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The Sacred Depths of Nature |
Author: Ursula Goodenough
Published: 2000-06-15 |
List price: $19.99
Our price: $13.59
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As of: January 06th, 2009 03:51:05 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 The Sacred Depths of Nature
I found this book simplistic and full of wishful thinking. Quoting 2000 year old scripture passages did nothing to enhance my knowledge of the natural world at all. It was a very disappointing read.
 Religious Response to "what is."
The phrase that titles this review is one frequently used by Dr. Goodenough. Beneath its elegance and poetry this beautifully constructed vision of natural law and our global siblings' spiritual response to "what is," is a strong sense of purpose driven by the imperatives of modern human life. In the face of environmental peril and the experience of millenia of fratricidal bloodletting, we must rethink the foundations of our religious and political institutions that separate us and turn instead to our common natural essence for a new form of religion will unite us.
I recommend this work for anyone able to read.
Essential Reading
Ursula Goodenough has produced a very rare bridge between non-theistic evolutionary science and religion where she expresses an understanding of the spiritual side of human culture while keeping her feet planted firmly on the science ground. Through what she calls 'religious naturalism' Goodenough seeks to show how natural reality abounds with natural 'miracles' that elicit 'religious' emotions without the need to belong to any particular religion nor believe in a god. More than this, she seeks to show how nature itself can provide every one of us with all that is necessary to be 'religious' in the sense of having a common planetary ethic, planetary wisdom and interconnectedness.
Religious people believe that existance without a god would be devoid of meaning, bleak and pointless. Goodenough explains how this absolutely does not need not be so and how, in fact, understanding how life works can fill existance with immense joy. She gives a clear, brief explanation of aspects of life from the origins of the earth to human consciousness and adds her own personal refections on the 'religious', though non-theist, way life makes her feel.
Mortality is one aspect of life that often spurs people to believe in a god and Goodenough explains the origins of mortality in the evolution of multicellularity and sexual reproduction with the resulting diversity of life. With multicellularity the germline cells are sequestered from the body cells which, not themselves going into the future, can specialize and create complex body parts including the brain. These body cells, and bodies, have a limited life ie "death is the price paid to have trees and clams, birds and grasshoppers, people and consciousness." Goodenough can therefore say: "my somatic life is the wondrous gift wrought by my forthcoming death".
I don't know how many people who are firmly in the non-theist or theist camp would find a bridge between the two as comfortable as Ursula Goodenough finds it but that is what makes this book essential reading for everyone.
This is Really Good
I loved this book and it's a refreshing thing for a thinking person to read.
A fun review of evolution, an excellent overview of the beauty of life.
It is refreshing to find a brilliant scientist who is willing to turn nature into poetry and spirituality. It shouldn't matter if you are an atheist or a deist, the description of the common bonds we have with the earth and the different species of the animal kingdom brings tears to your eyes. At the same time, we can have reverence and feeling for the profound desires of humans to communicate and feel intimacy with God who may well be a metaphor for the beauty of the gorgeous biological process.
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