The Old New Way is a group that formed in the fall of 2014 in Berkeley, California, with the intention of exploring what it is to be human in the 21st century.

We want to ask the Big Questions — Who am I? What’s the point of it all, anyway? How can I recognize right from wrong? — but without resorting to supernatural answers of any kind.

We accept that we are products of millions upon millions of years of evolution; that we are a particular kind of bipedal primates, members of a species called “homo sapiens.”

We get it.

155 years after On the Origin of Species, it’s sinking in.

We realize that we therefore cannot expect to “know” everything. Nor can we hope to  “transcend” the physical world, since our capacities are limited by nature. (After all, even our strong moral sense and our “consciousness” are — so far as we can see — products of our biology.)

Oh yeah, and we accept that when we die… that’s it.

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What an amazing time to be alive!

With the threadbare fables and myths of millennia falling away around us, we can see more clearly than ever before!

Join us.

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Readings and activities for the Old New Way will range widely. (All suggestions welcome!)

It is our hope that, through this group, we will add to our understanding of ourselves and our world, and therefore enable ourselves to give more to the people around us.

Please feel free to take part  in our discussions — either in person or online.