false 14 28 23 true 5862474 read 4 true 645767 currently-reading 1 true 645766 to-read http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/38642520 to: When God is Gone, Everything is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist (Hardcover) by Chet Raymo
Noted writer, naturalist, and Professor Emeritus of Physics at Stonehill College, Raymo is first and foremost a man of science. But unlike Richard Dawkins and those of his New Atheist ilk, Raymo has a soft spot for religion, specifically in the sensuous rituals of his own Catholic upbringing.

This book is a brief, humble manifesto on what it means to be a religious naturalist. Raymo does not believe in miracles or the supernatural. He believes, rather, that we should stop looking for God in exceptions to the laws of nature and start noticing how amazing and mysterious the natural world really is. He cites studies indicating that the human desire to seek to identify with our source is hard-wired into our genes. It is not that the religious impulse should, or even could be eradicated as some would wish. But the archaic cultural institutions that seek to deny the efficacy of scientific inquiry or set themselves up as the “one true faith”? Those obviously have to go. We’ve simply outgrown them.

The Latin root of the word religion is ligare, “to fasten or bind” + re-, “again.” The refastening that needs to happen is between the two largely non-overlapping spheres of our reality: an objective, phenomenological world and subjective experience. Being a religious naturalist means dispatching with the idea that these two apparently separate spheres of experience imply a Descartian mind-body dualism. There is no ghost in the machine. Self-awareness is an emergent property of the machine itself. The implications are electrifying, mysterious, and, in Raymo’s opinion, worthy of awe and reverence. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/25830576 The Aleph and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) by Jorge Luis Borges
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/25830507 to: Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God 3 (paper) by Joseph Campbell
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19343898 to: The Secret Book of Revelation: The Apocalypse of St. John the Divine (Hardcover) by Gilles Quispel
bookshelves: currently-reading
This is my favorite book in my entire library. Quispel's classic exegesis of the Revelation of St. John is foundational for the study of the Western esoteric tradition and the ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS THING BLOW MY MIND. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19345140 to: Siddhartha (Mass Market Paperback) by Hermann Hesse
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19345194 to: The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel by Hermann Hesse
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19345183 to: Narcissus and Goldmund (Paperback) by Hermann Hesse
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19345167 to: Steppenwolf (Paperback) by Hermann Hesse
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19345097 to: On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art (Paperback) by James Elkins
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