RNA Discussion Forum

To my knowledge there are no set Religious Naturalist practices. —> [If this is wrong, hopefully Admin will create a subforum titled “Practices” and post a link]

If there are no set practices, then what does “religious” in “religious naturalism” mean to you?

For me, it has nothing to do with any supernatural source of the world, but instead it signifies an *attitude* towards the world and towards my neighbor.

That attitude is an attitude of deep respect and kindness towards the physical world and all the people in it.

A deep sense of respect and kindness is absolutely essential to stability and well-being in our world.
- Emerson

Emerson, I would say that respect and kindness are indeed practices not just attitudes in that these have outward manifestations in actions.
Mark I

P.S. I made italics by using the I button on the text (which just gives it hypertext formatting with square brackets).

P.P.S. I agree this forum should probably be called "RN Practices" (and the other forums "RN Core Concepts" and "RN Education") because the discussion is not just about this association.

Mark I,
I agree there is a very strong element of practice or at least practice makes perfect to both respect and kindness.

That said, respect and kindness are still core values that can be put into practice in many different ways I think.

How to put them into practice?
- Emerson

Yes I agree we RNs don't have specific practices in common like the rituals in other religious communities. Maybe for us ritual is not as strong an incentive as reason for our practices. But it may be nice to have a little ritual like some Muslims do who say "inshallah" (god willing) when discussing future events (either fatalistically or hopefully). In the same context we could ritually say "evolution happens" or something like that.

Mark,
For sure.
Be prepared and be kind.
- Emerson

I wrote a personal essay once in response to this inquiry. I think it was pretty good.

Basically, I'm fond of Loyal Rue's definition, paraphrasing, that to be religious is to take ultimate concerns to heart.

To me that means that questions of life and death, purpose and meaning, right and wrong, epistemology and ontology, as well as more humanistic interests around gratitude, reverence, awe, happiness, sorrow, awe, etc., are all worthy of serious reflection, study, and expression.

Rites, rituals, and ceremonies can serve those pursuits (or not), and the same goes for orthodoxy and/or orthopraxy, and dogma or creed.

Like David, I also wrote an essay on this question! Rather than paste the whole thing in here, I will select one pertinent paragraph which gets at the definitional aspects.

It's my understanding that religion is a collective response to the deepest questions of our existence. Spirituality is individual; religion is collective, and collective responses are essential, given the human-precipitated crises of Gaia today. Religions are spiritual communities. That suggests some degree of shared beliefs, a shared worldview, and that is important in a broad sense. In terms of group cohesion, however, practice is more important than complete agreement on every philosophical point. Religions are spiritual communities of practice.

(If you want to read the whole thing, it can be found online in written or audio form.)

This may raise a further question of "spirituality," which I think of as encompassing three main things which few would deny: meaning, values, purpose. If there’s a better word for this, I don’t know what it is.

Here’s hoping we get a 100 posts in this thread giving us 100 personal views of what “religious” might mean to our viewers and our membership group.

I think “religious” might be the most important word in the religious naturalist nomenclature. And the 2nd most important word isn’t “naturalism” but instead is “join” … as in “join us”.

This is based entirely on my personal efforts to get friends and family to join in our dialogs.

I am 0 for 30 in getting people to join us in conversation. Roughly half said “no” to anything “religious”. The other half said “no” to joining any more social media groups.

So how do we remove or at least lower the barriers to dialog on and to online community building? Perhaps if interested lurkers see here that “religious” does not have a dogmatic meaning but is a stepping off point for connecting and interconnecting, we could attract thousands.

Please, all, add your views as to what “religious” means to you. No wrong answers, imo.
- Emerson