Transcendence without the bull

[cleanhippie]

A rush of powerful, transforming emotion. A bolt of altered perspective. A love that overwhelms. An unmediated encounter with pure beauty. A profound realization of significance—or insignificance. When a humanist has a "wow" experience, by what name should we call it? Transcendence?

Transcendence is a word that makes many who embrace humanism and naturalism recoil. And for understandable reason, with its connotations to both supernaturalism and mumbo-jumbo. Can transcendence be expressed and understood in a way that is humanistic, rather than supernatural?

The answer is yes. For humanism to not explicitly embrace such experiences risks limiting humanism's appeal and reducing its potential for personal meaning. If a culture does not provide explicit links between such profound experiences and a naturalistic interpretation, these powerful and possibly transformational experiences can easily be misinterpreted, by default, as being part of a provincial religious story.

The rush of naturalistic transcendence is available in several ways: when we glimpse universals, when we treasure particulars, and when we expand our consciousness. All these types of experiences can be both transcendent and fully understood as naturalistic phenomena in a naturalistic world.

http://thenewhumanism.org/authors/lawrence-rifkin/articles/transcendence-without-the-bull

[rrneck]

1. Good stuff.

Religion, for all its benifits (and there are many), has been making bank off this fundamental aspect of the human experience for thousands of years.

Religions are the first corporations. I don't see how, at this point in human history, religion can be a positive influence. Every time God gets property religion jumps the shark.

[laconicsax]

2. Rec'd to zero. n/t

[Taverner]

3. I call it Endorphins, Dopamine, Prolactin, and Oxytocin

But I'm a smartass like that :)