The working definition of religious naturalism found on our home page was developed on-line in 2003 by members of a religious-naturalism e-list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/religious-naturalism). It is a modification of the Campion statement of self-understanding generated by the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (www.iras.org). Several of the terms and concepts included in this statement are described in more detail below.
Naturalism
“Naturalism” is most commonly used to describe a philosophical lineage that starts from the framework of materialism—the universe is constructed from matter and energy—and articulates philosophical propositions within that framework. Given that our scientific understanding of the material world has undergone a vast expansion since the naturalism project was launched, and since philosophical responses are framed in cultural contexts, much of the thought that would be included in a historical treatise on naturalism would not resonate well with present-day understandings (this is true as well, of course, of other philosophical traditions). To release the term “naturalism” from its historical constraints is not to release it from the fundamental impulse of the naturalism project, however, which is to perceive and construct meaning systems based on what is known of the natural world.
What is known of the natural world has generated a recent and profound transition, moving from facts-about-physics (quanta) or facts-about-biology (genetics) to a sweeping integrated story—the Epic of Evolution—that deeply informs us about who we are (symbol-manipulating primates, social, mortal, creative, members of ecosystems) and how we got to be here (the Big Bang, nucleosynthesis, biological evolution, brain evolution, emergence). This shift has in turn enlarged the scope of the naturalism project: The challenge is not only to construct meaning systems based on a knowledge of, say, quantum uncertainty or genetic specification, but also to construct meaning systems that emerge from the new meta-narrative itself.
Religious
Loyal Rue—author of Amythia, By the Grace of Guile, Everybody's Story, and Religion is Not about God (in press)—defines a religious orientation as that which offers personal wholeness and social coherence, and suggests that this is accomplished in traditional religions via meta-narratives that indicate how-things-are and which-things-matter. The adjective religious can be said to encompass three spheres of human experience.
A religious naturalist is anchored in and dwells within her understandings of the natural world. He finds his primary religious orientation within that narrative /perspective and develops mindful religious responses to it—interpretive, spiritual, and moral. These responses are then transfigured into emergent valuations that are called religious orientations and beliefs. Importantly, these valuations and beliefs may deeply overlap with those espoused by existing ethical and religious traditions: The substitution of one meta-narrative for another does not necessarily alter the human impulse toward common spiritual and moral sensibilities; rather, it influences how we get there.
Religious naturalists holding shared orientations and beliefs may go on to associate as more focused communities, albeit this possibility has not yet become widespread. These communities may, for example, develop art and ceremony that honor and celebrate their understandings of the sacred, and may commit to engagements in social and environmental activism. Such communities may coalesce within existing faith traditions, or they may come to stand alone.
Examples include the World Pantheist Movement, the Teilhard Association, and the two Interest Groups at the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS). One of these interest groups is called Religious Naturalism, the other Nature and God.
Benton Stidd (August 2006):
Religious naturalists understand naturalism to be an abandonment of supernaturalism. As a consequence the term religious refers to and indicates respect for nature as revealed by science. It is the scientific view of the world that serves as the primary source of information about human nature and the physical environment that supports life as we know it. The human sensory apparatus coupled with the enterprise we call science provides the best epistemological basis for what can be known. As such it is fallible and subject to modification as knowledge proceeds. Nevertheless, it has the advantage of self-correction.
As we enter the 21st century the time has come to attempt a naturalization of the religious impulses of our ancestors. One of the motivations of this enterprise is the realization that the planet we occupy is deteriorating as a result of human activity. If the planet is to be sustained the religious impulses of our ancestors need to be rethought and refocused on what humans can do to save themselves and the planet that makes existence possible. It would be a shame to destroy what nature has wrought because our ancestors believed that an entity called God brought humans into existence along with a set of rules by which they should live. This view, centered in the Abrahamic tradition, has resulted in nearly continuous warfare since its inception. An ontology that accepts nature as all there is and an epistemology that recognizes the human brain as the only hope of salvation renders preservation of the planet, and our species in particular, a wholly human responsibility. Religious Naturalists accept the challenge.
This page last updated 17 August 2006.