Also, you should read M.J. Lee’s follow up in the comments section before proceeding. She explains who her audience is and what her intention was.

Moreover, your characterization of the Gods as “superbeings” who “come off seeming un-god-like, small, weak and insignificant” is pretty hateful. Yet your follow-up comment, “even if they do exist, I don’t see why we should care.” is where your arrogance really shows. There can be very practical reasons for caring that the Gods exist and building relationships with them. For example, perhaps like myself you want to become a better organic food gardener. If none of the research you’ve done, and none of the techniques you’ve used or advice you have gotten has been working, on your sickly berries, a relationship with Azaka or Demeter can be literally fruitful. I don’t need to worship these deities from a position of subservience and groveling obsequy. I can engage them as holders of the agricultural wisdom I need to successfully use completely organic means to get my strawberries and blackberries to grow without succumbing to pests or bouts of fungus. So they can’t materialize and strike down the slash-and-burn operations. Azaka and Demeter hold the key to the mysteries of agriculture and humanity’s dependence upon it in their flawed, human-scaled hands. But the power of Their knowledge and understanding can be shared with anyone who approaches Them with respect and love. In answer to your question of who needs supernatural gods?” I am happy to answer “I do.” My spirit has been enriched by my experiences with Azaka and Demeter, and my garden has been never been more delicious. Good luck getting that result from an imaginary dialog with your symbolic archetype of “Agriculture.” You have indicated your belief that a religion should be intellectually and emotionally fulfilling. At no point have you acknowledged that for most of history, religion has been concerned with spiritual growth and fulfillment. If you don’t want spirit, go join a social club or go find a Rainbow gathering. Don’t hijack a religion and then be hateful to the people who made it possible for you to have it in the first place.

Um…doesn’t really seem like the best point for dialoging about what hard polytheists actually believe and how that differs from naturalists.

As with any type of paganism, naturalistic pagans do not agree on everything. (Naturalistic here refers to philosophical materialism not nature-like.) One of the issues within naturalistic paganism and other “naturalistic earth/nature-center religions” such as naturalistic pantheism is whether or not god language and symbols is appropriate or useful within religious naturalism. This has often been a topic of discussion on Humanistic Paganism. In my piece “Why do people want supernatural gods?” I was trying to argue for symbolic theism among naturalistic pagans, some of whom were arguing that god language and symbols should be avoided because it is confusing (as many people view gods in a literal way) and will inevitably lead to hard theism (i.e. literal belief in immortal, conscious superbeings) and the problems associated with hard monotheism. My intentions in this piece were not to attack hard polytheists, but to emphasize to my fellow naturalistic pagans that the theism I am talking about is not hard polytheism.

What the piece really addresses is a type of metaphysical materialism. I just started reading the book “The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology and Modern Life”. The editor Meredith Sabini in the introduction says, “Jung remarked that “the earth has a spirit of her own, a beauty of her own.” (VS, PP. 133–4) Spirit is the inside of things and matter is their visible outer aspect. Jung’s main contribution is restoring to Nature its original wholeness by reminding us that “nature is not matter only, she is also spirit.” Jung, C. G.; Sabini, Meredith (2011-06-28). The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology and Modern Life (pp. 1-2). Random House Inc Clients. Kindle Edition.

Does this mean that Jung was a dualist who thought the earth was composed of an outer shell (matter) and a tangible inner spirit like a soul? Does the spirit in the earth have to be a tangible, separate “thing” on to itself to be real? It seems to me that at least some hard polytheists are saying yes, that the spirit of the earth and other such spirits must be (and are) in some sense physical (presumably made of finer stuff than coarse matter) to be real and to have value. Many folks (though certainly not all) of a naturalistic disposition would agree, for they also take the idea of “spirits” very literally, feeling that since science has dissected, measured, weighed, compared and found no spirits nor detected any measurable influences of spirits, there are no spirits and therefore we, religious naturalists, should not speak of them. I disagree with both of these positions.

My piece is really meant as a critique and a challenge to the latter naturalistic position. I do feel the earth has a spirit, that the beingness of the earth has a personality, has a song, not just a song a whole orchestra. To me this spirit is a quality of being and not a being in its self. Religion is that which particularly focuses on this quality of being, so I think we, naturalistic pagans, need words and concepts like spirit and even god to accurately describe and emotionally engage with the beingness of the world especially in a religious context. Yet when this spirit is conceived of too literally, either by hard theists or naturalists, it seems to me that it is lost. This to me is the theology of symbolic theism.

My piece could have just as easily been title “Is Nature Enough?” Again this question is not posed to hard polytheists but to naturalistic pagans. When I say, “For many people, nature is just not a suitable object of reverence; nature is just not god-like.” I am not talking about pagans of any sort, but the average modern western person. And the nature I am referring to here is the nature of science, of philosophical materialism, the nature of matter devoid of spirit. I personally think that we need spirit, need to recognize the essence of beingness, the beingness of the world and all its components. I think nature, matter without spirit, is not enough for religion.

I do not wish to devalue anyone’s personal religious experience. I think such experiences are part of our human nature and should not be dismissed and reasoned away. And yet I do think that the weight of the evidence is in favor of scientific materialism and against supernaturalism. Although the religions of the world make diverse and often contradictory metaphysical claims, still nearly all religions now and in the past are in some sense supernatural. The truth is that even if there are no tangible gods and spirits, as it certainly appears to those of a scientific disposition, it may still prove that believing in gods is necessary for a viable religion and that it may even be instinctual. This is why I think the question “Why do people want supernatural gods?” is so important for religious naturalism.

These issues between hard theism and religious naturalism are nothing new. Cicero starts his book “On the Nature of the Gods” with a preface where he lays out the issues of the dialogue he is about to relate to Brutus. Although it is not explicitly stated, it is obvious that he is referring to Epicurean theology and I think his words still pose a challenge to those of us, naturalistic pagans, who in some sense which to pick up Epicurean mantel.

Cicero writes: ”For there are some philosophers, both ancient and modern, who have conceived that the Gods take not the least cognizance of human affairs. But if their doctrine be true, of what avail is piety, sanctity, or religion? for these are feelings and marks of devotion which are offered to the Gods by men with uprightness and holiness, on the ground that men are the objects of the attention of the Gods, and that many benefits are conferred by the immortal Gods on the human race. But if the Gods have neither the power nor the inclination to help us; if they take no care of us, and pay no regard to our actions; and if there is no single advantage which can possibly accrue to the life of man; then what reason can we have to pay any adoration, or any honors, or to prefer any prayers to them? Piety, like the other virtues, cannot have any connection with vain show or dissimulation; and without piety, neither sanctity nor religion can be supported; the total subversion of which must be attended with great confusion and disturbance in life.” Cicero, Marcus Tullius. The Nature of the Gods (p. 3). Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition (2009-12-09).