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WEEKLY NEW REALITY CHECK

Peter Kilde, Chair
Partnership Strategic Initiatives Task Force

A couple of week ago I was helping my daughter Ingrid bone up for a Civics quiz and one question on her study sheet was; “What is religion?”  The study sheet said something along the lines of; “A shared belief in a supernatural being or beings…” and so on, but I disagreed that being a religion requires belief in a supernatural deity, as does the author of this week’s post, John Michael Greer.  On more than one occasion as I have given presentations on New Reality issues and revealed my lack of faith in either Progress or the belief that Technology Will Save Us, I have provoked a response that is best characterized in one word: “Blasphemy!”  It’s one thing to have a civil disagreement about some facts or the conclusions to be drawn from some particular data set; it’s quite another to seen as attacking the very foundations somebody’s deeply held religious beliefs.
 
I have childhood memories of my Lutheran minister father referring to “Man” as “the religious animal.”  Recent research in Social Psychology strongly supports this view.  (See the book recommendation a couple of weeks ago for Jonathon Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.)  In his current series of posts, John Michael Greer makes the case that our species’ tendency toward religious beliefs and behaviors is not limited to theistic religions, but also extends to what he calls “civic religions” like Communism, Americanism and the Religion of Progress.

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