Yet somehow for Christians in particular, there is this massive energy spent trying to find value in life. I wonder if it comes from the incessant rehashing of the all the woes in the world that occur within churches. In a way, it is almost as if church-goers have to back up their salvation by finding things they are saved from, and one of those things is a “meaningless life”.

Quite frankly, what is wrong with a meaningless life? I don’t really think about it anymore unless it is brought up, and even then I don’t take it too seriously. I create my own meaning in life… I find things to make my life meaningful and to add perceived value to my existence.

And in a way, religious people do the exact same thing. They “find” God’s will for their life and often feel useless until they do (I’ve seen it happen). Ironically, God’s will normally just ends up being “what I like to do with a spiritual twist”.

The de-deification of western culture (including the sciences) is our task for the next 100 years.

1. we free culture from the dead hand of near eastern mythological speculation

A mishmash of near eastern magical texts makes spurious claims of being god-given. Their nihilistic dualism and androcentric understanding of the universe and paternalist model of human nature are too damaging to contribute to a humane planet-wide ethos.

2. we free culture from a death impulse characterized by “sin” and “guilt”

The universe evinces neither affect, nor morality, nor intellect. Neither physical nature nor human nature say anything about a superordinate, supernatural realm populated by creators or law givers.

Nature is silent. There is no concept of truth in nature. Indeed, there are no concepts whatsoever in nature. Nature obeys nothing. Nature knows nothing. Natura naturans. Nature acts.

Nature is neither meaningful nor meaningless. Neither a source of comfort (natural theology) nor a source of despair (existentialism). Both are rooted in the same mistaken presupposition that meaning can be found by searching “the starry heavens” for gods or by quarrying human inwardness for “the moral law within [us].”

3. we show that religion is a cultural artifact

Religions belong to cultures embedded in nature. And cultures are our distinctive human-all-too-human handiwork. Religions are obsolete, replaceable cultural artifacts.

Any specific religion reenacts and institutionalizes cultic myth. It gets spread through recruitment, custom and conquest — financially supported by tax code and state funding — enforced by indoctrination, intimidation or violence.

4. alleged god-given morality is rooted in ancient imperial propaganda

Xian mythology, like related big-4 monotheisms zoroastrianism, post-exilic judaism, and islam, posits a moralized universal order which never existed. No more can be found than the ancestors put there in the dream-time. (All commentary, aka theology is fifth-rate fan fiction.)

Some pseudo-meaning derives ultimately from Sargon I’s (2334-2279 BCE) imperial propaganda when the very first violent yoking together of disparate city-state cultures occurred in what is now Iraq. The first myth of divine status of the emperor and of an empire-spanning morality turns out to be ancient political spin. (Still works today, doesn’t it?)

5. we present a “way” superior to world hating monster-theisms

Adjust your understanding, adjust your expectations, and you will have a right relationship with the only total reality there is natura naturans. Nature naturing —

the anti-supernaturalist

Yes—pantheism believes God makes up everything in the Universe. That God basically IS the Universe and everything inside it or outside it too.