Is There Religion Without God? What Is Religious Naturalism

Religious naturalism is the conviction that nature is all there is, and that it is enough to give a life meaning, values, reverence and belonging. There are no gods, no immortal souls, no other world. There is this one: the universe, life, the people we love and the short time we have to live among them.

A note on the name. "Naturalism" is also a 19th-century literary movement. Here, the word names a religion.

Is there religion without God?

Yes, there is. God was never the most important part of a religion.

Look at what a religion does in someone's life. It gathers people around what they hold sacred. It gives words and gestures to birth, to marriage, to death. It teaches us to treat others well, despite our selfishness. It stays beside someone who has lost a person they loved. None of this requires a god. It requires people who live together and know they will die. That is who we are.

Two reasons support this.

The first is history. There are religions without gods, and they are religions. They have community, practices, values, a sense of the sacred. They simply do without a god. To define religion only as belief in gods is to use a word too small for what religion has always been.

The second is need. Religions were born to answer two human urgencies: living together in harmony despite the selfishness and violence we carry, and enduring loss, failure and death. A person who stops believing in gods still has both. Knowing there are no gods does not help anyone through grief. To live well, we need community, values and comfort, with or without a deity.

Religious naturalism is what remains when you remove the supernatural and keep everything else.

What does religious naturalism claim?

First, that nature is all there is. This fits in four ideas:

• Only the natural world is real.
• Nature depends on nothing outside itself to exist or to be explained.
• Nature can be understood without an intelligence or a purpose directing it.
• All causes are natural: every event is the effect of other natural events.

The world, then, works through causes we can investigate, and science is the best tool we have for that. It explains the world without gods. It does not prove they do not exist. It strips them of any role in the explanation, and that is why this doctrine does without them.

Second, it claims what makes naturalism religious. Many people accept the four ideas and stop there, as atheism does on its own. Religious naturalism goes further: this nature has value, and value calls for reverence.

It helps to separate two words. "Religion" is the set of doctrines and institutions tied to a deity. "Religious" is a quality of human experience: peace, fullness, the feeling of belonging to something larger. It exists without any deity at all. Religious naturalism keeps the second and does without the first. Its attitude is reverence, gratitude and humility before the natural universe, grounded in what science knows today.

Where does this idea come from?

From far back. Its roots in philosophy are ancient, and it gained strength with the theory of evolution, which gave naturalism an account of life and of the mind. In the twentieth century, philosophers defended it openly, and part of the clergy of liberal Christian traditions proposed a religion without the supernatural.

After decades in the shadows, the idea returned with force. Today there are associations and groups that recognize themselves in it.

What does a religion offer, and what does naturalism offer in its place?

A religion meets four human needs: meaning, purpose, community and ritual. Religious naturalism answers each one.

• Meaning. The universe comes with no meaning built in, and the meaning we build is no less for that. It grows from what we know: the atoms of our bodies forged in stars, the kinship among all living things, billions of years of life on a single planet.
• Purpose. Each person has a place in something larger than one life: keeping life flourishing on Earth for as long as possible.
• Community. Groups and associations exist, but none yet has the reach of a church or a temple. Building it is the next task.
• Ritual. This is the least developed point. Naturalist gestures to mark time, loss and achievement are yet to be made. Making them weighs as much as writing the doctrine.

Ethics remains, and it has a foundation. Morality arose because beings who depend on one another flourish when they cooperate. That gave us reciprocity, compassion, a sense of justice. It also gave us greed, fear, hostility toward outsiders. The task is to cultivate the first and guard against the second, with no commandment handed down from above.

What is the difference between religious naturalism, atheism and humanism?

Atheism answers a single question: are there gods or not? It brings no method, no ethics, no community. Humanism proposes values centered on the human being. Religious naturalism stands close to humanism and widens the focus. Humans are part of nature, so all of nature enters ethics, with special weight on caring for the Earth.

Within the field there are two readings. One uses the word "God" for the creativity of the universe, for the love that binds living things, or for nature itself, which is pantheism. The other drops the word. Naturalism follows the second: no gods.

Is this really a religion, or just a philosophy?

The objection has weight. Without gods, without scriptures, without a temple, what remains would be a philosophy with good feelings. Each person would be their own priest, and then: who kneels? A spirituality that no one shares lasts as long as a new idea.

The objection is right about the danger. It is wrong about the verdict.

A philosophy is debated. A religion is lived. It decides what you do in the hour of loss, on the day someone is born, on the morning life asks for courage. Religion is what a person gives their life to, and what they receive in return: meaning, values, belonging. Religious naturalism offers all three, without asking you to believe anything you cannot verify.

It is a religion. What it still lacks is a body: the table set, the appointed hour, the repeated gesture. Every tradition was once a handful of people who decided to meet again.

Picture this a few generations from now. A child is born, and someone tells them aloud where the atoms of their body came from. A family says goodbye to someone who died, surrounded by people who do not promise a reunion and do not leave them alone. On one night of each season, people of every age look at the sky and remember they are part of it. No god was called. The loss was not lived alone.

Religious naturalism exists to the extent that someone practices it. Start with yourself.

For those who have faith in a god

Naturalism does without gods. It starts from not believing in them, and there is no middle ground there. But a conversation does not demand agreement. Those who hold a faith can read, disagree and ask questions.

An indifferent nature

Nature is indifferent, and religious naturalism says so plainly. The universe does not act for us or against us. Reverence, here, is admiration and respect for something immense, complex and on which we depend. We do not need a kind universe to recognize it as extraordinary.

A religion under construction

There is no single institution, and no authority decides the doctrine. Associations and groups exist around the world, reaching the idea by different paths.

If you do not believe in gods and do not want to be left with nothing, the proposal fits in two sentences. The world is enough. What is missing, we build together.

Where to go next

If disbelief was only the beginning for you, read What is atheism?. And if your question is whether people who do not believe in gods also have faith, read The Faith of Those Who Don't Believe.