Religion Transforms into Philosophy

Lauren’s Earthseed is arguably a book of philosophy versus a book of religion or a religious text. Early on, Butler introduces the reader to Lauren’s skepticism toward the idea of God and Christianity. Lauren finds that “a lot of people seem to believe in a big-daddy-God or a big-cop-God or a big-king-God,” while others believe “in a kind of super person” or God being “another word for nature” (Butler 15). Lauren grows frustrated with the inconsistency of how people envision God and acknowledges that “if you ask seven people what [God] means you’ll get seven different answers” (Butler 15). Her frustration then prompts her to question the purpose of God, the idea of God, and God’s existence. Lauren initially creates Earthseed as a private journal to help define God’s existence and the purpose of her Earthseed philosophy. Like Christianity and other religions, Lauren’s Earthseed includes a book of parables and stories written to motivate, guide, and elicit hope during difficult circumstances. Although not a religious text, it is like the Bible in the sense that it is read for its “philosophical propositions, ecumenical moral and ethical advice, theological revelations, and for its general insights into life, happiness, and well-being” (Goodman 224). Due to Lauren’s father being a minister, Earthseed undoubtedly possess characteristics of the Christian religion and the Bible; nevertheless, it deems itself worthy of being a philosophical text and idea because of its origin, purpose, and concrete definition of God. According to Goodman, “it is far-fetched to present philosophy as the Bible’s original meaning” (226). Unlike Earthseed, the Bible’s most prominent characteristic is that it displays and describes the encounters and relationships that people on Earth have with God. Yet, Hazony, author of “The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture,” states that the events of the Bible that display the encounters between people and God need not be entirely true in order for its life-wisdom to be influential (Goodman 226). Conversely, the parables written in Earthseed are not potentially false verses that describe physical encounters that people have with God, nor are they meant to be worshipped by believers. To create Earthseed, Lauren analyzes “other people, [her]self, everything [she] could read, hear, see, and all the history [she] could learn” (Butler 217). Everything Lauren writes in Earthseed is authentic to the personal encounters she has with people and her environment. While living in a community so devastating, desolate, and prone to disaster, Lauren admits that creation of Earthseed was a true quest for God, not a pursuit of “mythology, mysticism or magic” (Butler 217). Instead of being a religious text that deals with supernatural authority figures, Earthseed is a philosophical text that seeks to acknowledge continuing reality, God as change, God as an idea that can be shaped, and Lauren’s aspirations to build Earthseed communities.