8.0.8 Can Religion Be Natural and Rational?

Version 1.4 June 2018                                   (Previous Version)

It is useful to describe what sort of beliefs these global beliefs are. 

• They are not trivial beliefs, such as who won the last football match. 
• They are not “tactical levelâ€� beliefs about specific aspects of life, that we might use to decide which clothes or kitchen utensils to buy. 
• They are not like “business ethicsâ€�, that professionals or company managers would use in considering how to deal with clients or to pursue their business. 

They are more fundamental, more important, more “strategic� beliefs. 

• They help us discover and explain values and life’s meaning and purpose.
• They explain why we can, and most of us do, choose to be good.
• They explain why some of us aren’t good, why there is suffering in the world.

·       They help us to understand mystical or ‘spiritual’ experiences.

·       They help us find ways to express our reverence for life.

• They are critical to how we manage our whole lives.

Just as god fearing parishioners can share a complex set of attitudes and moral principles, as they participate in their community, so we as atheists, more as naturalists than supernaturalists:

●  following this reasonable global way, based on reason and the evidence,

●  can share that we have looked reality in the eye and seen its harsh, indifferent side, but we have

●  chosen the path of truth, diversity, reality, life, love, freedom, responsibility, equality and hope,

●  and we can look each other in the eye and say “you have done this tooâ€�.

If we can accept this, there are various ways to consider the implications;

• We can look at how we define religion, whether we can have a natural rational religion, whether we can have reasonable rituals or alternatives to religious liturgy; and
• We can explore various ways to present these conclusions, in single page summaries, personal statements that look a bit like creeds (but aren’t), or in poems, and so on.