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
by Thomas Schenk The Eve of Destruction I was talking with some college students the other day. I had made the comment that I was retired, and one of the students expressed doubt that he would ever be able to retire. I asked why, and he said he didn’t think the world would even be here when he turned 65. When I again asked why, he gave a short list of the world’s problems, particularly noting global warming. Shortly after... Read more
by Thomas Schenk This article is my 100th for SNS. Taken together, these articles present a fairly complete picture of my ideas about spiritual naturalism (as well as many other things.) In the past, I’ve tried to put these ideas into a unified form, like a book. I’ve never made much progress. My inability to do this used to bother me, but I’ve come to realize that the fragmented form in which I have presented my ideas on SNS is actually... Read more
by Daniel Shkolnik Image by Alice Popkorn Almost every Friday during college I attended Shabbat dinner at the campus Hillel. And every Friday night Rabbi James Ponet would climb up on a chair, hold a wine glass over his head (or a whole bottle) and yell out across the room with the earnestness of a divine messenger: “Stop!” Conversations trailed off and forks stopped moving. He would then deliver a short teaching on different themes such as the Torah portion... Read more
by Gregory Gronbacher As a spiritual naturalist, I take the ethical view that reducing suffering in the world is a moral good. When the opportunity arises, and we can realistically and practically lessen another person’s suffering, then we should do so. Such a notion is widespread and shared across many spiritual and religious traditions. And I’d argue that this principle extends to animals, as well. Whenever realistically possible, we should reduce the suffering of animals when we can. Such an... Read more
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