In this essay, I introduce religious naturalism as one contemporary religious response to anthropogenic climate change; in so doing, I offer a concept of hope associated with the beauty of ignorance, of not knowing ourselves in the usual manner. Reframing humans as natural processes in relationship with other forms of nature, religious naturalism encourages humans’ processes of transformative engagement with each other and with the more‐than‐human worlds that constitute our existence. Hope in this context is anticipating what possibilities may occur (...) when human organisms enact our evolutionary capacities as relational organisms who can love, engaging in multilayered processes of changing behaviors, values, and relationships that promote the betterment of myriad nature. (shrink)

From the swirling stars above, to the end-directed design of life below, to the perceptions and emotions that color the world within—as more and more phenomena prove susceptible to scientific description, explanation, prediction, and control, the naturalistic metainduction grows increasingly plausible: perhaps nature is self-enclosed, so that everything that makes a difference within the world is itself part of the world; perhaps there are no disembodied agents—neither ghosts nor gods—whose actions influence our shared day-to-day world. Because neither the expansion of (...) science’s adequacy nor the concomitant pressure toward philosophical naturalism show signs of abating, the recent emergence of religious naturalism.. (shrink)