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I meant to say molten, not "molton." And yes, it is a mystery that the planet Earth even exists. However, I don't believe that the human mind is capable of understanding how we got here any more than a dog is capable of understanding calculus. So I'm content to, as the songwriter Iris Dement says, let the mystery be.
I have never been religious; I have always been spiritual. I have always believed, but after seeing pastors building megachurches and living in houses members of their congregation could never afford, I have steered away from organized religion.
That's exactly what came into my mind at about age 11 when I first became interested in the history of other times and cultures. It's simple logic: It's impossible for every different theology to be (or have been) the "true" one, therefore at least one of them must be "wrong." And if even one can be "wrong", then that opens the possibility that they all can be wrong -- a probability, actually, given the lack of any factual evidence for any of them. It just makes far more sense to me that gods and religion as a whole have always been a convenient invention, refined and perpetuated by generational indoctrination and supported by cultural and political institutions (and often for their own ends.)
In the fifty-plus years since then, I've seen nothing that would convince me to change that evaluation. If anything, I've become even more cynical (for example, the various scandals within the Catholic Church.)
I hear people say this, but I have no idea what they mean by "spiritual" without it being part of a religion. Can you explain what you mean by this, speaking strictly for yourself of course? I'm not seeking to debate it, just to understand your meaning.
....-- I don't mean to offend anyone here or sound legalistic, but, I think people seriously need to ask themselves what they mean when they think of themselves as "religious." Do we, for example, truly imagine that Almighty God is only seeking "religious people?" .... and if so, what do we think that means?
While not even remotely in the same camp of belief as jghorton, the above above that I have excised from his longer posting certainly resonates with me. I was raised a Roman Catholic and even after I ceased to be committed to it, I still felt that "religious" by and large meant participation in church ceremony and attention to rules and regulations. This was probably intensified by the fact that my mother's family had been staunch Irish Presbyterians, church-goers, Bible-readers (at least my grdfather and his kin.)
That idea of "religious" is uncomfortable for me now. Probably meaningless on a personal basis.
I finally reached a point where I realized that I was not a lapsed Catholic, nor a nominal Christian, but a non-believer....though I was not even sure a non-believer of/in what. But in my mid-forties under the pressure of some life circumstances and at the invitation of a formerly Catholic gay man and a divorced Catholic woman I did retry/reassess Catholicism with regular church attendance, participation in the sacraments, etc. for perhaps a year. As I have said in other postings I ended up feeling that we were all gathered in a camp on the edge of somewhere, but never departing (hard to explain.) One bright, sunny day I had a St. Paul revelation in reverse - I was waiting for church to begin, then felt totally emptied out and overwhelmed, and I walked away. I was on vacation and I just walked down the beach for quite awhile and finally sat down. After a bit I looked around and realized from a landmark behind me that this was the spot where I had poured someone's ashes into the sea for his family (whom I didn't know and who lived on the other side of the world.)
And it seemed unexpectedly appropriate that I was there, with no belief and that I would have to work backward from death.
So my answer to the OP would be "Yes", if it were not for the fact that for me "religious" is a personally empty term, and though some people talk about being "spiritual" I have no handle on that at all. I probably associate that term too much with R.C. mystics and their writings. My approaching death probably tones things now, no doubt; but it actually began when I was doing volunteer work where I was paired with clients who had a terminal diagnosis, and I was expected to respond to their whatever, but that whatever could be anything from simply visiting to being the confessor for every thought and feeling they did not want to share with their families, or wanted to protect their families from.
I hear people say this, but I have no idea what they mean by "spiritual" without it being part of a religion. Can you explain what you mean by this, speaking strictly for yourself of course? I'm not seeking to debate it, just to understand your meaning.
I live in one of the more "unchurched" areas of the country and there are a lot of people here who don't attend a church but instead go out in nature to feel connected to life around them. I'd describe them as spiritual rather than religious - and there is a term for it, a "blue-domer"
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I'm not religious. Was raised Catholic. But by the time I was in my early 20s and met my husband and then we lost my brother, I had left Catholicism. Drifted into another Christian denomination but it wasn't to last long. Got involved in womens spirituality and Sacred Feminine. I am spiritual but not religious. Like mentioned by PNW-type-gal it involves Nature, the seasons... and finding Her in myself and other women.
I knew someone who believed there were "spirits" in everything, each tree, rock, lake, etc. We had a conversation about this but I left at a total loss. I could sort of understand that a rock could be said to have a spirit. Then I wondered if the spirit was still there is the rock broke in half. Were there then two spirits? Does each grain of sand have a spirit? And the parts of that grain also? And big things like the billions and billions of galaxies with billions of stars also have spirits, I suppose. When you are out in nature which ones of those "spirits" does one feel "connected" to? Beats me.
I love being in nature. I love interacting with the world and all of it's special places. Somehow I never felt I was dealing with spirits. The physical world is spectacular enough. I am a photographer and love taking pictures of flowers and also the big scenic areas of our national parks. I never imagined some non-physical being within any of those things or places.
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