natural religion

noun

1. religion based on principles derived solely from reason and the study of nature.

Word History and Origins

Origin of natural religion¹

First recorded in 1665–75

Example Sentences

It has been claimed that the modern argument from design first appears in John Wilkins, one of the founders of the Royal Society, in Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1675.

Read more on Literature

Spinoza was the subject of a cherem, the equivalent of excommunication from the Amsterdam Sephardic synagogue; Locke disguised his authorship of “Two Treatises of Government”, and spent a number of years in self-imposed exile; Hume chose to publish his “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” posthumously; and Rousseau fled to England when persecuted in mainland Europe.

Read more on Economist

Thomas Scanlon, the Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity, said it's important to think hard about why high inequality is a problem at all.

Read more on US News

One day in 1948, after I had been transferred to Concord Prison, my brother Philbert, who was forever joining something, wrote me this time that he had discovered the “natural religion for the black man. ’

Read more on Literature

My brothers and sisters in Detroit and Chicago had all become converted to what they were being taught was the “natural religion for the black man” of which Philbert had written to me.

Read more on Literature