Category Archives: Pantheism

Mental health has received greater emphasis this lockdown year isolation, loss of jobs and businesses, the effect on churches and schools and the simple irrationality of the rules can be wearing. It has been so chaotic a year that it shouldnt surprise us when meditation is promoted as a path to mental and physical health.

Breathe, a self-care magazine, touts 34 ways to lift your mood, embrace mistakes and find your purpose. A smartphone app called The Calm collaborated with HBO Max for a World of Calm series, featuring celebrity narrators. In January 2021, the Headspace app launched the first of its Netflix shows titled Headspace Guide to Meditation. And the CARE channel screened in hospitals juxtaposes nature scenes with soothing music on endless loop.

In the process, meditation has turned a religious practice into therapy. It has gone beyond spiritual, but not religious to not being spiritual at all.

But when Eastern-style meditation first rose to popularity in the 1960s, its goals were finding divinity within oneself, the visualization of deities, becoming one with the cosmos and attaining enlightenment. Some forms of yoga involve Hindu gods. Tibetan Buddhist yidam meditation involves visualization of deities. New Age meditation promoted pantheism and polytheism. The promised enlightenment was transcendent.

The 1960s were also a turbulent time with the Vietnam War, assassinations and riots, yet meditation was still considered a path to nirvana beyond the mundane world. It was assumed that meditation would have a religious basis leading to a religious enlightenment.

But nowadays, meditation is more pragmatic. An example would be Andy Puddicombe, the founder of Headspace. He spent a decade trying to become a Buddhist monk, venturing to places such as India, Nepal and Thailand. In the end, he decided, according to his website, to demystify the mystical. The website states, The techniques in the Headspace app stem from both the Burmese and Tibetan Buddhist traditions, even though some of the names have been changed from the original translation to make them more accessible.

Accessibility and demystification mean draining meditation of its original religiosity. In a sense, it is Buddhism without the Buddha. It exemplifies the 9th-century koan attributed to the Chinese monk Linji Yixuan, who said, If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. The koan is often interpreted as the rejection of external spiritual authority, be it from a monk or the Buddha himself. The seeker has the final say. It is completely subjective.

In this suddenly complex post-Christian world, subjectivity is good, and demystified meditation is now about increasing productivity, getting better sleep and lowering stress. Dave McKay, CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada, wrote, I know several colleagues who have begun the practice of meditation for the first time in their lives as a result of using the Headspace app, so Im proud were giving all employees an accessible introduction to improving their mental health fitness. This fitness seems to be congruent with productivity to the company.

Headspaces Introduction to Meditation video offers the simple directions of Breathe in/Hold/Breathe out as soothing music plays. The Calm app has a Sleep Story with comedian Stephen Fry telling a relaxed story about Frances lavender fields in Blue Gold. These meditations arent focused on the spiritual and transcendent. One could argue that Blue Gold, for example, is focused on the grandeur of creation, rather than how it reflects the greatness of the Creator.

This kind of meditation has a strictly utilitarian goal: calmness, even passivity. Stress relief is now its primary purpose. It goes beyond dealing with pressure it seeks eliminating stress altogether in the name of self-care.

Taking care of oneself, though, is not enough. What if youre not treating the right person? Then what? All that work would be for nothing. Discovering the authentic self is of prime importance.

The term authenticity used to be applied to reality. Is that money real, or is it a forgery? Is this painting or manuscript authentic? Is that signature authentic? The teaching of the Church is authentic when grounded in Tradition.

Today, however, it is applied to the self. Authenticity replaces truth. It is deeply relativistic because people differ and have differing experiences and is the authentic self the self at 20, 30, 42 or 70? It devolves into a scornful (John 18:8), What is truth?

The modern I am true to myself supplants Our Lords I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). Our Lords statement is absolute and objective.

Church teaching shows how meditation can guide us beyond relaxation to God. A day at the beach is relaxing. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church states (2705), Meditation is above all a quest.

The concept of a quest is active. While current trends in meditation are centered on passivity and making people docile, a quest is an active march to a goal. The Christian epics of the Holy Grail, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the Lord of the Rings are about striving. Quests are not relaxation; they are challenges.

In the case of Christian meditation, it is an active quest to live the life of Christ, which was anything but passive. Our Lord sought baptism from his cousin to begin his life of teaching. He called the Twelve Apostles. He actively healed, preached and performed miracles. He repeatedly told Sts. Peter, James and John that the endpoint of his mission was crucifixion, death and resurrection. He endured heroically, not passively. His mission is the foundational quest.

Crucially, Christian meditation the quest acknowledges suffering. It doesnt promise the perfect escape from discomfort. In the Salve Regina, there is the line mourning and weeping in this vale of tears. St. Junpero Serra prayed the Salve Regina nightly as he founded missions in California from San Diego to San Francisco. Christian meditation doesnt flee from pain but faces it by focusing on Christs many sufferings. It acknowledges reality rather than dismissing it as an illusion.

In sum, the greatest difference between Christian and Eastern meditation is that Christianity does not deny the reality of suffering, let alone stress. The idea of escaping the pressures of life because they dont exist is nonsensical. And in the modern era, peace cannot be found in relativism either, because we dont experience life relatively, but in stark, absolute terms.

Catholics look at the source of authenticity, the Bible. St. Paul, who knew his share of suffering, wrote (2 Corinthians 1:5, 7), For as we share abundantly in Christs sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. For we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. In uniting our sufferings and stress with Christ, we find true comfort the peace the world cannot give.

Read this article:
Meditation Isnt Mere Therapy Its a Living Relationship With Almighty God - National Catholic Register

There is a view of God's nature known as pantheism. The term is derived from two Greek words pan and theos. Pan means "all or everything" and theos means "God." Pantheism, therefore, means god is everything.

There Is No Distinction In Pantheism

Pantheism teaches that everything that exists is part of one single reality and that reality is called god. God is all and all is god. There is no distinction between the creature and the creator in pantheism. God is equal to anything and everything. Trees and rocks, birds and land animals, the wind and the rain, - everything that exists, including human beings, is declared to be parts of God. God expresses himself through these substances and forces.

They Reject The Idea Of A Personal God

The concept of a personal God who created the universe as a separate substance is foreign to pantheism. Pantheism depersonalizes any idea of God.

The God Of The Bible Is Distinct

However, the Scripture states otherwise. The first verse of the Bible refutes the idea of pantheism.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).

The apostle Paul wrote.

For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead (Romans 1:20).

The Universe Was Something New

The universe has not existed eternally but God has. When God created the universe He brought into being something different from Himself.

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible (Hebrews 11:3).

Pantheism blurs this distinction.

God Made Everything

Scripture teaches that God made everything.

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands (Acts 17:24).

God Is The Sustainer Of All Things

The living God is also the Sustainer of the universe.

For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:16,17)

The universe is not God; rather it depends upon God for existence.

The Origination Of Pantheism - The Rejection Of God's Truth

Scripture gives us a clue as to the origination of pantheism. Speaking of the eternal God, Paul wrote.

For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures (Romans 1:21-23).

When people began to reject the idea that the God of the Bible existed, they substituted the creation for the Creator. Realizing that humanity needed something big and powerful to worship, humans turned their affections to the creation, rather than the Creator.

Pantheism Creates Confusion

Pantheism confuses God with His creation. The art is not the artist, the poem is not the poet, the music is not the musician, and the creation is not God.

God Is Distinct From Nature

While God has revealed Himself through nature, He is separate and above it. Nature is not divine. Scripture says that the present heavens and earth will pass away, but that God will exist forever.

By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly people (2 Peter 3:7).

Pantheism Has An Impersonal God

In Pantheism, God is impersonal. Since everything that exists is designated God there is no difference between the creation and the Creator.

Good And Evil Is Blurred In Pantheism

Pantheism destroys the moral perfection of the God of the Bible. Since everything is God there is no distinction between good and evil. This negates what the Bible says about the goodness of God and the evil of sin.

God Exists Apart From The Universe

The pantheist position is: without the universe, there is no God. The Christian position is: if the universe were taken away, God still exists.

Summary

Pantheism states that God is equal to anything and everything. All things that exist are part of one reality - God. There is no distinction between God and his creation.

This is not the biblical idea of God. The god of pantheism is impersonal while the God of Scripture is the personal creator. According to Scripture, God created the universe. It had no existence before he created it. Therefore the universe is not part of his nature. He existed before there was a universe. Pantheism confuses the creature with the Creator. It makes everything god and misses the God of everything.

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Is Everything That Exists Part of God? (Pantheism)

Are You a Pantheist?Pantheists are persons who derive their fundamental religious experience through their personal relationship with the Universe. They feel that Nature is the ultimate context for human existence, and seek to improve their relationship with the natural world as their fundamental religious responsibility.

Pantheists see their personal religion as a system of reverent behavior toward the Earth rather than subscription to a particular creed. Because Pantheists identify God with Nature rather than an anthropomorphic being, Pantheists oppose the arrogant world-view of anthropocentrism.

This web site contains a collection of materials about Pantheism and Pantheists sponsored by the Universal Pantheist Society, an organization which since 1975 has provided a network for Pantheists. In Universal Pantheism, there is no creed or requirements to follow any particular belief or practices; rather we seek to provide ways for individuals to promote their own spiritual growth and understanding. Our goal is to provide Pantheism with a unified presence -- bringing Pantheists of all varieties together to share in our commonality.

The Universal Pantheist Society was conceived and founded within the high-altitude groves of ancient 5,000 year-old Bristlecone Pine in the White Mountains of California.

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Home - Universal Pantheist Society

By: Brian Chilton

Before the website transferred from pastorbrianchilton.wordpress.com to bellatorchristi.com, I had written an article on the major worldviews across the globe. I presented six major worldviews at the time. While I still think the previous article treated the most major of worldviews, I have come to realize after reading Douglas Groothius book, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith, that other major worldviews exist that should be discussed and incorporated into the list.[1] So, lets revisit the major worldviews in this article. The goal of the article will be to notify the reader of each belief and will show how Christian theism triumphs. In addition, the Christian apologist will need to understand the starting points that must be taken with each worldview.

The term atheist is taken from the Greek term a meaning no and theos meaning God. Placed together, the term means no God. The atheist, therefore, is one who does not believe in the existence of God. Atheists are often termed naturalists as they only accept the existence of the natural/physical world, thereby rejecting the existence of things like God, spirits, the human soul, angels, and demons. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss are good examples of atheism.

Atheism holds a problem as it pertains to the immaterial world. Naturalism cannot explain the existence of human consciousness. Even if the consciousness could be shown to derive from material means, naturalism (or materialism) faces a great problem as the human consciousness is a non-material thing. A scanner can see brainwaves, but not mental thoughts and the like. Naturalism holds two additional problems. On the one hand, naturalism cannot answer why anything exists. It has been mathematically demonstrated by the theorem of Borg, Vilenkin, and Guth (i.e., the BVG Theorem) that there cannot be an infinite regress of material worlds. Every material world must have a beginning point. On the other hand, naturalism fails to account for the mounting evidence of near death experiences.[2] Atheism and naturalism hold great problems serving as a cohesive worldview. The Christian apologist will need to demonstrate the reasonability of Gods existence and the means by which naturalism fails.

Agnosticism comes from two terms: a the Greek term meaning no and gnosis the Greek term meaning knowledge. The agnostic does not necessarily reject belief in God. The agnostic claims no knowledge on the issue. There are at least two forms of agnosticism. Atheistic agnostics incline to reject belief in God, but are open to the possibility of Gods existence. The atheistic agnostic claims that it is impossible to know whether God exists or not. Bart Ehrman and Neil deGrasse Tyson are examples of atheistic agnostics.

Theistic agnostics are individuals who are inclined to believe in Gods existence. However, they are doubtful whether individuals can know anything about God. The theistic agnostic may either reject divine revelation altogether and claim that no religion is correct, or the theistic agnostic may reject exclusive revelation and will claim that all religions are correct. When I stumbled into my time of personal doubt, I became more of the theistic agnostic (one who claimed to be spiritual but not religious). The Bahai religion and Morgan Freeman may be considered examples of theistic agnosticism.

The trouble with agnosticism is with divine revelation. If God can truly be shown to exist, then atheistic agnosticism begins to wane. If one can demonstrate that God has revealed himself to humanity (particularly through Jesus of Nazareth), then theistic agnosticism begins to fade. The Christian apologist will need to understand, first, that agnosticism can cover a wide variety of flavors. Second, the Christian apologist will need to describe the evidence for Jesus of Nazareths life, miracles, and resurrection.

Pantheism comes from two Greek terms: pan meaning all and theos meaning God. Pantheism may look quite a bit like panentheism and even theistic agnosticism. However, generally speaking, pantheism is the belief that God is an impersonal force. Buddhism is the greatest example of pantheism. The Star Wars idea of the force is another example of pantheism. Buddhists claim to be agnostic concerning Gods existence. Yet, the Buddhist believes in impersonal forces (i.e., the force behind reincarnation). The goal of such a worldview is to become nothing. In fact, the Buddhist concept of Nirvana means that one has become so enlightened that he or she escapes the wheel of reincarnation and becomes nothing.

The trouble with pantheism is diverse. On the one hand, the pantheist will speak of such forces in such a way that intelligence is necessary. For example, why is there a wheel of reincarnation? Why is it that good behavior elevates one to a higher level and vice versa? On the other hand, pantheists have great trouble in explaining why anything exists at all. Much more could be said on this issue as it pertains to the trouble of pantheism. The Christian apologist will need to describe the internal inconsistencies of pantheism as a starting point as well as note the personal nature of the divine.

Panentheism comes from three Greek terms: pan meaning all, en meaning in, and theos meaning God. Therefore, panentheism is literally defined as all in God. Panentheists hold that God penetrates everything. While the Christian may initially be inclined to agree, one must understand that panentheists believe that everything is God. Thus, the panentheist would agree that Jesus of Nazareth is God. But, the panentheist would also agree that you are God, he is God, everyone is God, and even your kitchen sink is God. The panentheist does not distinguish between the personal God and the physical creation. Hinduism is the greatest example of panentheism.

Panentheism, however, holds issues as it pertains to the world. If the world is God, then why is there so much evil? God is certainly good. So, if everyone is God, then wouldnt everything be perfect? To accept such a claim, one must have a flawed idea of Gods nature. With the panentheist, the Christian apologist will need to begin by teaching the distinction between the personal divine being of God and the physical, material creation that is the world.

We have investigated the first four of the eight major worldviews. In our next article, we will describe the final four: polytheism, dualism, deism, and monotheism/theism.

Notes

[1] See Douglas Groothius, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011), 50.

[2] Here, I do not mean heavenly or hellish experiences. I am addressing the scientific verification of such events in this world. For instance, if one were to see something that could not have been otherwise seen after ones death, then this would serve as a verification of the souls survival past death. Soul survival discredits naturalism.

2017. Bellator Christi.

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8 Major Worldviews (Part 1) | CrossExamined.org by Brian ...

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B First Reading: Is 35:4-7 Second Reading: Jas 2:1-5 Gospel Reading: Mk 7:31-37

The theme of this Sundays Readings is Be opened.

In the First Reading, it is the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf, etc. In the Second, it is the eyes through which we see our neighbours. In the Gospel Reading, it is the deaf and those who cannot speak.

All the readings appeal to us to open ourselves to the truth. Ephphtha, Jesus said: Be opened.

In our society today, many people think that they are opening themselves to new truths so called by seriously considering the doctrines and practices of other religions, especially Eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism.

No. That is a closing of oneself to the truth of Christ in favour of the old beliefs and superstitions that preceded it: Gnosticism, esotericism, astrology, pantheism, etc.

Christ is the perfect image of God the Father. In him, God revealed all he had to tell us about himself. Therefore, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church, anyone now desiring some [new] vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behaviour, but also of offending [God], by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.

During this past year, as I have delivered my course The Catholic Faith in Plain English online, I have become aware of how many people good Catholics think that they can supplement the Catholic faith with Buddhist meditation techniques, etc.

They are like people who think they can supplement the conjugal attentions of their husbands or wives with those of other men or women. No matter how small such a supplement, it constitutes infidelity. A faithful husband does not look outside the marriage for conjugal comfort or benefits. A faithful wife does not invoke support from a third person by criticizing her husband.

God himself described his relationship with his people as a marital covenant, and he compared idolatry to adultery.

It is because of their idolatry that he drove the original inhabitants out of the Promised Land. He warned the Israelites to stay away from them. When they fell into idolatry, He exiled them, too.

You shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind; you shall have no other gods besides me. That is the First Commandment. If we break it, we are unfaithful, regardless of whether we keep the others. Even something as apparently trivial as consulting horoscopes contradicts the honour, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone, says the Catechism.

A Catholic who seeks spirituality outside the Catholic Church is like the unfaithful wife in the Book of Hosea, who wants to see what other men can offer, even if she does not intend to desert her husband.

Adultery is never a sudden, spontaneous, totally unexpected act: it is always preceded by a longer drama of infidelity which includes thoughts, words, and deeds. And the same is true of apostasy from the Catholic faith.

Christ is the Churchs Bridegroom, says the Catechism. It is through [his] Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained.

Nevertheless, idolatry remains a constant temptation. People whose understanding of the Catholic faith is weak mistakenly hold that Catholicism does not inspire a profound spirituality, and so they seek elsewhere, says the Vaticans document on the New Age movement.

Many New Age practices seem harmless. Nevertheless, the underlying principles are irreconcilable with Catholic faith. We cannot pick and choose from Catholicism and New Age any more than a faithful wife can pick and choose from her husbands attentions and those of other men.

Let us pray, this Sunday, that we who claim to believe in Christ may come to know the riches he showers on his Church, and thus receive true freedom.

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You shall have no other gods, including 'trivial' ones - The B.C. Catholic

In Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2015), historian Yuval Noah Harari recounts a familiar sort of tale about the origin of religion. Casey Luskin, who has been reviewing the book, explains,

Yuval Noah Harari tells the standard evolutionary story. According to this story, religion began as a form of animism among small bands of hunters and gatherers and then proceeded to polytheism and finally monotheism as group size grew with the first agricultural civilizations. At each stage, he argues, religion evolved in order to provide the glue that gave the group the cohesive unity it needed (at its given size) to cooperate and survive.

According to animist assumptions, everything has a spirit. As Luskin goes on to show, however, any simple explanation of the origin of religion overlooks the complexity of the evidence:

As I noted in my previous installment, there is undoubtedly much truth that religion fosters cooperation, but Hararis overall story ignores the possibility that humanity was designed to cooperate via shared religious beliefs. His evolutionary story about religious evolution also assumes the naturalistic viewpoint that religion evolved through various stages and was not revealed from above. No wonder Harari feels this way, since he admits his worldview that There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. As a monotheist, Im skeptical of these accounts of religious evolution, especially since Im accustomed to evolutionary arguments often leaving out important data points.

Some thoughts here: First, we know very little about the specific content of any religious beliefs before people started to write things down. For example, there is a figure of a man with a bird mask confronting a buffalo in the Lascaux caves from 17,000 years ago.

Is the figure a shaman? Or was the bird mask a decoy? Theres no one we can ask.

When we assume that early religious beliefs were animist, we are extrapolating back from animist societies today. Its a reasonable inference, not a demonstration from evidence. Similarly, is the Willendorf Venus (28,00025,000 years ago) a goddess or a representation of a human figure? Theories abound.

We run into a similar puzzle with polytheism (many gods). It is assumed that polytheism arose from animism and later developed into monotheism. But the picture may be more complex than that. It may be that each band had only one god but, when people began to live in larger groups, polytheism was the natural result of everyone bringing their own god. Polytheistic traditions are typically amorphous and overlapping, which is consistent with that view.

For the most part, monotheism did not develop; In most known instances (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, for example), it began as and is certainly treated as a revelation from above. This also seems to have been true of the short-lived monotheistic religion of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten (13521336 BC). Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and defied tradition by establishing a new religion that believed that there is but one god; the sun god Aten. Discovering Egypt.

Generally, monotheism is favorable to a high level of organization, including complex theologies that dont just morph a lot but are only changed with much deliberation or controversy. But did that state of affairs evolve so as to foster cohesive unity, as Harari suggests? Hard to say. Religion especially propositional religion, like the monotheisms can foster either unity or disunity. Monotheism has not been a force for unity in Northern Ireland or the Middle East.

But what makes the problem even more complex is that not all disunity is bad. Many social reformers who were motivated by religion created considerable disunity in their lifetimes (William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King come to mind) but they are honored today for the changes they brought about.

Monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, animism, and atheism can and do co-exist in the same society. Sometimes its violent but often it is not. Suppose a math professor is a pantheist (God is ultimately a cosmic unity). She knows that in a distant village, animism is the rule but she may feel no desire to go and disrupt those peoples lives over religious differences.

At any rate, if evolution in religion is taking place, it would seem to be directed evolution: education and evangelization projects. The math professor could possibly become a Muslim or an atheist but she is unlikely to become an animist.

It may happen the other way around though: As animists acquire education, if they retain their basic outlook, they will probably move more toward pantheism. Pantheism is consistent with a high level of understanding of how the world works in a way that animism isnt. The pantheist may hold that plants participate in consciousness in some sense but need not suppose that they think like people.

Overall, theories about the evolution of religion should be treated with caution because they usually start by assuming what they wish to prove. The theorist can find evidence for his view, certainly, but the history is so complex that there is evidence for many others views as well.

You may also wish to read: is free will a dangerous myth? The denial of free will is a much more dangerous myth (Michael Egnor takes issue with Harari on the issue of free will.)

and

Can plants be as smart as animals? Seeking to thrive and grow, plants communicate extensively, without a mind or a brain

Read more from the original source:
Religion Is Far Too Complex to Have a Single Evolution Story - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Why should you care about a bunch of dead white guys?

To pull some lyrics from Sam Cookes Wonderful World, the Yankee working class dont know much about history, dont know much about geography. So why would they care at all about an intellectual movement that began 300 years ago in a country notorious for not liking Americans? This article attempts to answer this question.

I have a Facebook friend who is a mutualist, Will Schnack, who was posting about this topic recently, so I asked him to write an article on it. The article was longer than our site can accommodate and covered areas that, while very interesting to me, would likely be beyond the interest of the educated lay person. I have selected the most pertinent parts to share with you. I have added my own commentary from my knowledge of the Enlightenment which will support Wills article. Ive also created a table to give you the big picture. Direct quotes from Wills article will be in italics. Wills article,Enlightenment,Counter-Enlightenment: Modernism, Postmodernismcan be read in its entirety by clicking on the link.

What is the Enlightenment?

Beginning around 1715 and lasting for about a hundred years, there arose an intellectual movement in Europe, which began in Holland, then centered in France. It aimed to synthesize the fruits of the hard sciences and apply those lessons to the study of human history, human societies, human psychology and the arts. The 18thcentury had seen the beginnings of a science of history at the same time Europe was learning more about the variety of societies that existed around the world through its own colonial exploitation of these societies. Enlightenment philosophers hoped that these disciplines would find their own Galileos, Keplers and Newtons.

What the Enlightenment was instrumental in producing was a picture of humans evolving over time: from ignorance to knowledge; from superstition to reason; from instinct to education; from tyranny to republicanism. The philosophers of the Enlightenment confidently argued that humanity was gradually improving and given enough time, the light of reason would envelop the world. We would no longer need heaven in the afterlife because we could slowly build heaven right here on Earth. The overall direction of this movement was characterized as progress.

By the 19thcentury, the process of industrialization, the Civil War in Yankeedom, the Gilded Age, labor strikes, social Darwinism and imperialism and an unstable capitalist economy closed out the 19thcentury. Are human societies really progressing? Maybe not. In the 20thcentury, the hopes of the Enlightenment were pounded again by World War I, the Russian Revolution, the rise of fascism, the world depression and then World War II. By the end of World War II, there was no longer a universal evolving sense of social evolution changing for the better. The pocket of hope for progress which remained for 20 years was the in United States between 1950 to 1970, and then in the socialist countries.

Meanwhile, in the West a New Left movement developed by the mid 1950s which did not identify with socialist countries. It rejected theories of progress, the importance of understanding the capitalist economy and the centrality of the working class in any revolutionary process. Gradually cultural movements like the Frankfurt School began to cast doubt on the value of science and attempted to give psychological explanations as to why the working class didnt rebel in the West, as Marx and Engels had predicted. This was followed by a revolution in language studies. Language theories based on structuralism and post-structuralism fetishized language and assumed that changing the vocabulary of social classes would shake the foundations of capitalist society. This culminated in a movement called postmodernism. Postmodernism is what any working-class student lucky enough to get into an undergraduate program in a state university today has to deal with: obscure language, a politically correct police force led by professors and graduate students who have spent all, or most of their lives at the university.

Purpose of the article

The purpose of this article is to show that most of the postmodern criticism of the Enlightenment deals with only one part of the spectrum of the Enlightenment, the Moderate Enlightenment. There was also a Radical Enlightenment which most postmodernism ignores. This Radical Enlightenment is well worth preserving as an inspiration for working-class people.

The Radical Enlightenment

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, historians such as Margaret C. Jacob and Jonathan Israel, following scholars such as Isaiah Berlin, have dissected the Enlightenment into Radical Enlightenment and Moderate Enlightenment and Counter-enlightenment factions.

The Moderate Enlightenment was the Enlightenment that we were all familiarized with growing up, that was responsible for the American Revolution, and those that followed. This is the Enlightenment of Montesquieu, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. This Enlightenment, which had produced the oligarchic republics that we are familiar with today, had actually followed in the wake of a much more Radical Enlightenment that had pursued not only republicanism, but popular democracy, freedom of speech and religious tolerance, and so on.

It was this Radical Enlightenment (which had preceded and influenced the more aristocratic-styled Moderate Enlightenment) that is associated with core Enlightenment ideals with freethinking and heresy and democratic republicanism etc. by historians such as Jacob and Israel. This Radical Enlightenment is now being used by thinkers such as Jonathan Israel in the defense of the Enlightenment from more recent postmodern philosophy.

Whereas the Moderate Enlightenment had been largely informed by Protestantism and a mechanistic deism, the Radical Enlightenment had been about heretical organicist pantheism.

Whereas the Moderate Enlightenment had been largely informed by Protestantism and a mechanistic deism, the Radical Enlightenment had been about heretical organicist pantheism.

Nicholas of Cusa

The Enlightenment had followed after the introduction of modern (but not modern era) philosophy and the arrival of the Scientific Revolution. Perhaps the first modern philosopher, leading up to the Enlightenment, is the pantheist cardinal, Nicholas of Cusa, whose geometric logic had suggested that the more knowledge we can attain about existence the closer our approximation to God will be. God was, to Cusa, all that is, and so, to know God, we must know the natural world. This would encourage a scientific reasoning that would culminate in the Scientific Revolution.

Neoplatonists

The Scientific Revolution followed after the Renaissance and proto- or Radical Reformation, had included pantheists such as Eriugena, Amalric of Bena, and David of Dinant, and Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, pantheists who adopted neo-Platonic and Hermetic beliefs about matter being infused with spirit.

The Cathars and the Hussites would come to represent leveling spiritual aspirations where mystical experience can be had without ecclesiastical chaperones.

The pantheist Giordano Bruno would carry on the scientific pursuit of knowledge in his alchemical-magical practices, meanwhile proposing that the Universe was vast and infinitely filled with suns like our own, with planets like our own, having sentient beings on them like ours does. For his heresies he would burn at the stake.

Radical pantheists

Baruch Spinoza, Gerrard Winstanley and his Diggers, the Ranters, and John Toland would be among groups to carry on this radical pantheism that was often associated with propertied peasants, communal movements, and democratic republicanism, from the Scientific Revolution on into the Enlightenment.

This is where the Enlightenment and modernity ultimately come from, a long line of pantheistic reasoning informed by religion but grounded in natural philosophy. Jonathan Israel suggests, and to a limit I agree, that it was really Spinozas philosophy at the heart of the transition from the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment focus on politics. And this makes the Radical Enlightenment the first among all of the factions of the early modern time period to come to fruition. The repression of scientific advancement and the deeming heretical of new insights on religion had created much demand for a change in politics, a change that would allow for greater degrees of freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of association, as well as positive freedoms such as the freedom to participate in deliberation and democratic process, and sometimes to claim common access to property, especially natural resources like land. The political views of Spinoza, backed by rigorous and rational metaphysics, encapsulated all of these concerns, and provided a logical argument for how to eradicate monarchy and aristocratic rule. So, the Radical Enlightenment, foundations. Of the Enlightenment, moderates watered it down.

Spinoza as a working-class hero

Baruch or Blessed Spinoza had been born into a Sephardic Jewish family that had been crypto-Jews amidst religious repression in their home of Portugal. While living in Amsterdam during the Dutch Republic and the relative tolerance that persisted there, Baruch Spinozas books would be banned and burned by the Dutch authorities. Hed also be excommunicated by Jewish religious authority and his books were added to the Catholic Churchs list of forbidden books. The memory of Giordano Bruno was not so distant at this time, so Spinoza is perhaps lucky to have stayed alive!

Spinozas philosophy was a rich compilation of rational mysticism, humanistic theology, moral philosophy, social psychology, naturalism, and political thought, and that probably does not cover all of it. According to Spinoza, God is Nature, the Bible contains the self-fulfilling prophecies of rulers, might makes right, we can find solace in accepting necessity, and mutuality is the source of political power. Like Nicholas of Cusa, Spinoza stressed that we should come to know as much as we can about God, which he identified with Nature. Spinoza believed that by coming to know the reasons for the hardships we face, by knowing our hardships as a part of Gods perfect necessity, that we can come to a Stoic abolition of our passions (strong emotions), become virtuous, and to have peace of mind, called blessedness. As we can never fully be free of our passions, Spinoza suggests we put our efforts to resolving the problems in our life in rational, loving ways. He was a democrat, with a small d, and a proto-Georgist who believed monarchy, aristocracy, and feudalism to rest on the ignorance and superstition of the multitude, those who have not succumbed yet to the force of reason. Spinozas manner of fighting this was the promotion of a clandestine democratic revolution, wherein collective reason pursued in deliberation and majority-rule would produce greater truths than those of individual humans.

Spinoza has been noted for a favorable disposition in the memory of his peers, and for having turned down prestigious university teaching positions in order to continue in his trade as a glass grinder, or oculist. Ocular science had long been entangled with the occult, perhaps since the time of Ibn al-Haythams Book of Optics was passed around during the Islamic Golden Age, and ocular science was or would become an important avenue for clandestine Enlightenment of Spinozas time. He probably had important and unspoken reasons to stay in the trade. Spinoza died at a relatively young age, however, said to be due to lung issues from breathing the glass particles in his profession.

Winstanley

Gerrard Winstanley, a contemporary of Spinozas, similarly held a pantheist worldview and republican political beliefs. Like the Stedinger peasants who had homesteaded the swamps, but perhaps more communally, Winstanley had led a group called the Diggers or the True Levelers to homesteadby means of squatting the enclosures unused land for a commune of their own, an effort to restore the commons. His inspiration went as far back as the Peasants Revolt of Wat Tyler and John Ball. After the destruction of his commune by authorities, Winstanley retreated, but would continue to push for land reform, eventually joining the Friends (or Quaker) cause. Winstanleys legacy would go on to influence other land reform radicals, likely including Thomas Spence and the famed Thomas Paine, though they would not join him in his communism.

Winstanley had connections to the very radical textile industry. This is important because it was in the textile industry that heresy, science, and radicalism had become especially connected, in part because of the influence of the Silk Road, but also because of the rapid changes that early industrial capitalism would bring about, with the textile industry especially affected. Surrounding the textile industry had been the Beguines and Beghards; many participants in Lollardy, the Waldensians, and the Hussites; and the Luddites, whod taken to sabotaging the textile mills and factories. Abolitionism (of chattel slavery) would become especially strong among textile workers, who saw slave labor in America and elsewhere as competition that was driving their wages down while also being morally repugnant to their sentiments of freedom. Winstanley had been a tailor in a guild, and so had participated in this industry, likely becoming well-aware of the heresies saturating it. This same industry would also inspire utopian socialist, Robert Owen, to establish the modern cooperative movement.

John Toland

John Toland was a Spinozan radical who was the first to receive the label of freethinker. He is, perhaps, the first professional revolutionary as well. Believing in an organic geology, his philosophy suggested a living Earth in the spirit of Gaia. A republican and classical liberal, he opposed political and religious hierarchy and upheld the values of freedom, perhaps the first to support equal rights for Jews and their full participation in the body politic.

Diderot, dHolbach and Helvetius

Richard Price, Joseph Priestly, Helvetius, the Baron dHolbach, Diderot and Condorcet, were also foundation members, representatives of the Radical Enlightenment. They are characterized by various degrees of organicism in relation to nature, necessitarianism, substance monism, democratic reform, and Egalitarianism. Diderot, dHolbach and Helvetius were great materialists and atheists. They hated the clergy and blamed priest-craft for the masses superstition. DHolbach and Helvetius were determinists, denied free will and believed in public education as a way to reform society. They believed that human beings were not evil. We have universal needs, desires and simply the hope of avoiding pain and gaining pleasure.

Materialism, the masses and pantheism

Many years ago, Stephen Toulmin, in his bookThe Architecture of Matterpointed out there was a relationship between the attitude toward matter and the attitude toward the masses. In the 17thcentury mechanical materialists thought of matter as passive and needing an external push from the mechanical watchmaker, the deity. At the same time, masses of people were thought of as passive and incapable of managing social life without divine kings. One of the first to challenge this passive notion of matter was Julien la Mettrie who argued that matter was alive and self-organizing. Not soon after, the French Revolution showed that artisans and peasants were not just passive lumps of clay in the hands of kings, aristocrats and popes.

At the same time, there is a relationship between whether sacred sources are singular or plural and whether they are immanent or transcendental. Pantheism says that sacred sources are infinitely plural and are right here on earth. Transcendentalism argues that the sacred sources are singular and outside the world. It is no accident that those in the Radical Enlightenment championed pantheism and immanence because they were on the verge of supporting the democratic movement of masses of people. The transcendental god, on the other hand, sucks dry all power on earth and takes it to the beyond, hogging all power to itself. Transcendentalism as far back as back to Plato sees the material world as either less than or degraded compared to the stuck-up spirit in the sky. Transcendentalism is a spiritual projection of the rule of divine kings. Immanence and pantheism are projections of the masses of peoples collective creativity.

Where postmodernism misses the boat

Overall, it was the Radical Enlightenment that started the ball rolling. However, the Moderate Enlightenment that would win out and this is the Enlightenment that postmodernists criticize.

But defenders of Radical Enlightenment like Israel, suggest that postmodernist criticisms do not apply as easily to Radical Enlightenment participants, as to those of the more aristocratic-minded Moderate Enlightenment, which had had a decided role in giving direction to our modern societies. In other words, defenders of the Radical Enlightenment argue that modernity, as inherited from the Moderate Enlightenment, is not the entire picture of Enlightenment. There is an Enlightenment that is egalitarian, abolitionist, feminist, sexually-tolerant, and democratic, too. That was the Radical Enlightenment, which Israel also calls the Democratic Enlightenment. This Radical Enlightenment is not the one that gave rise to oligarchy, allowed for slavery, and produced corporatism, but something different. It gave rise to modernism.

Socialism as part of the Radical Enlightenment

Jonathan Israel excludes socialists from the radical Enlightenment but Margaret Jacob in her bookRadical Enlightenmentthinks otherwise. Will Schnack says this tradition has plenty of room for libertarian socialists. The first philosophical anarchist William Godwin, in the cooperativist tradition of Owen and Fourier, Proudhon and the mutualists, Warren and the American individualist anarchists, and John Stuart Mill, fit very easily into the Radical Enlightenment.

The Spectrum of the Enlightenment

Table A, the Spectrum of the Enlightenment, compares the Radical to the Moderate Enlightenment. Ive left out a description of the Moderate Enlightenment in this article because it is well-known and because it is not on the main line of my argument. The Counter-Enlightenment is less well-known and interesting, but this is also not quite in line with the thrust of this article. Broadly speaking the Counter-Enlightenment is a movement of religious reactionaries who reject democracy, science and materialism. The Radical Counter-Enlightenment are for most part the forces to the left contributing to the French Revolution, typified by Rousseau and Robespierre. As a liberal, Israel wants to exclude revolutionaries from the Radical Enlightenment, but this categorization is confusing and not worth trying to sort out here. Again, Margaret Jacob does a good job of straightening things out. But to travel with her would take too much time. The most important part of Israels implied categorization of the Radical Counter-Enlightenment is his claim that it is an early version of postmodernism. Ive included some of the characteristics of postmodernism in the table (the leftmost column) even though the characteristics have not yet been discussed.

Postmodernism

Postmodernism adopts what I would call a cynicism when it comes the modernism that came out of the Enlightenment. Modernism is assumed to be foundationally racist and sexist. Its attitude to the remaining tribal societies is that of a colonizer. This involves claims to scientific objectivity, the power of reason, universal claims to truth and morality, traditional institutions, meaning Christianity. Postmodernism has been very preoccupied with the power of language to control people. Ironically, many postmodernists have some of their roots in western Marxism and various strains of anarchists. It is telling that Jonathan Israel has placed them in a category of the CounterEnlightenment, linking them uneasily with conservative royalists who were also against the Enlightenment.

Among the earliest thinkers considered to be postmodern are the individualist anarchistMax Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom championed the individual against the pressures of science and capitalist. They were also connected to other movements in literary criticism like the symbolists. The values of post-modernist are relativity, diversity, subjectivity and the freedom of the individual agency. It criticizes most leftism but still genuflects before Marx while not showing the slightest interest in political economy or organizing the working class.

Will Schnack has this to say about the postmodernist luminaries:

Lyotard

Jorge Luis Borges is among the most prominent influences in postmodern literature, but it would be Jean-Francois Lyotard who would be the first to put postmodernism to philosophical use. Lyotard, a literary theorist, had defined postmodernism as a rejection of metanarratives, or the underlying stories and ideologies of modernity that assume the stability of concepts like truth. Lyotard wanted to promote a sort of skepticism toward universal conceptions, suggesting Wittgensteins notion of language games take the place of the notion of truth. He believed that language, particularly what he called the differend, was made impossibly difficult to communicate ideas within a thorough manner. His work would be deconstructed by another postmodernist, Jacques Derrida.

Derrida

Derrida, like many postmodernists, had a strong interest in language, particularly semiotics, but considered himself to be a historian. His approach, called deconstruction, was an attempt to challenge what he saw as unfounded assumptions of Western culture. He opposed the Western search for transcendental meaning, which he considered to be logocentric.

Foucault

Michel Foucault was a literary critic who established a postmodern theory of power. He examined how language masked power relations which were then linked to knowledge systems.

The New Left and Postmodernism

Postmodern philosophy, in stressing subjectivity, has dovetailed nicely with the racial and identity politics of the New Left. Like the New Left it has abandoned the working class and any attempt at union organizing. At best, it has focused on single issues more of a cultural nature than political economy. Like the Frankfurt school, it has identified the university as the place where things happen. Like the New Left it has abandoned Marxs call to develop the productive forces for the life of a slacker, more interested in preening and cultivating their lifestyle.

Here is Wills conclusion:

Universities are now filled with lessons in postmodern philosophy. It is to the point that it has become state-sanctioned education. In response to postmodern indoctrination by the American managerial classes, Americans from all across the political spectrum are starting to push back against postmodernism, from anarcho-syndicalists, to paleo-conservatives (the Old Right), to Old Left Marxists, to alt-Right populists. It is unfortunate, but also true, that neo-reactionary postmodernism gave rise to Trump, a reaction to New Left postmodern hegemony. Trump appealed to paleo-conservative business interests and alt-Right populism in his push against New Left political correctness, capturing the interest of much of the now marginalized white working class, enabling white supremacy while it hadnt gotten such a strong spotlight in decades.

The American populace is divided, and because that populace is divided, so too is its working class. Black and brown workers, yellow workers, and white workers are caught up in various divisive schemes. But instead of just racism dividing the workers, it is also anti-racist and anti-sexist efforts, which have assumed the worst of all white men, a good portion of the working class. White men, effectively told to shut up by the Newest Left sponsored by neo-liberalism, have lost interest in Leftism, but they havent stopped being exploited by capitalism, and they are well aware of that.

Yet, if the Left is again to be a powerful force of class collaboration, a remodern Left must be willing to endure these semantics, and work with estranged friends to re-establish class consciousness, and to re-organize labor. Socialists and classical liberals can find common ground in the values of the Radical Enlightenment, the likes of which postmodern critiques have fallen short of addressing.

Even those class-conscious socialists who do not subscribe to Enlightenment rationality fall into the category of moderns, and so have a stake in dismantling postmodernity. Advocates of organized labor, which has been diminishing in the time of postmodernity, must reject the primacy of the forces that have been responsible for its decline, and rework the insights and display the courage to build and sustain a movement.

Bruce LerroBeyond Capitalism

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Is the Enlightenment Still a Foundation for Working-Class Liberation? - LA Progressive

Last September, a communications worker at the European grocery chain Lidl was fired for calling Asian people "greasy." The worker, Samuel Jackson, sued Lidl in response, claiming that he was a victim of religious and belief discrimination. Jackson said at a virtual hearing in the UK that he doesn't concern himself with the external consequences of his words or actions as part of his adherence to the ancient philosophy, Stoicism.

Given that his job is in communications, one can see the potential for conflict, but that is a separate issue, the judge noted, before ultimately finding that Stoicism is a belief protected under the Equality Act and allowing the case to proceed to the next stage.

Over the last 10 years, Stoicism has gone from a topic confined to philosophy lectures to one consumed by the masses. Sometimes referred to as Modern Stoicism, Stoic ideas and texts are now found in dedicated podcasts, newsletters, Instagram accounts, self-help books, personal coaching, and in-person events, like the well-attended annual event Stoicon.

During the pandemic, Stoicisms popularity has only grown. Print sales of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius went up 28% in the first part of 2020 compared to 2019, and print sales of Seneca's Letters from a Stoic increased 42%. E-book sales of Letters from a Stoic went up 356%. Penguin Random House told The Guardian that while 16,000 copies of Meditations were sold in 2012, more than 100,000 copies were sold in 2019. We have noticed a natural (slightly mysterious) year-on-year increase in our sales of the Stoic philosophers, the Penguin representative said.

As trends go, a philosophy that preaches emotional tranquility, reason, and virtue would seem to be on the beneficial end of the spectrum. But Jacksons case is just one example of what can happen when an ancient philosophy becomes popular, widely adopted, and, at times, distorted.

Alongside broad general interest, Stoicism has an outsized allure in certain cultural spheres. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Square and Twitter, has been called the Silicon Valley Stoic for his 5 a.m. wake-up time and ice baths. Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, has called Meditations her favorite book. Billionaires like Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Cuban have been described as Stoics, and theres an entrepreneurship-focused lobbying firm, the Cicero Institute, named after the Stoic Roman philosopher. Classicist Donna ZuckerbergMark's sisterhas pointed out the rise of a small, but troubling, group of far-right men who gravitate towards Stoicism to validate misogynistic and racist beliefs. A question currently dogging Modern Stoicism is a disconcerting one: Are billionaire and incel Stoics missing the mark? Or, are there elements of Stoicism that inherently justify their conduct and beliefs?

The answer is, "Perhaps." Stoics, unlike their contemporaries the Epicureans and the Cynics, had no position against extreme wealth or status; they were not to be sought after, but if you happened to be wealthy or powerful, so be it. It would be a misread to say that Stoicism encourages emotional suppression, but it is focused on emotional regulationan appealing skill for those who view emotions as irrational, weak, or unmasculine. And Modern Stoicim's emphasis on focusing only on what you can control, in some permutations, can support expressions of capitalistic individualism that view wealth status or social disparities as givens, and place priority on furthering personal interests or affluence; this might be more likely in iterations of Modern Stoicism that don't highlight themes of interconnectedness that arise from Stoicism's metaphysical, pantheistic side.

Modern Stoicism has interesting parallels with how Buddhism and mindfulness have integrated into personal, wellness, and corporate spaces alike. Mindfulness, like Stoicism, can both be a boon for individual and collective mental wellbeing, and also a stand-in for more meaningful measures or activismas when companies provide mindfulness or meditation workshops in lieu of living wages or better health insurance. As the next ancient form of wisdom to go mainstream, Stoicism will be subject to similar competing applications.

What is Modern Stoicism used for? Inner peace and mental serenity? Productivity and creating a Fortune 500 company? Fighting against climate change and for social justice? It's currently all of the above, depending on who you ask. Stoicism's memeable soundbites and its practical advice make it both incredibly useful as a strategy of resilience, and highly commercializable and pliant to varying interpretations. It can serve as an accessible entry to philosophy, offer genuinely helpful coping mechanisms, and a way to approach difficult circumstances, or, it can be adapted to justify one's pre-existing lot in life, forgo larger social change, and regulate away messy emotions, even in moments when vulnerability or attachment might be more beneficial. It will be up to the Modern Stoics to define the boundaries and applications of the philosophy so that it aligns with, to borrow a Stoic phrase, a virtuous life.

Stoicism first appeared around 300 BC in Greece, when a merchant named Zeno lost all of his belongings in a shipwreck and began to practice philosophy at the Stoa Poikile, a painted colonnade in the Agora of Athens from which Stoicism derives its name. But the most complete and renowned Stoic texts we have come from when Stoicism was popular in Rome: Meditations, by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius; Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, a philosopher and advisor to the emperor Nero; and the Enchiridion, by freed-slave philosopher Epictetus.

These texts feel exceptionally modern in their descriptions of the frustrations we encounter on a day-to-day basis. Take the opening of Meditations: When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. Even the emperor of Rome had to deal with annoying people; it's easy to imagine reciting this before opening Twitter.

Though it is a rich philosophy that can't be fully explained in brief, there are powerful and intuitive core observations that lie at the heart of Stoicism. Living a good life, to the Stoics, was about being as virtuous as you could be, through your capacity for reason. The Roman Stoics valued rational thinking above all, and thought that a person had control not over external events, but over their responses to those events. Anything that happens, whether it be a pandemic, war, your health, the weather, others' actionsif you have no control over it, it's not reasonable for you to expend negative emotional energy on it. Any distress that comes from such events comes from your reactions to them, which you can modify for the better.

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We are responsible for some things, while there are others for which we cannot be held responsible, said Epictetus. The former include our judgement, our impulse, our desire, aversion and our mental faculties in general; the latter include the body, material possessions, our reputation, statusin a word, anything not in our power to control.

This came in handy because the years during which Stoicism was developed were full of political upheaval. The Greek world was upturned by Alexander the Great and his Macedonian armies, and there was a pandemic to contend with, too. People were dealing with political chaos, a feeling of powerlessness, pandemics, and harvest failures, said Angie Hobbs, a professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. It's not surprising that something like, It is not events that disturb people, it is their judgements concerning them, as Epictetus wrote, could be a salve in tough times.

Thousands of years later, that notion became useful to Jules Evans, a philosopher and research fellow at the Center for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary, University of London. From the ages 18 to 23, he experienced severe social anxiety, as well as PTSD from a bad psychedelic trip. Going to a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) group for social anxiety reminded him of some of the Stoic texts he had read as a teenager. He learned that the creators of CBT had been directly inspired by the Stoics, and decided to dive headlong into Stoicism.

Evans's timing was apt; this was right at the beginning of the Modern Stoicism movement. There was a fledgling website called The Stoic Registry where people could proclaim Im a Stoic. (It had about 100 members, Evans said.) He started writing its newsletter and helped to organize its first gathering in 2010 in San Diego. Twelve people showed up.

My friends thought I was incredibly eccentric to go to California to hang out with some Stoics on Marcus Aureliuss birthday, Evans said.

He then went to a seminar at Exeter University on Modern Stoicism organized by professor of philosophy Christopher Gill. After that, Evans said, they organized an online course in 2012 called Live Like a Stoic. It was very popular, and led to a conference called Stoicon, which is still happening today. By one count, the online Stoic community now has over 100,000 active participants.

The idea of creating distance between external events and your reactions to them can be a profound one, offering space that makes stressful and demanding life circumstances feel more manageable. On the subreddit for Stoicism, people frequently discuss how Stoic principles are a guiding light in dealing with work and relationship stress, anger management, anxiety, and caring less about what others think and do.

Podcast host and author Tim Ferriss, whose TED talk on Stoicism has more than three million views, has said that Stoicism doesn't force a person to be a cow standing in the rain accepting whatever tragedy and terrible circumstances befall it, but rather provides a way to thrive in high-stress environments. It is a framework for making better decisions and training yourself to be less reactive, Ferriss said in a YouTube video.

Stoicism offers other practical advice, like the technique called premeditatio malorum, which says to rehearse in your mind all of the bad things that might occur in a day and how you might react to them. Amor fati, or love of fate, involves learning to accept whatever happens to you, and spending time reflecting on your own mortality and that of your loved ones. ("When giving your wife or child a kiss, repeat to yourself, I am kissing a mortal. Then you wont be so distraught if they are taken from you," Epictetus said.)

But the steep rise in Modern Stoicism eventually paved the way for the emergence of a Silicon Valley flavor of Stoicism, or what Greg Sadler, the editor of Stoicism Today, calls Bro-icism. It zeroes in only on the skills needed to build start-up companies, or having grit while taking ice baths and sleeping on the floor. Theres also $toicism, where the S is replaced with a dollar sign. There are people out there selling coaching, and its not engaging with classical Stoicism, Sadler said.

Somewhere in between is Ryan Holiday, a former public-relations strategist for American Apparel, where he did damage control during the companys ouster of its controversial founder, Dov Charney, the New York Times has reported. Holiday has also written a book called Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, about marketing techniques that generate media attention.

The Obstacle Is the Way, Holidays book based on Meditations, has been translated into 19 languages, and he's written an impressive number of Stoicism tomes since, along with leading workshops and helping run the Daily Stoic website, newsletter, and Instagram page, which has one million followers. Stoicism is a philosophy designed for the masses, and if it has to be simplified a bit to reach the masses, so be it, Holiday told the Times in 2016.

In May, Nancy Sherman, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, had a less friendly take, writing in the Times that Modern Stoicism was now a mega-industry."

Today," she wrote, "Stoicism is not so much a philosophy as a collection of life hacks for overcoming anxiety, meditations for curbing anger, exercises for finding stillness and calm not through oms or silent retreats but through discourse that chastens a mind."

I participated in Holidays recent Stoicism 101 program, which included a daily email and several office hour Zoom sessions, where people asked questions about applying Stoicism to their modern lives.

Overall, I thought the course was valuable. It offered not just life hacks, but history lessons and quotes from the original texts. Holiday sent around reading lists and encouraged us to do more study on our own. The program emphasized doing good for others and the importance of community, and in the office hours, people earnestly asked about handling the stresses of daily life with more virtue and Stoic-like wisdom.

Some of the tips were so general, though, that I hesitate to call them Stoicism, even if I can find parts of the Stoic texts that reference them. Things like wake up early, go for a walk, journal, eat well, read, and get active are good pieces of advice, but surely not specifically Stoic behaviors.

Too much emphasis on these reductive tips can breed certain strains of Modern Stoicism that feel awfully life hack-ridden, or focused primarily on things like productivity. (See listicles like "10 Reasons Why Stoicism Is A Great Contribution To Corporate Culture.") Its easy to find references to Stoicism as the ultimate self-help ideology, or as a way to eliminate negative emotions.

If these Stoicism-tinged self-help regimens are of use to people, why should it matter? It's the implications of such advice that are worrying. The idea that our thoughts and beliefs, rather than external events, inform our emotions is a key component to CBT, as Evans discovered. Stoicism, though, is not therapy, and its targeted uses and effects are not the subject of a vast body of research and practical experience. It reframes therapy as a philosophy, and quite a manly philosophy at that, Evans said. Stoicism has lots of wrestling metaphors, gladiator metaphors, soldier metaphors. And it comes out of the tradition of ancient Greece and Rome, which were quite masculine cultures.

Its reminiscent of the Men will before going to therapy, meme, with the blank in this case being filled with "become a Stoic." By calling coping with emotional distress Stoicism, people get to bypass the stigma of working on their mental health and say that theyre engaging in the intellectually rigorous practice of philosophy instead.

And as Olivia Goldhill put it in Quartz, "there's something a little eye-rollingly predictable about Silicon Valley elites latching onto a philosophy that teaches them how to accept the things they cannot change." Whatever the ancient Stoics intended, Stoicism is so open for interpretation today that those who arent inclined towards activism can use it as an excuse for passivity, whether consciously or not. One might look at Epictetus dichotomy of control and think, "If climate change or police brutality is out of my control, then its not for me to worry about."

Ada Palmer, an historian at the University of Chicago, argues that Stoicism is popular in places like Silicon Valley particularly because it doesnt require a person not to be a CEO of a successful company to be a Stoic. "The Romans loved Stoicism because it was a philosophy that was compatible with political life, Palmer said.

It's perhaps unsurprising then that billionaires love a philosophy that doesn't require them to give up on their wealth, but accept their role in the world, and counsels the less fortunate to not worry so much about their circumstances and accept their lotas Zeno did when he lost all of his possessions.

"There is a risk that the mega-rich will seek philosophies that basically validate themselves and their lifestyles rather than awakening them to their blind spots, their obligations to their fellow beings," Evans said.

The metaphysical side of ancient Stoicism contains an explanation as to why we shouldn't worry about external events but simply our reactions to thembut it raises more potential problems.

The Stoics were monists, and thought that the universe was all connected, made of a divine rational substance called logos. The universe, they believed, was rational because it was organized by logos: Whatever happens is whats meant to happen. Even things that seem bad to you have been ordained by the divine spark of logic, and so whats actually bad is your response, which you can change and have control over.

Stoicism is thus from the outset a deterministic system that appears to leave no room for human free will and more responsibility, wrote Gregory Hays, associate professor of classics at the University of Virginia, in the introduction to his translation of Meditations. In reality the Stoics were reluctant to accept such an arrangement, and attempted to get around the difficulty by defining free will as a voluntary accommodation to what is in any case inevitable. Hays described it like this: Imagine that we are like a dog tied to a moving wagon. If the dog refuses to run along with the wagon he will be dragged by it, yet the choice remains his: to run or be dragged.

Palmer thinks there is a tension between social improvement and such thinking, which asserts that there is an underlying justness to human life. Much like a kitchen knife can be a brilliant tool but can also be used for harm, similarly Stoicism can be a brilliant tool, but can also do harm when it's used to justify Providentialist thinking," she said, "making it easy to reassure oneself inside that the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, the sick, and the disabled somehow deserve it, that the world is already fair ... and therefore that the affluent have no obligation to try to work to make a fairer world."

Being committed to social change and progress and believing in Providence can be compatible, Palmer said. Yet it requires adhering to the idea that our reason, divine or not, was meant to be used, and that everything isnt automatically good on its own. Everything can be good if we act on the world with the abilities that we have, and according to our virtues. This is, of course, a more complex idea that doesn't always make it into Stoicism memes.

There wasnt a large sense of the scale of what humans can do in antiquity, Palmer said. Our power was not understood to be as great as it is. If you talked to someone in antiquity about suddenly making vaccines, the answer is what is a vaccine? They didn't have the apparatus to just eliminate the disease; that's much better than just consoling ourselves about the disease.

Often in the modern age, we do have control over things, but perhaps not individually, and only if we work collectively. My fear of both ancient and modern Stoicism is that it can make people give up the fight for social justice too quickly and think that things can't be changed in the greater world, which perhaps could be chipped away at and changed a bit, Hobbs said.

When I hear things like Jeff Bezos is a Stoicno, he isnt, said Massimo Pigliucci, a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York. He definitely isn't, because a major point in his life seems to be to engage in entrepreneurship and make money. And hes done that by exploiting other people and acting in an anti-competitive way. Those are both unethical. And the major thing for a Stoic is to be ethical.

Pigliucci came to Stoicism during one of those periods of life that seems determined to overwhelm: His father died, he got divorced, he changed jobs, and moved cities. He read about Stoic Week on Twitter, and became entranced after reading Epictetus.

As a scientist, Pigliucci said, he can't accept the idea that the cosmos is a living organism, so he leaves that bit of Stoicism in the past. Whenever you reject part of a philosophy or religions metaphysics, there are consequences to it. For Pigliucci, it means he no longer believes in the ancient Stoic concept of Providence.

If my daughter dies, I am not going to be happy about it, because I don't believe it's for the good of the universe," Pigliucci said. "At the same time, I am going to have to accept it because it's in the nature of things. And I still have duties to other people, other children, or toward my wife, or toward my friends."

He still considers himself a Modern Stoic, though, and Pigliucci thinks you can view the Stoic's pantheistic rational universe through a modern lens. Philosopher Lawrence Beckers book A New Stoicism argues the same: If Stoicism hadnt died out at the end of antiquity, then it would have been updated or modified naturally as the world modernized, perhaps losing its pantheism.

It's not so much cherry picking, it's more kind of updating in the light of more recent evidence, said John Sellars, a reader in philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. In fact, this is what the Roman Stoics did toothey were much more focused on the ethics of Stoicism than the metaphysics.

Pigliucci thinks of the world not as imbued with a substance called logos, but as a web of cause and effect, where things don't happen without causesand this helps to counter any potential for passivity. In many of the ancient works, theres not an emphasis on personal outcomes or benefits, but rather social ends, or collective outcomes. The Stoics thought that all rational beings were part of the same cosmopolis, or community. This sort of reframing, Pigliucci said, can help to counter critiques of passivity within Stoicism.

In the new book Being Better: Stoicism for a World Worth Living In, by Kai Whiting and Leonidas Konstantakos, they push for the idea that Stoicism can be a tool for social and environmental change foremost, not self-help. I wouldn't say that Stoicism should be seen as a tool or life hack, Whiting, a researcher and lecturer in sustainability and Stoicism based at UCLouvain in Belgium, said. And that's why my slight concern with Modern Stoicism is that it can unfortunately and unintentionally lead people in that direction.

The ancient Stoics were anything but passive, Sellars said. In ancient Rome there was a movement called the Stoic Opposition, composed of members of the aristocratic senator class standing up to the emperor or the concentration of power.

The Stoics aren't trying to encourage us to become completely indifferent to the external world, Sellars said. All they want to do is for us to avoid excessive emotional disturbances caused by things in the external world.

Will Johncock, the author of Stoic Philosophy and Social Theory, agreed, and said that the individual self-control that people think they're going to achieve from Stoicism is not the most important part of philosophy. "If you're going to discuss Stoicism in these highly self defining terms, you're going to misrepresent the philosophy and you're going to send someone down a path which is arguably more isolating, mentally and more alienating than they've been feeling before," he said.

He pointed me to an Epictetus passage: A person never acts in their own interest or thinks of themselves alone, but, like a hand or foot that had sense and realized its place in the natural order, all its actions and desires aim at nothing except contributing to the common good. Marcus Aurelius, for his part, agreed, writing, It has long been shown that we are born for community ...each creature is made in the interest of another.

Whiting thinks that as it gets more popular, Modern Stoicism should take responsibility for the interpretations that encourage individualization, and the more nefarious applications. Stoicism, when used as a tool rather than a philosophy as a whole, has an uncomfortable relationship with the right wing of the Republican Party, and we need to address that, Whiting said.

In 2018, Donna Zuckerberg published Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age, about how Red Pill communities could be drawn to classical philosophy, and use it to bolster their ideas. The "Red Pill" comes from The Matrix, and the moment when Neo swallows a red pill to see the truth about the world around him. Red Pillers claim that they alone see through an 'establishment narrative' that oppresses heterosexual white men, Zuckerberg wrote.

Evans said that he was once invited to speak on a podcast about Stoicism, the organizers of which turned out to be right-wing segregationists who helped organize the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. In an interview published in May with the philosopher Mary Beard, she apparently rolled her eyes when asked about Stoicism, and said, All to the good when people are interested in the ancient world, but this is one of the more mystifying bits of interest: clichd self-help from a philosophy that, if you looked at it really hard, was nasty, fatalistic, bordering on fascist.

Sellars said that he thinks the kind of phenomena that Zuckerberg wrote about is a storm in a teacup. I think she's managed to dig up something that is incredibly marginal and tried to present it as a big problem, Sellars said. In all of my experience, engaging with the public on this, I've not encountered anyone that fits that description of the hard right, misogynistic people wanting to take up Stoicism. I think it's incredibly marginal and not a big deal. Sellars also said that despite the perception that Stoicism is for men, the official Stoic Weeks have had a good gender balance: In 2020, it was 57% male; in 2019, it was 60% male.

Zuckerberg agreed that in the community that takes Stoicism seriously, the people shes writing about are in short supply. But in the types of online meeting grounds she explored in her book, she said, the use of Stoicism is much more superficial yet also more disturbing. She maintains that it's the "unfortunate responsibility of people who take Stoicism seriously to insist that out-of-context quotations from Marcus Aurelius aren't the full picture when it comes to Stoicism, and the reality is a lot more nuanced and less individualistic."

Whiting felt that Zuckerberg's warnings in her book went unheeded, and that people dismissed her. I thought that we did not respond as a Stoic community with kindness to Donna, Whiting said. I don't think we did enough to thank her for the stance that she took and the effort that she made. People say, 'Oh, you know, she made us look bad.' She made us look in the mirror.

People within the Modern Stoic community should be able to criticize it, Evans said, rather than assuming the philosophy is impermeable to dangerous interpretation. Im a pluralist, so my basic position is that every philosophy has flaws. No philosophy is perfect. And I think sometimes people can latch on to Stoicism as the answer.

While there have been activists who have been inspired by Stoicism, like Nelson Mandela, Evans said he has yet to see charitable endeavors emerge from the modern Stoic movementso we shouldn't assume it is, on its own, an altogether charitable position. After all, could we even tell that Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic if we didnt have access to Meditations, which was not meant for wide public readership?

On a recent episode of the philosophy podcast In Our Times, host Melvyn Bragg wondered if there wasnt a bit of romantic nostalgia when it comes to figures like Marcus that obscures his actions. I mean, he was a military commander," Bragg said. He went into wars. The big monument to him is ringed by the number of barbarians he slaughtered. Christians were perceived to be near his philosophy in a way, but they were still criminals when he took power, and he didnt pass a law stopping them being criminals.

"Should modern Stoicism also be careful of ascribing too much modern activism to it?" wondered senior lecturer in ancient philosophy at Exeter University, Gabriele Galluzzo. The point isn't that activism is a bad thing, but that to justify it through Stoicism might not be appropriate. Being an activist for social or climate justice is a good thing, of coursebut does anyone need the justification of Stoicism to do good work? Or even to talk about it? As Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations, "Stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one."

This is one potentially off-putting aspect that can be gleaned from certain corners of the Modern Stoic movement: the idea that one should only be a Stoic and that every activity you do should be done Stoically, as if its even possible to do so. Sadler said that most of the Stoicism Today team members are not quite so dogmatic about it; the ones who identify as Stoics are interested in and open to other philosophies. Even Seneca often quotes Epicurusthe alleged rival of Stoicsin Letters from a Stoic.

I think that there's a tendency among people who first get into it to think that it's like an exercise program where you start benching and doing leg presses and you're going to get to a certain number and now you're done, Sadler said. It's not like that at all. There are people who are obsessed with who's the better Stoic than who. And that's a very anti-Stoic thing to do.

Palmer said that there was a recognition in the ancient world that very few people were ever completely successful at Stoicism. They said those who had done so were rare, and that there might only be one in a generation who achieved such levels of self-control and emotional tranquility.

Almost everyone will still break down, and still fail, Palmer said. And that's OK, because if it helps you four days a week, and you have a breakdown one day a week and need to use other tools, like cry on a friend's shoulder, that's normal human.

Palmer referred me to Petrarch's encounters with Cicero's personal letters. Petrarch was a 14th-century Italian scholar who lived through the Black Death and tried to mine the Stoic Ciceros letters for comfort. During the plague, many of Petrarchs friends died, and at some point, he could no longer accept there was a rational universe or God creating such a plan. Hes very overt about that he cant accept it, Palmer said. "And he asks, what did our generation do that was so much more terrible than all the other generations, so that they were visited with this?

Later, when Petrarch wrote the book Remedies Against Fortune, Fair and Foul, which Palmer described as akin to a Stoic self-help book, he still believed that having "irrational" emotions about the plague was the appropriate response. "And that was a very un-Stoic thing to say," Palmer said. "He basically said sometimes you just have to weep."

Stoicism is a wonderful philosophy, but there are some elements missing, if its taken on too unilaterally. Evans found that focus on the rational can omit ecstatic, non-rational approaches to healing and meaning. Incidentally, this can be the case with CBT as well, which is not for everyone, or for every problem. Some people find the idea of trying to rationalize away your negative beliefs doesn't work, which is why some people prefer Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Evans said. I have a friend with OCD, and he can't Socratically dispute his intrusive beliefs. That just makes it worse.

Stoicism accommodates emotions greatly, but some of the portrayals of stoicism that say you should be resilient to your emotions, that you should fight the conditions which enact the adverse emotions that you feel; I think that's actually worse for someone who's in a poor mental state, Johncock said.

Even Ferriss has said that he doesnt see himself as an evangelist for Stoicism, because he pulls from other philosophies too, like Buddhism and Epicureanism. I find that to be a very helpful counterbalance, Ferriss said in a Youtube video. Being 100% Stoic, 100% of the time can get a little dry and somber.

The desire to single out Stoicismor any other philosophy, life hack, or diet, for that matteras the solution for every woe a person faces might arise from a broader crisis of meaning, Evans said. People dont understand their own minds, and feel at the mercy of their thoughts and emotions," Evans said. "They feel like their lives lack meaning or structure or they don't have any moral compass. So they look to things like psychedelic trips, Stoicism, or Buddhism. But of course they look to them in modern Western culture where you have charismatic wellness entrepreneurs with all the issues there about their authority, and whoever's the slickest gets the most votes.

Evans still thinks that on the whole, Stoicisms popularity is a good thing. "These are just helpful ideas and helpful practices, he said. He compared it to where modern Buddhism has ended up. Some people will go extremely deep into Buddhism and devote their lives to it, he said. And some people might just listen to Headspace for like 10 minutes a day. But that's actually fineeither of those options.

The ancient Greeks said that philosophical arguments are like medicines: Some would be appropriate for some people at certain times, others for other times. Stoicism is a useful medicine, and there may be times in our lives when swallowing it is better than others.

Coming out of trauma, Stoicism was helpful for me because I had bad social anxiety, so it helped me to learn self-reliance, Evans said. It was a helpful stage, but after a while, Evans felt it could become maladaptive. As a growing man trying to develop emotions, I actually needed to learn how to depend on others, that actually vulnerability is not all bad. That was the main reason he moved beyond Stoicism and doesnt consider himself a Stoic now (even though he can't get rid of his Stoicism tattoo).

I thought it was lonely, Evans said. I wanted to learn to love. I would rather have attachments and suffer loss and grief and the risk of being rejected or let down things like that. That, for me, was the big limitation of Stoicism.

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The Revival of Stoicism - VICE

Photo credit: Mark Schierbecker, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Last week, the Templeton Foundation announced Jane Goodall as its Templeton Prize laureate for 2021. The press release hails her as a singular figure and a pioneering researcher in the quest to answer humanitys greatest philosophical question, What does it mean to be human as part of the natural world?

As Evolution News has covered before, Goodalls answers to that question leave behind a darker legacy than you would gather from Templetons effusive encomium. Her vision for a harmonious world is cast in a rosy-golden hue, but Wesley Smith has rightly pressed the same point Chesterton once made, that where animals are worshiped, humans tend to be sacrificed. Today, Louis Leakeys famous declaration that Goodalls research forced the scientific community to redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human seems prophetic. Goodalls fellow GAP (Great Apes Personhood) activists such as Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins are famous for excusing selective abortion, even infanticide.

Yet Goodall herself does not present as an angry atheist. Indeed, spiritual language suffuses her speech as she accepts the award. She concedes that the truly deep mysteries of life lie forever beyond scientific knowledge. She underlines this with a quote from the Apostle Pauls famous anticipation of heaven: Now we see through a glass darkly; then face to face.

Goodalls parents were not especially devout, but at 87, she is of a generation where even casual churchgoers could pick up biblical language by cultural osmosis. She tells Religion News Service that she occasionally attended a Congregationalist church in her home town of Bournemouth. As a teen, she fell passionately and platonically in love with the minister, though her own take on religion was private, personal.

This spiritual instinct grew while she was conducting her groundbreaking research in the Tanzanian forests of Gombe. She tells Templeton that here she felt very, very close to a great spiritual power. She again draws from Pauls epistles to refer to that in which we live and move and have our being.

But shes mixing and matching, and her new color has more shades of pantheism than theism. All living things, she believes, have a spark of divine energy that could be called a soul, including not just animal life but plant life: The trees, they have a soul too. Theyve got a spark of that divine energy.

As a young scientist, Goodall was able to overcome her fears of untamed nature through a conviction that she was meant to be there. Her lifes work has always felt purposeful, guided by some unseen force beyond her control.

Goodall likewise sees purpose in the tapestry of nature: The most important part of being in the rainforest is the understanding of the interconnection, how every little species has a role to play. When a species goes extinct, its as if a thread has been pulled out of the tapestry. Pull out too many threads, she says, and the tapestrys grand design will unravel.

Magic is the word that comes to mind for her when she attempts to describe the grandeur of this design. Only spiritual language suffices as she looks at the surrounding forest: Its something so powerful and so much beyond what even the most scientific, brilliant brain could have created.

Science cant explain everything, Goodall is convinced. Weve got finite minds, she tells RNS, And the universe is infinite. When science says, Weve got it all worked out theres the Big Bang that created the universe. Well, what created the Big Bang?

She believes reconciliation between religion and science can only be achieved by rejecting materialism. She agrees with her friend Francis Collins that chance mutations couldnt possibly lead to the complexity of life on earth. Shes glad that scientists are becoming more willing to talk about the possibility of intelligent purpose behind the universe.

Yet whatever or whoever this intelligence might be in Goodalls mind, she still maintains He/She/It hasnt created human beings as uniquely valuable. She dismisses her simplistic childhood view that our species is elevated onto a pinnacle, separate from all the others. Like Darwin in his Descent of Man, she would say its far humbler for us to see ourselves as created from animals.

Theres nothing wrong with arguing against materialism. But Jane Goodall proves that rejecting materialism is not the end of the story. Even opening up the floor for intelligent design is not the end of the story.

This is where the value of books like Stephen Meyers Return of the God Hypothesis becomes apparent, by going beyond the hypothesis of design to compare competing profiles for a designer. Goodall seems to lean towards some kind of pantheistic life force that imbues the world with energy. But it can easily be shown how this hypothesis pales by comparison with the explanatory power of traditional theism. And not only does theism better explain the structure of the universe, it provides a way to ground the exceptional nature of the human species that we instinctively intuit, even though brilliant scientists like Goodall have sadly conditioned themselves to reject it.

The line between religion and science may indeed be blurring, as Goodall enthusiastically observes. And yet, there are many ways to be religious. There are many ways to worship. Goodall certainly worships, in her own way. She might even tell you she worships a designing power. The question is, has it made her in its image? Or has she made it in hers?

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Jane Goodall Meets the God Hypothesis - Discovery Institute

Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen of Parramatta has been criticized by local Catholics for what they see as his favorable and false approach to the homosexual agenda, especially in relation to diocesan schools.

Lay Catholics in the Australian Diocese of Parramatta have succeeded in having their bishop moderate his public support for gender identity after they waged a campaign that led him to amend his opposition to local legislation banning discussion of gender ideology in schools.

Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen of Parramatta has been criticized by local Catholics for what they see as his favorable and false approach to the homosexual agenda, especially in relation to diocesan schools.

According to his critics, the bishops pro-LGBT agenda was particularly manifest in his opposition to a bill introduced in April by Australian politician Mark Latham. The bill introduced in the New South Wales state legislature would prohibit the teaching of the ideology of gender fluidity to children in schools and seek to ensure that schools not usurp the role of parents.

It further proposed that teaching in relation to core values is to be strictly non-ideological and should not advocate or promote dogmatic or polemical ideology that is inconsistent with the values held by parents of students.

The proposed legislation, which is in line with both Church teaching and Pope Francis comments rejecting gender fluidity, has been strongly condemned by homosexual activists.

The Diocese of Parramatta under Bishop Longs leadership split from other Catholic leaders in the state and opposed the legislation, describing it in an April 27 submission as counter to promoting and respecting the human dignity of all.

Concerned that students who identify as lesbian, homosexual, bisexual or transgender could be harassed because of the bills prohibition on teaching gender fluidity, the dioceses executive director of Catholic education, Greg Whitby, told the media April 28 that the bill was an unacceptable incursion into the professional judgment of Catholic schools and systems.

After a backlash from some diocesan priests, parents and laity, Bishop Long appeared to overrule Whitby by issuing a new submission on May 5 in which he said the Diocese of Parramatta affirms the prohibition of teaching gender ideology (gender fluidity) in an educational setting. He also added that he had serious concerns, echoing Pope Francis, about this ideology.

In a further about turn to the previous statement, he said the Parramatta Diocese strongly affirms the Catholic teaching that parents are the primary educators of their children in matters of faith and education.

Latham tweeted his thanks to Bishop Long for withdrawing his earlier submission and replacing it with a statement recognizing parental primacy in education and supporting prohibition of teaching of gender fluidity in schools.

Despite the public reversal, the faithful in Parramatta contend that the bishop continues to be sympathetic toward the agenda of gender-identity activists.

His critics point to the bishops May 5 statement, including a proviso that the bill must not prohibit a school from supporting children who are already at risk of marginalization because of gender identity issues. They also cite the bishops words, quoting Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, that the young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created, and that he said it is important that the school community is able to challenge unhealthy, ill-informed and discriminatory attitudes.

Dallas McInerney, chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW which backed the bill and supported the protests, welcomed Bishop Longs new submission, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. [We] look forward to engaging with Mr. Lathams inquiry further on this matter now that we have the benefit of a more aligned position, he said.

But parishioners want to keep up the pressure.

The bishops new submission is not viewed as a major victory at all, said Zana, a Parramatta Catholic. Its an appeasement to shut us down, she told the Register, while he continues his unfaithful agendas in many spheres.

Bernadette Ching, who has led much of the resistance to the bishop, said she did not agree with Latham that Bishop Long had withdrawn his initial submission as she believes the bishop still wants a new curriculum implemented that continues to promote an LGBT agenda. The bishop refers to Vatican and papal documents, Ching said, but defies the letter of what the Pope said that teaching LGBT issues in schools is indoctrination.

Catholic means universal, she told the Register. We welcome all to learn Christs teaching, but what Bishop Long means by this is that we need to learn more about their [homosexuals] sin to make them feel welcome. So why not teach murder and adultery to children, too?

Another parishioner, Craig Donaldson, said he found the revised submission tepid and misguided, and took issue with its assertion that the diocese is trusted by local families on sensitive educational matters. The diocese is not trusted by local families on these issues, he insisted, adding that some parents have removed their children from diocesan schools because they are so concerned about the agenda being pushed.

He also said that promised collaboration with parents has not materialized and the bishop avoids any engagement.

Opposition to Bishop Longs approach to the bill followed prior concerns about the diocesan education office and its stance toward same-sex relationships, including a new school curriculum sympathetic to the agenda. Parishioners also have other complaints against the bishop including other concerns about the curriculum (that it contains divisive subjects such as Black Lives Matter and pantheism) and claims of financial corruption and mismanagement.

This led to several lay-led petitions as well as an appeal sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that called on Bishop Long, his vicar general for education Father Chris de Souza, and Greg Whitby to resign.

Faithful of the diocese continue to hold Rosary protests outside the bishops office, the latest one taking place on May 13, the feast of Our Lady of Fatima and the Solemnity of the Ascension.

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Parramatta Laity Make Their Voices Heard in Dispute With Their Bishop - National Catholic Register