Is Religion Natural? Response to David Fergusson

This response to the 2024 Boyle Lecture takes David Fergusson’s lecture “Is Religion Natural?” as a starting point from which to discuss some of the philosophical issues that arise in this context. It raises the question of how we are to think about the limits of the natural, expresses some doubts about the explanatory pretensions of cognitive science of religion, and draws out the implications for the topic at hand, drawing upon an expansive naturalist framework.