Naturally supernatural

Abstract

Ann Taves, in her newest book on religious experience, Revelatory Events: Three Case Studies of the Emergence of New Spiritual Paths, writes to make natural what many consider supernatural (Taves, 2016). She focuses on understanding in naturalistic terms rather than supernatural terms the “historical process whereby small groups coalesced around the sense of a guiding presence” (p. xi). Her voice joins a growing discourse in the academic study of religion about how we might theorize the naturalness of the supernatural. Representing a comparative religions approach is Jeffrey Kripal who thinks that the incorporation of paranormal events as historically shaped occurrences within the natural realm is essential to the future study of religion (Strieber & Kripal, 2016). This does not mean for him that the events have an explanation in any traditional “materialist” framework, but that the psychical phenomena are “real,” by which he means that nature can and does behave in extraordinary and special ways all the time. Rather than avoid these “super natural” phenomena that violate our basic ways of knowing, they ought to be theorized using a comparative approach to the study of extreme religious events (Kripal, 2014, pp. 143–176). Such analysis, Kripal argues, may unlock or make possible a new understanding not only of anomalous states of cognition, but also of the nature of consciousness itself, which he doubts can finally be reduced to any purely materialist or physical process. Another perspective is developed by the anthropologists Michael Winkelman and John R. Baker. Their biocultural approach to religion is meant to explain from scientific and cultural perspectives that having “an experience of the ‘supernatural’ is a completely natural thing to do.” This does not mean for Winkelman and Baker that otherworldly things actually exist, but that it is a “natural condition of human beings to have religions” and “think about the supernatural” (Winkelman & Baker, 2010, p. xxii). Winkelman and Baker rely on a long evolutionary story (which includes humans’ ability to create culture) to explain what happened to humans’ ancestors that caused them to develop the capacity for religious thought and practices. Paschal Boyer’s cognitive approach to religious ideas correlates with the biocultural approach, arguing for the naturalness of supernatural thinking based on evolutionary biases of mental processes (Boyer, 1994, 2002). Taves’ book maps a historical-cognitive approach to the supernatural. Her goal is to provide historical and cognitive explanations for visionary and auditory experiences, cases when people with unusual mental abilities have sensed presences, seen apparitions, and heard voices that resulted in the emergence of new spiritual paths and religious movements. While she works to analyze socially the claim of the visionary and the first collaborators of the new religious movement, that supernatural entities are guiding the formation of a new spiritual path, she deals with these historical accounts of the supernatural by naturalizing them. She is particularly focused on the historically chronicled experiences of Joseph Smith, Bill Wilson, and Helen Schucman, “revelatory events” that she argues led to the formation of Mormonism, Alcoholic Anonymous, and A Course in Miracles.