The Importance of Religious Naturalism

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Religious naturalist orientation has no dogma, there's all sorts of interpretations they're all sorts of spiritual responses. All religious people from other religions want to be there come on in you can set up your booth and we'll see if anybody goes over there oh you mean you don't have a missionary program or you go knocking on doors giving copies of the sacred depths of danger or charles segens cosmos or whatever? We have a thousand members i think and from all 50 states and 30 countries so you know it's it's an idea that's out there um that we're trying very hard to let people have access to and see whether mmm right why isn't it?"

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.

Shermer and Goodenough discuss: origins of her personal beliefs • origins life, RNA, DNA, consciousness, language, morality • myths and religions • what it means to be “religious” • religious naturalism • where the laws of physics came from • why the universe seems so strange • chance and evolution • fine tuning of the cosmos • autocatalysis and emergence • purpose of religion • ethics and morality without religion.

Ursula Goodenough is Professor Emerita of Biology at Washington University. One of America's leading cell biologists, she is the author of a bestselling textbook on genetics, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served as President of the American Society of Cell Biology and of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. She lives in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard. Her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved, is now in a second edition. She currently serves as president of the Religious Naturalist Association.