by SNS Guest (This article is by guest writer John Stokdijk. For a short bio, see below.) There is no consensus on free will among great thinkers who are far more intelligent and much more knowledgeable on the matter than I am. I could spend years trying to understand what Daniel Dennett, John Searle, Julian Biggini, Alfred Mele, Susan Blackmore, Christian List and numerous others have to say about free will. Therefore, on an intellectual level, I DO NOT KNOW if... Read more
June 15, 2023 by Gregory Gronbacher We’re considering this image, created by Danial Strain, for our new logo. NOTE: This week’s SNS article differs slightly from what you’re used to reading. Due to a scheduling conflict, the slot for this week’s article opened up, and I asked if I could use it to give everyone an overview of where SNS stands as of June 2023. So, here we go. Spiritual Naturalist Society at a Glance About ten years ago, Daniel Strain and others launched the... Read more
by Thomas Schenk I’m surprised that humans didn’t discover something like Darwinian evolution from observing human behavior. Metaphors comparing human behavior with the behavior of other animals date back to early times. Our sexuality is goatish, we eat like pigs, we lock horns in battle, we strive to be top dog, to provide a few examples. Such metaphors show that humans have long been aware that we share traits with other animals. It shouldn’t have been too hard, at least for... Read more
by James Jarrett Created by Jay Galvin “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.” — Jesus of Nazareth I have been thinking about rituals lately. Amusingly, the English word “spiritual” includes the word “ritual”. How do you feel about ritual? For me, it depends on the purpose of my participation and the purpose of the ritual itself. For this article, I am using ritual as a pattern of thought, word, and/or action repeated on some regular basis.... Read more
by Eric Steinhart Painting by Elmer Wachtel, Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum We humans often love other humans. We love our family members and our friends. And we often have more abstract kinds of love, like love for our communities and our countries. We might have love for non-human animals like cats and dogs. Humans also often love things that aren’t even alive, like food or power or money. We love activities like running or painting. And we can even... Read more
by Jeff Worthy Last week at my local Toastmasters International meeting, a member delivered a speech entitled “Antidote for A.I.” He opened the speech with the phrase “I think therefore I am” from Descartes. He went on to explain how we as a race of people have entered the final phase of our civilization, due in no small part to the invasive nature of artificial intelligence. His “antidote” consisted of finding ways for us to remember that we are human and... Read more
by Jeff Worthy (This is the second installment of a series of articles examining the spiritual and intellectual influences of the 1982 classic science fiction film, “Blade Runner.” Readers may wish to read the first installment, “Like Tears In Rain: The Intellectual and Spiritual Influence of Blade Runner—Part 1”—also available here at the SNS website– to put the article below into proper context) October’s article in this series introduced the reader to the world of “Blade Runner,” and this month... Read more
by Thomas Schenk The Greek word “cosmos” means order and a cosmology is an attempt to account for the order or lawfulness of the world, with a particular emphasis on its origin. Virtually all of the cultures that have been studied by anthropologists have had a cosmology of some kind. These cosmologies are presented in the form of myths, and we might also say that it is characteristic of myths that they present elements of a cosmology. These myths range from... Read more
by Eric Steinhart Here at the Spiritual Naturalist Society, we do more than just publish weekly internet articles. We’ve got a website that has many resources of interest to people who embrace many different kinds of spiritual naturalism. There are, after all, many ways for naturalists to be spiritual! And, if you’re wondering what spiritual naturalism is, our website has a great introduction to spiritual naturalism. To put it simply, spiritual naturalism is a kind of naturalism. Naturalists tend to believe in reason... Read more
by Leigh Anderson How Spiritual Journaling Can Help You Navigate Life’s Struggles We have to constantly remind ourselves that we are not the sum of our failures, but the sum of the moments we get up and try again. – Rebecca Solnit Through spiritual journaling, you can work through difficulties and uncover insights about yourself that you never knew existed. In this final article on journaling, inspired by Amber Lea Starfire’s “Journaling for Dummies“, I look at journaling for spirituality as a... Read more
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