As Above, So Below - the religion thread (formerly: People of California, beware)

Not as its own, but rather as the only "correct" or "true" spirituality, really, but that's pure semantics.

Depends what you mean by religion. If you mean particular religions claim spirituality as their own, well yes, just about anything monotheistic will do that. (Even then though many of those allow for alternative forms of spirituality to be valid, they just don't issue the pass to heaven.) Some with an eye to survivability in a multi-faith society have segued to allow for many paths to one goal.

But if you mean 'religion' in the abstract claims spirituality as it own, does the idea of religion claim anything? Given it's a word we use to describe most mass spiritual movements, religion is pretty much synonymous with spirituality in our parlance. And I'd contend that most mass spiritual movements that eschew the word 'religion' do so for the purpose of brand differentiation more than out of some semantic offence (whether to shrug off a sense of conservatism, extremism, legalism or being answerable to a larger movement). (Examples of eschewers would be particular organisations within the New Age movement, cults, to some extent the Pentecostal church does it in a light way...)

Slightly different topic... The spirituality you speak of is based at the individual level. You can really believe what you choose -- you don't have to adhere to the precepts of a movement. Does your own spirituality at times disconnect from your rational beliefs? (You don't have to give any examples or anything if it's too personal.) Or is it purely connected to feelings that derive from provable objects, arguments, etc (by whatever burden of proof)? E.g. David Attenborough once claimed his spirituality was for things like Bach's music. But there's nothing irrational there -- subject to certain conditions, a piece of music is something that has an effect on people that is detectable and reproducible.

Interesting. Any sense of kinship with nature? That's an idea that some would label spiritual. (Actually I guess kinship with fellow man is not actually very different from feeling some connection to animals. Both are about feeling a greater community of beings that gives us some solace.)

It also depends on your your definition of "supernatural". Of which I personally don't really have one. Either things exist or they don't. When I was younger I thought "God" was a real, present entity that I was talking to and being influenced by. The longer such went on without the slightest observable effect to confirm that "He" was real, the less convinced I became.

The way I see it, if anything considered "supernatural" is real then it's not actually supernatural, its natural, its just nature that we haven't put through the scientific method yet. And if it's not real, then its simply a myth, a fictional story, and not even worthy of the term "supernatural".

There's a youtube video of Dawkins and O'Reilly (terrifying combination that!) where Dawkins sends the "things are either real or they aren't" idea across in hilariously simple language. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FARDDcdFaQ at 2:30.

I have a massive problem with the whole blanket concept of "spiritualism", especially as it's generally used as a catch-all concept for "something beyond".

It just doesn't gell with me.

Yes, I think Bach's music transcends any individual human artistic endeavour .
Yes, I feel humbled and awed at nature's ability to adapt and spring back at anything we (as man) care to throw against it.

But it sure as hell isn't in any way spiritual.

I love the human spirit for being indomitable. For being at best curious and striving for knowledge and reaching for the "beyond" (whatever that may entail in whatever cultural or historical setting we may choose).
But that's IT.
Spirituality isn't something vague and intangible.
It's what makes us, as a species, as successful as we are (and please spare me the " but look what we're doing to our poor Earth" platitudes. We fuck up. We fix it. We fuck up again. We fix it again. It'll take time, effort and dedication...but we can DO it. Hell, we're DOING it!).

I'd love to see someone properly and definitively define 'spiritualism', so I'd be able to take an axe to it (or indeed - I may be old, but hopefully not that rusted shut- be persuaded otherwise).

I fully support any kind of humanism in science or taking an overarching humanist ethical view to any objective scientific find (with all the challenges that this may entail...can you just *imagine* the kind of debate a discovery like dynamite might provoke today?).
But do not challenge me with any theological or "spiritual" concepts somehow suggesting they make the world better for their very being. I need FAR better arguments than that.

That said, I am now on my seventh G&T during my holidays in the tropics (looking out at at least three coupes where the woman is clothed in a burqah, which *infuriates* me) so I grant I may be a bit more bellicose than I generally tend to be. So while I'd be happy to enter into debate with anyone about the considered value of spiritualism and religion, I really don't want to kick anyone in the shins quite so deliberately as it may seem.

It is true having a bucket called spiritual into which unaccounted feelings are cast assumes that we are somehow divisible into body, mind (soul?) and spirit (heart?). The last category does exist if you think all thoughts of any kind - emotional impulses, factual reference, dreams, moral calculations, math, sense of purpose, identity, etc are all clearly assignable to the mind and body categories.

For me personally the division makes sense if I think of the mind as being the conscious mind and the spirit as being the subconscious mind.

Thanks -- I wondered if anyone had read that! You were my audience.

I do agree about there being an element of modernity to this phenomenon, but I think even within a contained community (as many an historical community would be), there may still be an impulse for people to seek other views. It's just that the alternative views on offer may not be that different, so the outcome might look like persistent extremism.

(One thought, just as Doyle's music for Sense and Sensibility is playing -- Jane Austen's leading ladies are very often more moderate and sensible, more willing to throw tradition to the wind, than their elders; or their younger sisters for that matter. While not exactly rebellious teenagers compared to the James Dean model, these perhaps suggest that the behaviour was certainly there in one form or another.)

Thankyou. That's what I was looking for.

Ah, yes, I forgot about those ones. I recall you posting them before.

Peter

I read through the last handful of pages last night, and found it all very interesting - especially the very long posts! I'm familiar with the debates between apologists and atheists on youtube, and am fascinated by the rhetoric of Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Krauss and others. Sadly there are almost no apologists that can make a clear case (although Dinesh D'Souza made a good case in a debate with Christopher Hitchens) and carrying the burden of proof seems too big a task for them in order to justify their assertions of the absolute truths they claim to know.

The best reasoning that is pro-religion I can find within my own mind, is that the human condition doesn't allow us to fully understand anything at all. I can explain the various mechanisms and structures that characterizes the piano, but at a certain level of depth, there are things I can't explain at all. The origins of the atoms that make up the woodwork is a mystery: why do certain atoms exist and others not? Why do the sound waves vibrate the precise way they do? Why is the natural tone row as it is, in that particular order? These things can be explained to the extent that the origins of the phenomena makes enough sense for many of us to feel sufficiently satisfied, but at a certain point of depth all reason completely ceases to exist, and that point is usually reached with particle physics.

As impressive as science has become over the past century, it doesn't really tell us anything worth knowing about the very mystery of existance itself. Religion seems to conclude that we must allow ourselves to be not only guided by our experience, but literally persuaded by it. We all wish to live positive and heathy lives, and making sense of the good experiences in life and dismissing the bad ones will help us to do that. Religion offers, through its various doctrines, a precise methology of accomplishing this, that seems to encourage the complete annihilation of existential doubt. Whether any one religion is true or not, it has certainly been proven to help people live their lives, cherish the out-of-body experiences that make us feel totally convinced of the inevitability of that precise moment in our lives, and dismiss other meaningless things, most commonly as the results of an alleged devil advocating its purpose upon humanity.

Obviously, there are ridiculous contradictions in religion that must be addressed, especially by those who call themselves believers, as some of you have pointed out (Steven, Martijn, Peter and others). Let us look at a wise thing the Dalai Lama said: "if Buddhism is wrong, Buddhism will have to change". Unfortunately, Christianity, Islam, and other faiths don't share this attitude. Their doctrines are the indisputable words of God himself, unchangeable, unchallengable - and inevitably war-inducing! Still, many Christians pick and choose when it comes to biblical teachings. Genesis is perhaps seen as a metaphore, and thankfully many can at least accept that much. For example, the hydrogen atom that is released from a supernova and required for the existance of water, efficiently disproves the biblical notion of water being created prior to light. But that rises the question of exactly what else in the "post-modern bible" we can call a metaphore? Everything? The fact that one can pick and choose provides at least an implication of evidence of that the existance of human morality without God is true, and that religion infact does need to change! For this argument, I celebrate the efforts of organised atheism. At the same time, the virtues of religion can only exist if one believes in the autonomous truth of God. If religious people are willing to diminish their dogmatism, the belief itself is likely to evaporate into thin air.

Now here is a thought that absolutely baffles me: what if the human ear, through evolution, had been developed to distinguish between pitched intervals even smaller than chromatic half-steps, say we could distinguish between intervals a hundred times smaller than that? How would that affect our musical heritage? This just tells me that the music I experience to be universally cherishable - as if it were of inevitable origins, like a Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, or Mahler symphony that appears to have turned every stone and been fully developed to such a maturity that improvement is an impossibility - is actually strongly limited by human perception and ability. It tells me that my experience of music as possessing an overwhelming higher power implying a sense of universal "truth", is actually an illusion - as a matter of fact! It is a most humbling thought, and one that celebrates the qualities of human imagination. Creativity is the key to human existance!

I happen to be an adept of the theory of emergence. The theory of emergence attempts to bring the classic positions of dualism (Descartes) and materialisms / reductionalism to a synthesis. It sais that there is no existence beyond matter. In so far it is close to materialism. It also sais, that the possibility of highly complex structures is inherent in the matrix of all Being and that evolution may bring such structures to existence if it serves as an advantage in given circumstances. (It's not the goal (telos) of evolution, though, it's an aspect of evolution.)
If this happens, as was the case with the human brain that is the most complex structure known to us, sentinence, self-awareness may appear. We are aware of ourselves and our environment and we can abstract from both. And our focused mind (will) has power over our body. Mere thought may provoce manifest reactions in our physical body. Hormones are the medium of such reactions, they are not their reasons. So with growing complexity an aspect of matter arrises that we may call spirit. This "x" is an aspect of all matter. Only sufficiant complexity will allow this "x" to culminate to a point that gives it a certain power over it's physical sorce, it will ignite sentinece, yet it will not have independent existence beyond it. If the physical body desolves, so does it's mental aspect.
Theoretically this might also happen to a complex structure of synthetic origin. Remember Wintermute or Skynet? Or HAL 9000?
We do not exist in opposition to the universe, we are not a foreign body, not the Crown of Creation. Stardust we are. Matter is congealed spacetime. We are congealed spacetime that has become sentinent. If we look up to the stars, the universe turns towards itselve. With the human mind as a medium a small part of the universe becomes aware of itself and of all Being. Other such "spots of awarenes" are likely to be out there, seing the light of our sun.
When I die I will be gone entirely. But the atoms that make up my body, will be part of other bodies and they may oneday contribute to the basis of another cycle of physical and biological evoltuion and to the evolution of mind.

markrayen:
Why do certain atoms exist and others not? Why do the sound waves vibrate the precise way they do? Why is the natural tone row as it is, in that particular order?

Because we live in this universe and not in another. Would we live in different universe we would be different beings still asking the same question.

markrayen:
The best reasoning that is pro-religion I can find within my own mind, is that the human condition doesn't allow us to fully understand anything at all.

I agree. Think of all Being as a matrix, a closed system. We are a part of that system. We may be able to describe all Being in a mathematical way, thus giving an answer to "How?". But in order to find the answer to "Why" we would ultimately have to be able to exit the system and have a look from outside. This is basically the idea of God.

I have to clarify: I agree with markryan that we cannot answer the ultimate "Why" for the reasons given above. I do not agree that that is in any way a proof of the existence of God. You noticed the subjunctive mood in my text? The notion that the view from outside would be necessary does not mean that this point of view does exist or that this is even a sensible way of describing the world we perceive. Still "matrix of existence" is a common term even in natuarlistic contexts.

Want to chime in here (I haven't read through all of the thread so I'm not all knowing here) ;

I'm not a believer (though I was baptized as a Christian and as a result am part of their statistical database). I don't believe in a God, and certainly not one that would pre-occupy himself with the human race, as if we are the chosen ones in the grand scheme of things. We haven't been around for that long and by the way we like to kill, pillage and wage war in our small time being 'here', I'd find any God pre-occupied with us a sadist. But then God is everything so he'd have to be a sadist as well. Let's keep cutting off arms and legs in Mali, lets keep dieing from Aids, Cancer, such a cruel creator! Yet, if we believe, all of that is ok really (well except the aids part I guess), cause we will make it to the next level of the game of life, and it's an eternal one with clouds and rainbows; about 'heaven', do you think they'd allow anal and bondage or would you have to send in a request form? Perhaps take a trip down to hell for that I guess. But we will live on; that to me is the bigger lie religion sports. Who cares if there's a god? All I'm saying is, if he exists, he's far too late to the party. If God is listening, we need you down here! Take away all pain and grant our decaying body cells eternal life as you would our souls (who will live on eternal). Bah... a soul. What is a soul without a penis or a vagina? Useless! We need to create like you God, I don't want to come back as a neutured soul! I don't want to be casper roaming the universe as cloud of energy.

I have a soul (and black soul), a conscience, it is entirely my own, although it is shaped by external factors like upbringing, environment, MTV and videogames... but I don't consider "God" to be a part of my conscience nor a force guiding it or communicating with it. Do any of you speak to God and has he spoken back? Is he male? female? Never mind, we wouldn't be able to understand him anyway as we can't grasp him nor the concepts he's suppose to be the answer to. That makes me lean towards female though.

Is God really inspiration? Then why do I suffer from believers block?

P.S. Mabey he's speaking through me as I type this (or could be that god complex I'm suffering from).

And about being religious, it's a coat you put on, a mindset, just like being a punk rocker or a cowboy in the wild west.

Continue please and disregard satan.