Giving Thanks – Part 2

February 2, 2023 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Eric Steinhart 4. Giving Thanks to Evolution Evolution finely tunes living things to exchange gifts with each other. It likewise finely tunes them to give thanks to each other. This fine tuning involves no intelligent foresight. Nevertheless, it is arguable that evolution designs things. It designs organs, organisms, and ecosystems. Design need not involve intelligent foresight. Design proceeds by blind variation and selective retention. It can be done in a mind or it can be done by a mindless computer. Natural selection is... Read more

Virtue?

February 2, 2023 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Thomas Schenk Detail of Raphael’s The School of Athens. A few weeks ago, Jeff Worthy posted an article here titled “Hall of Virtue” (1). His article got me thinking about virtue and below I’ve jotted some of these thoughts. My Catholic upbringing had made the word “virtue” somewhat distasteful to me when I was younger. I got interested in the topic again, however, when I read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Virtue, in the Catholic catechism I was raised on, is about... Read more

The Hall of Virtue

January 26, 2023 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Jeff Worthy “Happy Birthday! Now blow out your candle and make a wish.” I had just turned 54. There was just one candle on the cake, as 54 of them would constitute something of a fire hazard. I started to contemplate what I might wish for, and here is what took shape inside my head… As I reflect on our modern culture, it seems that we have a number of establishments created to honor, and economically capitalize on, our human... Read more

Simulated Worlds and Natural Deities

January 26, 2023 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Eric Steinhart The Gazebo People have been making simulated worlds for a long time. With the advent of the computer in the 1970s, we started making simulated worlds on computers. The earliest digital worlds were text-based, but graphics soon followed. Primitive video games built worlds you could explore and interact with. The game SimCity, which appeared in 1989, let you design and build your own simulated city, with simulated humans. As these games evolved, they started running on sophisticated... Read more

Giving Thanks, Part 1

January 12, 2023 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Eric Steinhart 1. Giving Thanks among Humans People often give each other gifts. If somebody gives you a gift, then they usually intend for you to have the gift. Their action is purposive. It is directed to a goal, which is your possession of the gift. Thus gifting contrasts with unintended transfers. You aren’t gifting your car to the thief who steals it. You don’t gift things by throwing them away or by losing them. If you win the lottery, your... Read more

Mindful Journaling

January 12, 2023 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Leigh Anderson Photo by Joyful on Unsplash I have been journaling on and off for over thirty years. There are times when I’m in the habit of not only journaling daily but writing multiple pages at a time. There are also months that I go without writing anything, when its hard to write even a paragraph during the day. Much of my journaling has been a record of events that happened. Occasionally I will throw in some feelings and... Read more

What We Accept As “Normal”

January 6, 2023 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by DT Strain You walk into a coffee shop and approach the counter. The barista carries a large lizard on his shoulder. The lizard looks at you and asks what you’d like. You order a coffee and pay. Next you are seated with your coffee and notice it is a latte. You curse the lizard for his carelessness. Then you wake up. Recalling the dream it is amusing that you simply accepted the presence of the talking lizard as though it... Read more

Of Gold and Jewels

January 6, 2023 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by Thomas Schenk I’ve long been interested in alchemy. According to several sources, alchemy was practiced in some form from at least a few hundred BCE until around the time of Isaac Newton, who had more than a passing interest in it. It was practiced in ancient Egypt, China, India, Arabia, and Europe. The thing that people are most likely to know about the subject is that alchemists tried to turn “base” metals, such as lead, into gold. But just about... Read more

Stoicism’s God: The God of Nature

December 31, 2022 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by SNS Guest (Today’s article is by guest writer Kai Whiting. For brief bio, see below.) The ancient Stoics would not have recognised the modern distinction between religious thought and scientific inquiry. This is because the Stoic God, as the very essence of Nature, was envisioned and arrived at through a naturalistic and rational framework that, apart from forming the basis of Stoic virtue ethics, provided practitioners with the rationale to study the natural world and the wider cosmos, including... Read more

The Case for Religious Fictionalism: or How to Lead a Religious Life Without Faith or Belief

December 31, 2022 By Spiritual Naturalist Society

by SNS Guest (Article is by guest writer Rob Wheeler. See bio below.) All religion is fiction I begin from the simple but not uncontentious premise that all religion is fiction. I want to make the strong claim that no religion contains any historical or metaphysical foundation. Religions are fictions all the way down. I don’t intend to argue the case for treating religion as fiction, rather, my task is to examine why we might regard religions as continuing to have... Read more