I was talking to a friend the other day and he mentioned something about ‘religion without the supernatural’. This got me thinking about the word supernatural.
Whenever I hear somebody say that they have a problem with the supernatural, they seem to imply that they cannot deal with an object outside of the sphere of natural phoenomena. However, I think that that would require the use of the prefix exra-, as opposed to super-. We would call that extranatural phoenomena.
It seems to me that the prefix super implies a value judgement, and a positive one at that. Super means not only good, but beyond good. Therefore when we speak of a supernatural phoenomena, we mean a natural phoenomena that is good beyond good. The supernatural as a singular term would mean that singular nature is good beyond good.
Those were my thoughts at least. Just thought I’d share.
I think the “super” merely means “at a level above” as in superstructure, superordinate etc. Not all supernatural things are good, let alone beyond good.
Incidentally, I don’t think there can be religion without the supernatural. All religions deal with what are known as “counterintuitive entities” - things that either have properties they should not (such as a dog that talks, or a statue that cries) or lack properties they should have (such as an invisible person, or someone who can walk through walls). This seems to be the common denominator in different religions, and contributes to their transmission potential as well as forming the justification for ritual.
This is how the current, well-supported cognitive theories of religion view the matter. If you liked Why God Won’t Go Away I think you’d be interested in this stuff.
I am in fact very interested. Especially in regards to you’re statement regarding the transmission potential and as the basis of ritual.
There does appear to be something about contradiction and especially cyclical logic inherent in religious practice. I would love to learn more. Do you suggest any literature?
BTW- You’re definition ‘at a level above’ still implies value. You still mean ‘good’ or actually, ‘better’ (which is the word I should have used). I can show this because certainly by ‘above’ you are not referring to spacial orientation. Therefore, I can assume, that ‘above’ in this case means ‘better’. I just don’t think you can deny the subjective aspect.
I’ll restate that the super in supernatural is perhaps the better nature.
Anyway, this could get out of hand. How 'bout that literature.
No, I was speaking spatially. Above, with no value attached.
Get hold of Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer. This is pretty easy-going, but solid and a good read. He presents a more rigorous, heavy-going theory in The Naturalness of Religious Ideas.
You might also be interested in Saver and Rabin (1997), which is referenced fully in Why God Won’t Go Away.
Another I imagine would be good is In Gods We Trust, by Scott Atran. I haven’t read it, but I have read various research articles by Atran, which have been good.
I’ve seen the stuff by Boyer at the local bookstore but I thought it looked mostly evolutionary. I’m more interested in the biological and neurobiological stuff. I’ll check them out again though.
The study of religion just is more cognitive and evolutionary at the moment. There haven’t been a great many direct neurological studies at all, and almost all of them have been within the last seven years or so, with only a tiny handful before then. The interest in the scientific study of religion has only taken off very recently, and its focus is more on anthropology and the cognitive structure.
I personally think, however, that a cognitive foundation is essential in formulating a basis for the neuroscience of religion, as we need to know what is going on cognitively. We cannot rely just on what common-sense tells us about the purposes of religion, as what we believe and what we believe we believe do not always coincide (and there’s empirical support for this being the case). The thing is, though, no one’s written anything combining the disciplines into a unified cognitive neuroscientific theory of religion, including the neural substrates, and I think this is the next step.
That said, you can get a fairly good idea of what such a theory would be like from reading Saver and Rabin (1997) “The neural substrates of religious experience”, whilst bearing the cognitive theories of Boyer, Barrett, Atran etc in mind. It’s also good to place Why God Won’t Go Away in the context of these theories.
One book you might be interested in as well is Michael Persinger’s “The Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs”, which is still very relevant despite being written in 1987. Persinger has done a lot of work on the foundations of religious and supernatural beliefs in the past, inferring neural mechanisms from behavioural patterns. Although some of it appears incorrect in view of recent findings, much of it is still pertinent.
All of these references complement one another to an extent.