Cycles, Progress, and the Clash of Civilizations

The carbon cycle and the calamity of Western individualism

Image by Jordan Benton, from Pexels

There’s an embarrassing problem for religious people, which is the multiplicity of religions. How do we know which god is real or which creed to obey? If we must take a leap of faith, what are the chances the religion we happen to grow up in our place and time in history is the only correct religion or the best faith? What are the odds that our religion even makes for an especially worthy response to divine reality?

Religious people feel protective of their traditional beliefs and practices, but that doesn’t mean their defensiveness is rationally justified.

However, all of that is a tempest in a teapot.

The difference between religions is like the difference between fashions. These differences matter to those who are caught up in the latest fads, but anthropologically speaking, there’s a broader and more illuminating way of dividing up religions, just as there’s a simpler and more socially important difference between being clothed and being naked.

Natural Cycles

This broader classification takes as its starting point religious cosmology — which explains why the classification is largely ignored in public discourse about…