R&M Philosophical Series Update

Because of ERR and GRR insights I've currently rewritten the concluding essays 57, 58, 59, 60, 61 of the ontology series (while leaving the EPR essays 1-56 as is). And so far have edited essays 9-16 of the metaphysics series, including major upgrades to the two indexes themselves (R&C and R&M). Essays 17-25 will next be updated.

When realizing Embodied Process Realism (EPR) was doing too much work I then created the philosophical category of "Generative Relational Realism" (GRR) to release EPR back to its intended purpose of pursuing questions of ontology. That transition also required the renaming of EPR to ERR because of another significant realization that process was no longer the ontological primitive. It was relation. Thus Embodied Relational Reality (ERR) replaced Embodied Process Realism.

As a result of these formidable conceptual changes I had to stop and update both the ontology and metaphysics series. When the updates are completed I will next provide two essays on GRR, then complete the second Trilogy on "The Odyssey" as it relates to our study. Those remaining five essays will then finalize Section IV of the "Reality and Metaphysics Series."

They will also prepare the ground of discussion for the next Sections to follow, V - XVIII, where I will discuss time, science, consciousness, panexperientialism, panpsychism, relational interpretation and theology, ethics, and participation. Those discussions will be extensive, and I think fun and helpful additions to the current discussions I see occurring on the Internet.

However, before commencing the remaining R&M sections I may take a short break and write up a new series on the historical events and beliefs of ancient humanity which got included into the bible. I had completed an earlier series, The Evolution of Worship and Religion,  last year but feel it needs the addition of an earlier history to help students of the bible engage its earlier history within an evolutionary and early civilizational context.

That series, like this present one, will ask "How Then Shall We Live?" But rather than describing reality philosophically, I'd like to think through the experience of reality through the lens of primitive mankind. When done, I intend to return and complete the R&M series.

R.E. Slater
August 9, 2026

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The Prehistory of the Bible

An Introductory Study into the Deep Human World Behind the Bible

Long before there was a Bible, there were human beings asking questions. They wondered about birth and death, the heavens and Earth, animals and ancestors, suffering and catastrophe, good and evil, belonging and the stranger, and whatever powers or mysteries might lie beyond the visible world. For tens of thousands of years these questions found expression through burial, ritual, art, symbol, story, myth, religion, and eventually written literature.

The Biblical Prehistory essays will explore this largely forgotten world behind the Bible. Beginning with human evolution and the symbolic cultures of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, the study moves forward through the rise of agriculture, cities, civilizations, and the great narrative traditions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Canaan, and the ancient Near East. Only then do we arrive at ancient Israel and discover that the Bible did not simply appear in an empty world with its own early events and beliefs. Rather, its stories participated in an already ancient human conversation about creation, climate events, mortality, catastrophe, justice, suffering, God, community, and the meaning of human existence.

This study is not intended to disprove God, diminish the Bible, or test anyone's faith. Neither will it begin with questions of biblical revelation, inspiration, or inerrancy. Those questions belong more properly to the realms of theology and religion. Its purpose here is more fundamental: to give the Bible back its historical background. When Scriptural understanding is integrated with the prehistory of civilization before it - the evolutionary, cultural, religious, and later literary worlds from which it arose - then familiar biblical texts may become unfamiliar again, and perhaps made richer for the discussion.

The God of the universe, of the heavens and the earth, may be a question for some, but for many this God is ever a wonder and a mystery. As the earth and ancient life evolved, early humanity gradually became capable of asking ancient questions of God and life. Those questions, insights, beliefs, and stories of the ancient past became part of humanity's perpetuating legends that were remembered not only then but even now, in our modern, postmodern, and emerging metamodern societies as we search for meaning and meaningful living with one another.

That ancient search eventually returns the question to us. What have human beings learned across the immense journey from our earliest ancestors to the present? How might our inherited stories help us become more compassionate participants in the world we now inhabit? The journey into biblical prehistory therefore leads finally toward the present: toward care for one another, hospitality toward the stranger, compassion for suffering, responsibility toward Earth and its wild things, and the continuing question that has accompanied humanity from time immemorial:

How then shall we live?