Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) email list

[Alex]

The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) email list IRASnet <[e-mail]> has some great posts.

This is a collection of some of them, together with other resources and reports related to IRAS.

[Alex]

The nature of matter and energy, of rainbow and earthworm, of the igniting of stars and the emergence of Man, these and a thousand other puzzles of yester-generation have now been reduced to natural occurrences that conform to the laws that buttress the world.

But why the silken wings of a butterfly or the smile on Mona Lisa’s face, the chorus in Beethoven’s Ninth and the kirtanas of Thygaraja, the epics of Homer and the couplets of Tiruvalluvar should spell so much joy in my heart; and why this spark of consciousness  flickers for a brief time-span in this vast and ancient cosmos, here to exchange insubstantial ideas with you and some others, before it is extinguished for good: these are, to me, not trivial puzzles. I rather doubt that the most sophisticated equations of quantum or non-quantum mechanics, string or rope theories will solve in my life-time. So there are surely mysteries for me.

Yes, we know how the most wondrous entities have emerged from the brain, we know too (though we don’t yet know how), that man and mind were borne of molecules and mechanisms.

A mystery is not an unanswered question, but an unanswerable one. It is right to ask if there are such questions at all.

To me, the answer is Yes: intriguing mysteries are associated with the joy of love and the  hope of the despondent, and the inner peace that is so elusive. I see mystery in the minds of a Mozart and a Shakespeare, of an Euler and a Ramanujan. The capacity of puny earthlings to see the world in a grain of atom, and heaven in a throbbing life, hold infinity in the symbols of an equation, and eternity in a calculation, are all, to me, mini-mysteries. Mysteries, minor and magnificent, do light up my experience. I revel in the recognition of ultimate questions that have no answers but in the humility of meditative silence.

I don’t find this incompatible with the ceaseless striving of science to solve all the puzzles that thinking minds are heir to. The finite mind may never fathom the totality of the infinite, but its extraordinary powers to experience and enjoy, to discover and debate, to create and contemplate: herein lies the stuff of cosmic mystery.

V. V. Raman
October 14, 2010

[Alex]

Rosmarie, You seem to be somewhat new to these discussions and it is possible that you are not aware that I too am an atheist and have been one all of my longish life. Although I now study human neuroscience and visual perception, my PhD is in theoretical physics. The physics makes me a total reductionist always wanting to be sure that any event in nature had better be compatible with the Standard Model (quarks/electrons/gluons/photons etc) and general relativity. I may have confused you about the God language that I use. I belong to a Jewish congregation where where God is more of a metaphor/poetry for mankind's highest, most optimistic nature. When things seem bleakest (like at the present, tea infested,  pre-election, global warming period), it is especially helpful to call forth the forces of optimism that we have the power to overcome. Jesus was a Jewish revolutionary who had the strength and wisdom to show that compassion can win out. I may add that my physics background has also taught me that there are many, many occasions where dualities are found, i.e. opposite, conflicting descriptions of the world can both be true from different viewpoints. The wave/particle duality and the observer/observed duality may be the most familiar ones.
 
Incidentally, I'm not naive about the difficulty of the struggle ahead of us. It is because of that difficulty that it is nice to have Jesus on our side rather than fighting him as so many of my fellow atheists are prone to do. I like Jesus as my buddy for several reasons. 1) There is the practical, political reason that there are lots of theists in the US and I would like to join with them rather than fight them in the fight for carbon taxes/regulation/cap&trade and population control in the forthcoming years. 2) We humans have evolved and have been socialized to have strong responses to human stimuli. Thus to anthropomorphize some of the forces of nature impinge on us, can help motivate us to better deal with those forces.
 
So that gives you a glimpse into my use of poetic God language. Most of the IRASnetters have already heard the above story many times, but for newcomers it is useful to repeat it. Incidentally, what kind of biology do you do?
 
Stanley Klein
Oct 21, 2010

[Alex]

Having waxed lyrical in response to V.V.'s comment that we probably going to
have to work off and with existing religions, let me assay in more
traditionally analytic terms a set of notions as to what new or enhanced
religion in an age of science might look like.

Characteristics of a new religion in the age of science:

1. What it would retain
       a. The sense of awe, wonder, and gratitude for the gift of life
in an astonishing and creative universe
       b. The sense of personal responsibility for bringing one's life
in harmony with the potentials of the Universe, and life in the Universe
       c. The sense and practice of community with other humans, and
other life forms, including social participation in groups of like mind and
orientation
       d. Appreciation for the insights on morality and religion
developed in the pre-scientific eras

2. What would change, or be re-emphasized
       a. Insistence on finding the 'will of God' in close attention
to the potentials of life in the universe as indicated by objective,
ongoing, scientifically oriented and tested investigation
       b. Application of insights on how human and other life systems
can be structured to accord with 1 and 2a. above,
       c. Avoidance of claims of divine guidance superior to that
obtained as above.  That is, claims of divine guidance  based upon the
perceived interests  of subgroups in the human community, and/or claims of
divine guidance based on historical doctrines associated with particular
revered religious and moral figures - in other words, the historical claims
of religious guidance -- would be tested against 1 and 2 a, b above rather
than assuming priority over the new wine in new vessels.

Given the rich and varied backgrounds and perspectives of this IRAS group, I
am not sure whether this assay will result in my being mounted on a cross,
in a Klein bottle, both or neither.  I am conscious that item 2a is but one
take on a possible ultimate orientation of a 'religion'.  But why not try it
out for size? It reaches beyond Utilitarianism and the somewhat limited
intellectual reach of philosophers of the last few centuries.

And as to whether any such development of 'religion' would proceed with new
prophets and scriptures -- - RN already has some candidates perhaps to be
picked through in about 100-300 years for canonization - or would emerge
from morphing of existing religious bodies, the floor remains open.

Jack Pearce

[Alex]

Why ethics/morality needs separation from religion at this time?

As I explained before, ethics has a function.  As the various ethical constraints developed in humanizing societies, a major function increasingly complex ethics performed was allowing the social system to become considerably more complex.  Any additional complexity to the social order requires or prohibits certain types of behavior.  The ancestors of humans were depending increasingly upon culturally created behavioral constraints, rather than genetic constraints.  But the early human ancestors did not understand the relationship between the behavioral constraints and the ability of the social system to function.  The changes developed over thousands of years.  Much too slowly for anyone to have memory of a time when the social system, and the behavioral requirements were significantly different.  The cultural behavioral constraints developed in a manner similar to genetic developments.  Individual societies happened upon systems of constraints that worked, and developed ways of maintaining the constraints.  The societies that did this were the ones that were able to survive.  Social systems in which the constraints were not held firmly in place collapsed.  As religions developed a major function of the religions became to provide apparent grounds for maintaining obedience to the behavioral constraints.  No one understood why the constraints were actually important--they did not understand the connection between the constraints and the social system being able to function.  But they had a vague idea that the constraints were important.  And prohibitions against stealing, lying, breaking promises, and the complicated conjugal systems that developed were all very important to the ability of the social system to continue to function, and to function much more "smoothly" than would have been the case without fairly rigid constraints.  So the constraints became commands from almighty God.  That both made the constraints supremely valuable, and created severe punishments for not respecting the constraints.

Actually, there were good reasons for the people of that time not to understand the relationship between the moral constraints and the ability of the social system to function.  It was important for the morals to be regarded as absolutes, rather than as contingent upon what they were accomplishing.

As Jerald noted, the world is a radically different place now than it was several thousand, or even a hundred, years ago.  Today some of the commands of almighty god are destructive of the ability of the social system to keep functioning.  If the ancient peoples had had the type of technological power common in today's world, and had no constraints concerning how they use that power, there is no way humans would have survived to this point.  Today people acting in accord with what they take to be god's will are quite willing to use much of that technology to destroy the social systems of other people that they see as deviating from god's will.  If ancient peoples had this tremendous technological power and had no constraints or duties concerning how they make changes to the biosphere, there is no way we would be here now.  Furthermore, the existing technology makes changes in the world in which our societies are located much more rapidly than could happen in the past.  And there is no good reason to think there will not be additional major changes.  We can reasonably expect rapid changes to continue to occur, and that many of those changes will be relevant to the required and or prohibited behaviors making it possible for our social system to function.  Traditional religions have no good way of recognizing the need for these changes.  Since they regard ethical behaviors as due to commands from god, and there is no reason to think god has altered the commands, it seems apparent to them that there should be no changes.  In fact they are likely to regard the problems the society encounters as evidence of god's displeasure for way the ethics are being changed, than to see them as due to the fact that the new world needs new ethics.  Of course, this is not true of all religions.  Most Unitarians feel compelled to change our behavioral constraints.  Any religion that regards humans as having a role in creating values can easily see the needs for ethics to change.  But traditional religions simply have no basis for altering the system.  They have only tradition to rely upon.  And many of those traditions do not work today.

This is a brief summary of the reason ethics today need to be separated from traditional religions.  This is not to say there are not other good reasons for being part of a religious tradition.  But the idea that ethics are due to commands from god, or are related to some other absolute values, is extremely dangerous at this time.  Consequently it is time for humans to begin taking responsibility not just for following a moral code, but for the content of that code.  It is, after all, a human invention, even if we have not regarded it in that way in the past.  But it is by no means an arbitrary invention.  Behavioral constraints of the type traditionally regarded as ethics are essential to the existence of humans, as well as to the existence of many other life forms.  They perform functions upon which our social systems depend.  And the social systems are certainly essential to the existence of humans.  In my opinion it is time for something like Religious Naturalism and/or Unitarianism to take very seriously the task of establishing essential values for today's world, and detailing the type of behavioral constraints to which we must adhere in order to accomplish and sustain those values.  Those same religions can provide new meanings for today's humans in accord with the new values.  None of these values with be merely individual preferences if they are intelligently established.  We establish the values today, but do not accept responsibility for what we are establishing.  We can take responsibility for intentionally establishing the types of values needed in today's world.

Very best Regards,
Eugene Troxell



Alex's comment:  I haven't read Sam Harris' latest take.  But from the Q&A at Amazon, I suspect that Sam might be less up to the point than Eugene's concise, clear, and powerful exposition here, the essence of which is incredibly simple (and convincing): a new age needs new ethics.  This is a must-read for our Humanist Group!

[Alex]

Defintion of Religion

As is well known, there exists no overarching, generally-accepted
definition of religion. Part of the reason is that it can be defined at
various levels of explanation, specifically the intraindividual, the
interindividual, the intragroup and the intergroup level. Also, the
definition can be by experts for use in academic discussions (the
etic point of view) or by believers from their (emic) perspective for
internal use. Ann Taves (2010) advocates paying more attention
to the latter than done usually. I derive my definition as follows
(Reich, 2009, pp. 283-284):

Among more functional definitions, Ninian Smart's (1989, pp.
11-21) seven dimensions of religion stand out:
1. the Practical (rituals and practices, including praying),
2. the Experiential (religious experience and emotions),
3. the Narrative (the story side of religion),
4. the Doctrinal (formal teachings which underpin the narrative/mythic parts of religion),
5. the Ethical (formal and moral laws),
6. the Social (institutional organisation of the religious community), and
7. the Material (buildings, instruments of ritual, sacred places, works of religious art).
 
Concentrating more on individuals, Charles Glock (1962) posited
five dimensions:
1. the Ideological (belief),
2. the Ritualistic (religious practice),
3. the Intellectual (religious knowledge),
4. the Experiential (religious feeling), and
5. the Consequential (effects of being religious).

The empirical verification of Glock's dimensions does
not yield undisputed results. The five dimensions are more evident
when the persons studied belong to a religiously homogeneous,
sophisticated group, rather than to a heterogeneous group of
religious and non-religious individuals (Wulff, 1997, pp.212-219).
Nevertheless, these dimensions are used in the present discussion
as sufficiently representative.
 
Comparing both lists, one sees that Smart's dimension 1 (the
Practical) corresponds to Glock's dimension 2, and 2 (the
Experiential) to 4. Dimension 3 (the Narrative) presumably shares
features with 3, 4 (the Doctrinal) with 1, and hopefully 5 (the Ethical)
with 5.

I gladly provide the full references in case anybody is interested.


K. Helmut Reich

[Alex]

It's enough to make you want to take a statistics course:

Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - BBC Four
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo
 
A statistician sees a bright future for Homo sapiens.
 
Blessings & Peace be with you
Ed

Ed Gibeau to [e-mail]
Dec 20, 2010

[Alex]

I have brought up, in an email to the IRAS list, the issue of HK's censorship of Michelangelo's David:

It is ridiculous to censor nudity of artwork.  It has, unfortunately, happened in Hong Kong.  In an exhibition in Hong Kong a few years ago, the Statue of David by Michelangelo has been labelled as "indecent" by the censorship authority of Hong Kong (a significant proportion of the amateur accessors appointed from the public are conservative Christians).  This has become an international scandal.  


This response might be a joke but actually quite historically incisive:

Those conservative Christians who called Michelangelo's David "indecent" may have been on to something.  They were trying--through a kind of time-warp (or at least a mind-warp)--to kill humanism at its roots.  It was the humanism of the Renaissance that encouraged appreciation of the beauty of the human body, an appreciation that had been shared by the ancient Greeks and Romans.  In this statue we can trace the movement from the other-worldly to the this-worldly.
 
Tim Muench
[e-mail]

[Alex]

Why I am not a Religious Naturalist

Varadaraja V. Raman and friends:

How lucky that a general discussion of Religious Naturalism (RN) began again just as I was drafting a position statement on RN, to share with the list at the right time.

I am not a religious naturalist, as will be plain to anyone who has read the list for a while; but while I am also a theist, I want to be clear that as a non-theist I would also not be a religious naturalist. I respect the RN position and think its “fruits,” in the sense of “By their fruits shall ye know them,” are by and large fine. These include social consciousness, environmental urgency and a more sensitive attitude to problems of suffering than one often finds among forms of nature-based religious liberalism. More to the point for those whose basis for understanding the world rests in science, RN does not replace the "worship" content of theism, the emotional enthusiasm, with anthropomorphizations of nature that often go further than the human projections onto nature of traditional theism. There are no goddesses, spirits or other real or metaphorical personifications of earth and/or borrowings from earlier religions freely adapted to meet the needs of people who encounter nature on weekends. If I were to espouse a nature-based, nontheistic religion I would find RN an attractive and intellectually honest way of doing it, up to a point.

The reason I say "up to a point" is that no matter what, locating the source of spiritual consciousness in nature risks a human projection. And I personally don't want to do it and call it religious. Revering nature is one thing, but revering what I need nature to be seems too much like revering myself. A nicer way of putting it would be to say that we come back inevitably to the human being. This is not bad in and of itself. St. Catherine of Genoa is reported to have said "My real me is God," which is unlikely to have been a statement identifying her individual self with God. Humans appear to have an innate sense that the self is not limited to the personality and that our individual selves stand within a larger context that is related in some way to everything that is. So far, so good for RN; where I believe we part company is that for me the evidence does not have to do with nature, which does not need us at all and is what it is with or without us. It has to do with the nature of the human being. That this is part of nature, I would not argue with, and on that count I could assent to a form of RN if it were limited to an exploration of human consciousness and potential. One could for instance argue that the Buddhist religion is just such a form of RN. As a Western person, however, formed (whether or not I take it on board) by the Christian tradition in which reality is grounded in matter and expressed through matter, I cannot give up the interest in statements about how nature itself essentially is and whether there is a meeting-place between the reality of nature and the reality of human consciousness, beyond projection.

So if I revere something in nature that I believe to be inherently there, that has particular values of good associated with it irrespective of whether I exist or not (or any human being paying attention to it exists or not), I feel that I must either say this is a lovely convention—the projection, as is my individual right, of my individual or species-based emotions and needs onto physical phenomena that do not recognize my existence at all, let alone the projection—or else that I am making some kind of faith statement. This is emphatically not to say “Boy howdy—it means God must exist!” Indeed I am somewhat suspicious of arguments from beauty, when it comes to the existence or goodness or power of God; the very beauty that nurtures one person may have been deadly for another earlier that day; and one can be sure that one’s experience of it coexists with terrible human suffering somewhere not far away. In the simplest sense, to me it appears that if one says nature has sacred depths, and it is not a convention for expressing the need of humans to find meaning even though only we make meaning, one is making a statement that is based in more than that which one can observe. This is not theistic in and of itself, but it seems to me to open a door to theism, at least of a “skinny,” bottom-line kind (the idea that the concept of God refers, as one finds for instance in some science-friendly British theologians such as Arthur Peacocke, Daphne Hampson, and Sir Alister Hardy), in a way that RN seems to claim it closes instead. So if it does open this door, there seems to me to be a self-contradiction in presenting RN as something dramatically new under the sun. The way in which it may be dramatically new may be less in its conclusions (that there is ultimate goodness and value, that all the positive benefits of religion can be transferred to this ultimate goodness without ever leaving this world) than in the apparatus of language surrounding these conclusions, and the ways in which that language is encouraging us to see.

So either there is an inherent value to all that is, irrespective of whether I choose to see that way or not, or there isn’t, and whatever I may imagine to be inherently true about nature in a value sense is a projection. The latter choice doesn’t mean one has to live in a spiritual desert. The values we have as humans are for the most part appropriate to our life as humans. And there is spiritual value in understanding nature as entirely autonomous from us in a philosophical sense except to the extent that we are animals and thus part of nature. But if there is an inherent, non-relative value in nature of a kind we can respond to emotionally and morally without projection, and especially if it mirrors anything resembling human values, then to me it must be there regardless of our freedom to construct it in different ways; and if it is there autonomously it must at the least function as a membrane between what is of us and what is not of us. It must point the way to an essential otherness that we are yet in touch with in a real sense.

Not everyone will come to this conclusion, and it is by no means inevitable any more than the conclusion that values such as what human beings recognize as "the good" inhere in objective reality. But if we come to this conclusion, we must be able to take it as evidence pointing each person in directions according to their own lights and conscience. I respect the direction RNs have taken. The same evidence points me in a different direction, and while I respect those who say “But this is just RN,” I would extend the respect to disagreeing in what I hope is a reasoned way. RN or not RN seems to me to be a matter of choice as to how one looks at it and that choice is as ever a matter of relationship, and relationships have consequences in the human dimension. I’d really like to say “moral,” but find that when I say moral, people get scared. So let's use the word "human," and accept that when one speaks of human beings there are inevitably dimensions of morality. I must refer to the morality of a certain kind of projection into nature to say “This is not how I choose to understand perhaps the same thing, or a related thing.” The reason is that I consider it a very grave responsibility to find values in nature. The reasons will I hope be obvious, on many levels, and so I consider it an important matter of individual conscience to decide if or how one will ascribe value to objective reality. One is in a real sense legislating for others when one does so. Thus I choose to be less interested in "How much do we need to believe, and can we let go of the rest" and more interested in "What can we know?" It doesn't bother me personally to realize there are things we might not be able to know, but if we accept a relational understanding of the human self and make bold to extend it to the human relationship to reality, that in which we stand, the potential exists to know certain things about reality in a way partaking of both objectivity and relation, which to me is a good working definition of transcendence. So if someone makes the personal decision to call that "just RN--why do without RN," I'd say "why not," but I'd want to explain why I do not myself see a need to ban transcendence from the discussion and also why I personally want to take on that responsibility if I'm going to speak about what I find in nature in the first place--especially as a person who does not have to draw water from a well, hoe fields, or kill my own meat.

It’s riskier to say “This cannot then be all there is,” in scientific terms, and riskier in some ways in moral ones, since it always carries the danger of responding to real life challenges (especially those imposed by our present relationship to nature) with pie in the sky by and by. I'm not interested in pie in the sky for the purposes of the science/religion discussion because the evidence has yet to be brought back by any normal human being. The evidence for theism that I find is in the relational self. It is also the relational self that raises the theodicy issue, which is dear to me and which is in a sense how I began my own journey into science/religion, but which carries its own teasing solution: "Honeysuckle, the answer to that is that you ask it. You're programmed to care and to mind. You're human."

That the human self is relational requires no God. We have evolved in this way. But the evidence of our experiences tells us again and again that we relate to more than ourselves in a way that does not appear to be a projection. That appearance could still be wrong. The moral burden on choosing to interpret with theism is fairly heavy. So can be the interpretation from positivistic atheism of a kind that does not acknowledge sacred depths, and I appreciate that RN has tried to move beyond this. But if it includes the word religious, any and all religious experience interprets and if it is understood to do as much, it factors the interpretation in. This may be achieved with responsible self-consciousness or not. An intellectually honest RN would say that we, as part of nature, are wired to respond to nature in this way and we might as well run with it. It might add, if we celebrate the parts of ourselves that respond positively to nature we might be motivated to protect it and thus spare ourselves. In this, it takes responsibility for why one chooses the way of seeing that one does. It does not mean that if the details of meaning that another person finds are different, it is automatically a challenge to nature being enough.

But coming finally back to the question "is nature enough," for me it’s simply asking the wrong question. Of course nature has to be enough regarding anything we can know for sure empirically. Judeo-Christianity did make “nature enough,” by doing away officially with magic. An unfortunate consequence was that for a long time nature was seen as fallen and thus unimportant. Again, let us not forget the conditions under which people lived--they wanted to get away from nature, and anyone who wishes to empathize with that can remember the last time they had a good case of flu. Since nature has been inescapable for most human beings (oh, to be a Jewish woman in the Middle Ages and be guaranteed a regular bath! I might have converted for that), we need to take it seriously that humans have always needed to find sacred depths in nature or go mad, and that previous understandings, based in faulty conceptions of nature, nevertheless attempted to do this. So to me, "is nature enough" puts the cart before the horse, and so I would probably not be RN as a non-theist. For me we are really talking of human beings, what they need out of nature, and why.

Sincerely,
Tanya Avakian
[e-mail]
14 July 2011

[Alex]

Why I am a Religious Naturalist

All this wonderful talk about Religious Naturalism (RN) has inspired me to try once again to explain important features of my idea of RN.

In my mind Nature is not static.  I like to try to imagine the impossible scenario of a large group of scientists observing the Big Bang at a time frame of about a million years of Big Bang time to one year of human time.  Even in a million years there would have been some change in the energy of the Big Bang, but not much for a year's worth of observation.

Then I like to imagine one of the scientists saying to another:  "You know, eventually that stuff will understand what it is doing and become capable of appreciating what it is."  The imaginary scenario has the scientist apparently figuring this out simply from observation of the hydrogen the energy had become by that time.

I posit this ridiculous scenario to call attention to how far the energy of the Big Bang has so far evolved.  Today this energy, which we call nature, contains millions of characteristics and manners of behaving that not only were not part of the original, they would have been unimaginable to any thinking being at that time with no awareness of what has happened since the Big Bang.

Nature, in my way of thinking, has all the capabilities of the God of any Theist, provided that God is devoid of any anthropomorphic characteristics.  Saying God is devoid of anthropomorphic characteristics is not in any sense limiting what God/Nature can be.  The limitations here are upon the necessary characteristics for the proper application of the anthropomorphic qualities.  The anthropomorphic qualities can make sense only when they are applied to limited beings.  If Nature/God has any limits, we are in no position to understand what they may be.

I am not in any way belittling Science and what it has discovered about Nature/God.  What science has so far discovered I regard as quite accurate.  That is how we have learned how much Nature has changed since the Big Bang.  The manner in which I seem to differ from many scientists is that I do not think nature has stopped evolving.  I don't mean evolving as we think of evolution occurring on this planet.  I mean evolution in terms what that primordial hydrogen has become.  I see no reason whatsoever to think the inner capabilities of that extraordinarily creative hydrogen, or energy, have been exhausted.  I believe that a billion years from now whatever intelligent beings there may be will see Nature as exhibiting thousands of qualities that are beyond the capacity of our present imaginations.  These new qualities will have manners of behaving that we would regard as impossible at this time, just as "understanding what it is doing" would have been beyond the capacities of those imaginary (and impossible) beings at the time of the Big Bang.

From my point of view, dualism in the traditional sense makes no sense.  There are millions/billions of different qualities in this world as it has so far evolved.  It has no need of some additional "supernatural" being.  We think in terms of a supernatural being simply because we are beings with self concepts.  So we think there must be some other being out there that acts basically the same way we do, but with infinite powers.  That great superpowerful human type being must have created all this!  Of course, if a separate god created it we would need to posit some other creator to make sense of how God came into being!

This way of regarding Nature makes Nature "alive" for lack of a better word.  It is a magnificently creative being surrounded in mystery.  How it came into being is as mysterious as asking how God came into being.  How it came to have the qualities and capabilities it has are as mysterious as wondering why God is the way God is.

We know it has the capacity to become intelligent self-conscious beings.  We are small features of what it has become.  We are separate from it only in our minds.

With the emergence of each new quality the creative whole acquires the necessary conditions for the existence of radically different qualities and entities than it had before.  Just as having the qualities of life give it the capacity to manifest vast new capabilities, having the qualities of understanding, planning, appreciating bring about the capacity to reveal ever more fantastic manifestations of itself.  Those new beings, in turn, supply more capacities to become even more.

I think that if we can completely regard ourselves as integral features of this creative whole, we can begin to appreciate the special capacities that we bring to it.  With our emergence this magnificently creative being acquires capacities for completely new ways of manifesting itself.  We have our "faults" or "problems."  There is a very real possibility that this particular manifestation (humans) will ultimately become an "experiment" that did not work.  But whether beings with human characteristics continue to be part of the constant creativity much longer, we know that this fantastic creative energy has the power to create/become beings with these types of characteristics.  This, in itself, shows that it has the capabilities that we could imagine in a God.

That, in my mind, makes it worthy of worship.  The worshipping becomes in large part worshipping our true selves.  The worshipping is a type of appreciation of the incredibly creative reality that we are part of.  It is also a way of making us much more clearly aware of the types of beings we truly are.  We provide qualities to the magnificent creative whole enabling it to proceed into entirely new ways of being.  We can use our special capacities for planning, for appreciation, along with other human capabilities to bring about new qualities that are actually chosen because of their special beauty and other wondrous qualities.

I believe that if we devised special procedures (religious practices) for reminding ourselves of what we are we would acquire a purpose to guide our lives and see value in the creativity we add to God/Nature.  We no longer need to imagine an unearthly heaven with no challenges.  We need to appreciate what we are and what we are parts of.

Eugene Troxell
[e-mail]
Department of Philosophy 
San Diego State University
15 July 2011

[Alex]

A recent posting on IRASnet (Aug. 2) by Stan refers to my Religious Naturalism Today.  In Chapter 5 I treat "Current Issues in Religious Naturalism."  On pp. 194-208 I discuss the issue as to whether the object of the religious attitude is the universe as a whole (e.g. Spinoza) or whether only a part of the universe (such as its creative process, e.g. Wieman).  This may seem like an esoteric question but it has important practical implications.  When the universe as a whole is the object of religious devotion it is usually responded to in its aspect of power.  When a part of  the universe is the object of religious devotion it is usually responded to in its aspect of goodness.  Is awe or aspiration the main ingredient in religion?  How we orient ourselves to the Big Picture helps shape how we act.  (Or, as I sometimes say, like God, like worshiper.)  Devotion to power is different from devotion to goodness.
 
This is often inaccurately called the tension between "is" (power) and "ought" (goodness).  It is inaccurate because both viewpoints affirm that something is true about the universe and also that something ought to be done if this is recognized.  ...
 
Jerome (“Jerry”) Stone to IRASNET
3 August 2011

[Alex]

Naturalistic Moral Realism
Ash Bowie

I look forward to what will happen with getting morality from Naturalism.

That project is already well underway. Not only can we get morality from naturalism, I argue it is the most reasonable and effective model available.

You can check out Tom's site for a starter:
http://www.naturalism.org/morality.htm

Then read Richard Carrier's Sense and Goodness without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism (2005), which offers a robust philosophical presentation. As a starter for him, check out this essay: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/ought.html

For more heady stuff, you can look at Moral Naturalism:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism-moral/

There are also many excellent defenses of moral realism, including:
David Owen Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (1989)

A quick glance will show many more academic works available for your fireside reading pleasure.

J. Ash Bowie to IRASNET <[e-mail]>
August 29, 2011

[Alex]

Perspectives on Naturalism
http://www.iras.org/perspectives.html

In the following anthology, ten thinkers from the IRAS family present their perspectives on Naturalism, some on its relationship to Religious Naturalism, which is an important dimension of IRAS.

[Alex]

I've reviewed Murry's book here. Overall very good, showing how an ethical, practical humanism combined with a more or less impersonal naturalism can ground an authentic religious dimension in life that's consistent with science. I offer some corrections to his naturalism regarding free will and postmodernism; he's told me in correspondence he's since changed his mind about free will.

Tom Clark [e-mail] to Iras <[e-mail]>

[Alex]

Dear IRAS friends,
 
The website http://zygonjournal.org makes freely available abstracts of all published papers. Well, not always abstracts, as these were not there in the earliest issues. For the earliest articles (that had no abstracts) the introductory paragraphs are included. This wonderful overview is a cultural history of religion and science and a treasure trove of interesting reflections and arguments.
 
The overview is available under "Articles and Abstracts" in the left hand banner, or directly at http://zygonjournal.org/issues-index.html  .
 
The work has just been completed by Dave Glover, one of the two staff members that serve our editorial office in Chicago.
 
Feel free to direct others to this resource.

Yours,
Wim
Willem B. Drees, editor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science

[Alex]

Being spiritual and being religious, as I see it.

Our experience of life has two aspects: the physical, which involves eating and drinking, experiencing pain and pleasure, health and disease; and the non-physical which includes thoughts and emotions, wonderment and analysis.

Among the questions that arise in the latter context are these: Why is there existence at all, whether of brute matter of the measuring mind, rather than nothing? Why is there beauty and joy? What is to become of these experiencing bits of consciousnesses after they cease to function in any observable way?
These questions may be/have been answered in a variety of ways over the ages.

One reaction to them is that they constitute unsolvable Mysteries which can at best be felt, never fully answered. Those who deeply feel and contemplate on  Mystery with a humility that recognizes their own intellectual limitations in comprehending it are the spiritual people. This spiritual framework can affect in positive ways one’s views on life and values, and on how one interacts with others and with the world around.

On the other hand, many elements of the grand Mystery have been answered by various seers, sages, prophets, founders of religions, and scientists. Those answers as well as the associated worldviews and values constitute the religions of the human family, counting scientism as another religion. Those who adopt those answers in the conduct of their lives are the religious peoples of the world.

It is possible for religious people to accept some aspects of the spiritual worldview and vice versa. However, the important difference between the religious and the spiritual lies in this: Religious people are affiliated to cultural, historical, and traditional frameworks with values and visions that are culture-dependent, whereas spiritual people generally tend to transcend cultural and traditional boundaries.

V. V. Raman
October 9, 2011

[Alex]

I would say that from the perspective of atheists and naturalists, the spiritualist’s experience is subjective like a dream or a delusion, not having any objective reality. However, for the practitioner, it is more like the experience of music which, however subjective it may be, has an very real external source.

The important difference between science and spirituality in terms of subjectivity, is that science is a species-wise collective subjective interpretation of sensorially perceived reality, whereas spirituality refers to an individual-based experience of aspects of the world that, at best may be imperceptible dimensions of reality (not unlike dark energy), and at worst a pure fabrication of an erratic cerebral system. I don’t know which.

V. V. Raman
October 9, 2011

[Alex]

from Jerald Robertson

[Alex]

I know that there are a lot of definitions of faith and that everyone has their own particular take. Please note, I don't think my own definition is authoritative, although I do think it is useful, relevant, and accurate. I would like to offer again a summary of my definition, not to achieve a consensus definition (although that would be nice), but to smooth conversation---I want my conversation parters to understand what I'm meaning by the word.

Ash's Definition of Faith:

Faith is a belief in a proposition that has all three of the following features:
* High confidence (the believer is very certain the proposition is true; further, it is often bifurcated: the claim is either completely true or completely false. A faith belief is the opposite of a contingent belief);
* Strong commitment (the believer is emotionally attached to the proposition being true, such that the idea of it not being true is discomfiting);
* Inadequate or unreliable justification in proportion to the high level of confidence and commitment (while the belief might have partial support by reliable data or logic, it is not enough to warrant strong, committed belief. In this sense, the belief requires a "leap away from reason," such that the act of faith is its own justification).

I have argued that faith is primarily an emotional state rather than a cognitive one in that the "gratuitous light" of Aquinas describes a feeling of rightness. Now then, many belief states are accompanied by this feeling of rightness, and so by itself does not indicate faith. However, in the case of faith, the feeling of rightness is not compelled by reasonable evidence, but by a literal feeling in the body. Many Christians call this feeling the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit, believing that the feeling is correlated with a being or force external to the self. Other people might have had a vision, perhaps of their deceased relatives, that was accompanied by powerful feelings and this kind of event can compel a new faith belief. This feeling of rightness can also be an antipodal response to another emotion---often one of anxiety, fear, or pain---which serves as a coping mechanism against intolerable states of mind. Finally, the feeling of rightness can be an extension of social resonance, a common experience involving a sense of immersion into a group, in this case usually a congregation. Please note, the feeling of rightness does not have to be intense...it can and probably often is subtle and even below the threshold of awareness.

In the context of religion, when I use the word faith I am not referring to meanings such as allegiance, assurance, credit, or fealty, all of which are components of a functioning society. My definition above excludes the word from describing other common forms of belief, such as heuristic certainty or reasonable expectations. Finally, there are many beliefs that are not well justified, even to the point of irrationality or absurdity, but do not meet the threshold for faith if there is also not an associated high level of confidence and commitment.

Regards,
Ash
Nov 10, 2011

[Alex]

RELIGION AS ONE SEES IT
http://iras.org/religion.html