it's not a false dichotomy. in other words, christianity, islam and judaism do not get to take credit for the enlightenment.
The trouble is, terms like "sacred", "transcendent", "connectedness", "inspiration", "reverence", "awe", "meaning", "purpose", "something larger" and "the right relationship with all that is", in this context, are just subjective emotional states. These religious feelings are states of neurochemistry that have nothing to do with the belief systems that use them as proof of their dogma. Many religious people of a transcendental leaning spend their whole lives chasing subtle forms of these neural phenomena, when the whole time they could have them writ larger than they've ever experienced with a dose of a psychoactive compound such as psilocybin or LSD. However, most religious folk would think of that as somehow cheating, or not an "authentic" religious experience. Spirituality is like art. Those who covet and profit from it can only keep up the illusion by ring-fencing certain phenomena as valuable or worthy. "Every organised religion in the world is nothing more, nothing less, than a large, and unpleasant, real estate business." - Frank Zappa In this way, we might compare Marcel Duchamp to what we know about the teachings of Jesus or Siddhartha: they all challenged their culture by saying that the realtors and commodity traders don't get to tell you how to define subjective experiences. Sadly, in all three cases, the money men won. Every temple is a loss for "spirituality". "7. [...] a stance of harmlessness toward all living beings and an understanding of their mutual interdependence." That would seem to describe veganism and ecology. I have no idea what that has to do with "spirituality". I know far more "unspiritual" people who are vegans or into ecology and sustainability than "spiritual" ones. This last point is also a poorly hidden moral judgement: what about religious people who believe in righteous violence towards certain people? It's common to most major religions, so that would, by definition, make any Christians, Jews, Muslims or Hindus barred from being allowed to call themselves "spiritual". Congratulations, you and your friend have taken your first step into an enlightened, post-modern approach to religion Whether the object underpinning your cosmology of the moment is Jesus, Cthulhu, Emperor Palpatine or Spongebob Squarepants does not matter. The dogma merely acts as a vehicle for experiences, techniques and lifestyle. Choosing a god based on your needs at the time seems like a far smarter way of going about the whole religion thing than always being stuck with the same one, to me. Maybe it's like gambling in Vegas. Ostensibly, it's random chance with a dash of skill. In reality, the odds are stacked and the house always wins.
http://www.skeptical-science.com/science/claim-law-thermodynamics-disproves-evolution-nope/ EDIT: This one's better: http://www.askamathematician.com/20...odynamics-dont-living-things-reverse-entropy/
I'm arguing that to toss out spirituality you don't need to do away with art, philosophy or introspection. Even claiming that spirituality is illusory doesn't require you to do that.
Art is just as nebulous and subjective as spirituality. They can both provide interesting experiences. They both also defy definition, and include vast swathes of phenomena. Does a novel fulfil the same function as a piece of music? Does a musical score fulfil the same function as an mp3 file? Does being possessed by Baron Samedi fulfil the same function as attending a bible studies group? I would say that to toss out religion you don't need to do away with spirituality. I do think that "spirituality" is a poor word though, and we could do with a better one that doesn't involve the word "spirit".
There's no reason to invoke such an entity. We've seen the evolution of a shark like body plan arise from at least two separate land animal lineages and the evolution of flight from some four different groups and the evolution of eusociality from around a dozen or so. These are all hyper complex traits, but the canal towards reaching them is so clear that you can get to the same point without much trouble. The same is not true for hyper large vertebrates, like the sauropods. Only came about once. Same for human level intelligence. Genes are beneficial due to the environment that they operate within - not random, but contextual. This may still not be enough for survival as a piano can fall on even the best coifed head. Read some quantum mechanics. Read some quantum mechanics and some biology. You can always postulate some invisible dragon controlling every possible quantum interaction but it's up to you to prove it. If you can't demonstrate the usefulness of your dragon in making predictions, then it's the same thing as there being no dragon. If your prediction is that there is a hidden order to the chaos, but you can't describe it or form useful predictions about how the universe works, then that tells me more about how you want the universe to work than how it actually does. Can you imagine the hubris of a beetle saying this exact same thing to you? If there is a deity, he is far more concerned with them. It's not a spanner at all - it turns out that there's this massive source of energy in the sky, constantly beaming it down to us. (Edit: Holy wow, do not read the site you linked, it is propaganda. If you want some information about how evolution in fact CAN generate new 'information' I am happy to provide some papers. Be warned though, they are dense - it's about the formation of novel molecular machines in S. cerevisiae). Because drift happens.
I've always enjoyed this video, be warned there is some spiky language in it: [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6w2M50_Xdk"]Science Saved My Soul. - YouTube[/ame]
I'm with David on that. Spirituality as a concept is meaningless and seem to have been largely co-opted by the sort of people that say "I don't follow organised religion but I'm very spiritual". Spiritual these days means someone reads their horoscope and has a dream catcher over their bed. I have no spirit at all. But damn I likes me some art, music, beautiful skies and cuddles with my kids. Not sure having a "spirit" would add anything to that.
This is pretty much what I'm trying to advance. It's the woo woo horoscope readers that say "Aha, but we're doing the same thing!" that annoy the heck out of me.
I certainly don't consider myself as spiritual, as has already been said it's far too vague a term to be of any use.
"I'm with David on that. Spirituality as a concept is meaningless and seem to have been largely co-opted by the sort of people that say "I don't follow organized religion but I'm very spiritual". Spiritual these days means someone reads their horoscope and has a dream catcher over their bed. I have no spirit at all. But damn I likes me some art, music, beautiful skies and cuddles with my kids. Not sure having a "spirit" would add anything to that." "This is pretty much what I'm trying to advance. It's the woo woo horoscope readers that say "Aha, but we're doing the same thing!" that annoy the heck out of me." Here, we are very much in agreement. That trend is a source of great ire for me.
Mindgasm. That's definitely a better word than "spiritual". I like mindgasms. I study techniques and engineer my thought processes in order to experience more of them. I think the above sounds much better than "I'm a very spiritual person". It's also a lot more honest. That video was great, thanks for posting it. That is my kind of religion. It's just more grown up. I like to consider the evolution of humans in relation to the growth of a single human, like a Madelbrot set. Theistic religion is still stuck in the phase that toddlers go through when imagination attempts to explain the world, and authority is its own justification. Santa, the tooth fairy, thunder is God moving furniture around in heaven, no reason for behaviour is needed beyond "because I said so", etc.. Once a child's knowledge grows, along with their faculties of reason, those old imaginings and faith in authority are no longer needed. They are just random noise; the mind trying to make sense of its own experience in the absence of evidence.
Well as I said, we are both men of faith already and I still consider myself a Christian and Buddhist. It helps that, as said before, George Lucas took inspiration from many faiths when creating the idea of the Force so it's already syncretic.
How do you reconcile Christianity and Buddhism? I can see it could work if you think of Jesus as a misinterpreted Buddha, but I don't get how Jesus could be the son of God in a Buddhist framework. Also, I always thought Lucas took his original inspiration from Taoism and Chinese Qi stuff. I don't see anything Abrahamic about the force.
