Nature as Sacred Ground

Donald A. Crosby

Description

Nature as Sacred Ground explores a metaphysics for religious naturalism. Donald A. Crosby discusses major aspects of reality implicit in his ongoing explication of Religion of Nature, a religious outlook that holds the natural world to be the only world, one with no supernatural domains, presences, or powers behind it. Nature as thus envisioned is far more than just a system of facts and factual relations. It also has profoundly important valuative dimensions, including what Crosby regards as nature's intrinsically sacred value. The search for comprehensive metaphysical clarity and understanding is a substantial part of this work's undertaking. Yet this endeavor also reminds us that, while it is good to think deeply and systematically about major features of reality and their relations to one another, we also need to reflect tirelessly about how to respond to metaphysical concepts that call for decision and action.
Preface

1. Being and Nothingness

2. One and Many

3. Permanence and Change

4. Causality, Novelty, and Freedom

5. Matter, Life, and Mind

6. Good and Evil

7. The Sacred and the Profaned

8. Summing Up

Notes
Works Cited
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Métaphysique
• Philosophie de la religion
• Comparative religion
• Philosophy of religion
• Metaphysics

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 04 août 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438459318
• Langue: English

Extrait

Nature as Sacred Ground
Nature as Sacred Ground
A Metaphysics for Religious Naturalism
Donald A. Crosby
Cover image: Bigstockphoto / © pic.r
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crosby, Donald A.
Nature as sacred ground : a metaphysics for religious naturalism / Donald A. Crosby.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5929-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5931-8 (e-book)
1. Nature–Religious aspects. 2. Metaphysics. I. Title.
BL65.N35C764 2016
202'.12—dc23
2015008204
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In Memory of Mary Lou and Jack
Ever Loving and Forever Loved Parents
CONTENTS
Preface
Chapter 1 Being and Nothingness
Chapter 2 One and Many
Chapter 3 Permanence and Change
Chapter 4 Causality, Novelty, and Freedom
Chapter 5 Matter, Life, and Mind
Chapter 6 Good and Evil
Chapter 7 The Sacred and the Profaned
Chapter 8 Summing Up
Notes
Works Cited
Index
PREFACE
T his book is the fifth in a series of volumes in which I explore various aspects of what I call Religion of Nature . The first of these, A Religion of Nature , is a general introduction to a religious outlook on nature in which I lay claim both to the religious ultimacy of nature and to its metaphysical ultimacy, that is, nature’s entitlement to wholehearted religious commitment and to acknowledgment of the totality of its processes, patterns, constituents, and interrelationships as the final reality. The second book, Living with Ambiguity: Religious Naturalism and the Menace of Evil , investigates Religion of Nature’s interpretations of and responses to the presence and threat of systemic natural and human evils in the world. The third book, The Thou of Nature : Religious Naturalism and Reverence for Sentient Beings , is a plea for religiously inspired, deeply respectful attitudes, treatments, and policies regarding nonhuman forms of sentient life in their natural environments. The fourth book, More Than Discourse: Symbolic Expressions of Naturalistic Faith , discusses the crucial role of nondiscursive symbols in the discernments and practices of religion in general and Religion of Nature in particular.
The present book probes and defends in more detail than these earlier ones the metaphysical aspect of Religion of Nature, that is, its vision of reality and its central contention that nothing exists beyond, beneath, or above nature in its manifold guises and continuing transformations. And it exhibits the intimate connection of this metaphysical claim with the religious outlook of Religion of Nature.
With this background in mind, let me suggest the following scenario as a way of directing forceful attention to the basic theme and concern of this book. Suppose I were to come to you with a proposal. I claim to have in my possession a powerful technique that can eliminate all of your potential anxieties, uncertainties, sorrows, pains, sufferings, and the like and enable you to live for the rest of your life in a dream world of perfect peace and contentment. But in order to do this, I must surgically, chemically, and irrevocably alter your nervous system and have electrodes permanently implanted in your body at critical places. All that would be “real” for you in this new situation would be in fact unreal , but you would not know that or have any perceived need to know it. I indicate to you that the procedure has already been employed with other people many times, and that there is no chance of its failure. Having explained all of this in careful detail, I now invite you to undergo the treatment I have described.
Would you accept the invitation? Why or why not? If you refuse to accept it, a basic reason for doing so might be this: you prefer to live in the real world, with all of its risks, uncertainties, frustrations, sufferings, and the like, and you do not want to sacrifice reality for illusion—however sweet and untroubled the illusory state might be. I suspect that many if not most of us would feel the same way. Implicit in this scenario is the distinction between what is real and what is not, and the singular importance of this distinction . What is the distinction, and how can we go about drawing it out in a systematic and satisfying manner? Among the ways of trying to do so is the philosophical way called metaphysics .
Metaphysics can be defined as study of the most general or pervasive types, traits, and structures of reality and their interrelations. Everyone has metaphysical beliefs of some sort, whether these beliefs are explicitly recognized, questioned, or critically reflected on as such. Metaphysical beliefs are convictions about the fundamental character of reality and the place of human beings within reality. Among the things such beliefs may center on or adumbrate—as the chapter titles of this book indicate—are broad topics such as being and nothingness; permanence and change; causality, novelty, and freedom; matter, life, and mind; good and evil; and the sacred and the profaned. Philosophical metaphysics seeks to investigate in systematic fashion topics such as these and their interrelationships with one another.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle in the fourth century BCE conceived of metaphysics, or what he sometimes called “first philosophy,” as inquiry into the nature of what is “really real” (Greek: ontōs on ) and into the basic types of existence derivative from, referent to, or dependent on the really real. 1 In the eighteenth century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant was convinced and confidently announced that he had found the definitive and finally adequate way of dealing with metaphysical problems, insisting that approaches to them were inescapably conditioned and limited by fixed structures of the human mind. This meant for him that it is impossible for humans to know what reality is like in and of itself. 2 His was a bold (if deflating) claim whose principal features some later philosophers were strongly inclined to accept but which other philosophers were adamantly critical of and unwilling to endorse.
In the twentieth century, to cite another prominent example, the English philosopher, mathematician, and logician Alfred North Whitehead defined metaphysics as identification of the generic categories of reality and the systematic study of their exemplifications, applications, and patterns of relationship. The generic categories are those present in each and every kind or instance of experience. They are by definition invariably present, and this requirement gives us the test of whether such proposed categories are truly generic. For Whitehead, these categories refer to such things as actuality, possibility, relation, process, continuity, novelty, subjectivity, and objectivity. He also gives a prominent place in his metaphysics to a particular conception of God and of God’s relations to the world. Whitehead insists that a system of metaphysics, in order to be plausible, must pass the muster of criteria such as consistency, coherence, logical reasoning, adequacy to all kinds of ongoing experience (including aesthetic, moral, and religious experience), and unfailing exemplification or necessity of its claimed generic categories. 3
What is real? What is most fundamentally or generally real? How do the basically real features of reality relate to one another? Is there a hierarchy of types of fundamentally real traits of the universe? Are minds or spirits separate or separable from bodies? Is the future fixed or open? Is there such a thing as indeterminacy or chance, not just as a limitation of present human knowledge, but as a pervasive trait of objective reality? Are we humans free or causally determined in every part of our actions? Did the universe come into being at some point in the past or has it always been in existence? Will it come to an end? Are space and time primordial or derivative? What is the status in reality of so-called natural laws?
Do values and disvalues exist in the objective world or only in us humans? Does the universe have a purpose? How do we human beings fit into the general scheme of things? To what extent can the universe be accurately known in its own right, and not just as a construct of human experiences, conceptual schemes, languages, and cultures? What, if anything, within or beyond the material universe is deserving of unqualified religious reverence, devotion, and commitment? These are typical metaphysical questions for which philosophers over the millennia have offered various answers and argued in support of their answers.
Philosophers have long been specialists in systematic forms of metaphysical inquiry. But metaphysical ideas and beliefs have many other sources, references, and implications than in explicitly philosophical ways of thinking, including the natural and social sciences, religion, morality, the arts, and day-to-day experience. No one, seasoned specialist or not, holds a monopoly on assuming, wondering about, or speculating about the basic character of reality and the place of human beings within reality.
As we read the history of metaphysical speculation and of various proposed metaphysical theories, we soon come to realize that the content of the theories varies widely. There are materialists, mind-body dualists, idealists, and panpsyc