Human beings are on an evolutionary arc, progressing individually and as a species toward a ‘self-actualized’ fulfillment of our unique nature. With all the criticisms I have already directed against the personal ego – that conceited blowhard who craves validation, praise, glory, and immortality – it might come as a surprise for me to acknowledge it as the legitimateContinue reading “The Human Path”
Category Archives: Post-theism/New Humanism
The End of Religion
In my efforts to define what I mean by ‘post-theism’ (as distinct from other uses of the term you might find out there), it’s been critically important not to confuse it with straight-up atheism on one side, or on the other with clever spins on the ‘post-‘ idea that contemporary Christian theism is attaching toContinue reading “The End of Religion”
Journey Back to Reality
Just as soon as I make a case for the necessity of religion, it’s time to insist on our need to transcend it. If my atheist friends squirm at my insistence that we all have a religion – a system of beliefs, attitudes, values and practices that links the separate ego back to reality – my friends whoContinue reading “Journey Back to Reality”
Does Your Religion Work?
The question is not whether religion will one day be only a memory of our brutal and superstitious past as a species, or else singularly responsible for our future catastrophic self-destruction. A lot of people feel that we would be better off without it. In their perspective religion is unnecessary baggage crowding the mental spaceContinue reading “Does Your Religion Work?”
Unfinished Business
I guess I write a lot about what I feel is most urgently needing our attention these days. Current events are interesting because they’re in the news and on our minds, but popular engagement with the news of the day tends to skim the surface of what’s really going on. It’s not nuclear proliferation, terroristContinue reading “Unfinished Business”
Matter, Life, Spirit
One of the challenges we face as we advance deeper into a secular and global reality is how to redefine the terms ‘spirit’, ‘spiritual’, and ‘spirituality’ so they can have relevance to life today. While they carried metaphorical meaning in a mythopoetic reality, and were converted into a supernatural and metaphysical realm above or apart fromContinue reading “Matter, Life, Spirit”
Mental Bypass in Religion
How did something with its origins in a mystical intuition of reality’s essential oneness become such a violent force of division in the world? If religion began as a system of symbols, rites, and sacred stories with the purpose of linking the business of daily life back to the grounding mystery of being, where didContinue reading “Mental Bypass in Religion”
Reality Shift
A somewhat naive understanding of human evolution and individual development assumes that with each advancing stage, former ones are simply outgrown and left behind. We know, however, that this is not how nature evolves. Earlier and more primitive structures are not abandoned, and neither do they merely lie inert beneath the exciting progress higher up. InsteadContinue reading “Reality Shift”
The Examined Life
It was Socrates who said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” He is a key figure in the history of Western consciousness and its growing fascination with the self. At that time, Socrates and others were searching out the individual’s place in the comic and moral orders; only later did the obsession collapse into theContinue reading “The Examined Life”
Easter Without Miracles
Jesus of Nazareth went into the tomb, and Christ the Lord came out. Jesus was crucified by a conspiracy of Ego, Orthodoxy, and Empire. His message was about the ‘good news’ (gospel) of human liberation and the invitation to life in community. The opposition he confronted on the political, religious, and personal levels was not interestedContinue reading “Easter Without Miracles”
Tracts of Revolution 