by Thomas Schenk The poem below, Thanksgiving, is by a young woman Annie (Kat) Reece, who died recently from the damage her long-time eating disorder had caused to her organs. She was my daughter’s best friend all through her childhood and a frequent guest in our house. She was intelligent, creative, and loving, but in the end, helpless against that mysterious monster behind anorexia and bulimia. The poem below, though, is not about any of that. It was a poem of... Read more
June 21, 2018 by Jeff Worthy Imagine stopping in the middle of the path you are traversing, but unlike Robert Frost who came to a crossroads and had the choice of taking the “road less traveled by,” your road ahead just continues straight to the horizon in the same bland, unbroken path. You haven’t stopped because you have lost your way or have to make a choice; you have stopped because you are not sure if you wish to continue walking the... Read more
by Jeff Worthy “What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then?” –Valery Legasov, “Chernobyl” We have all had moments in our lives when we exclaimed “How could I not... Read more
by SNS Guest (This article is written by guest author Crysta Bliss) How long has it been since we humans lost touch with each other and the natural world? Our culture seems a pool of distractions. We spend a lot of time communicating with each other, but how often do we really listen and respond rather than just talk? Perhaps if we could just pause, come up for air, we might hear more, understand more. Instead of understanding each other,... Read more
by Eric Steinhart Some people are mind-body dualists. They say their bodies somehow contain an immaterial or non-physical mind. Perhaps they call it their soul or spirit. If minds (or souls or spirits) are thought of as immaterial or non-physical, then they are also non-natural. Maybe they are supernatural. But if they are non-natural, then naturalists aren’t going to allow that they exist. If naturalists agree on anything, they agree that mind-body dualism is false. It’s an error. More than an... Read more
by Brock Haussamen Ferns are all leaf, all the time—no fanfare for a celebrated flower, no seduction of the insect. At the tips of sprouts, curled fiddleheads unwind while leaflets widen behind the lengthening tip, like a wake spreading behind a boat. My store-bought Boston fern, tended for years with no expertise, is a fountain of green, bearing dazzling fans of leaves that arch up, out, and over. Before ferns, all plants lived entirely in the water, where they did not... Read more
by Thomas Schenk Sunrise in the Grand Staircase Escalante There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, to me did seem Apparell’d in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. These lines from William Wordsworth’s poem “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” have echoed around in my head in recent years. When I was younger, wild nature often seemed to me “apparell’d in celestial light.” Or perhaps, I might better describe what... Read more
Thomas Schenk The success of artificial intelligence, though limited, suggests that intelligence is a rather mechanical operation. To the extent that we humans have prided ourselves, or felt ourselves set apart by our intelligence, this should be a bit of a blow. It is apparent, however, that the goal of making machines intelligent — e.g. developing computer programs that can beat us at chess or Jeopardy — is a distinctively human one. Computers have yet to set their own goals.... Read more
by Thomas Schenk The question of whether or not humans have free will is one of those venerable old questions that never gets resolved. Here, I am not attempting to come to such a resolution, only offering a brief exploration of the phenomenon of making a choice. I am writing this piece after lunch. Before lunch I made a choice to eat out, and then I made a choice of which restaurant I would eat at. I’ll use this simple... Read more
by Gregory Gronbacher One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the twenty-first century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns — about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering — in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. – Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation Starting with a Question Is spiritual naturalism a... Read more
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