This book takes what is often referred to as the “supernatural” to be normal natural phenomena that are closely linked to the neurobiology of the human species. Reflecting evolutionary and biocultural perspective, the chapters cover phenomena such as the origins of ritual, supernatural beliefs, out-of-body experiences, ghosts, and experiences of spirit entities. The introduction and 8 chapters of The Supernatural after the Neuroturn address the underlying neurological and evolutionary mechanisms. The contributors consider the “supernatural” as emerging from innate neurobiological structures and functions and reflecting ordinary neuro-biological processes that explain their universality and persistence. 

Cognitive approaches to religion characterize supernatural thought as manifestations of innate thought processes. Biogenetic perspectives situate the supernatural within humans’ efforts to infer hidden mechanisms underlying complex phenomena, brain processes that construct models about the natural world from limited data and perceptual capacities. Supernatural cognition reflects the integration of special design features for adaptations to social life through modules for self and other awareness that provide the basis for projection of a supernatural “other.” 

Supernatural thought also has biogenetic bases in ritual behaviour and its psychosocial communication functions that enhance communal bonding with mimetic expressive capacities that enhance social coordination. Some supernatural experiences reflect disintegration of the normal unity of innate modular processes, such as manifested in the out-of-body experience, where the visual perspective, physical body and personal identity are separated, allowing perceptions of movement apart from the body. Perceptions of ghosts may be the result of similar disruptions in the brain’s processing of information and the emergence of intuitive cognitive styles.

Religious revelations may reflect intuitive processes involving implicit information operating at quantum levels of the brain and involving an emergent order of informational organisation with top-down causal influences on both neural networks and the physical world. These explanations of supernatural experiences in terms of innate neurobiological structures and functions provides a naturalist paradigm for further research.