Today, most intelligent people reject traditional religions as aberrant pre-modern belief systems. Simply put, they appear to be assemblages of mythic stories propounding belief in anthropomorphic Gods, whose existence, either now or in the past is at best improbable and is in any event seen as irrelevant now in our modern age. Some religions, such a Buddhism hold out as the ultimate goal in life the achievement of a state of inner peace that can only be achieved through a renunciation of self and one’s natural urges.
In short these religions fail to provide a credible explanation of; who we are; how we got where we are today; how we relate to the rest of creation; and what purpose there is in life; in a way that connects with the restless, Faustian spirit of Western man and our instinctive ethnocentricity.
Evolutionary psychologists such as Professor Bruce G. Charlton would argue that traditional religions fail because they lack a complete cosmology. Charlton has written that “[a] cosmology is a mythical account of the universe as it presents itself to the human mind; it needs to be poetic, symbolic, inspiring a sense of awe and mystery. Furthermore, a complete cosmology should include three levels of macro-, meso- and microcosm, in order to understand the nature of the universe, human society, and the individual’s relation to them”.
Traditional cosmologies according to Charlton, describe a “static ideal state towards which the world ought to gravitate”. He obviously has in mind here as examples, the state of ‘Nirvana’ or the attainment of the ‘Kingdom of God on Earth’. “However, modern life is characterised by rapid fluidity of all kinds of structures, including innovation and destruction, and growth in complexity of communications without a pre-established end-point. We do not know where we are going, yet we are accelerating towards it.”
“Because people do not have a basic symbolic understanding of the modern world and modern humanity’s place in it, they experience conflict between their cosmology and what they observe and experience. This mismatch between traditional cosmology and contemporary actuality is alienating. Consequently the modern world is frequently perceived as chaotic, meaningless, declining or collapsing”.
Reflecting the essentially European character of his own psyche, Charlton concludes, “A modern cosmology therefore needs to be focused on underlying process instead of structure, on dynamism rather than stasis. If modern individuals become able to develop mythic understanding of the evolutionary nature of things-in-general then their experience of change will match their deepest expectations. Consequently, people may be more likely to feel ‘at home’ in the world and broadly optimistic about the future.”
Through Cosmotheism, which I regard as scientific paganism, I belief that it is possible to establish a complete cosmology that meets all of the prerequisites set out above, which is consistent with current science and which has the capacity to evolve and adapt and remain credible as our scientific knowledge advances. I will expand upon this in future posts.
Cosmotheism Now! 