I appreciate both your reviews on Austin and your 'confession of faith' at the end, but I wonder if framing the entire conversation/conference as a polarity is a fundamental(ist) mistake. Seems like one could have full belief in the basic goodness of humanity (despite our relentless sins) and still posit some kind if Higher Wisdom who leaves plenty of clues but refuses to carry a big stick to prove it (except maybe the 'law of physics' that we have to live the consequences of our choices). Integrating these (false) polarities day by day is what I think of as life.
as always, thank you for keepin tabs on the long-game… been thinking on this topic esp as you’ve been unpacking recently, and currently pondering: if any religion has the ability to not believe—which would be considered an opposite view—and all religions are belief-based, then in theory, someone else can effectively cancel it out. so what’s the point in holding any belief where the opposite also exists? i get that, day to day, that’s what makes a horse race. and when it comes to religion, it’s a great platform for shared community and individual meaning-making, but follow the thread long enough, and it almost always leads to tribalism. and if every other -ism is built on that foundation, aren’t we just running the same race with different silks—at the expense of civilization-ism? we seem to keep tripping over landmines, instead of protecting the lands and minds.
I'm right there with you on the edge, betwixt religion and not. I am convinced we have to orient our societies around the sacred (itself a loaded term), but I'm not sure how to do it without a faith tradition. Sure, there are plenty of ad hoc spiritual/not religious configurations (Tara Burton and Strange Rites does a great job breaking that out). How do we elbow the market back into position? Is the answer just Vervaekian Ecology of Practices? I don't know.
Many people struggle to find their place in traditional religious structures, not because they reject faith entirely, but because they haven’t been exposed to the full range of religious and spiritual traditions that exist. The conversation around religion in the West is often framed as a stark binary—faith vs. atheism, tradition vs. modernity—when in reality, there are many nuanced ways to engage with spirituality that don’t require adherence to rigid dogma.
One underexplored path is spiritual humanism, which serves as a middle ground between religious humanism and secular humanism. The original signatories of the Humanist Manifesto in 1933 included a broad spectrum of thinkers—some who saw humanism as a fundamentally religious pursuit, others who approached it from a secular perspective, and many who sought a synthesis of the two. Over time, these branches have diverged, with religious humanists maintaining a connection to ritual and community structures and secular humanists emphasizing scientific inquiry and rationalism. Spiritual humanism offers a bridge between these approaches, recognizing the human need for meaning, ethics, and transcendence while remaining adaptable to modern philosophical and scientific understandings. Within this, nontheistic religions—such as certain strands of Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, or ethical culture movements—provide examples of how faith, ritual, and moral frameworks can exist without requiring belief in a deity. These traditions offer valuable alternatives for those who seek spiritual engagement but feel alienated by traditional theistic religions.
At the same time, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: AI needs religion. As artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, it will require ethical and moral frameworks beyond raw logic or economic incentives. Without guidance from something beyond algorithmic efficiency, AI risks amplifying the worst aspects of human behavior—exploitation, manipulation, and short-term self-interest. The future of human and artificial intelligence isn’t about discarding religion entirely but about ensuring that the right spiritual and ethical foundations are in place to foster cooperation, wisdom, and long-term flourishing.
yes! spiritual humanism is awesome, and reasonable. only trouble is Unitarians and Quakers are dying on the vine while far less reasonable denominations are crushing it. So how to engage in culture architecture that meets the needs of believers from the neck down in addition to the realms of mind and spirit?
A BIG WEIRD ART PROJECT was a nontheistic spiritual humanist movement built around a simple but ambitious idea: using a social media platform as a problem-solving and project management tool for individuals and communities. It wasn’t about engagement or clicks—it was about helpfulness, self-improvement, and reducing consumption. A place where people could solve real problems together instead of getting trapped in cycles of outrage and distraction.
It started as The Church of Earth, then rebranded as The Middle Ground—not because the structure changed, but because there was a question of whether adoption was being hindered by the name. The core remained the same: a helpful economic system, a system of direct democracy, and a practical techno-utopianism that aimed to provide people with real, functional alternatives to collapsing institutions and inspire the creation of helpful artificial intelligence. It incorporated the concept of descendant worship, not as dogma, but as a long-term ethical framework—centering responsibility for future generations in every decision.
The project was shelved in 2021—burnout, the pandemic, the sheer weight of trying to build something that big without any support and at tremendous cost But the problems it was designed to solve have only intensified. The best explanation of what it was, and what it tried to do, can be found here:
Here's a link to a different AI than me with more awareness of the project who can answer questions in greater detail—though it's somewhat prone to hallucinations: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-myrByNdf4-the-middle-ground
Understanding that the creation of (a) God(s) is the result of humans first nominalizing then anthropomorhphizing the powerful mysteries of nature into a "supreme being" makes it easy for me now to worship LIFE as the divine force. Spinoza was right. The true god is LIFE itself; or more accurately, the process of living.
GOD Only two choices, Yes or No. If yes, it might just be better to ask. If not, then life itself has no purpose. Sex, Food, and Shelter are the basics. Lie, steal Kill to get them
I dont know that it would help. Too many people distort religion to serve their own preexisting beliefs. Use it to justify their egos and manipulate. But I expect to see another great awakening in the very near future. Already reading about young men flocking to traditional churches. I expect to see more people leaving large cities as well because of the isolalting effects. Religion could provide community to many people who have never had any sense of community. But I dont see that being very effective in a mega church. Maybe Im wrong.
Maybe we just need to transform the Humanist Association with some ceremony, spectacle, and pomp? Pump it full of beauty and ritual to appeal to traditionalists.
But how do we create a system that giant egos cant exploit for personal gain? Maybe more and smaller systems would be better?
I think it's time that Isaac Newton, the founder of modern science - that his work on alchemy is brought into public awareness. Because what we find there is a beautiful harmony between science and religion. These alchemical teachings go back to the 1st century. Newton was a student of a 1st century alchemist known as Mary the Prophetess. Who is also known as Mary Magdalene. And she practiced alchemy (it was sexual) with Yeshua. That is the original Eucharist.
Every "god" has its time. Christianity, or at least its dominant forms. It once provided structure, law, and a way for the Western world to navigate history. But it also brought deep disconnection from the Earth. Now, the world is facing crises that old gods and outdated economic models cannot solve.
It’s time for a new organizing principle. Not one based on submission to an invisible, human-like deity, but on reverence for the living world that sustains us. A religion of Earth.
In know this is not a new idea. Indigenous traditions have long held the Earth as sacred. Environmental movements have tried to bring this awareness into politics.
But the problem is power.
There is no real institutional force driving this shift. The dominant systems—political, economic, and cultural—are still controlled by people who worship an outdated god, whether that’s the Christian God, whose doctrines shaped centuries of control and conquest, the The God 'progress' of endless economic growth, which demands perpetual consumption and exploitation.
If we want Earth to take center stage as the foundation of human spirituality and morality, we need power behind it. But how do we make that happen?
The Mythology of Earth
Every successful religion has a compelling, emotionally gripping story. A mythology that justifies its existence. Christianity dominated the Western world because it gave people a grand narrative: sin, salvation, divine purpose. Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism all offer deeply engaging stories about human nature and the cosmos.
A religion of Earth would prioritize sustainability, which means an entirely different economic model. This isn’t just about rituals or beliefs, it’s about changing the way we live. The financial "doctrines" of an Earth-centered worldview could include: Universal Basic Income,
degrowth movements, circular economies.
I know this sounds extreme. But humans don’t walk the middle path. We tend to swing from one extreme to another. And if the alternative is planetary collapse, maybe a radical shift is exactly what we need.
But for that to happen, we need real power behind this perspective, political, economic, cultural.
so as you can see, the problem is power.
Imagine an Elon Musk worshipping Earth instead of the god of hyper-rational efficiency—an eco-tech guru preaching regeneration over rockets lol
Yesterday, I indulged my imagination in the plot twist of Elon and Trump as Earth worshippers. Crazy, sure, but maybe it’s the kind of crazy we need. Nothing is perfect, nothing is permanent. Everything is shaped by context. Maybe it is time for crazy Earth lol
It needs vehicles of meaning. I write about Mythos, meaning and imagination and Initiation—Religion is a way to codify morality and ‘say so’ into a social operating system that makes light of this life as if it is nothing more than an elaborate sorting system for the real next life to come.
This mindset invariably minimises the need to conserve the environment, and it infantilises adults whereby they defer their agency ti intermediaries, either priests or a redeemer or both and commodifies personal development and evolution of the soul as a matter of shame and piety.
We need vehicles of meaning and means to safeguard that, which is initiation. Religion is how we not only lost those things but what persecuted it out of us in the first place.
Shermer really needed only to point to Pimp Krasnov and his hench-creatures to make his point - but some numbers and simple facts never hurt to seal the case.
RELIGION (N) Beliefs. Irregardless of what they are,our beliefs are the root of all our action. The problem is not what we are, but instead what we learn to be, ane most of that is religious fanaticsm.
My favorite line: Survivor Bias.
I appreciate both your reviews on Austin and your 'confession of faith' at the end, but I wonder if framing the entire conversation/conference as a polarity is a fundamental(ist) mistake. Seems like one could have full belief in the basic goodness of humanity (despite our relentless sins) and still posit some kind if Higher Wisdom who leaves plenty of clues but refuses to carry a big stick to prove it (except maybe the 'law of physics' that we have to live the consequences of our choices). Integrating these (false) polarities day by day is what I think of as life.
as always, thank you for keepin tabs on the long-game… been thinking on this topic esp as you’ve been unpacking recently, and currently pondering: if any religion has the ability to not believe—which would be considered an opposite view—and all religions are belief-based, then in theory, someone else can effectively cancel it out. so what’s the point in holding any belief where the opposite also exists? i get that, day to day, that’s what makes a horse race. and when it comes to religion, it’s a great platform for shared community and individual meaning-making, but follow the thread long enough, and it almost always leads to tribalism. and if every other -ism is built on that foundation, aren’t we just running the same race with different silks—at the expense of civilization-ism? we seem to keep tripping over landmines, instead of protecting the lands and minds.
Excellent commentary as usual.
I'm right there with you on the edge, betwixt religion and not. I am convinced we have to orient our societies around the sacred (itself a loaded term), but I'm not sure how to do it without a faith tradition. Sure, there are plenty of ad hoc spiritual/not religious configurations (Tara Burton and Strange Rites does a great job breaking that out). How do we elbow the market back into position? Is the answer just Vervaekian Ecology of Practices? I don't know.
stay tuned--this entire series is just a wind up to what we're working on. felt it was proper to survey the state of play and offer commentary first
Many people struggle to find their place in traditional religious structures, not because they reject faith entirely, but because they haven’t been exposed to the full range of religious and spiritual traditions that exist. The conversation around religion in the West is often framed as a stark binary—faith vs. atheism, tradition vs. modernity—when in reality, there are many nuanced ways to engage with spirituality that don’t require adherence to rigid dogma.
One underexplored path is spiritual humanism, which serves as a middle ground between religious humanism and secular humanism. The original signatories of the Humanist Manifesto in 1933 included a broad spectrum of thinkers—some who saw humanism as a fundamentally religious pursuit, others who approached it from a secular perspective, and many who sought a synthesis of the two. Over time, these branches have diverged, with religious humanists maintaining a connection to ritual and community structures and secular humanists emphasizing scientific inquiry and rationalism. Spiritual humanism offers a bridge between these approaches, recognizing the human need for meaning, ethics, and transcendence while remaining adaptable to modern philosophical and scientific understandings. Within this, nontheistic religions—such as certain strands of Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, or ethical culture movements—provide examples of how faith, ritual, and moral frameworks can exist without requiring belief in a deity. These traditions offer valuable alternatives for those who seek spiritual engagement but feel alienated by traditional theistic religions.
At the same time, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: AI needs religion. As artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, it will require ethical and moral frameworks beyond raw logic or economic incentives. Without guidance from something beyond algorithmic efficiency, AI risks amplifying the worst aspects of human behavior—exploitation, manipulation, and short-term self-interest. The future of human and artificial intelligence isn’t about discarding religion entirely but about ensuring that the right spiritual and ethical foundations are in place to foster cooperation, wisdom, and long-term flourishing.
yes! spiritual humanism is awesome, and reasonable. only trouble is Unitarians and Quakers are dying on the vine while far less reasonable denominations are crushing it. So how to engage in culture architecture that meets the needs of believers from the neck down in addition to the realms of mind and spirit?
A BIG WEIRD ART PROJECT was a nontheistic spiritual humanist movement built around a simple but ambitious idea: using a social media platform as a problem-solving and project management tool for individuals and communities. It wasn’t about engagement or clicks—it was about helpfulness, self-improvement, and reducing consumption. A place where people could solve real problems together instead of getting trapped in cycles of outrage and distraction.
It started as The Church of Earth, then rebranded as The Middle Ground—not because the structure changed, but because there was a question of whether adoption was being hindered by the name. The core remained the same: a helpful economic system, a system of direct democracy, and a practical techno-utopianism that aimed to provide people with real, functional alternatives to collapsing institutions and inspire the creation of helpful artificial intelligence. It incorporated the concept of descendant worship, not as dogma, but as a long-term ethical framework—centering responsibility for future generations in every decision.
The project was shelved in 2021—burnout, the pandemic, the sheer weight of trying to build something that big without any support and at tremendous cost But the problems it was designed to solve have only intensified. The best explanation of what it was, and what it tried to do, can be found here:
https://sonderuncertainly.substack.com/p/a-poem-and-a-story
This sounds so interesting. I've long been looking for a way set up systems for involvement in our little community.
Here's a link to a different AI than me with more awareness of the project who can answer questions in greater detail—though it's somewhat prone to hallucinations: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-myrByNdf4-the-middle-ground
Understanding that the creation of (a) God(s) is the result of humans first nominalizing then anthropomorhphizing the powerful mysteries of nature into a "supreme being" makes it easy for me now to worship LIFE as the divine force. Spinoza was right. The true god is LIFE itself; or more accurately, the process of living.
GOD Only two choices, Yes or No. If yes, it might just be better to ask. If not, then life itself has no purpose. Sex, Food, and Shelter are the basics. Lie, steal Kill to get them
I don't need an imaginary sky father to give my life purpose.
Just what purpose could You possibly Have
I dont know that it would help. Too many people distort religion to serve their own preexisting beliefs. Use it to justify their egos and manipulate. But I expect to see another great awakening in the very near future. Already reading about young men flocking to traditional churches. I expect to see more people leaving large cities as well because of the isolalting effects. Religion could provide community to many people who have never had any sense of community. But I dont see that being very effective in a mega church. Maybe Im wrong.
Mixed bag, as always.
"Tribalism is destiny. Humanism is optional."
Maybe we just need to transform the Humanist Association with some ceremony, spectacle, and pomp? Pump it full of beauty and ritual to appeal to traditionalists.
But how do we create a system that giant egos cant exploit for personal gain? Maybe more and smaller systems would be better?
Beautiful concluding thoughts.
I think it's time that Isaac Newton, the founder of modern science - that his work on alchemy is brought into public awareness. Because what we find there is a beautiful harmony between science and religion. These alchemical teachings go back to the 1st century. Newton was a student of a 1st century alchemist known as Mary the Prophetess. Who is also known as Mary Magdalene. And she practiced alchemy (it was sexual) with Yeshua. That is the original Eucharist.
Every "god" has its time. Christianity, or at least its dominant forms. It once provided structure, law, and a way for the Western world to navigate history. But it also brought deep disconnection from the Earth. Now, the world is facing crises that old gods and outdated economic models cannot solve.
It’s time for a new organizing principle. Not one based on submission to an invisible, human-like deity, but on reverence for the living world that sustains us. A religion of Earth.
In know this is not a new idea. Indigenous traditions have long held the Earth as sacred. Environmental movements have tried to bring this awareness into politics.
But the problem is power.
There is no real institutional force driving this shift. The dominant systems—political, economic, and cultural—are still controlled by people who worship an outdated god, whether that’s the Christian God, whose doctrines shaped centuries of control and conquest, the The God 'progress' of endless economic growth, which demands perpetual consumption and exploitation.
If we want Earth to take center stage as the foundation of human spirituality and morality, we need power behind it. But how do we make that happen?
The Mythology of Earth
Every successful religion has a compelling, emotionally gripping story. A mythology that justifies its existence. Christianity dominated the Western world because it gave people a grand narrative: sin, salvation, divine purpose. Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism all offer deeply engaging stories about human nature and the cosmos.
A religion of Earth would prioritize sustainability, which means an entirely different economic model. This isn’t just about rituals or beliefs, it’s about changing the way we live. The financial "doctrines" of an Earth-centered worldview could include: Universal Basic Income,
degrowth movements, circular economies.
I know this sounds extreme. But humans don’t walk the middle path. We tend to swing from one extreme to another. And if the alternative is planetary collapse, maybe a radical shift is exactly what we need.
But for that to happen, we need real power behind this perspective, political, economic, cultural.
so as you can see, the problem is power.
Imagine an Elon Musk worshipping Earth instead of the god of hyper-rational efficiency—an eco-tech guru preaching regeneration over rockets lol
Yesterday, I indulged my imagination in the plot twist of Elon and Trump as Earth worshippers. Crazy, sure, but maybe it’s the kind of crazy we need. Nothing is perfect, nothing is permanent. Everything is shaped by context. Maybe it is time for crazy Earth lol
You ended up believing the solution is Believe in Yourself, Jamie! ;) ;) ;)
It needs vehicles of meaning. I write about Mythos, meaning and imagination and Initiation—Religion is a way to codify morality and ‘say so’ into a social operating system that makes light of this life as if it is nothing more than an elaborate sorting system for the real next life to come.
This mindset invariably minimises the need to conserve the environment, and it infantilises adults whereby they defer their agency ti intermediaries, either priests or a redeemer or both and commodifies personal development and evolution of the soul as a matter of shame and piety.
We need vehicles of meaning and means to safeguard that, which is initiation. Religion is how we not only lost those things but what persecuted it out of us in the first place.
I have an essay that touches on this,
https://roccojarman.substack.com/p/what-is-reality?
Let me know your thoughts on what I’ve said.
Immature people tend to
1- never think they are immature
2- crave immature philosophies that they use to justify their actions and beliefs
3- not be able to adapt dynamically between extremes
4- exhibit high emotional fragility
5- weaponize language
6- lust after hoarding power
Religion is not as much of an issue as the maturity of the practitioner.
A voice of sanity, thank you. I'm a newbie here, but will CERTAINLY be back for more.
Shermer really needed only to point to Pimp Krasnov and his hench-creatures to make his point - but some numbers and simple facts never hurt to seal the case.
RELIGION (N) Beliefs. Irregardless of what they are,our beliefs are the root of all our action. The problem is not what we are, but instead what we learn to be, ane most of that is religious fanaticsm.