Swimming the Sacred River

There are two perspectives regarding religious naturalism. One is that religious naturalism is a label applied to a range of general ideas and beliefs. In other words, people write about ideas and beliefs and it is possible for an observer to fit them into a category called “religious naturalism.” This can be and is done retroactively; for instance, we can call Spinoza a religious naturalist thinker. We can call this perspective academic religious naturalism (ARN). ARN does not have any strong commitment to religious naturalist principles, it is simply a useful descriptor of a cohesive range of ideas and beliefs, many of which might not have any connection to or even awareness of religious naturalism as a category of thought.

Now we are seeing a new mode of religious naturalism, one that is bound up in human experience and not just abstract conceptions. We can call this mode movement religious naturalism (MRN). MRN emerges from commitment to religious naturalist ideals and establishes social affiliation among committed adherents. MRN is already off to a good start—there are multiple religious naturalist communities, both virtual and real space. And RN now has a Statement of principles.

ARN and MRN are dynamically related but are not the same thing; they have different tasks, goals, and structures. They also have different requirements for success. ARN requires things like intellectual rigor and critical openness (to borrow from Stone), whereas MRN requires social engagement and commitment to clear ideals. Someone coming from the perspective of ARN might be put out by the idea of commitment to ideals, whereas one coming from MRN might be frustrated with the cautious, tentative aspects of ARN.

But the two can work together when members understand that each has an important role to play. There will always be new ideas and beliefs, especially with the existence of an energetic movement, so ARN will have no end of examination and analysis. As new ideas are explored and put through the ARN intellectual wringer, MRN can absorb them into the committed movement, making it more robust and mature. If done well, the two perspectives support each other.

For MRN, it is a serious mistake to soften a commitment to naturalist ideals in an attempt to artificially wrap it around a larger constituency. While this might broaden the constituency, it will result in an anemic affiliation. A better strategy is to establish a firm commitment to well-defined ideals and then to (a) try to inspire those on the fringe to enter into the fold, and (b) partner with aligned movements when there is a shared aim and enough overlap to allow for committed action.

While commitment is good, intractability is not. Flexibility is also required for success. Fortunately, that flexibility is inherent in religious naturalism, due to both its humanistic roots and to the scientific humility that emerges from the awareness of our ignorance. Science changes the landscape of our worldview nearly every day, and we should extend that condition to the movement as a whole. This is why we want various branches off the central religious naturalist trunk, so that variety of thought and practice will lead to overall health in the movement.

There are two brands of religious naturalists: literal and poetic. The literal RN calls things by their proper name, so that love=love, beauty=beauty, and so on. A poetic RN chooses to use “god-language” to describe religiously-salient feelings or things, so that love=god, beauty=god, and so on. A poetic RN remains naturalistic as long as the language remains metaphorical; once it becomes explanatory (e.g. God is the source of beauty), she is no longer naturalistic.

Now then, there is also a group of people who can be called near-naturalists. Any given near-naturalist can choose to affiliate with religious naturalism, especially in the poetic neighborhoods, if she finds it meaningful and fulfilling. But that does not require MRN to then abandon its philosophical commitment to naturalism; rather, it is the task of the near-naturalist to come to terms with being a religious naturalist while holding on to supernatural constructs. Every movement has a set of soft adherents around the edges; changing the boundaries of the movement to fully include them will only result in a new set of soft adherents even further away from core principles, making the movement ever more insubstantial.

Academic religious naturalism is well-established; movement religious naturalism is not, and it will continue that way as long as it remains uncommitted to a central set of principles that is clear, accessible, and inspirational. This won’t happen on its own—it will take religious naturalists deciding to do it. And yes, people will get cut out because religious naturalism isn’t a wastebasket for any naturalistic-sounding beliefs, it’s a container for genuinely naturalistic views. Rather than appearing to grow by adopting people outside core religious naturalist principles, MRN should actually grow by inspiring people to join its ranks by the use of persuasion and good modeling. If we can show that a naturalistic orientation can provide a substrate for a fulfilling, meaningful spiritual life, then it will continue growing into a robust movement.

The following statement has been written as a declaration of the fundamental principles of Religious Naturalism. It is currently residing on its own page, which includes the following text and where people can sign their endorsement. You are also invited to sign...

Religious naturalism is the name given to a general set of ideas and beliefs that combine religious/spiritual elements with a scientific, non-supernatural understanding of nature. For most of its history, religious naturalism has resided quietly in the academic halls of theology and philosophy, and not always under that name. This collection of ideas started to take on new life when biologist Ursula Goodenough published The Sacred Depths of Nature in 1998, a wonderful book juxtaposing science and spirituality. This book pushed religious naturalism out of academia and made it accessible to a general audience.

Since that time, we have seen websites and communities adopt religious naturalism explicitly. And yet, even with its rich intellectual history, religious naturalism suffers from a conceptual vagueness. For any movement to mature, it must have a clear understanding of its core commitment, the banner under which its advocates rally. This is the purpose of A Minimal Statement of Religious Naturalism.

The Statement is not a creed nor a test of membership. It is a concise reflection of a broad collection of ideas, perspectives, and ethical stances that has been given the academic label “religious naturalism.” To speak metaphorically, this statement is intended to reflect the trunk of the religious naturalist tree, with many possible branches growing from it.

The Statement is not the only possible articulation of religious naturalism, nor is it in any way perfect; no such statement could be. The goal is to have a conceptual starting point, a place where we can build the religious naturalist movement.

You are invited to endorse A Minimal Statement on Religious Naturalism with your virtual signature. Signing proclaims endorsement of the statement as being a good enough representation of religious naturalism; it does not require being in perfect agreement with it. A signature does not imply that the signatory could not concurrently affirm different articulations of religious naturalism or some other set of ideas. The statement is not affiliated with any organization or group, and so signing it does not imply endorsement of any group or affiliation with other signatories except as fellow supporters of the statement. Signing does not imply membership in any organization and will not result in such, not even an email list.

This is an opportunity to come together as religious naturalists to establish a foundation for our beliefs and our movement. The world is changing rapidly and now more than ever we need new ways of fulfilling our spiritual needs, ways that looks to science for knowledge, to reason and compassion for solving problems, and to each other for making life meaningful, fulfilling, and joyous.

As a reminder, the signatures live on the Statement page, not here…

Recently, a gentleman with whom I’ve corresponded for the last couple of years offered a rather blistering comment in a Sacred River post. My initial response was to blow it off, which is my usual policy when I feel a comment doesn’t meet a simple standard of courtesy (I’m sorry, but you can’t separate what you are saying from how you say it). However, upon reflection, I thought it would be worthwhile to address a couple of the core questions since I imagine other people probably have similar questions about religious naturalism and the work here at Sacred River. And so, he writes:

Religious naturalism, you tell us, needs “an established set of spiritual practices or traditions”, but currently has none; needs “stories, both personal and mythological”, but currently has none; needs a “particular set of moral values or principles” but currently has none. Yet you talk of religious naturalism “becom[ing] a mainstream movement.” Isn’t this putting the cart before the horse, a little? … I’m confused as to how and why one would want to turn into a “mainstream movement” something that not only does not yet seem to exist in any meaningful form, and not only has no firm definition for what it would be even if it did exist, but something of which only the vaguest of statements can be made as to what even that definition might one day look like.

So, allow me to paraphrase a bit. Essentially, the claim here is that there is nothing to religious naturalism, therefore how can one promote or build upon that which is empty. In the brief time I have I will do my best to show that religious naturalism, while it does lack some key elements for it to qualify as a full-blown religion, has a firm foundation from which a mainstream naturalist religion can emerge.

As I see it, religious naturalism is not a religion per se, it is a religious orientation. By this, I mean that it is a categorical descriptor of belief that, in essence, rejects supernaturalism, dualism, and any form of personal god and yet views Nature as an object of reverence and a source of meaningful inspiration. It marks the difference between being religious and belonging to a religion—within religious naturalism, the former is possible while the latter is not, at least not yet.

Religious naturalism does have a rich intellectual history. Some scholars point to Baruch Spinoza (d.1677) as the grandfather of religious naturalism due to his concept of Deus sive natura (“God or nature”). Emerson is also considered a proto-religious naturalist who falls outside of its scope due to his idea of the Oversoul, although his spiritual response to nature is perfectly in line with it. Starting in the 20th century, an increasing number of thinkers started developing what is now considered contemporary religious naturalism.

George Santayana (d.1952) was a firm naturalist who spoke of the difference between idealism and facts, where religion (at its best) promotes the former and science promotes the latter. The problem, as he saw it, with most religions is that they confuse the two, which leads to supernaturalism. A rational religion, according to Santayana, does not confuse ideals with facts, and manages to balance them within a harmonious whole. Such a religion would be one that inspires us to discover what is true and best in ourselves and to pursue transformation into ever-more ideal states of being while keeping a critical mind on what we know and don’t know. Spirituality is the relationship between the self and the world via a central myth, piety is the acknowledgment of the wonder of incarnation, and justice (which he called charity) is the foundation of moral goodness (side note: I myself maintain that truthfulness, fairness, and compassion comprise the foundation of morality).

I can then point to more modern thinkers, such as the pragmatists Mead and Dewey, Sellars (religious humanism), Smuts (holism), and other significant naturalistic philosophers. The alignment of religious naturalism and humanism began here and is not arbitrary—starting with Sellars, several early prominent humanists, such as John Dietrich and Julian Huxley, advocated for the naturalization of religion and drew the basic conclusion that a religion which no longer focuses on a supernatural god or an afterlife should focus instead on the here-and-now well-being of humans. The Chicago School of Theology in the 1930s and 1940s produced a great deal of religious naturalist thinking, especially from Henry Wieman (this essay doesn’t have the space to consider all these people in full. Stone’s recent book is recommended).

Contemporary religious naturalism really got off the ground in the 1990s. Writers like Stone, Drees, Barlow, Swimme, Cavanaugh, Dean, Murry, and Milligan have begun a rigorous academic conversation. I am a fan of Henry Levinson, who is developing religious naturalism within a Jewish context. He says (and I paraphrase) that the goal is to celebrate joy without transcendence, responsibility without theology, science without scientism, holism without essentialism, chance without chaos, sufficiency without certainty, and the love of life in the consciousness of impotence. Further, that religious naturalists “love what good life there is and seek to protect and enlarge it.” Finally, Ursula Goodenough is probably the most well-known religious naturalist writer out there. She has begun to describe not just a philosophical construct, but a description of how a religious naturalist might experience the world (what I see as a foundational element to religious naturalist practice).

This has been the most bare survey of religious naturalist writing. The object was not to offer a comprehensive outline of religious naturalist thinking, but to show that RN does have a substantial history of robust thought. This is not to say that it is complete: far from it. In fact, I consider much of the theological writing to be a bit off-center from genuine naturalistic thinking (see this essay about RN and god-language for example). However, as with all systems, they are but the sources upon which a maturing religious naturalism will evolve.

Now then, the critic’s question made the error of taking my earlier observation that we do not have an adequate store of established stories, ethics, and practices to mean that we are completely absent of them. This is obviously false. First, we have what some theorists believe is a core requirement for a religion, which is a central myth or story, ours being The Epic of Evolution. The scientific story of the universe is our central “myth”, and (to paraphrase Dr. Goodenough) it is not only inspiring and majestic, it has the benefit of being true. We have a profound and factual tale involving the components and processes of Nature, and the growing size of the religious naturalist (proto)movement is a testament to its power to inspire and amaze.

What we do need are specific stories that can accomplish what Santayana saw as a chief function of religion, the poetic illustration of ideals. But again, we are not completely absent of them: Goodenough’s The Sacred Depths of Nature provides a wonderful example of looking at a scientific understanding of nature and responding with reverence, awe, and gratitude. My wife put a book on my desk not three days ago, The Whole World Kin, filled with naturalistic essays and stories. The story of Charles Darwin himself is fully legitimate as a religious naturalist tale, one that espouses the struggle towards understanding and surrender to empirical truth, even when it flies in the face of our most cherished beliefs. Finally, any inspirational story about nature absent the supernatural is a religious naturalist story, or at least one that an RN can adopt (this practice is not unlike what the Unitarians commonly do). This shouldn’t stop us from writing stories that are specific to religious naturalism, of course, but we have a rich ocean of material from which to draw.

It is also true that a basic foundational ethics exists within religious naturalism. It is not complete by any means and it does not exist in the form of dogma or a creed (which I imagine won’t happen anytime soon, all for the good). But religious naturalism is not ethically empty as the our critic suggests.

Theologian Roger Gillette speaks on the ethics of religious naturalism, which he says “provides superior directions and incentives—superior in that they more clearly govern behavior toward non-humans as well as humans, and offer the achievement of justice and mercy as its own reward. Religious naturalism does so by calling for religious or spiritual intellectual and emotional reconnection and love (agape) that leads to concern for and thus ethical behavior toward self, family, local community and ecosystem, and global community and ecosystem.” And further, “ethical behavior will be directed and driven by scientific knowledge of the consequences of various kinds and modes of actions and a desire to choose those actions that will best further the well-being of those affected by the actions. The resulting religious ethics thus will include social/political, bio/medical, engineering/developmental, ecological/environmental, and economic/business ethics, as well as what may be called population ethics. This religious naturalist ethics can be expected to provide principles and rules for decision-making and behavior that differ markedly from those provided by traditional theistic religion-based ethical systems.”

Jerome Stone also does a good job of detailing other ethical precepts that can be drawn from religious naturalist thinking:

a) “We should adopt and continually nurture a stance of critical openness and commitment”
b) It is good to “struggle for liberation against all forms of oppression.”
c) The spiritual ideal “is expressed in the drive toward concern for the [well-being of the] universal community of all beings.”
d) It is necessary to “avoid both despair at the enormity of our problems and fanaticism of assuming that we have the answers”
e) Many RNists “have a strong sense of urgency in protecting, nurturing, and renewing the natural systems and ecosystems” of the planet.

But at the same time, religious naturalists acknowledge that there is no perfect moral system, in part because the human condition constantly changes as society does, and because we continue to learn more scientifically about the moral function itself and the issues that moral systems focus upon (here is a wonderful overview regarding the evolution of morality). This is why critical openness lies at the heart of our approach to ethics, and can be seen as an ethical precept in itself (Openness is one of Sacred River’s Four Virtues). But religious naturalism does promote the moral imperative—the importance of being good, of striving for a more noble life, of helping to make this world a better place, even while we do not lay down hard and fast rules on what defines goodness. This is why Sacred River offers virtuous principles rather than rules: although not the only “formula” for goodness possible, we maintain that a moral life can be led by cultivating courage, integrity, beneficence, and (critical) openness within one’s self.

Are the ethical details of religious naturalism worked out? No. But the foundations are there and numerous religious naturalists are not idle—the project continues apace (here is an interesting example by David Tarbell). I am not an ethicist, so I don’t pretend to offer any ethical contributions of academic substance. But I do my best to explore ethics as I understand them and to encourage people to develop their own sense of morality grounded in naturalistic thinking.

The final components mentioned are traditions and practices. Traditions are grounded in culture, so to criticize religious naturalism for not having an established set of traditions before a culture of RN has had a chance to develop seems premature. This issue is relevant to religious practice as well, since rituals and celebrations largely develop within communities, even those that are intended for isolated practice. So, a priority of Sacred River is exactly that, the development of religious naturalist congregations (although this effort is on hiatus at the moment, alas), and I try to promote this effort in the existing RN community.

At the same time, I am not convinced that religious naturalism requires a standardized or codified set of spiritual practices. The world does not lack for such practices and anyone can adopt and convert them to work within a religious naturalist context. There is already much discussion about various forms of mindfulness and non-petitionary prayer. I initially created the Spiritual Streams to function as a backbone for creating a wide range of practices (eventually I want to create example practices, but that is also on the back burner). Over time, I am confident that we will see more ideas in this area.

Religious naturalism has no “established set of spiritual practices or traditions”, no “stories, both personal and mythological”, and no “particular set of moral values or principles”. You, I assume, consider yourself to have a more-or-less “spiritually fulfilling” life which you have clearly managed to achieve and sustain without any these things that you acknowledge religious naturalism cannot yet provide. That being the case, as a genuine question, why do you think that a “mainstream movement” is needed to provide such things if you’ve managed to do perfectly well without them yourself?

Religious naturalism is, at this time, mostly a robust religious orientation, a way of spiritually interfacing with the world. It has developed a core set of ethical principles (although more work needs to be done) and has a powerful central story. The potential of religious naturalism does not come in the form of dogma, creeds, or set practices, but in a spiritual perspective towards life and the world that eliminates the supernatural yet inspires awe, creativity, and even reverence (which is why RN is not simply atheism, which is nothing more than a lack of theistic belief). As more people are discovering religious naturalism, it is moving from the theological/academic stage to the real-world/movement stage, even while philosophers, theologians, and scientists continue to work on the intellectual infrastructure.

Now then, to the question at hand—why do I think a larger-scale movement is “needed to provide” a spiritually fulfilling life, especially since I’ve been able to get by without those things that RN is missing?  I think the problem is in the word “needed”…let’s take that out and substitute it with “worthwhile.” So, why do I think it is worthwhile to continue developing religious naturalism with the hope that it will become a mainstream movement, even when I cannot say what form it would finally take and am more or less satisfied with the system as it is?

First, I am not satisfied. I firmly align with religious naturalism’s core spiritual/ethical orientation, but I very much want to see more of the components that successful religions enjoy. And so, I advocate for their creation—the only other option would be to abandon the effort, which I see no reason to do, especially since I do find it fulfilling to do this work. Further, I want me and my family to have access to a real-world religious naturalist community (i.e. not just online), so it makes sense to try and actually build one. Second, I think that an increasing number people in the world are seeing the danger and irrationality inherent in theistic religion and yet want something more than materialistic atheism, and I believe that religious naturalism can be an attractive “landing pad” for many of them.

To summarize, religious naturalism does come from a considerable intellectual tradition, has a basic set of rational ethical principles, offers an outline for potential religious practice, and is rapidly developing a compelling spiritual worldview that sits in tight alignment with reason and a scientific understanding of nature. Is it enough to call it a full-blown religion? Some say yes, while I say no—I think religious naturalism does need certain things before we can say that, including more stories grounded in the Epic of Evolution, a firmer science-based ethics, a collection of rituals and celebrations, and active real-world congregations. However, what religious naturalism does have is more than enough to exist as a firm, compelling religious orientation from which further stories, practices, and communities can emerge. It is that process that I am personally inspired to work on and is the reason Sacred River exists.

As much as I identify as a religious naturalist, I must confess that I do not like the term. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that religious naturalism be eliminated, only used in the way other categorical terms are used, such as Abrahamic Religion. I can’t say that I have a better choice, but I do hope that one comes to light.

First, the term is blandly descriptive—it fails to evoke the deep emotions that many of us actually feel about nature. It simply does not reflect the life and majesty inherent in its object of reverence. Second, the use of the term “religious” is for many naturalists a source of dissonance, in some ways requiring a redefinition of the word. Third, “naturalism” is a poorly understood and confusing construct—because of that, its boundaries are too porous for my own taste (e.g. does it include pantheism or is it somehow distinct?). Finally, the term is an academic one, mostly referring to dry concepts found within the pages of theology journals, untethered from the personal and cultural experience of adherents.

Alas, I believe the term is becoming solidified in the wake of recent publications, most notably The Sacred Depths of Nature, by Ursula Goodenough, and Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative, by Jerome Stone (both excellent books). But rather than address religious naturalism as a religion, or even a religious movement, these books use the term to describe a religious orientation within an intellectual or academic framework. There’s nothing at all wrong with this, but it places RN more in the realm of philosophy or academic theology, places generally inaccessible to the average person.

Another major drawback with the term is that it describes an attitude towards Nature as a whole, offering little in terms of what we think about each other. From what I can tell, many religious naturalists have adopted some form of humanism into their worldview to fill in the ethics gap. But it really becomes a mouthful to say I am a Religious Naturalist Humanist.

Words matter. Names matter. The best names are symbols, which is why I chose Sacred River for this venture rather than “Ash’s Religious Naturalism Project”. It’s hard to imagine an inspiring symbol for “A scientifically-informed, reverent orientation towards Nature absent of the supernatural yet worthy of awe and wonder.” If there is an answer, I think it lies within the Story of Everyone, also known as The Epic of Evolution—not just natural selection, but big-E Evolution, the process of change that resulted in everything there is, including us. Something that embodies the experience of discovery, the thrill of progress, and the mystery of emergence—the sheer majesty of this universe and an utterly complex brain that allows us to contemplate and study it. What name could possibly encapsulate all of that?

I’m certain that the answer is out there, waiting to emerge from our movement. Until that happens, I’ll have to be satisfied with our working title.

In general, Sacred River is not intended for intellectual meta-discussion of religious naturalism, but this is an interesting issue that is worth exploration. Naturalism, as a philosophical orientation, explicitly denies the existence of anything that is outside of nature, and at this point in our scientific understanding of the universe, that includes personal deities, non-corporeal intelligences, meta-terrestrial dimensions, and occult/New Age forces. At the same time, religious naturalism recognizes that Nature includes a large dose of mystery—while our store of reliable knowledge increases daily, there are questions for which we might never know the answers. For some people, the way of articulating this sense of mystery, and the awe and reverence that attends it, is to use “god-language”. The question is, how does such language fit within an orientation that does not recognize the objective existence of personal gods?

For the most part, this discussion takes place in the rarefied atmosphere of theology and philosophy journals. We can read about how God is used metaphorically to describe authenticity, freedom, process, unity, goodness, energy, connectedness, love, or the sacred object of worship. But there are several problems with this approach, the worst perhaps being the usage of a vague term to describe something that is already vague or intangible. Rather than bringing clarity, saying “God” further diffuses the object of consideration.

This is compounded by the fact that the vast majority of people in the world do not use God as a metaphor. In general use “God” is first and foremost a pronoun, a name for an objectively-existing Supreme Being. Second, it is a homonym for deity, of which many in human culture are not necessarily “Supreme” but nevertheless are superordinate to the normal order of physical reality. When a religious naturalist uses god-language, a general audience will likely not understand that it is metaphorical, thereby undermining one of the key elements of RN, namely that it rejects supernaturalism.

This is not to say that metaphor doesn’t have a place within religious naturalism. Sacred River actually makes this idea a core component of its approach. Perhaps the one thing that makes humans special is our use of symbol, which arguably underlies language, logic, mathematics, music, art, poetry, and even culture itself. It is important for religious naturalists to develop stories, icons, and experiences that can provide social cohesion, ethical illustrations, and opportunities for meaningful profundity (a sense of deep significance or transcendence usually involving a change of perspective different from ordinary states of awareness). This is how a religious movement is able to mature.

However, using god-language is neither necessary nor advantageous for our movement because, at its root, the concept of God is antithetical to naturalism. It is fair to say that we currently lack adequate language to describe the more sublime elements of the religious experience within a naturalistic orientation. But using God does not advance the development of such a language; rather, it keeps us stuck within a pre-scientific context. It is akin to using God to fill in the gaps of scientific knowledge, which is neither accurate nor useful in terms of promoting understanding.

Another issue to consider is cultural. One of the greatest benefits of the RN perspective is its universality: nature is nature everywhere. However, “God” is largely a construct of the West—by using it, the speaker is limiting the context to those places where god has meaning. It seems obvious that religious naturalism has much more in common with Eastern religions than with Abrahamic. Using god-language to describe the RN perspective excludes a large portion of the Earth’s population who see the world in a similar way as we do, at least when compared to Western theists. By using naturalistic language only, we universalize our message.

Carl Sagan once said, “A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.” I believe that religious naturalism, or some variant, will be that religion. Like it or not, science and the concept of God, even as a symbol, are not compatible frames of reference. In the deepest parts of our minds, God is both a stand in for a lack of knowledge and a non-conscious elevation of our parents to the status of immortality and omnipotence. For us to mature as a naturalistic religious movement and also as a species, we must let go of God. It is not enough to transform him (and God is a “him”) to a metaphor, claiming that the supernatural elements have been banished. As long as God is used to describe the sublime within nature and ourselves, supernaturalism will survive, even if only in a silent form. We no longer need to anthropomorphize the universe.

Naturalism states that only the natural is real; that the universe as a whole lacks purpose and intelligence; that nothing exists, in principle, beyond the scope of scientific examination; and that all physical events are caused by other physical events in accordance with universal laws. Religious naturalism is a reverent orientation towards Nature that excludes supernaturalism; that responds to Nature with awe and wonder; that recognizes the mysteries inherent in existence; and ideally will develop a morality grounded in promoting human flourishing and ecological stewardship. The concept of God is not necessary and does not advance any of these principles, while it can be said to work against them. Yes, that includes the issue of mystery. Using God to explain mystery (such as why there is something rather than nothing) is generally just a way of trying to dispel mystery rather than accepting and abiding in it.

Letting go of God is necessary to fully embrace naturalism—which I write with a full understanding of how easy that is to say and how difficult it can be to accomplish. Rather than using a supernatural term to describe that which we see as sacred within Nature, let us instead consider those those things as sacred in themselves. That is what religious naturalism is all about, discarding the supernatural and exalting the natural. Instead of “Love = God = Divine”, religious naturalism says “Love = Divine”.

There are, of course, religious naturalists who do not have a problem with god-language, Dr. Goodenough being one of them (edit: although she herself does not use the term to describe her own beliefs). In no way is this essay an attempt to censure them. Neither am I calling for a “war” against believers in God (or those who use that term metaphorically), except perhaps in those cases where faith is used to justify hatred, suffering, discrimination, or willful ignorance. What I am attempting to do here is to persuade religious naturalists and those of like-mind to consider letting go of a word that muddies the waters, evokes supernaturalism, and inhibits the development of a naturalistic language of reverence. Chet Raymo said it best—When God is gone, everything is holy.

Generally I dislike receiving lists of advice, so I’m a little embarrassed to be offering one. I wrote this list in response to an email sent to me with a lot of (mostly Christian) suggestions that I didn’t particularly care for. Obviously this list only reflects my own personal values and preferences. Also, as far as I’m concerned, this is open source, so feel free to send any of it along. If you are so inspired, please feel free to add your own pearls of wisdom in the comments…

1) Develop mindful gratitude and express it often

2) Get enough sleep, eat well, and exercise regularly

3) Find beauty and joy in simple, every-day things

4) Practice courtesy, even in the face of rudeness

5) Read more

6) Make time for pleasures that enrich your life

7) Always be learning how to do something new

8] Don’t waste your time with people you don’t respect, but be willing to know people who seem different from you

9) Before passing judgment, remember that there is always more than meets the eye

10) Cultivate wonder and curiosity; be open to new knowledge but avoid credulousness

11) Look out for patterns that keep you stuck; growth requires going outside your comfort zone from time to time

12) Think for yourself; develop your ability to question and reason

13) Occasionally write down your life goals and best imagined future; research shows this is associated with increased health and well-being

14) It’s okay to get your needs met, but let go of any sense of entitlement; it’s healthier to think in terms of what you can offer rather than what you are owed

15) Be serious-minded but light-hearted; protect yourself from both bitterness and sanctimoniousness

16) Always be honest, loyal, and true to yourself and your word. Always.

17) Every now and then, reassess your own values, beliefs, and goals

18) Build the courage to face your fears and to take full responsibility for your life

19) Do your part to fulfill our role as stewards of the Earth

20) Make a difference—do what you can to reduce suffering and increase fairness, opportunity, prosperity, and freedom in the world

Ursula Goodenough has a wonderful essay up on the NPR website called, “Are You A Religious Naturalist Without Knowing It?” A short snippet:

…Nature is all that we know there to be; its source is a mystery; its dynamics generate emergent phenomena of increasing complexity. Full stop. How might one find Purpose and Value in such a perspective?

There are many responses, but my own is to see purpose and valuation in every biological trait, every adaptation, every humming bird dipping into a flower with its exquisitely shaped beak. Traits are about something, for something. They have been evaluated and selected in their ecological contexts. Therefore, for me, the flourishing and continuation of life has deep intrinsic Value and Purpose.

The spiritual entails inward responses to one’s core narrative, and here the menu is rich. Nature elicits both awe and humility, as lifted up beautifully by Marcelo; there’s the gratitude and astonishment of being alive at all; there’s reverence for nature’s outrageous beauty and complexity; there’s the joy of participation.

The article is very worth reading; it is not long but it packs a punch. It concisely lays out the core positions of religious naturalism. Except the end—in the last paragraph she writes:

So what’s the difference between a naturalist and a religious naturalist? Both take nature seriously; both adopt Everybody’s Story as their core narrative. And then, in the words of Loyal Rue, the religious naturalist also takes nature to heart. Taking something to heart means that your heart can be broken: you can experience moral outrage when that which is revered is desecrated.

To me, this is not an adequate answer. I think that non-religious people can be heartbroken by the desecration of nature. As it happens, I have written about this very issue, what it means to be a naturalist of a religious kind.

How can naturalism—a perspective that ignores the supernatural—be religious? It requires a different definition of religion, one based on function and experience rather than on traditional faith-based assertions. Loyal Rue (Pulitzer Prize winning author and professor of religion and philosophy) proposes that religion is, at the core, about a relationship with a central myth or story…In discussing religious naturalism specifically, Rue says that as “the gap between the natural and the sacred narrows—as God is naturalized and Nature is divinized…the central core of religious naturalism becomes clear: Nature is the sacred object of humanity’s ultimate concern.” Theologian Roger Gillette offers this: “Religious naturalism is a religion in that it is a system of belief and practice that demands and facilitates one’s intellectual and emotional reconnection with one’s self, one’s family, one’s local and global community and ecosystem, and the universe of which the global ecosystem is a part.”

Those who offer commentary on religious naturalism largely agree that the movement has a long way to go in terms of developing an established set of spiritual practices or traditions. Such practices can be placed into four major categories: ritual, celebration, mindfulness, and works. Religious naturalism has, of itself, nothing to offer in the first two categories, except perhaps when attached to an existing institution, such as the Unitarian Universalist church or a Reconstructionist Jewish community. This does not mean, of course, that individual adherents cannot create or transform religious rituals and celebrations to fit within a naturalistic frame; as they do, perhaps they will spread into more general use.

The third category—mindfulness—does not require any kind of institutional structure. Mindfulness encompasses a range of experiences, such as contemplation, reflection, meditation, and non-petitionary prayer; it is through such activities that the religious naturalist can experience the awe, wonder, inspiration, serenity, and reverence that nature and raw existence can evoke. Through certain mindfulness practices, even the most dedicated materialist can experience a mystical sense of union with everything—of this, Chet Raymo writes, “Every object of the natural world bears within itself a mostly hidden relationship to every other object. In attending prayerfully to these webs of relationship we integrate ourselves more fully into the fabric of the universe.” Naturalistic philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville speaks of the oceanic feeling of unity—”When you feel at one with the All, you need nothing more. Why would you need a God? The universe suffices. Why would you need a church? The world suffices. Why would you need faith? Experience suffices.”

Many religious naturalists have no calling for such mystical experiences and instead choose to express their spirituality through works. Since religious naturalism does not include the idea of an afterlife or alternate planes of being, the focus shifts from hope or faith to action. As with rituals and celebrations, there is no established set of proper works, nor should there be. At Sacred River, we have offered a template for works called the Spiritual Streams—being Self, Relational, Work (labor), Epicurean, Intellectual, Sociocultural, and Natural (environmental)—designed to help people determine for themselves where they can best spend their time and resources. But wherever one finds inspiration, the religious aim is to act with intention towards fulfilling one’s potential as an individual and as an integrated member of humankind and the planet.

And also:

Religion arguably exists in order to address certain human needs, such as assuaging existential anxiety, maintaining a sense of purpose and agency, developing an understanding of the workings of the world, and feeling connected to others. At another level, it is possible to surmise that people often desire what can be called a religious experience, here defined as a profound and meaningful shift in perspective involving an embodied sensation and a resultant interpretation that is explicitly religious in nature. Stated more simply, religion can potentially provide a sense of meaningful profundity, a sense of deep significance and/or transcendence from normal states of being, involving a connection with, experience of, or insight into a perspective of reality that is normally outside of everyday awareness.

Religious Naturalism states that all of these needs, desires, and experiences can be had without the need for a belief in the supernatural. Nature, as well as we understand it, is fully worthy of awe, gratitude, and reverence. But more than that, we maintain that nature is all that is real. In other words, we are merely acknowledging that which is, without needing more. Part of this recognition involves our own place within the biospheric narrative, our emerging understanding of human nature and the infinite variety of potential human activity within the world.

Naturalism alone is a philosophical position; religious naturalism offers a meaningful connection to Nature. It allows me to integrate my understanding of Nature into my life in a way that is emotionally salient, even profound—it is not just an intellectual pursuit, it becomes ingrained into the architecture of my life and sense of self. Whether through celebration, ritual, mindfulness, or works, religious naturalism seeks an ongoing experience of Nature that is meaningful, fulfilling, and joyous.

Freud famously hypothesized that God is little more than a projected father figure. This idea was given within the context of his psychosexual theories, which have largely been outmoded as the science of psychology has progressed. Nevertheless, Freud was probably on to something in this case.

As children, our parents are, in essence, gods to us. They are not only all powerful, but are possessed of incomprehensible knowledge and mysterious abilities; they also regularly transport us to strange new places. It is not such a far leap to suggest that a belief in a god allows us to keep a sense of the awe and safety that we are designed to feel when we are kids. There is some part of us—even as mature, educated adults—that craves a relationship with a larger-than-life being that can handle the chaos, danger, and mystery of life, that we can depend on, that will love us without limit.

It is possible that this effect goes beyond a belief in a god. It might also lead to magical thinking, even absent of any belief in a supreme being. This kind of thinking is typified by New Age practices, such as astrology, tarot cards, and candle spells. Occult-style systems can be understood as a transference of magic from the parent to the child. No longer content to leave power in the hands of humanized parents, nor to elevate it to an invisible deity, magical-thinking adults appropriate the flame of godhood for themselves. The illusion is essentially the same as that of the mainline theist, that mysterious, supernatural forces can be used to understand and effect change within the material world.

Naturalism is the only orientation that truly bucks the system—it states that there are no mysterious powers, no access to special knowledge, and no non-material parts of reality. This perspective is threatening to believers of both theistic and occult stripes, not only because humans are designed to have durable worldviews and group affiliations, but because naturalism “takes away” the sense of control and specialness that comes with supernaturalism.

That is the cost of maturity: giving up fantastical thinking. But that doesn’t mean that we have to give up any of the awe and wonder or even reverence! True, we have to learn how to cope with a lack of afterlife and control over the chaos inherent in life, but what we gain is the ability to live in reality and to bask in the majesty of Nature on its own terms. We can make choices and develop understanding grounded in observation and reason rather than scripture or divination. Instead of prayer or magic, we can adopt pragmatic action for when we wish to affect change.

There is much discussion of late about the nature and source of religion. Even if true, it seems highly unlikely that the hypothesis presented in this essay is the only element behind supernaturalism. More likely, there are numerous components, including potent sociocultural influences. It is important that social scientists continue to study religion—the more we understand that supernaturalism is a product of human thinking, the more we can transfer it’s positive elements—such as reverence, compassion, and profundity—to the actual source of reality, the natural world.

I know it’s corny, but I get a lump in my throat when I watch this video.

PS. If you live in Massachusetts you can help keep the world awesome by voting for Martha Coakley today.

The earthquake in Haiti has left the country in ruins and resulted in untold death and misery. Now is the time to step up and help. As President Bill Clinton said the other day, the single best way to assist is with cash. To that end, please consider one of the following options:

* Text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 instantly to Red Cross
* UUSC/UUA Joint Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund
* Doctors Without Borders
* ActionAid International

Religious Naturalism is a positive worldview that finds wonder in a universe without any need for the supernatural. Nature is astounding and life is precious. What more is needed?

Nature is astounding exactly because it is self-sufficient; a creator god or supernatural manager takes away from the majesty of nature. And since consciousness almost certainly ends with brain death, the short time we have here makes life valuable beyond measure. It is indescribably unjust and tragic for any person to experience their time in poverty, ignorance, or misery. This calls us to improve our condition, to challenge ourselves and to help make a world where every person in every culture can thrive.

Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University, has recently promoted HumanLight Day, a humanist replacement for Christmas. On the HumanLight website, they say:

HumanLight illuminates Humanism’s positive secular vision. In Western societies, late December is a season of good cheer and a time for gatherings of friends and families. During the winter holiday season, where the word “holiday” has taken on a more secular meaning, many events are observed. This tradition of celebrations, however, is grounded in supernatural religious beliefs that many people in modern society cannot accept. HumanLight presents an alternative reason to celebrate: a Humanist’s vision of a good future. It is a future in which all people can identify with each other, behave with the highest moral standards, and work together toward a happy, just and peaceful world.

While I strongly endorse the idea behind this, I don’t like the name very much. In part, I think that this time of year extends beyond humanity, which is also about the cycle of the seasons and all that that implies. I do like the word “Light”, which is certainly appropriate to the holiday spirit. But if I were to make a suggestion, I would call it Winterlight Day.

This topic is coming a bit late, but perhaps we can mull it over and see if the idea survives until next year.

And so, a belated Happy Winterlight to everyone! We at Sacred River hope that it was filled with warmth, joy, and togetherness.

It is time to hear some different voices at Sacred River. You are invited to submit an essay regarding the following topic:

“Inspiration and the Natural World”

You are free to write a personal narrative, an exploration into American Transcendentalism, a treatise on physics, a photo essay, or pure fiction; you are only limited by your imagination. There is no length requirement.

The due date is November the 6th.

We will publish what we consider to be the best entries, but there is no maximum—considering how talented naturalists tend to be, we might end up publishing all of them! So let your voice be heard—inspire us!

Send your essay to submissions@sacredriver.org

A wonderful “song” using bits from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, featuring an appearance by Stephen Hawking. It is a lovely example of the awe, curiosity, and joy that nature can inspire.

The following comment was written in response to a theist named Bridget from the last Dawkins post [here is her original comment]. I wanted to present this on its own page since I think it begins to address some core issues in Sacred River.

Where does the evil and good come from?

“Evil” and “Good” aren’t substances or states, but moral judgments on behaviors and ideas. All judgments are products of the human mind grounded in the evolutionary necessity of primates to live together in a reasonably harmonious way. We are beginning to find the basic building blocks of human ethics, which are related to such issues as fairness, resource/mate protection, incest avoidance, and reciprocal altruism (to name a few).

As in language, the moral building blocks have evolved into complex structures that are now largely culture-based. These structures form in every group (churches, schools, workplaces, clubs, and even whole cities and nations), and the majority of them are implicit, meaning they are unspoken mandates and rules of thumb that guide how group members behave and interact. When someone violates a rule, everyone knows it, even when that rule isn’t written down. Humans are simply wired this way.

Although the underlying purpose of morality is logical—the creation of social rules that allow humans to live together in groups—individual morals or moral sets are not always rational or even beneficial. At one time, for example, slavery was considered perfectly acceptable by many Americans and was even justified with the Bible. Many people would now consider slavery to be an unambiguous evil.

This is why there is a movement to push morals into a principle-based system rather than attempting a set of absolute rules. For example, increasing fairness and decreasing suffering are “good” principles, but what those look like will change along with a changing society, just as the acceptability of slavery changed with the Civil War. This is but one benefit of a non-theistic perspective—we can approach goodness from a reasonable and compassionate place rather than by attempting to fulfill rigid decrees, regardless of their relevance or logic.

Where does the “self” come from? And please don’t say the self is a set of neuronal connections…that is ridiculous and has not been proven.

The experience of self does indeed stem from complex neural nets in the brain, although the total self certainly includes the whole body. This might seem ridiculous to you, but there is a great deal of empirical evidence for it (and no evidence to the contrary). True, we learn more about the creation of self all the time as we learn more about the brain, but it isn’t the mystery you are making it out to be.

What we call the self is constructed from many psycho-neurological mechanisms, including temperament, emotions, personality (a la the Big Five), subjective perception and awareness, motivations and bodily needs, working memory and long-term memory, worldview and heuristic sets (e.g. social roles), and what you would call thinking. The self is an emergent phenomena that arises from the integration of all these functions, each of which are borne in the brain and derive from a combination of genetics and experience, and shifts according to environmental priming (a great example of this is an experiment with Chinese-Americans: one group was shown American symbols and the other Chinese symbols: each group then interpreted a single image, with the first group preferring a Western concept of individualism, with the other preferring an Eastern communal perspective. So based on how they were primed, different “selves” came to the fore).

To learn more, I strongly recommend “The Developing Mind” by Dan Siegel.

I’m afraid you might be falling for what our ancient ancestors fell for: the assumption that anything we don’t fully understand in nature must be due to a supernatural agent. It’s as if to say that if something in nature is amazing and beyond our comprehension, it couldn’t have “just happened”. But why not? There is no reason to think that anything in nature required an external agent, and the more we learn about the universe, the more we must conclude that indeed no agent could have caused any of it. Nature is self-sufficient; that is part of its majesty.

The abundance of even non-religious conspiracy theories is yet one more reason to challenge faith-based thinking. But it isn’t all roses…

Pascal’s Wager essentially states that it makes the most sense to have faith in the Biblical God because if he is real then a believer will earn entry into Heaven while a nonbeliever will suffer for eternity in Hell, whereas if God is not real, both lose nothing (unless to say the believer loses his sense of reason, which seems a fair stake for the chance of eternal bliss). The matrix looks like this:

Pascal’s Wager is frequently offered by modern Christians as justification for faith, even though Pascal himself said that the wager is only enough to consider finding faith. Nevertheless, they will say,  “You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain…and if you’re wrong, then Hell awaits you!” There are, of course, many logical shortcomings in this wager. For example, it doesn’t include the possibility that:

* The Christian god isn’t the correct deity
* God’s judgment is arbitrary
* God might also reward honest unbelief or punish dishonest belief
* Belief isn’t a necessary or adequate criteria for entry into Heaven

So, let’s take these issues into consideration in the following table, assuming the religion is Christianity with a “good” non-believer and an undefined believer:

When we add these choices, then the best choice is to be a good non-believer, because she has the best possible outcome—she gets both reason and Heaven if God is real and rewards those who act good. Likewise, in this choice and the choice where God is not real, the non-believer gets to have a fulfilling life of doing good deeds, without any unnecessary emotional, physical, or material sacrifices in the name of faith.

If the believer is good, then he has two extra chances to get to Heaven, but no one can know for certain what qualifies as “good enough”. The undefined believer might be “good enough” in choice #3, but has nevertheless made unnecessary sacrifices that the non-believer did not make. If God is not the Christian god, then there is equal risk of the unknown, making a rational and good life that much more worthwhile. If God is not real, then the believer does not have zero loss: he has, as Dawkins’ writes, squandered his “precious time on worshiping him, sacrificing to him, fighting and dying for him, etc.” And Hell becomes less one-sided, since the believer might get there if he is not adequately good (e.g. the mass murderer who repents in the gas chamber).

On top of all this, we then need to take into account the likelihood of God’s existence. There are already many arguments out there about this, but I will keep it at this: God isn’t necessary. God is not necessary to explain the origin of the universe, universal laws and processes, or how we humans came to be. There is no question in science that is best answered with “God”. This doesn’t prove his non-existence, but it does make it very, very unlikely, especially when we consider the countless number of gods humans have created and the complete lack of observable evidence for any of them. Virtually every universal theory that has arisen from religion has been shown to be wrong; why not just admit the concept of supernatural dualism is wrong altogether? With this in mind, we have to put the choices on a scale, with the existence of God being very unlikely and the non-existence of god being very likely.

The fundamental problem with all of this—as has been pointed out by non-theists many times before—is that one cannot be threatened into genuine belief. Faith requires that I honestly think that something is true. Any fear of being wrong does not, in itself, provide evidence that something is real.

And finally, I present my own Naturalist Wager:

If there is a creator God, then he created the universe and the world and humans. He also created your brain that is able to observe and reason and feel compassion. Looking at and learning about His creation using direct observation and empirically-based reason would honor His gifts, while making the world a better place for every human would honor the heart He gave you. If a loving creator God is real, it is reasonable to believe that He will reward you for your faith in Him and for the use of the reason and compassion He gave you. If God is not real, then you will have made excellent use of your life by fulfilling your ability to learn about and find wonder in the natural world and by making life a bit more worth living for those who remain.

In his latest book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins presents his own Alternative Ten Commandments. I enjoyed the list so much I wanted to share it here. [Edit: it has been pointed out that this list was not written by Dawkins, but only offered in his book. Whoever wrote it, I think it is a great list of principles. EDIT #2: It appears that the original list can be found here, written by one "Ebonmuse" who authors the site Daylight Atheism.]

1. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you

2. In all things, strive to cause no harm

3. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

4. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

5. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder

6. Always seek to be learning something new

7. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

8. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

9. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

10. Question everything

There are already plenty of good overviews of religious naturalism, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have one more. It certainly doesn’t stack up to the work of Jerome Stone [PDF], and I’ll probably update it over time, but I think it’s healthy to have multiple viewpoints that address a core set of ideas. Of course, I am no expert on religious naturalism, so I hope I can be forgiven a certain lack of unique insight or academic sophistication. For me, however, it is exactly this kind of exercise that helps develop a clear articulation of values and beliefs, an exercise that I consider to be central to my own personal progress. And you, dear reader, are naturally invited to comment and make suggestions.

It is wonderful to see articles and essays explaining the basics of science, especially in reference to religion and superstition. This one, titled “I Want to Believe: What Skepticism Reveals about Science“, is written by Michael Shermer and appears in the latest issue of Scientific American. You are encouraged to go read the whole thing.

Shermer writes:

What I want to believe based on emotions and what I should believe based on evidence does not always coincide… I conclude that I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know. I believe that the truth is out there. But how can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.

Science is a method, not a set of dogmatic beliefs. As Shermer explains, “Science begins with the null hypothesis, which assumes that the claim under investigation is not true until demonstrated otherwise. [...] The null hypothesis means that the burden of proof is on the person asserting a positive claim, not on the skeptics to disprove it.” Of course, as he points out above, many people choose to see evidence where none exist because they have an emotional drive to believe. Or they wedge the supernatural into scientific gaps, assuming that “if science cannot explain X, then [the supernatural] explanation for X is necessarily true.”

This is where the understanding of science gets a little murky. Shermer continues:

To be fair, not all claims are subject to laboratory experiments and statistical tests. Many historical and inferential sciences require nuanced analyses of data and a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that point to an unmistakable conclusion. Just as detectives employ the convergence of evidence technique to deduce who most likely committed a crime, scientists employ the method to determine the likeliest explanation for a particular phenomenon. Cosmologists reconstruct the history of the universe by integrating data from cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, spectroscopy, general relativity and quantum mechanics. [...] Once an inferential or historical science is well established through the accumulation of positive evidence, however, it is just as sound as a laboratory or experimental science.

This is why the Theory of Evolution is so compelling…although we cannot observe all the mechanics of evolution happening in real time, the mountain of positive, harmonized evidence over multiple domains of study allows for a high degree of confidence, especially since the theory allows for testable predictions. And yet, the null hypothesis is still out there, waiting…the moment we find a reliable fossil of a dinosaur with the remains of a homo sapiens in its belly, science will admit that it’s time to go back to the drawing board. But—and this is where many theists get lost—it is not up to science to disprove that that fossil exists, or that God exists in our knowledge gaps, or that invisible pink unicorns roam the forests. Until positive evidence is given, there is no reason, other than emotional desire, to consider them to be true.

Shermer sums it up nicely:

Which one you choose depends on your tolerance for ambiguity and how much you want to believe. For me, I remain in sublime awe of the great Unknown.