I was watching CNN, an d they asked this question and this one lady called in and claimed she wasn't raised in a religious household. But she remembered when she was in elementary school that this JW girl asked her if she was spritual she said no, then the JW told her she would go to hell. wow. But personally Do u think spirituality may replace religion?
can spirituality replace religion?
by make yourself 61 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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leavingwt
For many people -- it certainly has.
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AudeSapere
I believe that religion is very often a hindrance to spirituality. In the JW org, moreso than in other religions.
If you focus on your own spirituality, you can still go to religious services if and when you want the pagentry and association thus using the services to enhance, not dictate, your spirituality.
And if you don't go to services, you can still be happily spiritual.
-Aude.
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digderidoo
When you say replacing religion, you have to ask is there a hole that needs replacing. Spirituality would certainly fill that hole, but so would many other things.
I think you can be spiritual without being religious, but you can't be religious without being spiritual.
Personally i'm spiritual, but that's not now based on how many meetings i attend or how many hours i spend knocking doors. I really feel as though the society has defined the word spiritual to mean something completely different to what the actual word means.
Paul
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Gordy
What is Spirituality or being Spiritual?
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poppers
Spirituality comes from within and is driven by individual growth; it opens you up in an unconfined way to "what is" so that you can see clearly and without distortion. Religion is something that comes from without, usually imposed or conditioned into you. It boxes you within a set of beliefs so that your world view is colored by those beliefs. Its effect is to distort perception of what you see and what you think yourself to be and how to relate to what is perceived.
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GromitSK
Post removed it was so crap.
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tec
I didn't think it was crap, GromitSK. In fact, I thought it was a great discussion to be had; I just wasn't sure how I wanted to add to it. But I hesitate to give a yes or no response to the question in this thread because different people do define spirituality in different ways.
Tammy
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Etude
I don't see why it needs to or should or even if it could. In my experience, one has nothing to do with the other. To be more specific: I've known very religious people who are cruel bastards with a significant lack of compassion (many a JW, for example or even a Catholic Mafioso). Then, I've met people with no religious affiliation who are reverent, humane and have a sense that we are more than whatever the cost is of the hand-full of chemicals that make up our bodies.
These days I have a suspicion that since neurologists discovered the “G” (God) spot in our brain, we may well have an innate disposition for the spiritual and maybe even for more. For science, the question of whether it's there to communicate with God or if we tend to communicate with “God” because it's there is an open and probably an unanswerable question (if one could even suggest that the question is in its venue). Still something tells me that we probably need to “feed” or nurture this new 7th sense (or is it part of the old 6th sense?) While individuals like Richard Dawkins (Darwin's rottweiler) cannot successfully explain the universal appeal for god in evolutionary terms, the idea of a verifiable part of the brain that is a center of sorts for spirituality casts doubt on a process (Natural Selection) that would give humans something they apparently absolutely do not need or ever needed.
For me, spirituality is the person while religion is the clothing the person wears. To some people, the cloak of religions is comparable to a fashion statement. To others, it's a source of comfort and protection. For some who have an underdeveloped sense of spirituality but are very religious, it's like having some very fancy clothing to cover up the body but not ever taking a bath.
Many of today's “new age gurus” and other religious writers like Karen Armstrong or Frank Schaeffer have (in a way) abandoned religion (Armstrong was a nun and Schaeffer a fundamentalist Christian) for an apparently more middle-of-the-road approach to spirituality. It seems that this is more important to some people than actual doctrines and specifics about who-did-what-when. Either way, for me organized religion really sucks.
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mindmelda
I think it's the other way round...anthropologists tend to say that spirituality, which is more or less innate, came a long time before anything we'd call "religion", especially organized religion.
Spirituality is kind of hard to define, but so are emotions, art and creativity. They seem to come from the same parts of the brain...the right side part that handles all the non-linear, non logical stuff.
Basically, we just like to experience alteration to our brain chemistry occasionally, and we can induce it in various ways, some internalized and part of every day existence, some external. Most of it is harmless recreation for our brain meats, I think. Some researchers believe that even subtle changes in the earth's electromagnetic fields can induce these states...which could account for some places being revered for ages as "sacred".
These places tend to have more of that energy when readings are taken. Some places may have naturally produced unseen gases or plant substances that induced hallucinations or trancendent emotional or physical states...seem to be the case with the Delphian Oracle legend.
Also, our brains are so big and smart, they need constant diversion, like how we can look up at clouds and see dragons...as long as you don't start believing that they're real dragons and running around screaming "Dragons!" you're fine. We like to invent fictions and exaggerate to entertain ourselves and to try to explain the inexplicable.