Opinion

Atheopaganism is Not Just a Religious/Spiritual Path. It’s a Movement.

Imagine…

A world where critical thinking and reason and Occam’s Razor are the predominant means people use for determining what to believe. Where education is celebrated and made a major public priority, and expertise is once again respected.

A world where the Earth and Sun, and beauty and truth and love are considered Sacred. Where people conduct themselves according to principles of kindness and compassion.

Where we ritualize our life transitions, and calmly and factually embrace both sex and death as natural parts of a human life. Where consent culture is a norm rather than an aspiration. Where each of us is empowered to take on whatever religious roles we choose, subject to no priesthood, no religious authority.

Where our rituals are meaningful and transformative, and bring us into a sense of community and shared culture with our fellows. Where love, kindness, reason and wonder are the watchwords of an entire society, and the difference between experience and fact is clearly understood.

Wouldn’t it be lovely? Wouldn’t it be right?

Atheopaganism is a path for individuals to adopt and adapt as they see fit, but it has core principles and a vision that we all (hopefully) share. And that vision entails that through our practices we will become wiser, more grounded in reality, more reasonable, more kind, more compassionate, more environmentally and politically responsible.

And that as a result of our examples, these values will rub off. Will spread.

It’s late in the day for Western industrial capitalism. All the indicators are that it isn’t going to be able to manage to keep going for much longer. We’re going to need new values and approaches to living if humans are to enter another chapter and succeed.

So be proud, Atheopagans. You’re doing something new, something that actually squares the circle of integrating science and religion not only in terms of cosmology, but practices. And in the process, you’re building richer and more joyous lives for yourselves, your families and your communities.

Never doubt it: we’re playing the long game of culture-building.

Author of ATHEOPAGANISM: An Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science, Mark Green is the initiator of the Atheopagan path and editor at the Atheopaganism blog. With co-host Yucca, he records the weekly podcast The Wonder: Science-Based Paganism, makes YouTube videos, and creates materials and resources for practicing Atheopagans. He volunteers as a staffer to the Atheopagan Council to support the growth of Atheopaganism throughout the world. In his home of Sonoma County, California, in the occupied ancestral lands of the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok peoples, he is best known as an activist and founder of Sonoma County Conservation Action, the largest environmental activism group by membership on the North Coast of California.

One Comment

  • Ryan Cronin

    Thank you, I needed to read this. I do have hope, the new wave of political activists are doing amazing things and may just save us all yet. I think that atheopagan-ish ideas such as reverence for nature, respect for diversity and the like are becoming more integrated in society as a whole, regardless of people’s religious labels. The far-right backlash is the death throes of an old order, flailing at everything they are scared of. We are the future.

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