ABSTRACT
So the naturalist – or at least, the typical naturalist – is opposed to supernaturalism, and this involves a rejection of supernatural entities like gods, demons, souls, and ghosts. This leaves us with ‘the familiar natural world’ in which we live and move and have our being, and we are encouraged to suppose that the position is both eminently sensible and intellectually superior. As James Griffin has put it, it is an admirable and deep motive force behind naturalism that we do not need
any world except the ordinary world around us – mainly the world of humans and animals and happenings in their lives. An other-worldly realm … just produces unnecessary problems about what it could possibly be and how we could learn about it.6
