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Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative
Previously a forgotten option in religious thinking, religious naturalism is coming back. It seeks to explore and encourage religious ways of responding to the world on a completely naturalistic basis without a supreme being or ground of being. In this book, Jerome A. Stone traces its history and analyzes some of the issues dividing religious naturalists. He includes analysis of nearly fifty distinguished philosophers, theologians, scientists, and figures in art and literature, both living and dead. They range from Ursula Goodenough, Gordon Kaufman, William Dean, Thomas Berry, and Gary Snyder to Jan Christiaan Smuts, William Bernhardt, Gregory Bateson, and Sharon Welch.
273 pages, Paperback
First published August 7, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 8, 2021
A little too technical. It got bogged down in "who's who" and "who said what" that it didn't really discuss much of today at all.
March 30, 2022
Review of Jerome A. Stone: Religious Naturalism Today - The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative (2008). The author thinks of “religious naturalism” as the cultivation of a religious attitude toward a reality void of transcendental spirit or any supernatural power. There is no dimension of reality which is other than the natural world (p. 2). The divine is naturalistically conceived, and this allows us to celebrate the wonders of life and aspire to nobler living (p. 227).
Admittedly, the author has done an admirable job of summarizing the thoughts of a huge number of thinkers associated with such a worldly and “minimal” form of religiosity. But it seems to me that these are mostly second rate thinkers, possibly with the exception of George Santayana and John Dewey. They tend to reason in terms of “holism”, or the divine as the “concrete, interconnected totality” of the world as a whole (p. 130). But these are just empty words.
The arguments presented are surprisingly feeble. The conclusion is that the concept of a religious naturalism is untenable. What’s worse, it would strengthen the dichotomy of the natural versus the unnatural, since only the former is divine. In fact, there is no great difference between the two, and nature has no preference of the one over the other.
Elevating nature to divine status makes people think that we must follow the “natural” course and choose the “natural” alternatives. But there is no moral guidance to be found in nature. Sometimes we must go along with nature and sometimes we must defeat nature. Sometimes we must choose the natural solution and sometimes the unnatural, like we have always done, ever since we started to cook food over fire. Nature doesn’t care!
Divinization of nature leads to the overestimation of the signals of nature, and adherence to diffuse concepts such as “natural values” and sustainable living. What are natural values? What is sustainable living? Is it a “natural value” to endorse ecological farming without chemical fertilisers? But it requires much more arable area, because it is less productive. So more natural land areas are destroyed. “Divine nature” is a myth. It foments naive and superficial ways of thought.
Religious naturalism is an implausible concept. I don’t know how one can conceive of religion without a concept of divine agency. However, the book is a conscientious work and a good summation of ideas in this particular field. So I give it three stars.
Admittedly, the author has done an admirable job of summarizing the thoughts of a huge number of thinkers associated with such a worldly and “minimal” form of religiosity. But it seems to me that these are mostly second rate thinkers, possibly with the exception of George Santayana and John Dewey. They tend to reason in terms of “holism”, or the divine as the “concrete, interconnected totality” of the world as a whole (p. 130). But these are just empty words.
The arguments presented are surprisingly feeble. The conclusion is that the concept of a religious naturalism is untenable. What’s worse, it would strengthen the dichotomy of the natural versus the unnatural, since only the former is divine. In fact, there is no great difference between the two, and nature has no preference of the one over the other.
Elevating nature to divine status makes people think that we must follow the “natural” course and choose the “natural” alternatives. But there is no moral guidance to be found in nature. Sometimes we must go along with nature and sometimes we must defeat nature. Sometimes we must choose the natural solution and sometimes the unnatural, like we have always done, ever since we started to cook food over fire. Nature doesn’t care!
Divinization of nature leads to the overestimation of the signals of nature, and adherence to diffuse concepts such as “natural values” and sustainable living. What are natural values? What is sustainable living? Is it a “natural value” to endorse ecological farming without chemical fertilisers? But it requires much more arable area, because it is less productive. So more natural land areas are destroyed. “Divine nature” is a myth. It foments naive and superficial ways of thought.
Religious naturalism is an implausible concept. I don’t know how one can conceive of religion without a concept of divine agency. However, the book is a conscientious work and a good summation of ideas in this particular field. So I give it three stars.
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