Natural Religion

Natural religion might have the following meanings:

  • In the modern study of religion it is used to refer to the notion that there is a spontaneous religious apprehension of the world common to all human beings, see:
    • Urreligion
    • origin of religion
    • anthropology of religion
  • As a reverent form of nature worship, embodied in a well-known quote from Frank Lloyd Wright: "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
  • Referring to the religions of people prior to their Christianization.

Famous quotes containing the words natural and/or religion:

    “You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel. The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism—at least in the sense of this work—is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.”
    —Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872)