Our Practice of Continuing Creation has Thirteen Principles. Here are the first three:
       > Nature’s Continuing Creation is not a religion; it is a practice and a path.
       > We recognize Continuing Natural Creation – creature by creature, invention by invention.
       > We are Co-creators in Continuing Creation’s dynamic patterns of Growth.
To read the other 10 Principles, kindly proceed to the Essay itself.

Essay 2 – Introduction to Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation

This Essay is only 6 pages long, including our poetic, “Nature’s Continuing Creation in Short Stanzas.”

Essay 3 – Overview of Nature’s Continuing Creation

Our Overview summarizes the entire book of Essays — Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation.
Scroll through the Overview Essay and read all of its Section titles.

Essay 4 – Is Our Path a “Spiritual” Path?

No, ours is not a “spiritual” path. Ours is a “Secular-Spiritual“ Path.
We experience Wholistic Comprehension when we feel the emotions of awe, inspiration, or deep connection.
We can feel these emotions when we interact with loved ones, art, science, inventions, & healthy ecosystems.

Essay 5 – Is This Book for You?

Consider 48 questions. If you can answer “yes” to any 3 of them, you may benefit from reading this Book.
Here are four of the 48 questions:
— If you are pretty sure that humans never walked the Earth at the same time as the dinosaurs.
— If you believe in God, but maybe not in all the magical myths and crazy miracle stories.
— If you doubt Jesus turned wine into water, but have no doubt that Thomas Edison invented the phonograph.
— If you feel more uplifted when you look at a waterfall than when you hear a sermon on “original sin.”

Essay 6 – How to Read this Book of Essays

Our Practice is called by many names, including the Path, the Way, the Flow, the Weave, and others.
Participants in Nature’s Continuing Creation are also called many names, including Participants, Builders, Agents, & Co-Creators.

Part Two: Patterns & Complexity

Essay 7 – Nature Creates Patterns of Information & Beauty

When energy flows through an “open energy system,” it can create patterns of information, structure, and complexity. The patterns include the spiral structures of tornadoes and the branching patterns of river deltas. The 92 natural elements can combine to make an endless number of chemical compounds, each with a distinct pattern. Many natural patterns display great beauty, including crystals and butterfly wings.

Essay 8 – Mathematics Evolves in Nature’s Continuing Creation

The patterns we discussed in Essay 7 can be described with simple mathematics. For example, the Spiral Pattern found everywhere in nature is related to a special number called the Golden Ratio; to pentagons and pentagrams, and to a unique string of numbers called the “Fibonacci Sequence = where the next number is the sum of the previous two numbers.  So: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21… and so on.

Essay 9 – Nature Creates Increasingly Complex Systems

Complex systems include simmering water, a one-celled bacterium, bird flocks in flight, the brain, bicycles with riders, ecologies, bodies of law, steel mills, and Nature’s Way of Continuing Creation itself. Complex Systems display levels, feedback loops, triggers, cascades, and emergence.

Part Three: Evolution

Essay 10 – The Processes of Evolution — in Biology, Culture, & Technology

We define evolution as “any process or system (astrophysical, geological, chemical, biological, cultural, or technological) that assembles parts to form new and different wholes that survive in their environments.”  An example of cultural evolution would be the creation of the English language from the intermingling of Briton, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman French.  An example of technological evolution is the history of how telephones changed over time to emerge as cell phones.

Essay 11 – Answering Evolution’s Critics

In this Essay, we present twelve of the most popular arguments against biological evolution, and we refute them one by one.

Part Four: Nature Creates the First Life on Earth (Abiogenesis)

Essay 12 – Chemical Precursors to Life on Earth

Wherever energy flows (e.g., from hot to cold) it can drive natural systems to self-organize into structures that can move more energy through faster.
Quite a few chemical systems do this, and so do the structures we call living organisms. Most NASA astrophysicists now think that the emergence of life may be widespread across millions of Earth-like planets and moons in our Milky Way Galaxy.

Essay 13 – The Organic Molecules Forming Life

The Four Key Monomer Molecules of First Life and their key processes are: (1) Lipids – Fat molecules that can join to make the cell membranes of living things; (2)   Amino acid molecules that chain together to make proteins which are the “workhorses” of each cell.  (3) Nucleotide molecules, which combine to make nucleic acids which are the components of DNA and RNA. (4) Food molecules, e.g., sugar, which provide the living cell with energy.  

Efforts to Create Life in the Laboratory: The Miller-Urey Experiments in the 1960s (with an update in 2008). The Joan Oro i Florensa Nucleotide experiments, also in the 1960s; The Georgia Tech Nucleotide Experiments in 2016; Czech Nucleotide Experiments in 2017. In late 2020, “Synthetic Biology” successfully produced the early vaccines to fight the COVID-19 virus.

Essay 14 – Abiogenesis: Evolution of First Life on Earth

This Essay about life’s origin may actually be less important than our related Essay, The Processes of Evolution & Their Meaning, because the latter describes the evolution that is happening all around us, here and now. It explains how those processes provide us with secular-spirituality – our sense of connectedness and meaning.

While we understand that a Deist “clockmaker-God” may have started the universe – we can’t prove it up or down.  But the universe is here, the evolutionary processes are working here on Earth, and as these processes grow, they generally become more elaborate… as they likely do the same on other planets when planetary conditions are adequate. (For more on Deism, see our Essay, Forerunners to Our Path and Practice.)

Both our “Processes of Evolution Essay,” and Essay #14 about Abiogenesis are integral to this book about Nature’s Continuing Creation. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, and all the evolutionary science from then until now are forerunners to this book about Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation.

Essay 15 – Where Life Began: “Warm Pools?” “Black Smokers?”

Life may have started in the deep-sea hydrothermal vents (including Black Smokers) at the bottom of the oceans, where the flow of energy is provided by heat from Earth’s interior … Or the process could have happened in a “little warm pool”… Or in the hollow pockets of porous rock, where proto-cell lipid membranes may have coated the interior of the pockets. We also look at the possibility of “panspermia” – the idea that first-life hitch-hiked on asteroids that struck the Earth.

Essay 16 – The Rise of Multicellular Organisms

Through the thousands of years of early biological evolution on Earth, single-celled bacteria and fungi transformed into multicellular organisms, giving them better protection from predators, greater ability to find food, increased motility, and a basis for later cell specialization.  While Abiogenesis (the rise of the First Life on Earth) still has many unknowns, the rise of Multicellular Organisms happened repeatedly and with robust evidence.  

Part Five:  Evaluating Other Spiritual Paths

Essay 18 – Forerunners to Our Path & Practice

This book on Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation draws on a number of earlier philosophies and theologies. These include Deism, Process Theology, Stoicism, Freemasonry, Free-thinking, Positivism, Secular Humanism, Existentialism, Skepticism, Pragmatism, Unitarianism, Pantheism, and Transcendentalism.

Essay 19 – Evaluating Taoism & Zen

Taoism is an ancient Chinese religion that began around 400 BCE. In Western theology, concepts analogous to the Tao are the “the Way,” “the Flow of the universe,” the “Ground of all Being,” and, simply, “Nature.” The Book of Continuing Creation expands Taoism’s seminal book, The Tao Te Ching (The Way and its Power or its Virtue), to include scientific knowledge, invention, and progress. 

Zen is a school of Buddhism, mostly followed in Japan, which draws on the core ideas of Taoism. Instead of seeking an escape from life into nirvana, as other Buddhists do, Zen practitioners seek satori – “moments of awakening” — that bring spontaneity and openness to everyday life.  Agents of Nature’s Continuing Creation prize both Taoism and Zen for their practicality.

Essay 20 – Evaluating Hinduism

Hinduism is an unlikely mix of abstract theology and a huge cast of wild and weird gods and goddesses. We find many Strengths in Hinduism’s abstract theology, but many Shortcomings in its pantheon of fantastical deities.  There are hundreds of colorful, fanciful anthropomorphic gods and goddesses, each of whom represents some aspect of Brahman (translated into English as the indescribable “Godhead” or “Ultimate Reality”).

Essay 21 – Evaluating Buddhism

Jesus did not call Himself “God,” nor “The Son of God,” nor “The Messiah” in the earliest Gospels: Mark, Matthew, and Luke. The Jesus Seminar, a group of about 150 scholars from major American and European universities labored to identify Jesus’ actual sayings, using 200 years of prior scholarship, knowledge of all the original languages, and techniques of textual analysis. The Seminar Scholars concluded that 82% of the verses ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not actually spoken by him. 

Essay 23 – Early Christianity: From Jesus’ Death To 312 C.E.

In the first 312 years centuries after Jesus’ death, Christianity was popularized and sensationalized by his followers. During these centuries, the memory of Jesus is transformed from a gifted, charismatic, human preacher to Jesus-as-God, co-equal with God-the-Father and God-the-Holy Spirit. In this same era, “God the Severe Father” of the Old Testament becomes “God the Forgiving Father” of the New Testament.

Roman Emperor Constantine the Great’s conversion to Christianity in the year 312 released a flood of Roman money, power, and administrative efficiency into the Catholic Church. Christian sects having different views of Jesus’ message (such as the Gnostics) were put down, and their gospels were excluded from the New Testament. Over the next 12 centuries, the Roman Catholic Church accumulated great wealth. Corrupt church practices, particularly the selling of indulgences, led to the Protestant Reformation, which Martin Luther and others began around the year 1517 C.E.

Essay 25 – Evaluating Islam

Essay 26 – Smaller Religions & Modern Cults

This Essay briefly covers 40 different Smaller Religions, Cults, and Unusual Spiritual Paths, including Judaism (a smaller but highly impactful religion), The Branch Davidians, “Cargo” Cults, and Scientology. Nearly all the cults (and some of the unusual spiritual paths) rely on a charismatic, narcissistic leader who offers followers some kind of early heaven, often in exchange for access to his followers’ money, young wives, and daughters.

Part Six:  Love & Sharing

Essay 27 – Is ‘God’ Love?  Is ‘Creating’ Love?

In biology, love is a form of cooperation, a form that is augmented by emotion. Other forms of cooperation include the hive behavior of bees and ants, the teamwork of workers on an assembly line, and the free communication of scientists sharing their research results. We also know that human life and biological life include competition as well as cooperation. Thus, the central impetus in Nature’s Continuing Creation is not Love. It is the creative interaction of cooperation and competition.

Essay 29 – Love’s Role in Our Lives & Practice

Essay 30 – Suffering & Evil – Causes & Responses

Western religions say that human suffering results from Adam and Eve disobeying God in the Garden of Eden. But how does that explain the suffering of creatures like white-tailed deer, who have parasitic worms infesting their eyeballs, or who die from Chronic Wasting Disease?  What sins did Bambi commit?  Evolutionary Biology provides the correct answer: Species compete on the “playing field” of the biosphere.  But they may also join with other species in symbiotic cooperation.

Essay 31 – Dealing with Death on Nature’s Path

The Way of Nature’s Continuing Creation lists 10 rational ways to understand and accept death. Number 8 is, “Leave A Legacy.”  We encourage everyone to interview older loved ones while they are still alive and to record those interviews. Thanks to the internet, everyone can leave a biography posted online, including photos, family trees, and links to friends and interests.

Part Eight:  About Our Future

Essay 32 – Cyborgs, Transhumanism, & Immortality

Essay 38 – Gatherings, Sayings, Songs, & “Stars”

Essay 39 – “4,000 Years of Christmas”

Your author, J.X. Mason, loves the rich Nature-based traditions that my family and I celebrate around the time of the Winter Solstice. These traditions include the lighted evergreen tree, gift giving, yule logs in the fireplace, and singing seasonal songs. 

Some years ago, my good friend Laura Emerson wrote a marvelous piece explaining how the celebration of Christmas in the West was grafted onto earlier traditions going way back into pre-recorded history.  These traditions celebrated the Winter Solstice — the very first day of each year at which daylight began getting longer, promising that Spring would return, and life would be re-born on Earth’s northern hemisphere. Laura’s guest essay, “Winter Solstice, to Christmas, and Back,” is our Essay #36.

Essay 40 – “Primal Reverence” 

A sermon by The Reverend Kendyl R. Gibbons teaches how and why we may each find spirituality and transcendence in Nature.