Nature Is Enough, livre ebook

Nature is enough: enough to allow us to find meaning in life and to answer our religious sensibilities. This is the position of religious naturalists, who deny the existence of a deity and a supernatural realm. In this book, Loyal Rue answers critics by describing how religious naturalism can provide a satisfying vision of the meaning of human existence.
The work begins with a discussion of how to evaluate the meaning of life itself, referencing a range of thought from ancient Greek philosophy to the Abrahamic traditions to the Enlightenment to contemporary process and postmodern philosophies. Ultimately proposing meaning as an emergent property of living organisms, Rue writes that a meaningful life comes through happiness and virtue. Spiritual qualities that combine evolutionary cosmology and biocentric morality are described: reverence, gratitude, awe, humility, relatedness, compassion, and hope. Rue looks at why religious naturalism is not currently more of a movement, but nevertheless predicts that it will become the prevailing religious sensibility.
Preface
1. Introduction: What Is a Human Being For?
Part I. The Meaning of Life
2. The Reality of Meaning
Meaning in the World
Meaning in the Mind
The Illusion of Meaning
3. The Emergence of Meaning
What Is Emergence?
Revisiting the Options
Interlude: A Model of Emergence
The Miracle of Meaning
Part II. RELIGIOUS NATURALISM
4. Religion Naturalized, Nature Sanctified
Bringing Religion Down to Earth
The Heart of Naturalism
Taking Nature to Heart
Is Nature Enough?
The Promise of Religious Naturalism
5. Confessions of a Religious Naturalist
God and Creation
Sin and Grace
Evil and Suffering
Death and Salvation
Faith, Hope, and Love
Notes
Bibliography
Index