For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age--the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity--point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope. This eloquent volume reconciles the modern scientific understanding of reality with our timeless spiritual yearnings for reverence (...) and continuity. Looking at topics such as evolution, emotions, sexuality, and death, Goodenough writes with rich, uncluttered detail about the workings of nature in general and of living creatures in particular. Her luminous clarity makes it possible for even non-scientists to appreciate that the origins of life and the universe are no less meaningful because of our increasingly scientific understanding of them. At the end of each chapter, Goodenough's spiritual reflections respond to the complexity of nature with vibrant emotional intensity and a sense of reverent wonder. A beautifully written celebration of molecular biology with meditations on the spiritual and religious meaning that can be found at the heart of science, this volume makes an important contribution to the ongoing dialog between science and religion. This book will engage anyone who was ever mesmerized--or terrified--by the mysteries of existence. (shrink)

For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age--the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity-- point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope. This eloquent volume reconciles the modern scientific understanding of reality with our timeless spiritual yearnings for (...) reverence and continuity. Looking at topics such as evolution, emotions, sexuality, and death, Goodenough writes with rich, uncluttered detail about the workings of nature in general and of living creatures in particular. Her luminous clarity makes it possible for even non-scientists to appreciate that the origins of life and the universe are no less meaningful because of our increasingly scientific understanding of them. At the end of each chapter, Goodenough's spiritual reflections respond to the complexity of nature with vibrant emotional intensity and a sense of reverent wonder. A beautifully written celebration of molecular biology with meditations on the spiritual and religious meaning that can be found at the heart of science, this volume makes an important contribution to the ongoing dialog between science and religion. This book will engage anyone who was ever mesmerized--or terrified--by the mysteries of existence. (shrink)

Zygon®, Volume 56, Issue 4, Page 960-970, December 2021.

This paper aims to establish that Sorites reasoning, a fundamental part of Parfit's work, is more destructive that he intends. I establish the form that Parfit's arguments take and then substitute premises whose acceptability to Parfit I show. The new argument demonstrates an eliminativism or immaterialism concerning persons which Parfit must find repugnant.

Social animals are provisioned with pro-social orientations that transcend self-interest. Morality, as used here, describes human versions of such orientations. We explore the evolutionary antecedents of morality in the context of emergentism, giving considerable attention to the biological traits that undergird emergent human forms of mind. We suggest that our moral frames of mind emerge from our primate pro-social capacities, transfigured and valenced by our symbolic languages, cultures, and religions.

Transcendence is explored from two perspectives: the traditional concept wherein the origination of the sacred is “out there,” and the alternate concept wherein the sacred originates “here.” Each is evaluated from the perspectives of aesthetics and hierarchy. Both forms of transcendence are viewed as essential to the full religious life.

How does one talk about moral thought and moral action as a religious naturalist? We explore this question by considering two human capacities: the capacity for mindfulness, and the capacity for virtue. We suggest that mindfulness is deeply enhanced by an understanding of the scientific worldview and that the four cardinal virtues—courage, fairmindedness, humaneness, and reverence—are rendered coherent by mindful reflection. We focus on the concept of mindful reverence and propose that the mindful reverence elicited by the evolutionary narrative is (...) at the heart of religious naturalism. Religious education, we suggest, entails the cultivation of mindful virtue, in ourselves and in our children. (shrink)

Religiopoiesis describes the crafting of religion, a core activity of humankind. Each religion is grounded in its myth, and each myth includes a cosmology of origins and destiny. The scientific worldview coheres as such a myth and calls for a religiopoietic response. The difficulties, opportunities, and imperatives inherent in this call are explored, particularly as they impact the working scientist.

Cerebral Visual Impairment is an umbrella term which includes abnormalities in visual acuity, or contrast sensitivity or colour; ocular motility; visual field and the conscious and unconscious filtering or processing of visual input. Children with CVI have specific needs and problems relating to their development from infancy to adulthood which can impact on their wellbeing. Recent research indicates the complexities of living with CVI but there remains limited information of the full impact of CVI on families’ everyday lives. The qualitative (...) interviews reported here explored families’ experiences to discover the impact of CVI on all aspects of everyday life. Parents and children were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews, either face to face, by phone or video call between January 2018 and February 2019. Topics covered everyday practicalities of living with CVI, focusing on challenges and what worked well at school and home. Interviews were audio-recorded and subject to thematic analysis to look for patterns across the data. Twenty families took part in interviews, with eight children/young people within those families contributing interviews of their own. Four themes were developed from the interviews: Assessment and understanding implications of CVI, Education, Family life, Psychological wellbeing and quality of life. The interviews provide valuable insights into the impact of living with CVI and highlight the need for more awareness of the condition among professionals in both health and education settings. (shrink)

The dynamics of seeking causation and the dynamics of subjectivity are presented and then brought together in a consideration of the three core components of the religious quest: the search for and experience of ultimate explanations, the interiority of religious experience (“spirituality”), and the empathic experience of religious fellowship.

. Creativity is a concept far more often associated with art than with science. The creative dimension of scientific inquiry and practice is described and compared with its artistic counterpart; similarities and differences are analyzed.

The importance of scientific conflicts for theology and philosophy is difficult to judge. In many disputes of significance, prominent scientists can be found on both sides. Profound philosophical and religious implications are sometimes said to be implied by the new theory as well. This article examines the dispute over natural selection between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould as a contemporary instance of such a conflict. While both claim that profoundphilosophical conclusions flow from their own alternative account of evolution, I (...) suggest that the implication is not as great as is claimed and that the alleged implications have as much to do with their own perceptions of theology as with the actual theories themselves. Nevertheless, evolutionary theory is not irrelevant for theology. Theologians should be aware of the possible implications of evolutionary theory and at the same time the extent and limits of such implications. (shrink)

Human concern with problems of being and becoming promotes conceptions of ideal states of being, exemplified by paragons and heroes and projected as Utopias or visions of salvation; it leads to regimens for cultivating and maintaining individual ability to meet social expectations; and it produces fantasies, as in myth and popular literature, that rehearse the problems and that offer escape from them and roles to emulate in dealing with them. Many of these regimens and fantasies appear in the rituals and (...) teachings of organized religion. Many also figure in private devotions apart from established religions. The many forms they take constitute much of the religious life of ordinary people. From this viewpoint, there is much to examine in American life. (shrink)

The debate on personal identity tends to conflate or ignore two different usages of the word ‘person’. Psychological‐continuity proponents concentrate upon its use to refer to human psychology or personality, while animalist critics prefer its use to refer to individual human beings. I argue that this duality undermines any attempt to see ‘person’ as a genuine sortal term. Instead, adopting suggestions found in Dennett and Sellars, I consider personhood as an ascription rather like an honorific title or achievement‐marker. I show (...) how the questions of identity for a regular honorific title like ‘genius’ inevitably supervene on identity‐questions concerning the more basic entity of ‘person’. I then argue by analogy that, if ‘person’ be regarded as an honorific on a par with ‘genius’, questions of personal identity over time necessarily collapse into questions of the continuing identity of human beings. Attempts to separate the continuity of a person from that of the human being who embodies it then founder on conceptual and referential incoherencies. Room is left for increasing the extension of personhood ascriptions to non‐humans in the future, while much that was previously puzzling about its behaviour as a concept is explained. At least some of the revisionist debate can now be seen more profitably as a debate about the moral and pragmatic considerations underlying non‐paradigm human continuity. (shrink)

When people talk about religion, most soon mention the major religious traditions of our times, but then, thinking further, most mention as well the religions of Indigenous peoples and of such vanished civilizations as ancient Greece and Egypt and Persia. That is, we have come to understand that there are-and have been-many different religions; anthropologists estimate the total in the thousands. They also estimate that there have been thousands of human cultures, which is to say that the making of a (...) culture and the making of its religion go together: each religion is embedded in its cultural history. True, certain religions have attempted, and variously succeeded, in crossing cultural boundaries to "convert the heathens," but the invaded cultures usually put their unmistakable stamp on what they import, as evinced by the pulsating percussive Catholic masses sung in Africa. In the end, each of these religions addresses two fundamental human concerns: How Things Are and Which Things Matter. How Things Are is articulated as a Cosmology or Cosmos: How the natural world came to be, how humans came to be, what happens after we die, the origins of evil and tragedy and natural disaster and love. Which Things Matter becomes codified as a Morality or Ethos: the Judaic Ten Commandments, the Christian Sermon on the Mount, the Five Pillars of Islam, the Buddhist Vinaya, the Confucian Five Relations, and the understandings inherent in numerous Indigenous traditions. The role of a religion is to integrate the Cosmology and the Morality, to render the cosmological narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment to its attendant moral understandings. As a culture evolves, a distinctive Cosmos and Ethos appears in its co-evolving religion. For billions of us, back to the early humans, the stories, ceremonies and art associated with our religions-of-origin have been central to our lives. I stand in awe of these religions. I have no need to take on their contradictions or immiscibility, any more than I would quarrel with the fact that Scottish bagpipe ceremonies coexist with Japanese tea ceremonies. And indeed, the failure of Soviet Marxism to obliterate Russian Orthodoxy, and of Maoism to obliterate Buddhism, Confucianism, or Daoism, and of Christianity to obliterate Indigenous understandings, reminds us that projects designed to overthrow religious traditions face strong headwinds. (shrink)

I first offer some reflections on the term religious naturalism. I then outline how moral thought might be configured in the context of religious naturalism. It is proposed that the goal of morality is to generate a flourishing community and that humans negotiate their social interactions using moral capacities that are cultivated in the context of culture. Six such capacities are considered: strategic reciprocity, humaneness, fair–mindedness, courage, reverence, and mindfulness. Moral capacities are contrasted with moral susceptibilities, fueled by self–interest, and (...) brought to the fore in times of stress and humiliation. The essay is in two parts. I first respond to Jerome Stone's query as to the nature of religious naturalism. This is followed by the text of my presentation at the 2001 AAR meeting. (shrink)

A cell/molecular biologist challenges the thesis that science and religion are two ways of experiencing and interpreting the world and explores instead the possible ways that the modern biological worldview might serve as a resource for religious perspectives. Three concepts—meaning, valuation, and purpose—are argued to be central to the entire biological enterprise, and the continuation of this enterprise is regarded as a sacred religious trust.

Evolution of the human capacity for beliefs is considered in relation to the emergence in human phylogeny of the ability to formulate propositions, evaluate their worth as bases for action, and make emotional attachments to them. Most of the relevant capabilities had appeared in primate evolution before the emergence of the Hominidae. The combination of capabilities peculiar to evolving hominines was that involved in the development of language, which ontogenetic evidence suggests began as a tool for implementing intentionality in social (...) interaction and whose subsequent elaboration was associated with later reportorial and narrative uses. (shrink)

Huston Smith's book, Why Religion Matters, offers an eloquent evocation of mystical sensibility. Unfortunately, along the way, he offers a strongly negative and often inaccurate account of the scientific worldview, the claim being that the science is laying siege to the spiritual.

The publication of the human genome has elicited commentary to the effect that, since fewer genes were identified than anticipated, it follows that genes are less important to human biology than anticipated. The flaws in this syllogism are explained in the context of a treatise on how genomes operate and evolve and how genes function to produce embryos and brains. Most of our most cherished human traits are the result of the emergence of new properties from preexisting genetically scripted ideas, (...) offering countless opportunities to celebrate the evolutionary process. (shrink)

Science and technology are frequently confused. This essay points out thebases for this confusion and then focuses on a basic distinction, namely, that whereas science brings us information that we have little choice but to absorb and reflect upon, technology is something that humans elect to do and, hence, can also elect not to do. It is proposed that technological ethics are most cogently undertaken with scientific understanding as the linchpin and religious/artistic sensibilities as the muse.

Hester Goodenough Gelber is Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University.

A molecular/cell biologist offers perspectives on the contributions that the scientific worldview might and might not make to religious though. It is argued that two essential features of institutionalized religions–their historical context and their supernatural orientation—are not addressed by the sciences, nor can the sciences contribute to the art and ritual that elicit states of faith and transcendence. The sciences have, however, important stories (myths) to offer, stories that have the potential to unify us, to tell us what is sacred, (...) what has meaning, and how we might best proceed. (shrink)

. Book Reviews. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 403-421.

We see religion in the things people treat as crucial to what they are and to what they aspire to become, things that make the biggest difference in how people feel about themselves. They may be social aspects or personal (behavioral or characterological) aspects of the self. The things people are militant about, the practices in regard to which they are most scrupulous, and the things about themselves that distress them are indicators of where their religious concerns lie, whatever the (...) subject matter. People work to maintain themselves as they want to see themselves and as they want others to see them; they seek ways to repair damage to their selves. They seek also to transform themselves so as to escape present unhappy definitions of self and to achieve ideal states of being. What needs to be changed may be perceived as aspects of personal self, as attitudes other people have toward otherwise unchangeable aspects of self, or as the entire socio‐political system in which people feel trapped. The process by which people manage successfully to transform themselves includes social cooperation, including the formation of groups to provide mutual reinforcement. (shrink)

Biology on this planet represents an astonishing experiment in carbon‐based chemistry which, over billions of years, has generated billions of species adapted to countless major and minor fluctuations in ecological circumstances. In one sense there is no way to generalize about biology. While biological activities can all be ultimately explained by physical laws (like everything else in the universe), it is the emergent intensely particular properties of organisms that most interest us. This essay represents an attempt to describe some of (...) the more prominent patterns that emerge from the sea of biological particularities, patterns that present many opportunities for religous reflection. (shrink)