Quotes About Supernaturalism

Atheists are in a difficult position. A lot of modern religion is progressive, ethical and socially responsible--not about "supernaturalism" or a tyrannical ancient God. Atheists, on the one hand, risk giving the impression that they are campaigning against compassion and basic human values, or on the other that they are in a fight to finish off a dinosaur that was killed by liberal theology while they were sleeping.

Humanism involves far more than the negation of supernaturalism. It requires an affirmative philosophy . . . translated into a life devoted to one's own improvement and the service of all mankind.

Modern philosophy certainly exacts a surrender of all supernaturalism and fixed dogma and rigid institutionalism with which Christianity has been historically associated

Science and religion...have been perennially at war. The one studies nature and produces progress. The other explores supernature and produces confusion and darkness. In fact, progress is directly proportionate to the victory of naturalism over supernaturalism.

When I'm writing books, something weird happens; and the result is the books contain a large amount of what you could call 'supernaturalism.' As a writer, I find I need that to explain the world I'm writing about.

Aristotle is the champion of this world, the champion of nature, as against the supematuralism of Plato.

Although there are many variants of Plato's system, what makes them the same in regard to integration is their commitment to two fundamental principles. In metaphysics, their principle is supernaturalism. In epistemology, it is rationalism.

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

I'm not sure that Liberation Theology has ever satisfactorily resolved the tensions between Marxism's 'social naturalism' (the claim that all beliefs have their origins in social practice) and religion's supernaturalism (the claims that its beliefs are underwritten by divine will).

I am, indeed, an absolute materialist so far as actual belief goes; with not a shred of credence in any form of supernaturalism—religion, spiritualism, transcendentalism, metempsychosis, or immortality.

Zen discourse ranges from rejection to veneration with exorcistic trends never disappearing, and the haughty disdain for supernaturalism in some records coexists with full-scale syncretism that includes purification rites. This range in the levels of discourse of Japanese amalgamations offers many striking contrasts with the nonassimilative, intolerant interactions between Christianity and medieval European paganism.

As the God of the ancient Near East stemmed from ideas of supernaturalism, our concept of a modern God could stem from modern ideas divorced from supernaturalism. [...] A natural God need not intervene in human history, nor be the cause for religious wars such as witnessed through human history.

There are many people, many worlds who believe in supernaturalism in one form or another... religion, if you like the word better. We may disagree with them in one way or another, but we are as likely to be wrong in our disbelief as they in their belief. In any case, there is no disgrace in such belief and my questions were not intended as insults.

Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony.

Aristotelianism and the theology of Chalcedon enter here into an unbreakable alliance: they preserve the rights of nature against the rampages of an unchecked supernaturalism.

there is great danger that modern culture, progressing in its anti-supernaturalistic course, will be stirred against the steadfastness of believers and attempt to accomplish by oppression what it cannot obtain by reasoning and argument.

It is supernaturalism, which in point of fact forms the point of controversy between Christianity and many panegyrists of modern culture.

Christian religion cannot abandon this supernaturalism without annihilating itself.

the early church fathers provide abundant evidence that gifts such as prophecy and miracles continued in their own time, even if not as abundantly as in the first century. Christians in the medieval and modern periods continued to embrace these activities of the Spirit. It is, in fact, cessationism that is not well documented in earlier history; it seems no coincidence that it arose only in a culture dominated by anti-supernaturalism.

Secularization is not a zero-sum game necessitating the demise of supernaturalism. Nor does the new spirituality reject science. What it rejects is scientism in which the methodology and data of natural science alone are allowed to contribute to our understanding of the world and the human condition in it. The new spirituality also calls on natural science itself as a witness against the inadequacies of a purely secularized worldview.

It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism.

W]hile you believe in and construct your supra- and extra-natural God, you believe in and construct nothing else than the supra- and extra-naturalism of your own self.

Secular humanism rightly looks to reason and science, but lingering there is not enough. Religions hasten to tie secularism down to materialism, and link materialism with egoism, nihilism, and anarchy. Compared to that portrayal, spirituality or even supernaturalism might look sane and safe.

The witch theory of causality, and how it was debunked through science, encapsulates the larger trend in the improvement of humanity through the centuries by the gradual replacement of religious supernaturalism with scientific naturalism.