Attitudes, Ideals, Relationships, and Transcendence
Albert Einstein once said, “Religion is concerned with man’s attitude toward nature at large, with the establishing of ideals for the individual and communal life, and with mutual human relationship.” To this I would only add that religion is also concerned with promoting the experience of transcendence. These four things—attitudes, ideals, relationships, and transcendence—are, put together, best served in a religious context. Of course, it is really the last item that tips the scale towards religion; exploring things like science or philosophy might inspire fascination, curiosity, and thought, but only for a tiny few might they lead to a transcendent state of mind.
This is a main reason why religion exists: many people have a strong drive towards transcendence. Song, dance, chanting, meditation, ritual, and other activities continue to be life-enhancing for many people, even when they do not contain an ounce of supernaturalism. The experience of stepping out of one’s “mundane”, every-day state of mind is key to what we call meaningful profundity, being the sense of deep significance and connectivity which lies at the heart of religious experience.
The movement known as Religious Naturalism has yet to move substantially beyond theory into practice, although it has started to establish the attitudes and ideals that Einstein described. Sacred River, of course, has its own outline for these things, including the Spiritual Streams and the Four Virtues, as well as our understanding of progressivism and the utility of allegoricalism. But we are far from having an established set of practices. This will, hopefully, happen organically over time.
As a general point of observation, it is past time for mainstream religion to stop offering a few things that are not on Albert’s list, especially those things related to explaining phenomena. Religion has a terrible track record of providing accurate descriptions of the material universe and its multitude of processes. Some of the worst abuses of modern religion, such as campaigns against birth control or gay marriage, are often predicated on factually false models of reality. Worse, religion tends to offer what it cannot possibly deliver on, whether it be a miraculous cure for disease, an escape from poverty, or even a never-ending life of eternal bliss. People have a natural need for a sense of control and comfort—after all, life is difficult and often unfair, painful and confusing. Many religions take advantage of this by soothing the needy with fantasies, resulting in an overall decreased ability for people to think critically, to face the natural world on its own terms, and to cope effectively with the existential angst inherent in human life. That nearly half of American adults believe the Earth is only 6000 years old is indicative of the profoundly toxic effects of deistic religion’s efforts to provide causal accounts of the natural world.
In light of this, Sacred River takes the position that the Religious Naturalist movement has several ethical obligations:
1) to advocate for science as being the most reliable way of knowing about the world,
2) to increase fairness, economic opportunity, knowledge, and well-being (both personal and ecological), and
3) to promote naturalistic means for people to cope with the inescapable agonies of life.
I hope that this list might lead to a wider discussion about Religious Naturalism and the obligations implied by our shared worldview. After all, Einstein said that religion is, in part, about ideals. Perhaps it is not too far-fetched to hope that we might aspire towards an ever-more courageous, integral, beneficent, and open society grounded in a healthy combination of scientific understanding and transcendent inspiration.
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