ABSTRACT
The application of the term "religious naturalism" is something like the term "Impressionism" to describe certain French painters of the nineteenth century. There is no single, agreed-upon meaning of "naturalism". Religious naturalists espouse a variety of meanings of the term, most of which would satisfy all but the upholders of the strictest definition of it. There are a number of movements related to or overlapping with religious naturalism. It is helpful to clarify their relationships. One such view is materialism or physicalism. Another position overlapping with religious naturalism is humanism, especially religious humanism. Many people think that pantheism involves absorption into the infinite ocean of being as the goal of the spiritual journey or as a prospect after death. Some critics of naturalism use the term in an outmoded sense, are unaware of it, or have not taken seriously the possibility of a religious naturalism.
