Spirituality and Atheism. What does it mean to you? (married, Creator, different)
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Okay, I'm going to try my best to address your questions, but I suspect I may fail miserably. I get what you're saying about spirituality being "anything that lifts you up." Where I disagree is that I don't believe our brain, as an organ, in and of itself, is wired to respond to "uplifting" things. I see being "uplifted" as being a response of the spirit, the immaterial life force that connects us to a Creator. We listen in awe to a Beethoven symphony or catch a spectacular sunset at the exact moment when it is at its peak or feel a little baby grasp our finger with his fist or just feel an inexplicable feeling of love for someone else. To me, these things are proof of God's existence because they elicit feelings I don't see the brain itself as generating. The ability to recognize beauty is, to me, something that goes deeper than is explained by speaking of electrical impulses to the brain, the release of chemicals into the bloodstream, etc. There is also, for many people, a feeling of a link with the divine; this was the case before religion was really even a part of human culture. So yes, I think an atheist can experience spirituality; I just think the atheist fails to recognize the uplifting feeling as coming from a spirit created by God. I hope this explanation of mine doesn't offend anybody. It's just how I see it.
For me, having an inkling of science and the workings of the brain and biology, the spiritual experiences you speak of are perfectly explained by biological processes. Let's talk about something intense that we have all experienced - love. Romantic love is a surge of oxytocin (among other things) and a resultant formation of neural pathways. In short, our neurons fire up like crazy! We undergo physiological changes and we do crazy things.
Or what about parental love? Chemicals are released in the brain and again, neural pathways are formed. And this happens when we get a new puppy or raise a pair of baby birds.
All this can be seen on CAT scans and can be induced by electrical impulses applied to areas of our brain.
So that's how I see it.
I would ask the question; if it is not a biological processes, then how do we experience these feelings?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Iwasmadenew
Science accepts the Big Bang theory without it being empirical truth.
...
Science created the big bang theory based on empirical evidence and data. The theory describes the observations.
Just wanted to clear that up. Also, science doesn't talk about 'truth'.
Science accepts the Big Bang theory without it being empirical truth. Do you include the Big Bang when you evaluate what parts of reality match known science?
science puts everything on the table. It then uses a mechanism and repeatable predictions to evaluate the claims. People of faith have to avoid observations and competing claims. weather its faith in god or a faith in war on religion. Both are similar types of people.
neither can openly talk about all beliefs and how they relate to each other and over lap. Science deals with uncertainty and doubt, that's what it does. That's why people of faith (deity faith and we are here to stop religion only faith) have to avoid it.
They are both relying on uncertainty, keeping people in muddy water if you will, to prove their point.
Okay, I'm going to try my best to address your questions, but I suspect I may fail miserably. I get what you're saying about spirituality being "anything that lifts you up." Where I disagree is that I don't believe our brain, as an organ, in and of itself, is wired to respond to "uplifting" things. I see being "uplifted" as being a response of the spirit, the immaterial life force that connects us to a Creator. We listen in awe to a Beethoven symphony or catch a spectacular sunset at the exact moment when it is at its peak or feel a little baby grasp our finger with his fist or just feel an inexplicable feeling of love for someone else. To me, these things are proof of God's existence because they elicit feelings I don't see the brain itself as generating. The ability to recognize beauty is, to me, something that goes deeper than is explained by speaking of electrical impulses to the brain, the release of chemicals into the bloodstream, etc. There is also, for many people, a feeling of a link with the divine; this was the case before religion was really even a part of human culture. So yes, I think an atheist can experience spirituality; I just think the atheist fails to recognize the uplifting feeling as coming from a spirit created by God. I hope this explanation of mine doesn't offend anybody. It's just how I see it.
Of course Katz I don't think you could ever offend anybody.
We all know where you heart lies.
I understand your post completely but what it tells me is that I may not have adequately communicated my position.
Where you say: 'for many people a link with the divine". It is true that of course I do not feel a link with the divine but perhaps I can use a couple of Carl Sagan quotes that may help:
"The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself."
And...
"The earth is but a mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam. "
While I may not feel a link with the divine, I certainly feel my place within the universe. You are right, I do not recognize the uplift as coming from god, I feel it coming from within me.
Perhaps what you are seeing as divine, I am appreciating really the same thing but in a different way. I'm just coming at it from a different perspective - from the viewpoint of the universe being bigger and more beautiful more complex than we able to fully contemplate.
We are tiny dots in this vast eternal place. We cannot help but be overwhelmed by it and be in awe of it.
Very well said, though not for the first time. The answer to which (as usual) is that No, I do not see it as proof of a god to appeal to beauty, uplift etc. It wasn't even when there was no explanation for them as just a product of the mind. I think (just as was the case for morality not too many decades ago) there are hints at why we may have such instinctive feelings as an evolved survival trait. I'm not saying it's 'all sorted out', but the possibility that there is a natural (rather than divine) origin and purpose for these feelings (particularly the response to the stuff that babies do to our heads) can't be any means be ruled out.
Thanks, Transponder. I respect your perspective, even though I don't see it that way.
I would ask the question; if it is not a biological processes, then how do we experience these feelings?
I don't deny that biology is involved. Certainly biological processes involve the sending and receiving of electrical stimuli, chemical responses to those stimuli, etc. I just believe there's more to it than that. I'm sorry but it's something I just can't can't explain.
may help:
"The cosmos is within us. We a. We are a way for the universe to know itself."
And...
"The earth is but a mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam. "
While I may not feel a link with the divine, I certainly feel my place within the universe. You are right, I do not recognize the upliglft as coming from god, I feel it coming from within me.
Perhaps what you are seeing as divine, I am appreciating really the same thing but in a different way. I'm just
Of course Katz I don't think you could ever offend anybody.
We all know where you heart lies.
I understand your post completely but what it tells me is that I may not have adequately communicated my position.
Where you say: 'for many people a link with the divine". It is true that of course I do not feel a link with the divine but perhaps I can use a couple of Carl Sagan quotes that may help:
"The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself."
And...
"The earth is but a mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam. "
While I may not feel a link with the divine, I certainly feel my place within the universe. You are right, I do not recognize the upliglft as coming from god, I feel it coming from within me.
Perhaps what you are seeing as divine, I am appreciating really the same thing but in a different way. I'm just coming at it from a different perspective - from the viewpoint of the universe being bigger and more beautiful more complex than we able to fully contemplate.
We are tiny dots in this vast eternal place. We cannot help but be overwhelmed by it and be in awe of it.
Beautifully stated, Cruithne. I love Carl Sagan! Here's one of my favorite quotes of his:
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
Beautifully stated, Cruithne. I love Carl Sagan! Here's one of my favorite quotes of his:
“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”
Damn, Carl Sagan was such a poet.
There's nobody that articulates it better, then or now. Thanks so much for the quote Katzpur. He sums it up beautifully.
Okay, I'm going to try my best to address your questions, but I suspect I may fail miserably. I get what you're saying about spirituality being "anything that lifts you up." Where I disagree is that I don't believe our brain, as an organ, in and of itself, is wired to respond to "uplifting" things. I see being "uplifted" as being a response of the spirit, the immaterial life force that connects us to a Creator. We listen in awe to a Beethoven symphony or catch a spectacular sunset at the exact moment when it is at its peak or feel a little baby grasp our finger with his fist or just feel an inexplicable feeling of love for someone else. To me, these things are proof of God's existence because they elicit feelings I don't see the brain itself as generating. The ability to recognize beauty is, to me, something that goes deeper than is explained by speaking of electrical impulses to the brain, the release of chemicals into the bloodstream, etc. There is also, for many people, a feeling of a link with the divine; this was the case before religion was really even a part of human culture. So yes, I think an atheist can experience spirituality; I just think the atheist fails to recognize the uplifting feeling as coming from a spirit created by God. I hope this explanation of mine doesn't offend anybody. It's just how I see it.
I for one am certainly not offended. I can relate in fact. I am a sucker for the flash mob videos on youtube where members of a symphony orchestra, complete with chorus, gather in public places to unexpectedly perform Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Watching makes me emotional. Listening to Ralph Vaughn Williams' "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis" effects me deeply in a way that I cannot describe, or explain. One of my most profound "spiritual" life experiences, the memory of which I am drawn back to again and again, occurred when I was standing alone on a high mountain peak in the Sierra Nevada's at near 14,000 foot elevation with the wind blowing in my face, watching a hawk circling hundreds of feet below me. It took me the better part of a day to climb that peak, and the experience was worth the effort in ways that I cannot explain. That was half my life ago, but I retain the memory strongly because I find it life affirming. I was alive. I had experiences. Were chemicals being released into my bloodstream as I stood there on the mountain top? That is a real possibility.
But were my uplifted feelings "coming from a spirit created by God?" Reaching that conclusion, I am afraid, would be to venture into the land of make believe. I am an emotional person, like other emotional persons. But my emotional responses come from within myself. I have no real reason to suppose that they are the result of any connection to something outside of myself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
I don't deny that biology is involved. Certainly biological processes involve the sending and receiving of electrical stimuli, chemical responses to those stimuli, etc. I just believe there's more to it than that. I'm sorry but it's something I just can't can't explain.
Then why believe it? In what way is this any different from make believe? In other words, something that appeals to you on an emotional level because you draw comfort and special meaning from the notion. I am more than happy to admit that I do not know everything, and that there certainly may be more going on than I know or am aware of. But I do not understand the process of believing in something at a gut level just just because the notion might appeal to me emotionally.
That is a certain path to self deception based on that which one finds appealing. Which is to say, subscribing to make believe. I am devoted to finding things out and attempting to understand them. Make believe appears to me to be nothing more than self deception.
when "god is superfluous" then there is no relationship with god
when the Creator is not recognized or acknowledged, or is claimed not to exist, then there is no relationship with the Creator.
when it's just physics and chemistry and emotions and feeling uplifted, that is not spirituality in the context of "religion and spirituality." if you add these up, they do not equal "religion and spirituality." physics + chemistry + riding a bike + feelings + pretty pictures + happy joy + architecture + music + walking on the beach ≠ spirituality.
that is why it is accurate to say that atheists lack spirituality. because that which makes it spirituality (compared to just feelings and physics and going to the beach) has been removed, rejected, disposed of, because it is deemed superfluous, unnecessary, not modern, distasteful, as noted by the atheists for instance in this thread.
I agree with this.
Matter of fact...As regards, "Spirituality & Atheism...What does it mean to me?": It means the same as The Light compared to The Dark.
Spirituality is predicated upon that which is Divine...and that is predicated upon our Ultimate & Supreme Reality.
Thus, Atheism means to me...The Antithesis of Spirituality.
The price of admission to The Domain of Spirituality...is A True Relationship With the Divine...and Atheism is bereft of any of those assets.
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