When God Is Gone, Everything Is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist | 
 enlarge | Author: Chet Raymo
Publisher: Sorin Books
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
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Rating:  78 reviews
Sales Rank: 195651
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 148
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 1933495138
Dewey Decimal Number: 211.7092
EAN: 9781933495132
ASIN: 1933495138
Publication Date: September 2008
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Product Description
Best-selling author of sixteen books and a long-time writer of the popular column "Science Musings" in the Boston Globe, Chet Raymo invites readers to explore "the beautiful and terrible mystery that soaks creation." In what he describes as a "late-life credo," renowned science writer Chet Raymo narrates his half-century journey from the traditional Catholicism of his youth to his present perspective as a "Catholic agnostic." As a scientist, Raymo holds to the skepticism that accepts only verifiable answers, but as a "religious naturalist," he never ceases his pursuit of "the beautiful and terrible mystery that soaks creation." Raymo assembles a stunning array of scientists, philosophers, mystics, and poets who help him discover "glimmers of the Absolute in every particular." Whether exploring the connection of the human body to the stars or the meaning of prayer of the heart, these challenging reflections will cause believers and agnostics alike to pause and pay attention.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 73 more reviews...
 Another seeker of the middle ground January 8, 2009
This volume is brief and readily readable, succumbing neither to scientific nor to theological jargon. In it, Chet Raymo tries, as many before him have tried, to find a middle space between so-called orthodox Christianity (in all its hugely varied forms)and a more progressive approach to the acknowledgement of a more or less post-theistic yet holy element in creation.
This is a difficult task and, so far as I know, no one has found a broadly satisfactory solution. While many authors have approached a redefinition of the sacred from a variety of perspectives including, but by no means limited to history, anthropology, psychology, linguistics, and critical theory, Raymo's take is scientific, or at least naturalistic. The problem I have with Raymo and the others is that they are always reactive in tone. They are pushing against the conventional and traditional rather than striking out on their own. They spend too many words saying what they do not believe and why they do not believe it than what they do believe and why they do so.
In fairness to Raymo, he makes an almost mannered attempt to avoid the extreme positions taken by Dawkins and Co. on one end and Benedict XVI and the Protestant fundamentalists on the other. One senses from time to time that he is pulling his punches a bit for fear of being dismissed as yet another special pleader.
The reader who will enjoy this book is the one who reads not to find answers but to identify more interesting questions. Those seeking reassurance for the rightness of their convictions, whether theistic or atheistic, will find little of value here. However, one who is willing to be challenged by new ways of looking at the sanctity of creation will find it a good read.
The reader who will NOT enjoy this book is the one whose mind is already closed on the subject. Disciples of Dawkins will likely find it...what? Cowardly, perhaps. The writing of a man who knows that conventional Christianity is an illusion but yearns to hang onto comforting bits of it nonetheless. The rigorously orthodox, and particularly the biblical literalists will simply find it blasphemous.
This is not a heavyweight book but I recommend it to those seeking alternatives to the poles of orthodoxy and atheism.
A compulsive, propolsive read. December 29, 2008
One of the book's weaknesses might also be one of its strengths: It does tend to ramble and repeat a little, and is not tightly focused or well-argued. It is conversational in a way few books are, because when we use that word of a book, we usually only mean that the language is natural and accessible. In this case, it also mirrors the flaws in conversation--the picking up and dropping of topics, the ebb and flow of interest, the repetition and throat-clearing and stuttering. But I did not find that these flaws detracted from the work overall, but contributed to my sense that I was in the parlor of a very wise and intelligent mentor whose shelves are stocked with fascinating books, stuffed with incredible quotes and stories, and we're just going to spend a few hours together swapping opinions and sharing ideas. The smell of cigars and brandy fairly waft off the page. I guess I'd be hard-pressed to describe "When God is Gone" as some work of essay-writing genius, but it is so intensely likeable and pleasurable that I couldn't help loving it anyway. A single four-word line, written to react to the atheist books of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and the like was among the best things I've read this year: "God had it coming." Notwithstanding that line, this is a book that understands and celebrates that within humans that is most often called religious. "When God is Gone" actually succeeds in promoting its central thesis, that the god of the Abrahamic faiths is an impediment to wonder, awe, appreciation, and yes, in some key respects, spirituality.
 Magnificent December 24, 2008
Chet Raymo comes from the Catholic tradition, but his book will speak to all those who do not think that the absence of religious belief bars them from spirituality. To him, giving up the supernatural opens the door to a profound appreciation for nature at all levels -- hummingbirds, genes, galaxies and the human mind. This wonder leads to the contemplation and silent attention of mystical prayer.
If this book speaks to you, I strongly recommend Green Space, Green Time: The Way of Science.
Religious Naturalism December 24, 2008
The title of the book and also the title of chapter 10 announce the general position in partial agreement with E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins but specifically in disagreement over the nature of the religious. R describes his movement from Roman Catholicism to a position he feels certain is not amenable to orthodoxy but maintains a sense of the sacred in nature. CR's main argument is that the sense of the sacred that all religions have can be maintained by a naturalist that accepts Wilson and Dawkins scientific views. CR tends to quote much more poetry than either Wilson or Dawkins as well. He says, "Any religion worthy of humankind's future will have these characteristics: - It will be ecumenical....- It will be ecological....- It will embrace the scientific story...." (p. 114) "Grace is everywhere." Suppose the issue is more of emphasis since Wilson and Dawkins both marvel and the wonders of the universe and emphasize how science convinces a scientist of the beauty around us. Perhaps this is the grace CR means.
A Spirituality for Atheists December 22, 2008
Religion is a universal human phenomenon. Can it survive the epistemological onslaught of the scientific method? If Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are to be believed, the answer is definitely not. If Chet Raymo is to be believed, the answer is yes, but....
"When God Is Gone Everything Is Holy" outlines "the making of a religious naturalist," as the subtitle puts it. In addition to "religious naturalist," Raymo describes himself as a "Catholic agnostic." A cradle Catholic, Raymo left behind his faith gradually as the result of his scientific education, but he did not leave behind his appreciation of Catholic sacramentality, of the holiness of flesh-and-blood, of what Dun Scotus called haecceitas or "thisness." Sacramentality provides Raymo the bridge between religion and science. "The religious naturalist seeks a language of spirituality that is consistent with the empirical way of knowing."
Raymo identifies his religious naturalism with "creation spirituality" and "panentheism," although he recognizes the dangers of using those terms. What he especially wants to guard against are the "idolatry" of belief in a personal god and "faith-based" ways of knowing. He recognizes the limitations of scientific knowledge, of course. "Nature likes to hide," he writes repeatedly throughout the book. Its mysteries must always be searched out by science. But Raymo is clear that science is the only reliable method of attaining genuine knowledge.
As a Christian and a pastor, I find myself both more attracted to and more wary of Raymo's religious naturalism then of Dawkins's and Harris's strident atheism, even though Raymo is an atheist himself and somewhat appreciative of those two polemicists' efforts. "God had it coming," he says. Why more attracted? Because Raymo is more apt to see the genuine, beneficial contributions the religious spirit has made to humanity than are Dawkins and Harris, who seem to think religion is unrelievedly evil. Why more wary? Because a little sugar hides bitter poisons. Raymo wants to retain all the ethical and aesthetic benefits of Catholicism (and Christianity more generally) while chucking its doctrinal core. Many will find this convincing.
Me? Not so much. Different metaphysics entail different moralities. Christian theism produced a morality quite different from paganism. One small example: Christians rescued from the trash dumps those weak infants whom the Roman paterfamilias had ordered exposed. Christians saw something wrong with this treatment of infants. Romans? Not so much. Another example: Christian missionaries in India forced the end of the practice of suttee, by which widows were burned alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Christians saw something wrong with what was taken as normal by Indians. Raymo is quite drawn to the compassion and grace of the Catholic (and Christian) religion and seems to think they can be separated from the ridiculous story of the Beloved Son of God dying on the cross. But why?
The scientific worldview is an evolutionary one. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Oh sure, biologists have pointed out altruistic behavior in animals, and this too is part of sociobiology. But at the end of the day, an evolutionist has no way of preferring tooth-and-claw to altruism, for both are simply strategies of survival. If picking fleas out of her mate's hair helps a chimpanzee survive, do that. If cannibalizing her young helps her survive, do that. Who's to say which is better?
Who's to say, in other words, whether in the absence of God everything is holy or just plain terrifying? At several points, Raymo notes that a person's religion generally correlates strongly with where he or she was born. If born in America, one is likely to be Christian. If born in Saudi Arabia, Muslim. If in Mumbai, India, Hindu. (Obviously, that has nothing to do with the truth of those religion's claims. After all, if one was born to atheist parents, one is likely to be an atheist.) But I wonder whether Raymo's privileged status as a white male, North American academic with a fairly comfortable retirement hasn't slanted his view of nature. Would he consider nature so benign had he been born a dirt-poor, starving Ethiopian?
The picture of nature that emerges from Raymo's book is of nature veiled, but nonetheless productive of wonder, awe, joy, and delight--of a good nature minus the God who brought order out of chaos and called it good. Rudolf Otto identified the idea of the holy as mysterium tremendum et fascinans. Raymo focuses on the fascinans. He has forgotten the tremendum.
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