ABSTRACT
To adopt a religious attitude toward something is to hold it sacred, to hold it of great significance, of overriding importance. This is neither a subjective nor an objective judgment. Another needed paradigm shift is to reconceive the relation between matter and spirit. The long-standing dualism of spirit and body or spirit and matter should be re-thought, so that people can speak of "spirited matter" or "material spirits". The split between spirit and matter is deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. This split was reinforced by the Platonic dualism between the ideal forms and empirical objects or historical processes, which at best only approximated to the forms. Religious naturalism knows of no spiritual realm apart from the physical. In developing the notion of a generalized other, George Herbert Mead, the pioneer American social psychologist, hinted at the notion of a higher reference group in Mind, Self, and Society.
