1980s
Source: Interview in Reason Magazine (1983).
The Tyrant Next Time (November 7, 2019)
Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. xiv
Context: The role of religion is to integrate the Cosmology and the Morality, to render the cosmological narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment to its emergent moral understandings. As each culture evolves, a unique Cosmos and Ethos appear in its co-evolving religion. For billions of us, back to the first humans, the stories, ceremonies, and art associated with our religions-of-origin are central to our matrix.
I stand in awe of these religions. I am deeply enmeshed in one of them myself. I have no need to take on the contradictions or immiscibilities between them, any more that I would quarrel with the fact that Scottish bagpipes coexist with Japanese tea ceremonies.
Source: False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987), pp. 563-564
Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become Republicans
Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795)
About sending troops to China's northeast. March 1931, from speech entitled "Manchuria and Mongolia from the Military Point of View". Quoted in "China in the World Anti-Fascist War" by Peng Xunhou - Page 23 - 2005.
Science and Spirit interview (2004)
Context: We all eat or are eaten. That's the way life works, it's a greater rhythm. And that's why science and the understandings it has uncovered can be a source of joy.
This all relates to assent, a very important Judeo-Christian concept. "Thy will be done" is a God-kind of assent. "God works in mysterious ways," and you're supposed to give assent even if you don't like it. As a religious naturalist, I think of assent differently. Assent is saying, "Okay, for whatever reason, this is the way life works. It's an acceptance of what is. After that fundamental acceptance, I can live my life to minimize suffering and promote as much as good as I can, and try through whatever work I do to help others." We can't get around death, but we can get around poverty. We can try to avoid women being brutalized. We can curb environmental degradation.
One can start from the perspective of a religious naturalist or from the perspective of the world religions and arrive at the same place: a moral imperative that this Earth and its creatures be respected and cherished.
The New Divinity (1964)
Context: God is a hypothesis constructed by man to help him understand what existence is all about.... To say that God is ultimate reality is just semantic cheating, as well as being so vague as to become effectively meaningless... Today the god hypothesis has ceased to be scientifically tenable, has lost its explanatory value and is becoming an intellectual and moral burden to our thought. It no longer convinces or comforts, and its abandonment often brings a deep sense of relief. Many people assert that this abandonment of the god hypothesis means the abandonment of all religion and all moral sanctions. This is simply not true. But it does mean, once our relief at jettisoning an outdated piece of ideological furniture is over, that we must construct some thing to take its place.
Daedalus or Science and the Future (1923)
