A World Without Two Realms
Beyond the Natural-Supernatural Divide
The Need to Think Organically
“I have grown tired of being asked whether I believe in the natural or the supernatural. The question already divides the world before I have had a chance to experience it. It tells me that trees, rivers, bodies, and atoms belong on one side, best understood by science; while spirits, dreams, divine presence, and strange moments of knowing belong on the other. Then it asks me to choose which side is real.
But my life has never arrived in two separate realms. Grief enters the body. A place can carry a presence. Dreams sometimes disclose truths that waking thought has missed. Prayer changes the way the world feels. The living and the dead are not always as distant from one another as our categories suggest. I do not know how to explain all these things, and I do not need to believe every extraordinary claim. I only know that the words natural and supernatural often close the door before the conversation has begun.
Perhaps we need to think more organically. An organism is not a collection of sealed compartments but a living whole whose parts enter into and affect one another. What if reality is like that—many-layered, relational, alive with feeling, and more open than our inherited categories allow? Then the question would no longer be whether something is natural or supernatural. We would ask instead: How does it belong to the living whole? What relations make it possible? What difference does it make in experience? And does it contribute to the flourishing of life?
Is that the option of process philosophy? Didn't Whitehead name his philosophy "a philosophy of organism"? And didn't he think of God as not outside the whole bur rather the living whole of the universe, with a life of its own? And don't process thinkers like David Ray Griffin propose that, in process philosophy, experiences of the paranormal are as natural in their ways as are experiences of physical objects in space?
I understand that the very distinction between natural and supernatural is something of a modern Western invention, alien to many indigenous traditions and, for that matter, to traditional forms of religion. Maybe organicism, at least of the process variety, is a metamodern option: that is, an option that moves beyond the "modern" and now outdated distinction itself. Is that what process philosophy says?"
- A Composite of Many Voices
But my life has never arrived in two separate realms. Grief enters the body. A place can carry a presence. Dreams sometimes disclose truths that waking thought has missed. Prayer changes the way the world feels. The living and the dead are not always as distant from one another as our categories suggest. I do not know how to explain all these things, and I do not need to believe every extraordinary claim. I only know that the words natural and supernatural often close the door before the conversation has begun.
Perhaps we need to think more organically. An organism is not a collection of sealed compartments but a living whole whose parts enter into and affect one another. What if reality is like that—many-layered, relational, alive with feeling, and more open than our inherited categories allow? Then the question would no longer be whether something is natural or supernatural. We would ask instead: How does it belong to the living whole? What relations make it possible? What difference does it make in experience? And does it contribute to the flourishing of life?
Is that the option of process philosophy? Didn't Whitehead name his philosophy "a philosophy of organism"? And didn't he think of God as not outside the whole bur rather the living whole of the universe, with a life of its own? And don't process thinkers like David Ray Griffin propose that, in process philosophy, experiences of the paranormal are as natural in their ways as are experiences of physical objects in space?
I understand that the very distinction between natural and supernatural is something of a modern Western invention, alien to many indigenous traditions and, for that matter, to traditional forms of religion. Maybe organicism, at least of the process variety, is a metamodern option: that is, an option that moves beyond the "modern" and now outdated distinction itself. Is that what process philosophy says?"
- A Composite of Many Voices
Process Philosophy
Yes, that is what process philosophy says. Along with many historians and anthropologists, process thinkers recognize that the natural–supernatural divide is a distinctively modern Western invention and that it now hinders our appreciation of both religion and science. One response is to develop a new, more organic understanding of naturalism. This is the path taken by David Ray Griffin. Another response, however, is neither to propose a new “naturalism” nor simply to defend “supernaturalism,” but to think beyond the divide by finding language that avoids the dichotomy altogether.
One possibility is organicism: the view that reality is a living, relational, many-layered whole whose possibilities cannot be confined in advance by a narrowly modern conception of nature. Organicism need not affirm every report of spirits, miracles, telepathy, or out-of-body experiences. It asks only that such possibilities be approached with an open mind, without forcing them into the artificial categories of either “natural” or “supernatural.”
The work of the esteemed historian Peter Harrison, especially his book Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age, makes the problem clear. The rest of this page introduces Harrison’s book and an accompanying essay in which he summarizes its central argument. It then considers how his historical analysis might help us move beyond the modern natural–supernatural divide.
One possibility is organicism: the view that reality is a living, relational, many-layered whole whose possibilities cannot be confined in advance by a narrowly modern conception of nature. Organicism need not affirm every report of spirits, miracles, telepathy, or out-of-body experiences. It asks only that such possibilities be approached with an open mind, without forcing them into the artificial categories of either “natural” or “supernatural.”
The work of the esteemed historian Peter Harrison, especially his book Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age, makes the problem clear. The rest of this page introduces Harrison’s book and an accompanying essay in which he summarizes its central argument. It then considers how his historical analysis might help us move beyond the modern natural–supernatural divide.
Some New World
by Peter Harrison
In his famous argument against miracles, David Hume gets to the heart of the modern problem of supernatural belief. 'We are apt', says Hume, 'to imagine ourselves transported into some new world; where the whole form of nature is disjointed, and every element performs its operation in a different manner, from what it does at present.'
This encapsulates, observes Peter Harrison, the disjuncture between contemporary Western culture and medieval societies. In the Middle Ages, people saw the hand of God at work everywhere.
Indeed, many suppose that 'belief in the supernatural' is likewise fundamental nowadays to religious commitment. But dichotomising between 'naturalism' and 'supernaturalism' is actually a relatively recent phenomenon, just as the notion of 'belief' emerged historically late. In this masterful contribution to intellectual history, the author overturns crucial misconceptions – 'myths' – about secular modernity, challenging common misunderstandings of the past even as he reinvigorates religious thinking in the present.
This encapsulates, observes Peter Harrison, the disjuncture between contemporary Western culture and medieval societies. In the Middle Ages, people saw the hand of God at work everywhere.
Indeed, many suppose that 'belief in the supernatural' is likewise fundamental nowadays to religious commitment. But dichotomising between 'naturalism' and 'supernaturalism' is actually a relatively recent phenomenon, just as the notion of 'belief' emerged historically late. In this masterful contribution to intellectual history, the author overturns crucial misconceptions – 'myths' – about secular modernity, challenging common misunderstandings of the past even as he reinvigorates religious thinking in the present.
About Peter Harrison
Peter Harrison is a former Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion in the University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at the University of Queensland, where he was also an Australian Laureate fellow and Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH). His many celebrated books include 'Religion' and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1990), The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge University Press, 2007), The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2010), The Territories of Science and Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and - co-edited with John Milbank - After Science and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2022). In 2019, he delivered in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin the prestigious University of Oxford Bampton Lectures, which constitute the basis of the present work.
Interview with Peter Harrison
Science, Naturalism, and
the Idea of the Supernatural
An Essay by Peter Harrison
the Idea of the Supernatural
An Essay by Peter Harrison
Click here for entire essay.
Summary of Harrison's Essay
- “Religion as belief in the supernatural” is a modern Western construction. Neither the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, nor the Church Fathers employed a natural–supernatural dichotomy. The term supernaturalis appeared only in the thirteenth century, and the sharp division emerged later.
- The modern understanding of religious “belief” is also historically recent. Faith originally emphasized trust, loyalty, and relationship more than assent to propositions. Its transformation into an evidential claim made modern “unbelief” newly possible.
- Modern naturalism arose partly from developments within Christianity, not simply from science’s defeat of religion. Early modern theology separated an autonomous natural order from supernatural divine intervention. The scientific idea of universal laws of nature was itself originally grounded in belief in God as lawgiver.
- Nineteenth-century naturalists created a misleading conflict narrative. Thinkers such as T. H. Huxley recast history as a perpetual struggle between scientific naturalism and religious supernaturalism, obscuring the theological commitments of figures such as Descartes, Boyle, Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell.
- The natural–supernatural divide should therefore be reconsidered. It is neither culturally universal nor essential to Christianity, and it can distort our understanding of the past, Indigenous knowledge, and religious experience. Paradoxically, “the supernatural” has become more important to those who deny it than it ever was to most religious believers.
Excerpts from Harrison's Essay
“Religion is typically thought to involve belief in the supernatural. Yet the two categories that make up this definition are modern and distinctively Western. The concept of ‘the supernatural’ is absent from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Church Fathers."
"From a cross-cultural and historical perspective, few societies seem to have developed a natural/supernatural dichotomy comparable to our modern Western understanding.
"In his 1912 classic, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Émile Durkheim observed that ‘the idea of the supernatural, as we understand it, is recent. It presupposes an idea that is its negation.’ In keeping with this assessment, a number of anthropological studies have revealed that many traditional societies are innocent of a natural-supernatural distinction."
"Fatefully, however, this theistic understanding of laws of nature proved to be a Trojan Horse for modern naturalism. The theologically motivated reduction of the complex, multi-layered, causal economy of the Middle Ages to a single and undifferentiated layer of divine causation was susceptible to a simple redescription in naturalistic terms. Laws of nature, once understood as laws imposed on nature by God, could be understood simply as laws intrinsic to nature. This change of theological valence was effected in the nineteenth century, when naturalists such as Thomas Henry Huxley mounted a hostile takeover of the concept of laws of nature, happily accepting their universality and inviolability, but denying the theological premises upon which those characteristics had rested. Ironically, laws of nature had now became a reason to deny God’s activity in the natural world."
"The idea of the supernatural is far more important to those who wish to deny its reality than it ever was for the religiously committed.”
David Ray Griffin
Reenchantment without Supernaturalism:
A Process Philosophy of Religion
Occasionally, a book comes along that is definitive for its field of study, a book that marks a milestone in thought.... Griffin has written just such a book―a book that, by all rights, should mark a watershed in the academic study of religion.... Griffin makes about as strong a case as one can in a single volume for a genuine and viable alternative. ― The Journal of Religion
The process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne has made many distinctive contributions to the philosophy of religion. David Ray Griffin now offers the first full-scale philosophy of religion written from this perspective, discussing such topics as the relationship between science and religion, the validity of religious experience, the nature and existence of God, religious pluralism, creation and evolution, and the problem of evil. Griffin's clear and comprehensive book also serves as a valuable introduction to process philosophy itself.
In his vigorous defense of a worldview that is fully naturalistic and fully religious, Griffin shows not only how this position reconciles naturalism with freedom, genuine religious experience, and even life after death, but also how its naturalistic theism "reenchants" the world in the sense of providing cosmic support for moral values.
- Project Muse
Table of Contents
Introduction: A Process Philosophy of Religion
- Religion, Science, and Naturalism
- Perception and Religious Experience
- Panexperientialism, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Relation
- Naturalistic, Dipolar Theism
- Natural Theology Based on Naturalistic Theism
- Evolution, Evil, and Eschatology ·
- The Two Ultimates and the Religions
- Religion, Morality, and Civilization
- Religious Language and Truth
- Religious Knowledge and Common Sense
Chad Bahl: God without Supernaturalism
In The Death of Supernaturalism, Chad Bahl offers a bold theological manifesto that critiques the metaphysical assumptions of supernatural theism.
He demonstrates the incompatibility between the supernaturalistic worldview and the scientific worldview, and maintains that supernaturalism perpetuates rather than solves the problems of theodicy and divine hiddenness.
As a solution, Bahl argues for a process naturalist view of God—one which sees God as relational, persuasive and embedded within the natural world. Bahl is an emerging voice in the process theology community. This book offers a scholarly yet accessible introduction to his thought.
He demonstrates the incompatibility between the supernaturalistic worldview and the scientific worldview, and maintains that supernaturalism perpetuates rather than solves the problems of theodicy and divine hiddenness.
As a solution, Bahl argues for a process naturalist view of God—one which sees God as relational, persuasive and embedded within the natural world. Bahl is an emerging voice in the process theology community. This book offers a scholarly yet accessible introduction to his thought.
Concluding Reflection
Many religiously minded people in the past, including many Indigenous peoples, experienced or affirmed ghosts, spirits, celestial realms, miracles, and paranormal phenomena such as telepathy and out-of-body experiences. Many also experienced or affirmed gods and goddess, or a universal divine reality who could be encountered dialogically or mystically. Yet they did not think of these realities as “supernatural.” They were dimensions of the way things truly are, belonging to a world more capacious than the world imagined by modern Western naturalism.
At a certain point in Western history, however, things changed. A segment of the population began to conceive of "nature" as a self-contained realm governed by inviolable laws, independent and divorced from anything divine, while relegating spirits, miracles, divine activity, and other unusual phenomena to a separate supernatural realm. Some affirmed this second realm; others denied it. But both groups accepted the same conceptual divide. “Supernaturalism” and “naturalism” thus became opposing answers to a question that earlier peoples—and many cultures outside the modern West—had never needed to ask.
There are two possible ways forward.
One, attempted by David Ray Griffin in Religion without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion and also by Chad Bahl in The Death of Supernaturalism is to redefine naturalism so that it includes, rather than excludes ideas of freedom, purpose, values, and God. And that also includes, in Griffin's case, some of what has conventionally been called supernatural—spirits, miracles, telepathy, out-of-body experiences, celestial realms, and life after death. From Griffin's perspective, these might be understood not as supernatural but as ultranatural: dimensions of a world more capacious than scientific materialism allows. This approach may be conceptually helpful for some people. Nevertheless, the word naturalism inevitably carries the legacy of scientific materialism and its narrowly circumscribed conception of nature.
A complementary option is to abandon the categories of both the natural and the supernatural and speak instead of the organic. Organicism understands reality as a living, relational, many-layered whole whose possibilities cannot be confined in advance. It need not affirm every report of unusual phenomena. It asks only that such possibilities be approached without forcing them into an inherited dichotomy that may distort the very realities we are trying to understand.
Whitehead’s philosophy of organism is especially well suited to this second option. It understands reality not as dead matter governed solely by external laws, but as an evolving community of interrelated events, each possessing some degree of interiority, receptivity, and creative agency. Nature, on this view, is not a sealed domain whose limits can be determined in advance. Nor is there a separate supernatural realm standing outside it. There is instead one many-layered, living universe in which mind and matter, value and fact, God and the world, and ordinary and extraordinary forms of experience belong to an encompassing web of relations. Whitehead’s organicism does not require us to accept every claim about spirits, miracles, telepathy, or out-of-body experiences, but it provides a conceptual framework in which such possibilities can be considered without first forcing them into the categories of either “natural” or “supernatural.”
- Jay McDaniel
Many religiously minded people in the past, including many Indigenous peoples, experienced or affirmed ghosts, spirits, celestial realms, miracles, and paranormal phenomena such as telepathy and out-of-body experiences. Many also experienced or affirmed gods and goddess, or a universal divine reality who could be encountered dialogically or mystically. Yet they did not think of these realities as “supernatural.” They were dimensions of the way things truly are, belonging to a world more capacious than the world imagined by modern Western naturalism.
At a certain point in Western history, however, things changed. A segment of the population began to conceive of "nature" as a self-contained realm governed by inviolable laws, independent and divorced from anything divine, while relegating spirits, miracles, divine activity, and other unusual phenomena to a separate supernatural realm. Some affirmed this second realm; others denied it. But both groups accepted the same conceptual divide. “Supernaturalism” and “naturalism” thus became opposing answers to a question that earlier peoples—and many cultures outside the modern West—had never needed to ask.
There are two possible ways forward.
One, attempted by David Ray Griffin in Religion without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion and also by Chad Bahl in The Death of Supernaturalism is to redefine naturalism so that it includes, rather than excludes ideas of freedom, purpose, values, and God. And that also includes, in Griffin's case, some of what has conventionally been called supernatural—spirits, miracles, telepathy, out-of-body experiences, celestial realms, and life after death. From Griffin's perspective, these might be understood not as supernatural but as ultranatural: dimensions of a world more capacious than scientific materialism allows. This approach may be conceptually helpful for some people. Nevertheless, the word naturalism inevitably carries the legacy of scientific materialism and its narrowly circumscribed conception of nature.
A complementary option is to abandon the categories of both the natural and the supernatural and speak instead of the organic. Organicism understands reality as a living, relational, many-layered whole whose possibilities cannot be confined in advance. It need not affirm every report of unusual phenomena. It asks only that such possibilities be approached without forcing them into an inherited dichotomy that may distort the very realities we are trying to understand.
Whitehead’s philosophy of organism is especially well suited to this second option. It understands reality not as dead matter governed solely by external laws, but as an evolving community of interrelated events, each possessing some degree of interiority, receptivity, and creative agency. Nature, on this view, is not a sealed domain whose limits can be determined in advance. Nor is there a separate supernatural realm standing outside it. There is instead one many-layered, living universe in which mind and matter, value and fact, God and the world, and ordinary and extraordinary forms of experience belong to an encompassing web of relations. Whitehead’s organicism does not require us to accept every claim about spirits, miracles, telepathy, or out-of-body experiences, but it provides a conceptual framework in which such possibilities can be considered without first forcing them into the categories of either “natural” or “supernatural.”
- Jay McDaniel