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Originally Posted by patrick9965
The very belief in Soul or spirit points to unseen and hence a possibility that there is a diety called God?
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Again it is down to the definition and you are clinging to the definition that incorporates a "soul". For atheists the "soul" is nothing more than our capacity for consciousness and self awareness which appears to differentiate us from most of the animal kingdom.
We do not believe this "soul" is distinct from the body or brain or that any deity put it there. But supernatural unsubstantiated nonsense aside, we are otherwise talking about the same thing. Our humanity and what it means to be human.
It is a choice between a pedantic clinging to the etymology behind the origins of the word "spiritual" or an open consideration of the fact that the word is used by different groups, today, to mean different things, today.
I recommend the latter. The former serves to do nothing except maybe some ego masturbation by attempting to use linguistic trickery to suggest that atheists implicitly believe in a god when in fact they do not. Alas there are all too many on this forum who want to do just that.... misconstrue some aspect of how atheists talk, think, or live as being an implicit but denied belief in god.
Quote:
Originally Posted by patrick9965
The word spiritualism has a certain affiliation with God and religion and that's why the discussion in the first place. Why not call awe an experience or a good/great expereince or use some other word instead of calling it a spiritual experience.
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Because once again that is not how language works. We do not simply make up a new word and expect the rest of the world to use it or understand it. With notable exceptions, the progress and change in language is slow and tedious. And the fact remains that while it would be nice to have better words for this subject, "Spiritual" is the one that is in common and vernacular usage. I too would like to see better words used that are divested of the unsubstantiated religious nonsense you refer to here. Alas I am not the dictator of how the worlds population speaks or relates to their language.
Words are constantly changing things. They are not fixed points mired in their etymological history.