It’s All Secular and Nothing Else

Even the monks like ice cream.

There is no such thing as supernatural. If it occurs, then it is natural; because it occurred. Rarity is not evidence of an anomaly. If something happens, it’s real; if it’s real, it’s of nature and natural. If we don’t know, then we should say, “We don’t know,” not attribute cause to things that do not exist and therefore cannot be known.

We divide our understanding of reality into these two extremes, as either secular or religious. And what does secular mean; it worldly or of the age or this age. Secular is anything that doesn’t base it’s existence or being on any religious frameworks, authority, or value. A secular worldview observes and explains reality through natural causes, reason, evidence, and experience; not making up supernatural or superstitious causes. 

But secular isn’t just a “worldview.” It is the nature of reality itself. We have and use words like spiritual or religious but is reality those things? Does it care what we call it; what we name its various processes and functions? Secular is a human construct and only exists to contrast whatever a person or institution might hold “sacred” or “religious.”

If Secular comes from the Latin saecularis meaning "worldly or "of this age," then what's needed is a word that means "the world" and/or “transcends age or time." 

Many ancient philosophies or languages have tried:

• Nature - The collective natural world.
  

• Cosmos - Greek kosmos, “the ordered whole.”
  

• Reality - Res in Latin means “thing,” a generic term for “what is.”
  

• Tao - In Taoism means “the Way,” the flow of all things. Timeless, natural, beyond labels.
  

• Brahman - Hindu, the ultimate, boundless reality, beyond name and form.
  

• Aletheia - Ancient Greek meaning truth or unconcealment, reality revealed.
  

• Aion - In Greek it means not just time, but “the eternal age,” the boundless continuum.
  

All these reveal one thing, there is no single perfect word in English for “all-that-is, timeless, self-existing.”

But even without something to adequately call it, existence still persists. Meanwhile we get caught up, historically, in what makes and what to make of reality. Cultures and peoples have been destroyed for having or not adopting a different “worldview.” Every tribe has their God and they all know (think) theirs is the real deal, when the truth is they’re all the same and misunderstood. What it is, is people trying to manifest and at the same time wield some kind of power. God Is, but religion only wishes it was and so badly wants to be. 

Rather than God being an inherent part of who and what we are, such notions are stripped away; called insane. Rather than being what we are, God is an authority figure that exists outside of us, punishing us for being made by him. Escape from this ironic punishment can only be attained by strict adherence to dogma, rituals, and superstitions. But life is not sinister and doesn’t have an ulterior motive. Life doesn’t make us, in order to come get us or destroy us. Religion looks down on the secular reality that allows it to exist, that is its existence; its reality. 

For some reason we split existence into the Gross and the Divine, when it’s all Divine. The parts we don’t fully understand or know we give unknowable definitions that can’t be comprehended because they cannot and do not exist, aren’t real. The things we don’t know or yet to understand cannot be understood if we choose to constantly attribute their occurrence or existence to things which in themselves aren’t real. If and where we don’t know, why do we invent the unknowable? We turns gaps in our understanding into wells go ignorance. Giving real phenomena names and qualities that cannot be tested because they do not exist. 

Religion is our lack of understanding crystalized into rigid rituals and dogmas. None of which brings knowledge, wisdom, or understanding but helps people with their lack of understanding. We turn what could otherwise be comprehended into an insurmountable obstacle, an obstacle that can only be overcome by removing it entirely. There’s something wrong when institution solidifies our search for meaning into a set of non-negotiable answers. Where ignorance is a virtue and inquiry is a sin and blasphemy. This can provide comfort and community but comes at the cost of genuine inquiry, understanding, and wisdom.

The things we do not yet understand can be understood if we do not bury them under illusions first. God is the Process-Function that creates and is all existence. Religion is a conceptual human system built around reality, or in spite of it, that both obscures and explains existence. 

It’s almost a simple matter of which a person thinks came first, God or religion; reality or a fabricated unknowable?