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Natural religion most frequently means the "religion of nature", in which God, the soul, spirits, and all objects of the supernatural are considered as part of nature and not separate from it. Sometimes "natural religion" is taken to mean a pantheistic belief that nature itself is divine; conversely, the term is also used in philosophy to describe some aspects of religion that are said to be knowable apart from divine revelation through logic and reason alone, for example, the existence of the God, the first cause of the universe.
Most authors consider natural religion as not only the foundation of monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Baháʼí Faith, but also distinct from them. According to some authors, aspects of natural religion are found universally among all peoples, often in such forms as shamanism and animism. They are still practiced in many parts of the world. The religions of Native American societies for example are considered as possessing some aspects of natural religion.
Early monotheism had many naturalistic elements. Heaven and hell were thought of as physical places above and below the earth and "salvation" was expected to bring resurrection of the body.
In the fourth century, Christians were concerned that Jesus had not returned and wondered what happened to those who died before the Second Coming of Christ. Christians, led by Augustine of Hippo and under the influence of both gnosticism and neoplatonism, developed a new belief in the soul as capable of a separate existence abstract from the material world. The human souls, unlike those of animals, would survive death and, depending on God's judgment, be transferred to the non-material realms of heaven or hell and the new realm of limbo for unbaptized persons and purgatory for those who do not deserve hell but are not purified for heaven.
Another distinction from monotheism is found in the Christian belief in miracles, in which God intervenes in history from outside nature. Ancient Roman philosophers and others since objected to this Christian doctrine as God violating his own natural laws. Christians had to separate God more completely from the natural universe in order to show how this could be possible. There were similar Neoplatonism tendencies in Judaism and Islam, which also saw God as acting in history.
Natural religions, on the contrary, consider the supernatural as part of the natural universe.
The philosopher David Hume referred to mathematics, natural philosophy and natural religion as all dependent on a scientific understanding of man, and all liable to be improved in the light of an improved understanding of human nature.Hume, D. (1776), A Treatise of Human Nature, Introduction, p. xix, edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, London: John Noon
James defined the basics of all religion, including natural religion, when he wrote:
Certain aspects of natural religion (that is, religious truths that are knowable by human reason alone) are found among different cultures, though not always entirely intact, and to varying degrees, according to philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas and Malebranche.
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