“But it can all be summed up in this: The average man regards the common as natural, the uncommon as supernatural. The educated man—and by that I mean the developed man—is satisfied that all phenomena are natural, and that the supernatural does not and can not exist.”

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Rome, or Reason? A Reply to Cardinal Manning. Part I. The North American Review (1888)
Context: It is probably safe to say that at one time, or during one phase of the development of man, everything was miraculous. After a time, the mind slowly developing, certain phenomena, always happening under like conditions, were called “natural,” and none suspected any special interference. The domain of the miraculous grew less and less—the domain of the natural larger; that is to say, the common became the natural, but the uncommon was still regarded as the miraculous. The rising and setting of the sun ceased to excite the wonder of mankind—there was no miracle about that; but an eclipse of the sun was miraculous. Men did not then know that eclipses are periodical, that they happen with the same certainty that the sun rises. It took many observations through many generations to arrive at this conclusion. Ordinary rains became “natural,” floods remained “miraculous.” But it can all be summed up in this: The average man regards the common as natural, the uncommon as supernatural. The educated man—and by that I mean the developed man—is satisfied that all phenomena are natural, and that the supernatural does not and can not exist.

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Robert G. Ingersoll 439

Union United States Army officer 1833–1899

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 35.

“There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; they are both organs of evolving humanity.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)
Context: The entire cosmos is made out of one and the same world-stuff, operated by the same energy as we ourselves. "Mind" and "matter" appears as two aspects of our unitary mind-bodies. There is no separate supernatural realm: all phenomena are part of one natural process of evolution. There is no basic cleavage between science and religion; they are both organs of evolving humanity.

“It is just in thinking all these elements in an active originating Unit-thought, or an "I," that the essential and characteristic nature of man or any other real intelligence consists. Such an originating Unit-thinking, providing its own element-complex of primal thoughts that condition its experience, and that thus provide for that experience the form of a cosmic Evolutional Series, is precisely what an intelligent being is. Thus creatively to think and be a World is what it means to be a man. To think and enact such a world merely in the unity framed for it by natural causation, is what it means to be a "natural" man; to think and enact it in its higher unity, its unity as framed by the supernatural causation of the Pure Ideals, supremely by the Moral Ideal, is what it means to be a "spiritual" man, a moral and religious man; or, in the philosophical and true sense of the words, a supernatural being — a being transcending and yet including Nature, not excluding or annulling it.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Limits of Evolution, p.47

“Man’s craving for the supernatural is as natural as our discounting of the present moment… The natural becomes trite and commonplace to us and we take refuge in an imaginary world above and beyond it.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: Accepting the Universe (1920), p.261

“So that while we speak of the fallen man as the natural man, as against the supernatural man, who is a redeemed man in a very real sense we should say that sin is unnatural. With man, who was created into perfect knowledge, and his destiny is hell or salvation. Moreover man was created to exercise dominion and to rule the earth. This is man’s calling and it is basic to man’s nature.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Creationism and Psychology (n. d.)

“The common man, he is the uncommon man”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

His constant refrain, page =4
Baba Amte: A Vision of New India

“One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“Marx's prognosis of the future of the capitalist system has often been understood to imply a fatalistic view. Marx's own life should be enough to show that this is not so. Marx did not regard man as the impotent plaything of supernatural; but he thought that man could not ignore the laws of physical nature.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter VI, Marx, p. 295

“Darwin's] triumph has won for us a common height from which we see the whole world of living beings as well as all inorganic nature; phenomena of every order we now regard as expressions of natural causes. The supernatural has no longer a standing is science; it has vanished like a dream, and the halls consecrated to its thraldom of the intellect are becoming radiant with a more cheerful faith.”

Charles Otis Whitman (1842–1910) American zoologist

lecture at Clark University, " A study in evolution, based on color-characters in pigeons, and bearing on moot questions http://books.google.com/books?id=TdcwAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA3" (1909), quoted in Eight Little Piggies (W.W. Norton, 1993) by Stephen Jay Gould, page 366

“There ain't no man can avoid being born average. But there ain't no man got to be common.”

Satchel Paige (1906–1982) American baseball player and coach; Negro Leagues

"Words of the Week" Jet (Sep 4, 1958)

“But it can all be summed up in this: The average man regards the common as natural, the uncommon as supernatural. The educated man—and by that I mean the developed man—is satisfied that all phenomena are natural, and that the supernatural does not and can not exist.”

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