obvious why this need to account for physical effects should impose any substantial naturalist constraints on some category. After all, there seems nothing
a prioriincoherent in the idea of radically unscientific “supernatural” events exerting a causal influence on physical processes, as is testified by the conceptual cogency of traditional stories about the worldly interventions of immaterial deities and other outlandish beings."