Naturalizing God?

A Critical Evaluation of Religious Naturalism

Mikael Leidenhag

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781438484426
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

Can nature be considered a religious object? Religious naturalists answer yes, as they seek to carve out a middle path between supernaturalism and atheistic secularism. In this book, Mikael Leidenhag critically examines the religious proposals, philosophical commitments, and ecological ambitions of key religious naturalists, including Willem B. Drees, Charley D. Hardwick, Donald Crosby, Ursula Goodenough, Stuart Kauffman, Gordon Kaufman, Karl Peters, and Loyal Rue. Leidenhag argues that contemporary religious naturalism faces several problems, both with regard to its understanding of naturalism and the ways in which it seeks to uphold a religious conception of reality. He evaluates possible routes for moving forward, considering naturalistic and theistic proposals. He also analyzes the philosophical thesis of panpsychism, the idea that mind is a pervasive feature of the universe and reaches down to the fundamental levels of reality. The author concludes that panpsychism offers the most promising framework against which to understand the metaphysics and eco-ethical ambitions of religious naturalism.

1

Explicating Religious Naturalism

This chapter seeks to explicate the nature of religious naturalism. What is it that makes this perspective both naturalistic and religious? How should we understand the motivation behind this worldview? Where do religious naturalists place science on the epistemological ladder? Should we consider religious naturalism to be a realistic or antirealistic perspective in the science-religion dialogue? And what is the relationship between this emerging worldview and traditional religions? These are some of the central questions that will be addressed in this chapter.

Introducing Religious Naturalism

Religious naturalism is a perspective in which the natural world is viewed as being metaphysically ultimate but at the same time religiously adequate or at least highly relevant. Meaning, transcendence, grace, the Sacred, and what is Good can and should be located in the natural order, or some aspect of the physical domain.1 Religious naturalists believe that certain aspects of reality are religiously significant and can be appreciated within a naturalistic framework.2 As such, religious naturalism can in many ways be construed as a middle path in the science-religion dialogue. On one side, religious naturalists seek to avoid every form of supernaturalism that postulates an ontologically distinct being that is in some way separate from us and the universe. On the other side, they resist any type of atheism that depicts the universe and the whole of reality as being meaningless or metaphysically insignificant.3 They also reject those forms of militant atheism that have been put forward in the public sphere by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Jerome Stone therefore considers religious naturalism to be a third alternative to the dichotomy between supernaturalistic theism and full-blown secular humanism.4

For the majority of religious naturalists, the desire to locate purpose, transcendence, and meaning in nature is connected to an ecological awareness and ambition to formulate an ecologically sensitive religious alternative. The ecological crisis is currently being manifested in climate change, an increasing starvation rate, pollution, a reduced ozone layer, infectious diseases, the energy crisis, depletion of the earth’s fresh water, and so on. This crisis is, according to many, “one of the most urgent moral and political and religious challenges of our time, regardless of one’s political leanings or religious affiliation or social location.”5 Many religious naturalists argue that we must, if we want to respond effectively to the ecological crisis, propose new images of “God,” “Spirit,” “the Sacred,” and “Transcendence,” which can justify an eco-ethical view of nature as possessing absolute value. Some proponents of religious naturalism have likened their position to a form of “ecotheology.”6

Broadly speaking, the issues outlined above characterize what is known as religious naturalism. In the remainder of this chapter I will provide an overview of the central ideas that define religious naturalism as a position in the science-religion dialogue.

Historical Predecessors

Jerome A. Stone, a forerunner in the scholarly debate on religious naturalism, notes that this worldview is experiencing a revival.7 He seeks to contextualize religious interpretations of naturalism, highlight some of the significant differences between religious naturalists, and further bring out several important factors that can explain how and why this perspective is making a return.

Stone notes that Baruch Spinoza’s (1632–1677) pantheistic view of God bears some resemblance to how God is immanently conceived by several religious naturalists. Spinoza construed the relationship between God and nature by postulating two aspects of nature: “First, there is the active, productive aspect of the universe—God and his attributes, from which all else follows. This is what Spinoza, employing the same terms he used in the Short Treatise, calls Natura naturans, ‘naturing Nature.’ Strictly speaking, this is identical with God. The other aspect of the universe is that which is produced and sustained by the active aspect, Natura naturata, ‘natured Nature.’ ”8 However, I would add that unlike religious naturalists, Spinoza did not seek to naturalize God. God, in the pantheistic vision, was a real aspect of nature, and the workings of nature “followed immediately from God’s natures.”9 Spinoza was likely not a reductive pantheist in the sense of completely removing God’s transcendence. Moreover, Spinoza, unlike religious naturalists, argued that nature is not sacred and so cannot be a religious object. On Spinoza’s view, “There is nothing holy or sacred about Nature, and it is certainly not the object of a religious experience. Instead, one should strive to understand God or Nature, with the kind of adequate or clear and distinct intellectual knowledge that reveals Nature’s most important truths and shows how everything depends essentially and existentially on higher natural causes.”10 This is an important difference between Spinoza and some contemporary religious naturalists, as Spinoza strongly maintained that religious awe before nature/God would give rise to superstition and submission to religious authorities. There are some similarities between Spinoza’s pantheism and religious naturalism, but there are also important differences that set them apart.

Stone identifies three significant figures that have influenced contemporary religious naturalism. These are George Santayana (1863–1952), Henry Nelson Wieman (1884–1975), and John Dewey (1859–1952).11 Santayana, like contemporary religious naturalists, emphasizes the practical importance of religious beliefs in everyday life. Yet the Spanish-born philosopher and poet ultimately found supernatural and dualistic beliefs to be ontologically false. Instead of viewing religion as a collection of ontological assertions about ultimate reality, Santayana adopted a functionalist stance with regard to religion. As Willard E. Arnett remarks, for Santayana religion has a poetic function. Arnett writes, “Whatever ideas, ideals, or figments may be expressed in religion—and poetry—are thoroughly human and must be understood in terms of their genesis and function, even if they cannot be accepted as indicative of the nature of the universe outside man’s experience.”12 As religion can no longer be expressed in traditional and otherworldly language, Santayana proposes this functionalist and at the same time immanent conception of religion. Hence, religious ideas and concepts must refer to this world and the challenges facing humanity. This shift in emphasis fits rather well with many of the theoretical guiding points of religious naturalism.

A comparable view can be found in the writings of Wieman (who is also discussed in chapter 5). Wieman proposes the notion of God as the creativity of nature and the source of human good. In a similar vein to Santayana, Wieman suggests that we must ignore “the transcendental affirmation in the Jewish Christian tradition of a creative god who not only works in history but resides beyond history.”13 Wieman suggests instead that “the only creative God we recognize is the creative event itself.”14 This focus on the creativity of the natural order is central to the proposals of Karl Peters, Gordon Kaufman, Stuart Kauffman, and to some extent Donald Crosby.

The functionalism expressed by Santayana, and to a degree by Wieman, can also be found in the pragmatist thinker John Dewey. Indeed, as Willem Drees contends, religious naturalism and pragmatism overlap with regard to interests and aims. They are both concerned with life here and now and are characterized not by adherence to a supreme authority but by “self-reliance and taking responsibility for one’s thinking.”15 Yet self-reliance does not, according to Drees, mean that our achievements can be thought of as isolated from history and the hard work of earlier generations. Rather it invites “gratitude to earlier generations and the whole of nature, the sources of our existence,” a “gratitude that is honoured not by receptivity alone, but by moving on, by further explorations.”16

The pragmatic religious naturalism of John Dewey, as primarily expressed in A Common Faith, suggests that “the religious” could be separated from actual religions and religious institutions. As Sami Pihlström explains, for Dewey “the religious aspects of experience can be appreciated without metaphysical commitments to anything supernatural.”17 Hence, by separating the “the religious” from the ontological, Dewey, much like contemporary religious naturalists, raises the issue of realism with regard to religious utterances. Pihlström explains further the importance of the distinction between “the religious” and “religions.” He writes, “Dewey is about to tell us what is ‘genuinely religious’—apparently in contrast to what is pseudo-religious or superstitious.”18

For Dewey it is not only possible to separate religious experiences from established religious institutions; he suggests more strongly that it is our duty to separate the religious impulse from traditional religions, as such religions hinder or “prevent genuine religious experiences from coming to consciousness.”19 Dewey, in striving to separate the religious from religions, is thus creating space for a religious way of being in a naturalistic world. Dewey’s proposal should be considered an important forerunner to the kind(s) of religious naturalism that will be discussed and analyzed.

Demarcating Religious Naturalism from Related Approaches

There are several contemporary approaches in the science-religion dialogue, and in debates regarding ecology, that share many important similarities with religious naturalism. Here I will highlight some of the points of convergence, but also some of the significant differences between the nature and aims of religious naturalism and some other current approaches.

Given the nature-centeredness of many religious naturalists, I would like to point out the potential similarities between this religiously orientated naturalism and nature religions. The term “nature religion” designates the overall idea that nature is sacred and worthy of reverent care. This idea is central “to the identities of a number of groups whose participants consider themselves to be engaged in what they also sometimes call nature religion.”20 These religions and spiritualities include paganism, indigenous traditions, new religious movements, and New Age spirituality. The revival of nature religions and pagan traditions is linked to an increase in environmental awareness: “indeed, those who consider themselves to be pagan have been deeply involved in radical environmentalism, including participation in Earth First! (from 1980) and the Earth Liberation Front (from the early 1990s).”21 Similar to many religious naturalists, people involved in nature religions or pagan/neopagan spiritualities suggest that an eco-ethical system, or practical involvement in the environmentalist movement, flows from having nature as a focus of religious orientation.

However, contrary to religious naturalists, the beliefs of people adhering to nature religions refer often to gods, supernatural beings, and animist ideas, whereby animals and plants have their own spirit and perhaps are constitutive parts of the Divine Spirit. In this way, religious naturalism and nature religions subscribe to radically different ontologies despite both being characterized by a commitment to increasing ecological awareness through religious practices. It should also be pointed out that the religious naturalists in this book, unlike thinkers involved in the variety of neopagan movements, have as their primary aim to develop a religious alternative consistent with science, and in particular a naturalistic understanding of modern science. Religious naturalism occupies more clearly a position in the science-religion dialogue, with its emphasis on harmonizing a religious outlook on life with the major theories of science.

There have been multiple attempts in the dialogue between science and religion to naturalistically conceive, reconstruct, and reinterpret religious ontologies and discourse. Some of these naturalistic approaches to religious worldviews express similar views to that of religious naturalism, as they are committed to reconceptualizing religion in order to avoid potential conflicts with the natural sciences. Drees makes a helpful distinction between “naturalistic theism” and “theistic naturalism,” which will be explored below. Before doing so, however, let me briefly comment on what is usually meant by “theism” in these discussions.

Generally speaking, the concept of “theism” intends the view that there is some Supreme Being, mind, or reality that exists beyond the physical universe. This reality is often referred to as “God” and is depicted as the originator of everything that is. However, God did not just create the universe but is also actively sustaining it.22 In this way, the telos of the natural world, including humanity, is intimately linked to the intentions of God and God’s purposes. In the science-religion dialogue we find those naturalists who maintain that such a theistic view is compatible with naturalism, and those who reject such a compatibility-thesis.

Naturalistic theists are those theists committed to naturalism within the world but who maintain that physical reality has its origin in a transcend...