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Thanks! I love all things nature and science. Well almost all. You can have the snakes and creepy things. lol
My 10 year old granddaughter was very proud of herself today. In her science camp, she dissected a horseshoe crab and got to eat mealworms and crickets.
I make the odds of encountering a true spiritual person to be zero chances. The odds of encountering people claiming to be spiritual persons are disappointingly favorable.
Emotions are ephemeral, fleeting congresses of chemicals which have gathered in reaction to some stimulation. When the stimulation evaporates, the chemicals retreat and only a memory of how you felt remains.
That does not strike me as a solid basis around which to construct any theories of cosmic forces.
And that's what makes many atheists different from agnostics, deists, or pantheists in many cases. We sound less romantic.
We get the point across rapidly...but oftentimes, it ain't pretty
I think spirituality exists in a form that has nothing necessarily to do with religion though. It's an idea we create in our minds, and it probably varies with the person. It's vague for a reason...because we all have differing views of what it is.
I think spirituality exists in a form that has nothing necessarily to do with religion though. It's an idea we create in our minds, and it probably varies with the person. It's vague for a reason...because we all have differing views of what it is.
At some point the question intrudes......
What is the difference between an invisible, self proclaimed, vaguely defined and impossible to verify spirituality, and no spirituality at all?
I make the odds of encountering a true spiritual person to be zero chances. The odds of encountering people claiming to be spiritual persons are disappointingly favorable.
Emotions are ephemeral, fleeting congresses of chemicals which have gathered in reaction to some stimulation. When the stimulation evaporates, the chemicals retreat and only a memory of how you felt remains.
That does not strike me as a solid basis around which to construct any theories of cosmic forces.
Oh Grandstander you are such a romantic LOL
I think the meaning of 'spirituality' is very hard to pin down. I take it you have never had what you may deem a 'spiritual experience' then? That's fair enough - I do understand that. I'm fairly sure my husband doesn't get that either - he's also extremely level headed. But that's not to say others haven't. As you know I'm an atheist but I have definitely had a number of experiences even the theists would think of as spiritual. Even if you are using 'spiritual' in the very loose sense that Clintone describes, I'd think (I don't know) that most people have them at some point in their lives? no?
Mine would include watching a total solar eclipse, sunset over the Grand Canyon, practically everytime I sit near the sea, watching my kids sleeping, - that sort of thing. It's sort of an overwhelming feeling that knocks your socks off - very difficult to describe. Maybe its just an appreciation of nature, I don't know I can't put my finger on it.
None of it has anything to do with a belief in god - it's something else entirely.
What is the difference between an invisible, self proclaimed, vaguely defined and impossible to verify spirituality, and no spirituality at all?
According to the people with a view of what spiritual means to them? There may well be a big difference.
To my dad, for instance, I'd strongly suspect being spiritual might, for him, relate to the time he built a house he designed, that looks like an alien spaceship. It was his dream house. Nobody in the neighborhood wanted it there, and it lowers the property value of the surrounding area...but it's his baby.
He might view a lack of spirituality of himself as...say...selling the house because the neighbors don't like it, or because kids keep breaking into it. Selling the house for such minor reasons might necessitate no longer viewing the house as...well...more than just a house.
To may aunt, who threw a chair at her boss when she worked at a retirement home because he considered poor treatment of the residents as acceptable, a loss of spirituality for her might have been to willingly work under a bureaucrat who hurts people, and make no attempt to change that.
I have never heard either of these people use the word spiritual...but if they did use the word in nonreligious contexts...I would guess that's how they'd think of it. I could be wrong.
I know a Citi-Data member titled Rifleman has thrown around the world spiritual in the past. He is an atheist.
There's also a Cherokee religious leader titled ptsum who differentiates between religion and spirituality.
I do have a fantasy about tying them both down and tickling their feet until they provide a definition, in writing, of spirituality.
I don't really use the term spiritual often. I merely try to guess what others mean by it.
A spiritual experience probably like Cruithne's post, above.
Mine would include watching a total solar eclipse, sunset over the Grand Canyon, practically everytime I sit near the sea, watching my kids sleeping, - that sort of thing. It's sort of an overwhelming feeling that knocks your socks off - very difficult to describe. Maybe its just an appreciation of nature, I don't know I can't put my finger on it.
None of it has anything to do with a belief in god - it's something else entirely.
What you describe above are an emotional reactions to assorted stimulation. There is no need to attempt to impose a bogus framework of "spirituality" upon it. It is not as though emotions are some phenomena which are beyond comprehension and require some mystical element to be understood. If you put a bow on a brick it remains a brick.
Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of their being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live. ...
And this is distinguished from brain + idea + conclusion in what manner?
It's sort of an overwhelming feeling that knocks your socks off - very difficult to describe. Maybe its just an appreciation of nature, I don't know I can't put my finger on it.
None of it has anything to do with a belief in god - it's something else entirely.
Unless it's pretty extreme, it's hard for any one person to know if their emotional climate is "normal" or "typical" or not, because it's all they have direct experience of and there's a lot of room for interpretation in other people's descriptions of their emotions.
I like to think that I'm a feeling person and I've been described as sensitive; nor am I without aesthetic sense. Yet, I basically have no idea what people are talking about when they describe a response to certain things (the Grand Canyon, whatever) as "spiritual". I certainly find the Grand Canyon pleasing and it gets more of a rise out of me than a lot of other things (enough that I have had a brief fantasy of spending a few days in a Grand Canyon rim cabin, but not enough that I'll likely ever act on it), but I have a niggling suspicion that "awesome" means something far more to, e.g. you than it does to me. In other words whatever it is you're getting, I just feel a hint of. My son is even more blunted (borderline Asperger's Syndrome). From what he's told me over the years he would regard the Grand Canyon as a big hole in the ground and he would go along with your statements with a shrug if he were present during your "spiritual experience". Yeah, wow, cool, isn't it? What's for lunch?
What I think this speaks to is that spiritual experiences, while real and pleasurable for those having them, are a product of brain chemistry, emotional makeup, personality and social conditioning. If you are wired such that certain experiences put you "over the top" in some way and cause you to feel some unique sense of transcendence, you could easily, through the magic of agency inference, ascribe that to a spiritual world / beings / god. But you don't, from what you've written here, nor should you.
Regardless of how I explain the mechanism, I wish that I got more of a high out of beaches, sunsets, canyons, fuzzy kittens, poetry, etc. I get just enough to extrapolate what it must do to take people out of themselves and soothe their jangled nerves. Alas, I have to get along on what I can actually get my mind around. Other people laugh longer and more uproariously at jokes, melt more thoroughly and completely in the face of beauty, and just generally do a far better job of rationalizing the absurdities of existence.
What you describe above are an emotional reactions to assorted stimulation. There is no need to attempt to impose a bogus framework of "spirituality" upon it. It is not as though emotions are some phenomena which are beyond comprehension and require some mystical element to be understood. If you put a bow on a brick it remains a brick.
Emotions are real. Spirituality is marketing.
No...if you put a bow on a brick it does not remain a brick. It becomes something else entirely...based on differing aesthetics.
Your defining a view of the Grand Canyon as "emotional reactions to assorted situation" is less accurate not more. This is common sense. Think about it. This is something very clear to children, oftentimes.
Unless you have some sort of unusual thought process...you probably know this already.
No...if you put a bow on a brick it does not remain a brick. It becomes something else entirely...based on differing aesthetics.
Your defining a view of the Grand Canyon as "emotional reactions to assorted situation" is less accurate not more. This is common sense. Think about it. This is something very clear to children, oftentimes.
Unless you have some sort of unusual thought process...you probably know this already.
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A) You are obviously wrong about a bow rendering a brick not a brick. Nothing has changed about the brick apart from added decoration. Do you cease being a human when you put on a hat? Are you somehow or other transformed into a new species..."Hatpersons?" Does putting frosting on a turd make it a desirable snack, or is it still a turd?
B) Asserting that something is "common sense" is one of those arguments which comes sans any evidence or even actual argument.
Achieving a sense of awe as a consequence of viewing the Grand Canyon is nothing more than an emotional reaction to a stimulation. If it had any sort of existence apart from the ephemeral emotion, it could be duplicated/activated each time one viewed the Grand Canyon. In fact that does not happen, does it? If I took you to the Grand Canyon for the first time, you may indeed experience a strong emotional reaction. But if I put you up at a nearby motel for a month and each day took you to view the canyon in the morning, at noon and and again in the evening, after a few days there would be no particular reaction at all, would there? The awe would be extinguished by repetition and familiarity. After a time we forget to "tingle." Where did the "spirituality" go?
Further, the phenomena you reference, that awe which feels like part of something larger, can easily be reproduced by the deliberate ingestion of certain chemicals. Drunks will often reach a collective spirit of sorts which has all of the same illusions about something going on above and beyond how you are feeling. Is that spirituality?
You will need to come at me with something more substantive than "that's common sense" if you wish to establish the validity of your assertions.
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LOL