No transcendental reality

Principle 3. The way the world works can be understood by referring to this world alone, without appealing to any transcendental reality.

As stated in Principle 1, the truth is out there and we can discover it. We need to keep thinking, and we should never be content to take anything on faith. What's the difference between faith and simple authority after all? When you stop thinking and yield to what someone else tells you to believe, you hide your own unique perspective on the world that helps all of us understand it better. There may be things humans will never grasp, but that's ok. If we can't understand them, we can't integrate them into our understanding of the world either.

Does this mean there is no place for gods, religion or authority? No, certainly not. It does mean there is no place for dogma. Nothing is beyond questioning (including everything written on this site). There may be beings with superhuman powers out there, but the only reason to think that they actually exist should be because we found testable proof of their existence. Religions are valuable without the existence of the supernatural as well, as they tell the human story of dealing with life and mortality on Earth working with the tools available to make sense of these daunting topics throughout the ages. Authority is an important topic that I'll discuss more in another post, here I'll simply state that it has an important role to play in organizing a society. But only as long as it doesn't stifle thinking and questioning.

In philosophy my views are probably closest to what is called Naturalism. There are as usual quite a few varieties of this concept, and I find that Religious naturalism appeals to me. Because it includes meaning and guidance in our endeavor to understand and the environmental ethic that is part of it. Looking at the list of proponents on Wikipedia, I see it includes the authors of the books I liked most developing my views at university, Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac and Donald A. Crosby's A Religion of Nature. It might be time to read up on it a bit more 😊.