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No God, no angels, no spirit guides, no ghosts, no woo-woo.
Do I get an incredible rush standing in awe before the beauty, the sheer size and force of nature? Heck yeah! It's the incredible endorphin rush of realizing your tiny place in the universe. It has absolutely nothing to do with spirits or spirituality, etc.
In fact, I have a hard time thinking that someone who believes in the existence of angels, or spirit guides, or whatever you might want to call them is an atheist. For me, the same logic that persuades me that there is no such thing as a god persuades me that there are no other spiritual or supernatural entities.
No, I don't believe he actually has an angel. I think he may have some kind of empathy, where he perhaps recognizes my tension and suggests relaxation techniques that he views as spirituality.
I've had three respected surgeons (including a team at the Mayo Clinic) assure me they can fix this painful and life-threatening problem. Despite their best efforts, it persists.
At this point, I'm not sure there's much difference between listening to these same doctors telling me HBO "might help, or at least it won't hurt" (what a ringing endorsement!) vs. the guy who says an angel tells him stuff.
No God, no angels, no spirit guides, no ghosts, no woo-woo.
Do I get an incredible rush standing in awe before the beauty, the sheer size and force of nature? Heck yeah! It's the incredible endorphin rush of realizing your tiny place in the universe. It has absolutely nothing to do with spirits or spirituality, etc.
everybody believes in a little woo woo. the problem is when it becomes a life focus
Interesting answers. Let's add some logical thinking...
Since one cannot prove a negative (i.e., that god does not exist), anyone who claims to know that is just making it up, and pretending their belief is reality. Just as bad as deists, who pretend to know that god *does* exist.
If believing you have an angel makes you insane, then believing you know god does not exist must make you equally crazy. But I'll just assume it's a lack of critical thinking on both sides.
Incidentally, we were told we each had a guardian angel way back in the '60s, so the 1990s date is inaccurate. Though that might be when they started being referred to as "personal" angels, I duuno.
Being in nature and helping others releases endorphins, which give a shot of good feeling. If that's what is meant by spirituality, then I can be spiritual by eating ice cream and shopping, too. Seems pretty superficial, but rather appealing.
Yeah, my parents grew up in the '50s and '60s, and they passed along their beliefs in guardian angels to me. I was a young kid in the late '80s and early '90s, but I never got the sense that these beliefs were newly acquired on their part. In fact, had they been newly acquired, they most certainly would've told me.
I never truly believed in the deity thing - just put on the act when growing up, and skipped the whole topic once an independent adult.
The one thing that I got growing up Catholic was Sister Roberta Marie ( a nice nun - Catechism Grade 1 & 2) talking to us about purgatory - which (along with Limbo) the Catholic Church cancelled (after almost 2000 years - and suddenly said you can eat pepperoni pizza pie on Friday, also after like almost 2000 years of saying that was a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday).
After 70+ years, the last man standing in my case (everybody is either 6' under or took off on their own course), under those circumstances, you reflect. I've come to realize Sister was describing purgatory, but she was describing life. You really have to think objectively. Everybody I've known had a purgatory life, some more so, some less so (but that's the way Sister described purgatory). Despite all the hope that your future will be just as you meticulously plan, you DO get screwed somewhere, sometime - no matter what you do. Crappy teachers crappy counselor in that magnet honors HS you got selected to go to, and, you took 3 public buses to get to in below zero temps and 40 years later, you realize it was just fancified junior high; then, you have to wear a wedding band to a job interviews despite your credentials because if not, you're some creepy crawler; and you find out credentials are nothing because there are power hungry people out to not just do a job, but (knowingly or not knowingly) they skrew you over., smiling in your face. Then there's those other things that can and do happen - homo but small wiener, or things like fat no matter what you do, bad hair on a man, so he has to shave his head and walk around looking like a kid after 6 months of radiation therapy at St Jude's, the homely girl that marries a drunk or similar creep or a gal chaser and brings home VD...it goes on & on. Much of it oh, much less painful - but, you know...the best of intentions...the worst of outcomes (my aunt & uncle a classic case). I've seen it in just about everybody I've known, a million times. The problem is that while in the midst of all this, people naturally assume it'll all work out one way or another. It's sorta like if you got bit by a black widow spider (who just happened to make her web in the confessional) while there trying to get a better outcome.
The only thing that made a difference to me is that I've had no inclination to blame God for all those things that may have happened to me It's mostly people. And people, unlike any other animal, have a will. And they can think ahead - in a complex way, no other animal can. That's obvious, and something you can actually see if you want to.
This "Fridays" out after the "Saturdays" and probably ultimately the "Sundays," too proves my point. They all believe in a God. So, what difference does it make?
No God, no angels, no spirit guides, no ghosts, no woo-woo.
Do I get an incredible rush standing in awe before the beauty, the sheer size and force of nature? Heck yeah! It's the incredible endorphin rush of realizing your tiny place in the universe. It has absolutely nothing to do with spirits or spirituality, etc.
He tells me that I need to get in touch with my spirituality to heal a persistent wound from a recent surgery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by steiconi
He tells me that I need to get in touch with my spirituality to heal a persistent wound from a recent surgery.
I reach deep inside for spiritual feelings, but, like a Puerto Rican girl trying to feel the snow, there's nothing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by steiconi
So any atheists who feel some kind of spirituality that might give me a direction to look?
As an atheist, I think of ‘spirituality’ as (or a feeling relative to) an inquisitive mind re: the world in which we live and our relationship to each other i.e. the love of wisdom, as in philosophy. You either feel it or you don’t; there’s no point in trying to force it.
Wound healing/physiology, on the other hand, is science (and doesn’t require ‘getting in touch’ with anything except maybe a doctor, heh).
As an atheist, I feel no need to slap the label spirtuality on any of the emotions that I experience.
It’s common for atheists to equate spirituality with consciousness/thought/awareness (of the mind and the world) whereas others/religious folks tend to think of it in terms of spirits or a soul rather than relative to the brain and neuroscience.
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