Defending Pantheism

[Belacqua]

[Pantheism] looks at the totality of what does exist and pronounces it holy. To the pantheist, things that the religious have always claimed as their own (lie a sense of the spiritual or numinous) are instead understood as properties of the natural world-- not attributes of a supernatural being.

Interesting. Since it's still page 1, maybe I can do the boring thing of asking for definitions. 

Now, I can understand holiness if it's a kind of valuation given by people. That is, we say that X and Y are holy because we value them beyond mere utility, or something like that. 

What does it mean for holiness to be not a valuation given by people, but a property of the natural world? 

And if it is an essential, rather than a projected, characteristic, how do we know this? 

I am very sympathetic to the view that some things are valuable or spiritual above and beyond common, local, contingent values. But (as you know) a lot of people here will deny that a quality which isn't detectable through scientific means can ever be said to be a real attribute of anything, much less of everything.