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Once upon a time, Carl Sagan predicted the appearance of an atheistic nature-religion: “A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge” [...]
Archive for the ‘Naturalism’ Category
On Atheistic Religion
January 8th, 2012 
Eric Steinhart 
Posted in 'Nuff Said, Atheism, Culture, Featured, Naturalism, Philosophy, Religion, Religion and Science 
59 Comments »Atheistic Wicca
January 8th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [This is the next to last post in my long series on atheism and Wicca.] My approach to Wicca has been critical. For philosophers at least, and hopefully for any rational person, criticism is based on careful analysis; it points to both the good and to the bad, to the true and to the false. [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 16 Comments »Criticizing Wicca: Magic is Unethical
January 7th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [This is part of a series looking at atheism and Wicca.] Many Wiccans practice magic. Skeptics, rationalists, and naturalists may all be tempted to try to use science to refute the effectiveness of magic. Although such refutations do persuade some people, they often fail to accomplish anything: despite the best efforts of scientific debunkers, magical [...]
Criticizing Wicca: Magic is Unreliable
January 7th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [This is part of a long series looking at atheism and Wicca.] Any procedure for changing an initial situation (the start) into a desired situation (the goal) can be tested for its effectiveness. As used here, effectiveness is a matter of degree, so that procedures can be more or less effective. The simplest way to measure [...]
Criticizing Wicca: Magic
January 6th, 2012 Eric Steinhart [Magic is a pseudo-technology based on the pseudo-science of mysterious energy. It’s purpose is to provide the illusion of control. This post briefly describes how some Wiccans conceive of magic. Many Wiccans reject the use of magic altogether, or consider it entirely independent of Wicca. Thus the two should not be confused. After this brief [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Intellectual Vices, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Wicca 7 Comments »The Atheism and Wicca Series So Far
January 5th, 2012 Eric Steinhart Some folks have jumped into this series just recently, and others have had some trouble following due to the server problems in the last two days. The point of this series is to critically examine Wicca (and other neo-paganisms) through the lens of atheistic analytic philosophy of religion. So here’s the list of links to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 2 Comments »Spiritual Exercises for Atheists
January 5th, 2012 Eric Steinhart Spiritual exercises (askesis) are practical activities for mental self-empowerment. They are intended to facilitate successful achievement by increasing the degree to which the self is mentally or emotionally prepared to perform. Spiritual exercises are not magic. Spiritual exercises are distinct from magic because they focus on causing changes in the self while magic focuses on [...]
Posted in Atheism, Evidence, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Psychology, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 11 Comments »From Aristotle through Buddhism to Nietzsche
January 4th, 2012 Eric Steinhart Among all the classical theories of life after death, the one that seems to be most consistent with naturalism is the ancient Buddhist concept of rebirth. This concept is developed in Theraveda Buddhism. Theravedic Buddhism is an atheistic (or non-theistic) religion. Rebirth is linked to the Theravedic doctrines of impermanence and no-self. These doctrines imply [...]
The Soul is the Form of the Body
January 4th, 2012 Eric Steinhart According to the Wiccan theory of reincarnation, your soul leaves your body at death and enters a new body at conception. The Wiccan theory of reincarnation thus presupposes that human beings are soul-body composites. It is a type of soul-body dualism. Cunningham writes “The soul is ageless, sexless, nonphysical, possessed of the divine spark of [...]
Posted in Atheism, Biology, Featured, Historical Philosophy, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Wicca 
Tags: Aristotle, Aristotle on Soul, Aristotle vs. Descartes, Atheist views of the soul, Contemporary Hylomorphism, Hylomorphism, Reincarnation, Soul as program, What is the soul?, Wicca on Soul 17 Comments »The Atheist Wheel of the Year
January 3rd, 2012 Eric Steinhart The Wheel of the Year involves eight solar holidays (the sabbats). The sabbats include the solar quarter days (the solstices and the equinoxes) as well as the solar cross-quarter days intermediate between the quarters. For theistic Wiccans, these days symbolize events in the life-cycles of the god and goddess. These days are marked by sabbat [...]
Posted in Astronomy, Atheism, Cultural Secularism, Culture, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Wicca 68 Comments »Criticizing Wicca: The Wheel of the Year
January 2nd, 2012 Eric Steinhart The Wheel of the Year is a division of the solar year into eight holidays (the solstices, the equinoxes, and four days in-between). Insofar as the days on the Wheel of the Year mark natural points in the orbit of the earth around the sun, the Wheel marks a natural pattern. It marks a natural [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 1 Comment »Two Arguments for Evolution by Rational Selection
January 1st, 2012 Eric Steinhart Although there is some empirical justification for the Principles of Sufficient Reason and Plenitude, much of the discussion of the logic of creation and evolution by rational selection has been highly abstract. It has been a priori; a matter of pure reason. But it is reasonable to demand empirical justification for those metaphysical theories. To [...]
On Evolution by Rational Selection
January 1st, 2012 Eric Steinhart Almost all atheists are surely aware of Darwinian evolution, which is evolution by natural selection, and which explains the history of life on earth. Universal Darwinism is the thesis that evolutionary principles operate beyond earthly biology. Of course, not all things have genes or compete for survival in ecosystems. More general evolutionary theories need not [...]
The Logic of Creation
December 31st, 2011 Eric Steinhart At a very high level of abstraction, Sabin characterizes the god and goddess as symbols for two aspects of natural creative power (natura naturans, being-itself as the power to be). She says that “The God represents, among other things, power unmanifest; the spark of life. The Goddess gives this power form” (2011: 117). We experience [...]
Posted in Atheism, Cosmology, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Religion and Science, Wicca 15 Comments »Creation Stories
December 31st, 2011 Eric Steinhart Many religions have creation stories. The Judeo-Christian creation stories are found in the first chapters of Genesis, which is the first book of the Bible. There is no need to repeat the Genesis stories here. It can be agreed that there are some metaphorical or analogical correspondences between the Genesis stories and our best science. [...]
Revelation versus Manifestation
December 30th, 2011 Eric Steinhart The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) are religions of revelation. As is well-known, these religions are derived from the experiences of religiously privileged individuals (prophets, messiahs, inspired writers) to whom it is alleged that God spoke. These religions say that God revealed special information to these privileged people. This information comes neither from our [...]
Criticizing Wicca: God and Goddess
December 29th, 2011 Eric Steinhart According to several Wiccan texts, the Wiccan ultimate deity manifests itself in two forms, the male god and the female goddess. The first way to think about the god and goddess is realistic. This is theological realism: the god and goddess are both real things. They exist. A Wiccan who thinks like this is ontologically [...]
The Wiccan God and Goddess: Reality and Mythology
December 28th, 2011 Eric Steinhart The Farrars have an intriguing discussion of the ontological commitments of Wiccans to their god and goddess. Their discussion has three parts: (1) the realist thesis; (2) the anti-realist antithesis; and (3) the pragmatic resolution. The more detailed version of the Farrar’s discussion goes like this: (1) The realist thesis says that the god and [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Wicca 7 Comments »The God and the Goddess
December 27th, 2011 Eric Steinhart On the basis of their own texts, presented in an earlier post, it seems like Wicca affirms the existence of an ultimate deity. On my analysis, the Wiccan ultimate deity is the ultimate immanent creative power of being. It is an entirely natural power and it appears that the concept of the Wiccan ultimate deity [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Religion, Wicca 5 Comments »Criticizing Wicca: Rationality
December 26th, 2011 Eric Steinhart According to the Farrars, “Witches [that is, Wiccans] are neither fools, escapist nor superstitious. They are living in the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages” (1981: 105). The Farrars write that “Many witches are scientists and technicians . . . If modern witchcraft did not have a coherent rationale, such people could only keep going [...]
Atheism and Wicca: The Road Ahead
December 25th, 2011 Eric Steinhart I’ve been doing a long series of posts on atheism and Wicca. I’m working out the idea that atheistic and neo-pagan communities have more in common than they might think, and that, as American religiousity continues to shift away from Christianity, those two communities will increasingly be blended into each other. This will be messy [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 8 Comments »Pure Objective Reason
December 23rd, 2011 Eric Steinhart As immanent, being-itself is just the ultimate nature of every natural thing. So, how does this immanent being-itself manifest itself? It manifests itself in all the categories of nature. These are the categories of naturalistic ontology. To use some language from Nicholas of Cusa, these categories are derived from the self-unfolding of being-itself. This unfolding [...]
Posted in Atheism, Featured, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science 15 Comments »The Impossible God of Paul Tillich
December 21st, 2011 Eric Steinhart Paul Tillich was a Protestant theologian writing in the middle of the Twentieth Century. His writing is highly abstract, so you’ll have to forgive me for using abstract language here. He is perhaps best known for his idea that God is the ground of being; that is, God is being-itself. For atheists, Tillich says some [...]
Atheism and the Sacred: Natural Creative Power
December 18th, 2011 Eric Steinhart The concept of natura naturans has a long history in philosophy, and especially in atheistic metaphysics. Natura naturans is natural creative power, and from now on I’ll use that phrase. Natural creative power is a universal; as such, it is an abstract object. Nominalists deny the existence of abstract objects. So, nominalists are likely to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Metaphysics, Naturalism, Paganism, Philosophy, Rationalism, Religion and Science, Wicca 31 Comments »Criticizing Wicca: Levels
December 17th, 2011 Eric Steinhart Some statements are based on evidence, while others are not. And there is evidence for the existence of some entity if and only if the existence of that entity is asserted in a statement that is based on evidence. To say that a statement is based on evidence is to say that it is empirically [...]
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