Religious Naturalism
Taking Nature to HeartVoices of Religious Naturalism
The writers highlighted in these Religious Naturalist Voices postings may or may not self-identify as religious naturalists. They’re included because their writings speak in various ways to the religious naturalist orientation as I understand it. A beautiful complementary compendium, called The Earth Speaks, was published in 1983 by Steve Van Matre and Bill Weiler.
Ursula Goodenough
Maria Popova
Maria Popova sends out a weekly blog called The Marginalian. Her mission is to couple our science-based understandings with the arts in all sorts of vibrant ways. She has written an outstanding book called Figuring from which most of the quotes below derive, and has...
V. V. Raman
VV, as he is known, just celebrated his 90th birthday in fine fettle. A native of Calcutta and trained in theoretical physics in France, he held the wonderful title of Professor of Physics and Humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology until his retirement,...
Chet Raymo
Chet Raymo, a retired Professor of Physics at Stonehill College, is a mystic, journalist and writer, notably of the wonderfully titled When God is Gone, Everything Is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist. Some lucid quotes: The dark night was the first...
Loyal Rue
Philosopher Loyal Rue is regarded by many of us as a key figure in the development of the religious naturalist orientation. In his first book, Amythia, he lifted up the tragic absence of a common planetary Mythos and suggested that our understandings of Nature could...
Carl Sagan
The joyous and essential Carl Sagan, like Rachel Carson, has become a household name, largely because of his splendid 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, the most widely watched series in the history of public television, seen by at least 500 million...
Brian Swimme
Brian Swimme trained as an astrophysicist and then joined up with Mary Evelyn Tucker, John Grim, and others at the Riverdale Center for Religious Research , founded by Thomas Berry, to explore the spiritual and moral implications of Everybody’s Story. His 1984 book,...
Lewis Thomas
Lewis Thomas joins the small but might panoply of distinguished scientists who have stepped out to tell the rest of us about what’s being discovered and to offer heart-felt reflections on these understandings. His premier book, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology...
Andreas Weber
Andreas Weber, an at-the-bench neuroscientist turned writer, has authored three books: The Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling, and the Metamorphosis of Science, Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology, and Enlivenment: Toward a Poetics for the Anthropocene. Andreas...
Carol White
Carol White is Professor of Religious Studies at Bucknell University, and a member of the RNA Board of Advisors. We recently each gave talks at a conference on religious naturalism and I was blown away by her presentation. She’s sent me her powerpoint file, and while...
Wesley Wildman
Wesley Wildman is a Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics at the Boston University School of Theology, maintaining deep ties to his native Australia.Wesley is a pre-eminent philosopher of the religious naturalist orientation, a member of the RNA Board of...
VOICES IN TRADITIONAL AND INDIGENOUS RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS
VOICES IN TRADITIONAL AND INDIGENOUS RELIGIOUS TRADITIONSFoundational Nature-grounded understandings of the religious naturalist orientation are to be found in all indigenous and traditional Asian and Western religions. A key website along this axis is called Yale...