Nontheist Friends

(from Godless for God’s Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism, David Boulton ed., Dent UK: Dales Historical Monographs, 2006, pp. 43-48; available at quakerbooks.org)

We move. Sometimes we are moved and sometimes it results from our earlier movements. Some movements are private, only noticeable to the person moving. Some barely feel like motion. Talking and remembering are motions, as are sensing and experiencing.

Motions are physical events caused by other physical events. We are part of the ebb and flow of the universe. All is in motion, nothing stands still. Suns rise, birds sing, and poets write. The universe rolls along.

This is enough for naturalists who assume nothing exists but events we observe or reasonably infer from observations. Supernaturalists deal with other realms not observed or reasonably inferred. This requires its own languages, methods and tests of truth. For the naturalist, knowledge (that is, useful behavior) derives from observations of motions of the universe. From this we learn how to move more effectively through our lives. Gradually we change in the ways we move and we need support to continue to change.

As to what cannot be observed, naturalists respond by looking at its visible aspects. They assume the unseen works in much the same way as the seen until there is reason to assume otherwise. Tools may extend our range but eventually we come to a limit of knowledge. There the naturalist waits. While waiting we look around but we avoid speculating. Better to wait in silence.

Consider, for example, spiritual phenomena. These are always accompanied by physical events – that is how we know about them. Experiencing and thinking and talking about them are physical events. These are enough for the naturalist. The same is true of emotional reactions. Love for one another is as physical as a daisy.

Naturalists cannot be sure all this is true but it seems reasonable and no evidence contradicts it. They are sure good lives can be lived by people who view the world as physical cause and effect and nothing else.

The naturalists’ approach is based on the way the world works. True statements are ones that work well. The meaning of a word is in the situations in which it is uttered. The meaning of a life is in its living. Values are what we have learned to work for. We seek ways to live well.

There are many sorts of naturalists. They vary in how far they extend the determinist principle – is anything undetermined, requiring a different approach? They also differ in language, keeping and translating some terms and avoiding others. Some naturalists share their views readily and others remain quiet because other efforts are more important to them. Naturalists are a diverse lot but there is a simple core to their approach.

For the naturalist, we are a causally determined physical system like a river, but this is a river that can enjoy itself, and observe and comment on itself, and foresee its future course, and modify that course. Observing this determined system is our starting point and everything else flows from it.

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Nonphysical phenomena are popular today and have always been popular. Many people describe the experience of these phenomena, or have faith in them, or need them. They reject the naturalists’ explanations, saying they are simplistic, or unsatisfying, or inadequate for a good life. This is not true. Staying grounded in the world presented by sense and reason can lead us to lives that are healthy, happy, wise, useful and caring. Naturalists assert they can live good lives and they acknowledge those who accept the supernatural can do so as well.

Religion is a combination of ethical standards and common purposes. It helps us hold to the standards and accomplish the purposes, and it offers rituals, including ritual explanations. The standards and purposes are not discovered in nature but are tested there. The rituals do not derive from the standards they accompany. Religious naturalists can, in all sincerity, behave as do their co-religionists. Harmony does not require agreement.

There is no topic that we must talk about with metaphors or supernatural concepts. Take worship: for some people this is about a relationship with the divine. However, nontheists worship in much the same way theists do. This is true of all areas in which the divine is said to play a role, as when we seek a sense of the meeting or discern our path or follow leadings. Theism is a fine way to view these activities but it is not the only way.

In any case, religious beliefs, faiths, creeds, and experiences are not as important as most people think. Knowing about the beliefs of others doesn’t help us predict the rest of their behavior. Rather than being derived from one’s religious faith, behavior is often learned directly. People  can react appropriately to passing circumstances, whatever their history of religious experiences. Living well is a sufficient goal. This is religion centered on daily life instead of other realms.

Quakers are familiar with this focus on living. Those for whom God is central find God in their neighbors, making relations with them sacred. Some Quakers have pointed out that behaving like Jesus is more important than how we talk about him. We try to let our lives speak.

As chanticleer the rooster greets the sun announcing a new day, I call out to Quakers: your behavior is available to naturalist and supernaturalist alike!

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In religion, psychology, education, law and science, theories are used to explain observations but the theories are on another level, never observed, spoken of in different terms, separate from the physical world they are said to explain. These otherworldly theories are rampant in all fields of human endeavor, partly because they are effective in many situations. Using faith as evidence is less work than observation, experiment and analysis and it is harder to argue against. Unfortunately, basing decisions on intuition can lead to trouble. Humans have evolved to quickly see how events are related, and we are quick to convince ourselves of relationships that do not exist. Concepts are created to explain observations that are the only evidence of the concepts. Reasoning is shaped by needs and emotions and the aversion to admitting ignorance or error. The entire human intellectual enterprise needs reform.

The naturalist proceeds in religion without God, immortality and spirituality in their religion. In psychology and education there is no need for mind, will, self and consciousness. In law, people are responsible for the consequences of their actions without ascribing those actions to free will.

In the naturalist’s alternative, explanatory fiction is replaced by experimental study. This has been gradually accepted in astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology. Now it is the turn of human behavior, including the behavior of religious people. Naturalists see behavior controlled by surrounding environments rather than by influences from other realms. Behavior is environment dancing with itself. This includes environments that are present and, in a sense, those of the future (that are expected, based on what has happened in the past). The past is included because we were changed by environments during our lifetimes and because environments selected the organisms that are behaving. In the environment is the origin of our species and the origin of our behavior.

For the religious naturalist, environment replaces God, self and mind. The environment requires us to act; it gives our lives meaning; it is comforter and arbiter; beginning and end; majesty and mystery; all credit belongs to the environments that shape our behavior.

Questions about the adequacy of this approach are answered by looking at the naturalist’s life. Can a naturalist love a theist and vice versa?  Let’s try and see!  Is there joy in worship shared by people holding different beliefs but united in love?  Try and see!

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We all know people whose religious views differ but who cooperate with each other and love each other. We have seen it happen. The future of humankind requires that we get better at it. Naturalists do this by focusing on how the world works. Common ground is found in the particulars of our lives. We all breathe and cry and smile. These are physical reactions to surrounding circumstances. We share the physical world; here we can find purposes to unite our communities.

Living with diversity can be a challenge. One key is genuine, outgoing toleration. We can look for what each other has to offer and support each other in our searches. We can accept concepts in our listening and reading vocabularies even when they are not in our speaking and writing vocabularies. We can accept that people speak differently, and respond to the source of their words, to the function rather than the form. We can let speakers speak and listeners translate, and let the test of speaking and translating be the communities we build.

A membership decision in a doctrinally diverse religious community, such as a Quaker meeting, can be a cooperative effort to discern whether applicant and community are working well together, whether they are in unity. One way to establish unity is to insist everyone accept one set of beliefs, but there are other ways. Unity can derive from common purposes, or it can be directly taught. The commitment to move forward together is worth more than agreement on points of doctrine. We can find strength in diversity instead of creating problems by suppressing it. Unity is not a precondition for love – it arises as love goes to work.

In all these efforts, naturalists have an advantage because they are centered on the particulars. They define spiritual matters in practical terms rather than trying to link spiritual and physical phenomena. They naturalize religion rather than spiritualizing nature. The particulars of our lives and the purposes we work toward can unite a community. The naturalists’ faith is ready for practical application. There is hope that a good life can be achieved. The naturalists’ approach provides a basis for cooperation within a faith community and with people of other faiths.

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Pleasantly, naturalists are found in many religions. I grew up as a Quaker, but I could have been a nature loving Jew or Buddhist, Sufi or Pagan, Catholic or Moslem… I treasure the silence of Quaker worship, the spontaneity of messages building one on another, the way all present share in leading the worship. I love Quaker honesty and simplicity and the response of Quakers to violence and injustice. Kindliness is offered to all.

These behaviors, so important to me as a Quaker, are also present in other religions. We all meditate, one way or another. We all come back to the ideals of the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount. It is true that relations vary between naturalists and their co-religionists. Some naturalists are openly welcomed; some are welcome if they avoid mentioning their views; some need to separate themselves from the main body of their faith. Let us dedicate ourselves to loving and supporting each other, views and all, and to pursuing our common purposes.

Religious naturalists don’t need to convince others to change their views. We do need to show that naturalists can live religious lives and that we merit inclusion in religious gatherings.

It is time for meetings, churches, synagogues and mosques to extend the blessing of membership to those for whom the physical world known through sense and reason is sufficient. The belief that the universe is a reliably functioning physical system, and nothing else, need not be reason for exclusion.

Let those who are clear on this say to the world that naturalists are welcome in their hearts and in their communities. This will encourage others to raise the concern. Religious people need no doctrinal barriers. We only need love.

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Os Cresson is a member of Mount Holly Monthly Meeting of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in the USA, where he is Recording Clerk and a member of the Worship and Ministry Committee. In the past he was Recording Clerk of Burlington Quarterly Meeting and served on the Environmental Working Group and the Library Services Group of the Yearly Meeting. He served as co-leader of the ‘Nontheism Among Friends’ workshop at the Friends General Conference Gathering in 2001 and 2004.

Further Reading:

The title comes from two sources: the epigraph of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Walden; or, Life in the Woods’: “I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up” (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854), and the title of a paper that opened the way for a naturalist’s approach to psychology similar to the one I propose for religion: ‘Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It’ (John B. Watson, Psychology Review, 1913, 20, 158-177). For more details please go to www.nontheistfriends.org and look for the annotated version of the essay, above, and another titled ‘Quaker in a Material World’ (published in Quaker Theology, 2003, 5(1), 23-54). Also see ‘Quakers, from the Viewpoint of a Naturalist’ (Friends Journal, March, 2006).

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