What is Religious Naturalism?
First, the generic definition of religious naturalism, what I think marks the essence of religious naturalism. We start with naturalism itself. Negatively it asserts that there seems to be no ontologically distinct and superior realm (such as God, soul, or heaven) to ground, explain, or give meaning to this world. Positively it affirms that attention should be focused on this world to provide whatever explanation and meaning are possible to this life. Now religious naturalism is a variety of naturalism which involves a set of beliefs and attitudes that there are religious aspects of this world which can be appreciated within a naturalistic framework. There are occasions within our experience which elicit responses which are analogous enough to the paradigm cases of religion that they can appropriately be called religious. Religious naturalism usually includes an imperative for personal, social and, recently, environmental responsibility. However, this is not a distinguishing characteri
