Naturalistic Paganism
Paul Kurtz has died
Paul Kurtz (1925-2012), the great Humanist and founder of many organizations including the Center for Inquiry, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, has passed away. He was the author of the Humanist Manifesto 2000, and long-time editor of The Humanist and Free Inquiry.
While the kind of Humanism Kurtz represents is primarily Secular Humanism, rather than Religious or Spiritual Humanism, the man made great strides for Humanists of all stripes.
Dr. Kurtz gave an interview shortly before he passed away, and had this to say:
EV: Why do atheists need to focus on positive moral values, and not simply “atheism” and separation of church and state?
PK: This agenda is too limited. It marginalizes other issues of great importance. Atheists need to be committed to a moral compass, given the fact that totalitarian atheists (and secularists) have sometimes used terror to achieve their ends; it’s important that the means be ethical. In short, it is vital that we move beyond atheism. We need to develop, articulate, and defend ethical and moral alternatives, drawing upon science and humanistic wisdom, that speak specifically to human questions and concerns. We need to appeal to both the head and the heart. My basic point has remained the same: We need to defend and explicate a positive agenda of humanism — relevant to all. It needs to be constructive, prescriptive, and ethical. I have enunciated this view in virtually all of my writings. We cannot merely offer to the world negative critiques of religion. We have to be FOR something as well. We have to speak directly to the human condition.
As that quote demonstrates, Kurtz was a great proponent of moving beyond criticism of religion and embracing issues of social justice and humanitarian concern. While that is to be expected from Humanism, it has not always been put into practice as much as it should be, perhaps. Kurtz’ statement of Neo-Humanist principles and values lists sixteen recommendations:
Neo-Humanists:
- aspire to be more inclusive by appealing to both non-religious and religious humanists and to religious believers who share common goals;
- are skeptical of traditional theism;
- are best defined by what they are for, not what they are against;
- wish to use critical thinking, evidence, and reason to evaluate claims to knowledge;
- apply similar considerations to ethics and values;
- are committed to a key set of values: happiness, creative actualization, reason in harmony with emotion, quality, and excellence;
- emphasize moral growth (particularly for children), empathy, and responsibility;
- advocate the right to privacy;
- support the democratic way of life, tolerance, and fairness;
- recognize the importance of personal morality, good will, and a positive attitude toward life;
- accept responsibility for the well-being of society, guaranteeing various rights, including those of women, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities; and supporting education, health care, gainful employment, and other social benefits;
- support a green economy;
- advocate population restraint, environmental protection, and the protection of other species;
- recognize the need for Neo-Humanists to engage actively in politics;
- take progressive positions on the economy; and
- hold that humanity needs to move beyond ego-centric individualism and chauvinistic nationalism to develop transnational planetary institutions to cope with global problems—such efforts include a strengthened World Court, an eventual World Parliament, and a Planetary Environmental Monitoring Agency that would set standards for controlling global warming and ecology.
Honoring our ancestors, by NaturalPantheist
Veneration of ancestors: “It places us within a story and gives our lives meaning and direction.”
Two and a half years ago my world was rocked to its core when a friend was tragically killed in a car accident aged only 23. He was a very close friend. Coming to terms with his loss was very difficult and within six months I had lost my Christian faith.
As I started to look into alternative spiritualities and practices I came across Naturalistic Pantheism, Paganism and Druidry in particular. These philosophies and religions emphasise the importance of honouring our ancestors, those we have loved and lost, and this really appealed to me.
Last Samhain, I made an altar and on it I placed pictures of my friend and lit a candle to remember him. It was a good experience and I believe it helped me to accept things a lot more.
Woden’s Wandering Witch writes about the importance of honouring our ancestors too and it’s inspired me to do a post on it. Although I have talked about this before, I feel I had some new things to say.
Veneration
If we look at most of the ancient religions of the world, and particularly those that honour the earth, they all have a common practice of Ancestor Veneration. Yes, a lot of it is rooted in a belief that their ancestors somehow live on through an immortal soul, but not in every case. In my opinion, venerating ancestors is a way in which humanity has, for many years, remembered those that it has loved and lost and enabled people to come to terms with the reality of death. Honouring our ancestors, whether they be family members, friends or important people who have influenced our lives, is a practice that I think can be of great benefit to us as Naturalistic Pantheists.
Why veneration?
How? Firstly, doing something to honour our ancestors helps us keep the memory of them alive. While we don’t necessarily forget about the people we have lost, as time progresses and we move on with our lives, we often do not think of them for great periods of time and we lose a connection to them that we once had. By regularly honouring them, we ensure they are remembered…and if we teach the next generation to do the same, then we ensure that we are remembered after our own deaths.
Secondly, it teaches us important life lessons – respect and gratefulness. Honouring our ancestors is a way of acknowledging their influence and impact on our lives and showing gratitude for that fact (yep that includes those you didn’t like too), even though they are no longer around to receive that gratitude. It teaches us respect – for the dead, for the elderly and for other people. We have to take time to focus on others rather than ourselves and to give them a place of honour, and that is a great life lesson to learn.
Thirdly, it grounds us. It reminds us of where we came from and the forces and influences upon our lives. It gives us identity and a sense of connection to the past. It places us within a story and gives our lives meaning and direction.
Veneration of whom?
So now we have seen some of the benefits, lets consider who exactly we should be honouring? The simple answer is – anyone we want to. Generally I would suggest that honouring family members and friends who have died is a good place to start. You could add in family members further back in your past that you didn’t ever know. You could add in important people who lived in your area or influenced your culture but who you feel a connection to. Finally, you could add anyone who has influenced and inspired you in life.
Veneration how?
Yes, I hear you say, I agree with all that, but get specific, what exactly do I need to do?
I have two suggestions here – firstly, do some research and create a family tree as best you can so you can see who your ancestors were and perhaps learn a few interesting family stories about them.
Secondly, make an altar, just as millions of people have done throughout the hundreds of thousands of years of human history. Put some pictures of lost relatives on it, and maybe a copy of your family tree. Decorate the altar with a few candles, objects that remind you of people and anything else you want to. You could either have this altar up once a year – on Samhain, perhaps on significant dates, or all the time.
Create a ceremony to carry out at the altar. It could be something simple like lighting a candle for a minute or something more elaborate including drinking from a remembrance cup and spending time meditating on memories you have of them or holding a minute’s silence. Do whatever you feel helps you.
Just one more thing, I always include a few fossils on my altar. Why? As I said in a previous post on the great story of cosmic evolution, we are the subject of millions of years of evolution going right back to a single common ancestor. All those in our blood line, right back to that first life form that appeared on the earth almost 4 billion years ago, are our ancestors and remembering and honouring them helps to keep that fact alive for us.
This article first appeared at Naturalistic Pantheist Musings.
The author
NaturalPantheist: A former Christian, I now see myself as a Naturalistic Pantheist with an interest in Druidry.
My blog is at naturalpantheist.wordpress.com
Upcoming work
This Sunday
From the 21st until Samhain (Nov. 6th), we’ve got a number of articles on death and ancestors coming up. To kick off, NaturalPantheist asks: How can naturalists revere their ancestors?
Honouring our ancestors, by NaturalPantheist
Appearing Sunday, October 21st, 2012
Thing on Thursday
This week, Thing on Thursday asks:
How do you enter trance or meditation in ritual?
Next Sunday
How do naturalists relate to death?
Last hum of the cicada: Death in naturalism, by B. T. Newberg
Appearing Sunday, October 28th, 2012
Recent Work
Three Transcendents, by B. T. Newberg
Part 1: Naturalistic Transcendence
My journey in a nutshell, by Velody Dark
A practical way to work your chakras, by Thomas Geddes
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How do you give thanks in ritual?
2012 Thing on Thursday #4
Last week’s poll asked about the most important elements of ritual liturgy, and the most popular element was “giving thanks.” This week, let’s dig deeper into this. How do you go about this in ritual?
Diversity will no doubt be especially great for this question, and the poll can’t hope to cover all possible answers, so please share your ideas and methods of thanksgiving in the comments.
The poll options use the term “benefactor” to refer to any perceived source of benefit. Depending on your beliefs, this might include nature, evolution, ancestors, gods and goddesses, cosmic creativity, one’s inner intuition, society, family, specific people, etc. Interpret as you will, and feel free to elaborate in the comments.
By the way, last year Jonathan Blake contributed an interesting opinion on this very subject.
Please choose as many as strongly appeal to you.
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
About Thing on Thursday
This post is part of a series of councils on matters vital to the future. The name represents both the generic term for, you know, a thingie, as well as the Old Norse term for a council of elders: a Thing.Each week from the Autumn Equinox until the Winter Solstice, Thing on Thursday explores a new controversy. Participation is open to all – the more minds that come together, the better. Those who have been vocal in the comments are as welcome as those quiet-but-devoted readers who have yet to venture a word. We value all constructive opinions.
There are only a few rules:
- be constructive – this is a council, so treat it as such
- be respectful – no rants or flames
Comments will be taken into consideration as we determine the new direction of Humanistic Paganism.
So please make your voice heard in the comments!
Three Transcendents, part 4: Mind
Reaching inward, we discover our participation in something greater than what we normally call ourselves.
– by B. T. Newberg
This post concludes the series on transcendence in naturalism. Part 1 introduced naturalistic transcendence, part 2 covered nature as a source of transcendence, and part 3 explored community. Now we conclude with mind.
In our recent poll on symbols of transcendence, nature proved the most popular, with cosmos a close second. One that didn’t rate highly was mind. Perhaps it should come as no surprise. On the face of it, the very idea of it seems absurd: how could you possibly find something greater than yourself in, well… yourself?
But that’s exactly the misconception I seek to challenge: mind is not ourselves, or at least not what we routinely think of as such.
We are not our minds
What most of us, most of the time, think of as ourselves is more or less our conscious ego, especially the part where we feel like we’re thinking, willing, imagining, feeling, remembering, deliberating, and so on. It’s our most immediate experience, and it’s what we may fear ceasing to exist after death. However, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total process of an individual’s mind.
The unconscious is far more vast. To give a taste: cognitive psychologist Timothy D. Wilson estimates in Strangers to Ourselves that our minds assimilate some 11,000,000 pieces of information per second from our sense organs, but only about 40 can be processed consciously. The rest, according to Wilson, are handled by the unconscious.
There may even be parts of the mental process external to the individual body. The field of embodied cognition studies the mind in its holistic interaction with body and environment. Clark and Chalmers even go so far as to ask whether there is any difference between storing information in memory or in a notebook. Such mental prostheses, they argue, free up mental processing space by offloading some of it into the environment. This is a controversial claim, but one worth a moment’s pondering.
By mind I mean the whole mind of the individual, conscious and unconscious. You could also say psyche, a term more popular in Jungian psychology. It is the root of psychology, and originally meant “soul.” Psyche is one of many words that have been thoroughly naturalized, just as “god” and “spirit” may one day come to be.
Deep and vast
So, the other parts of the mind do a lot, but do they do anything interesting, or just take care of the tedious stuff?
Consider this: Where do your words come from when you speak? You may have a vague plan of the idea you want to convey, but do you consciously decide the words or even the nuances of the ideas? Or do you discover these things in the process of speaking?
Ancient poets like Homer and Hesiod claimed to receive their lines from a muse. Perhaps, in some sense, they were right. The “muse” lies in the unconscious. In a similar vein, Carl Jung said we are not the authors of our thoughts; they are handed to us. I tend to agree.
Jung also felt that messages from the unconscious await us in our dreams, and such content somehow “compensates” or balances the conscious mind. I’m not sure how to test that claim, so I remain skeptical. It may be a case of seeking pattern where there is none. But there is one thing that experience has proven to me time and again: my unconscious mind can do certain things that “I” can’t.
A power beyond “me”
When I sit down at my Isis altar with an emotional knot that I’ve been working on for days without resolution, and that knot looses within minutes of chanting and talking to Isis, it’s hard to argue with that.
Somehow, an unconscious process is facilitated by the images and actions involved in devotion. Perhaps the image of a supernormal mother figure like Isis and the bodily actions of rhythmic chanting, gift offering, and intimate confession are mental prostheses in the manner proposed by Clark and Chalmers. Ritual devotion may not be unique in its ability to facilitate this, but it appears to be one way to do it, and an effective one in my experience.
I’m sure other people’s experiences with ritual may be quite different. Regardless, this example demonstrates, like a pebble cast into a well, just how far down the unconscious mind goes. It is not “me”; it is radically “other.” It is greater in both degree and kind. To sound its depths is indeed to discover something greater than oneself.
So, although mind did not rate highly on our poll, I’d like to suggest reconsidering it, not only because it is perhaps the most well-established among naturalists (via Jungian Paganism), but also because it helps us to discover transcendence “closer than your own jugular.”
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