by make yourself 61 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
I do not think that there is any need to replace religion. Religions are made by men for men (women don't get much of a look-in)
I am a member of the British Humanist Association, a very high percentage of members are avowed atheists, very few of the rest are members or supporters of any religion.
Nearly all seem very spiritual, caring deeply for their fellow humans and for the planet.
Get shot of religion in your life and thinking, get on with living a spiritual and productive life.
Wobble
I feel the answer is a definite yes. Religion is (or rather *should*) only be spiritual people's gathering. Religion without spirituality is nothing (empty shells going through the motions of man made laws that defines what is right and wrong); spirituality can stand on its own, without man made crutches.
Spirituality is a part of us and is not removable. Religion is an external entity created by man and is not one of the 4 human needs. Spirituality is internal, an interdependent part of us human beings and something we cannot live without. You can remove religion and you'll still have your Spirituality. Each of us has our own personal definition of our own Spirituality. In essence it's really about how we can help others, what our purpose in this life is, and what legacy we wish to leave behind us once we depart. If you choose to embrace a religion or faith as part of that, then you are free to do so. Many do not and are still very spiritual people, living productive and fulfilling lives.
I'm with Poppers.
but you can't be religious without being spiritual.
With all due respect I completely disagree with this statement. I think Religion is the biggest obstical in the way of spirituality. We see people all the time (including in the jw religion) who are very good at the religion but don't have an ounce of spirituality in them.
To me spirituality is being connected to a Source, whatever you call that, in a way that makes you still, at peace, full of love and the right motive, encourages you to be at peace with the earth and plants and animals, AND does not allow you to carry an egoic title or egoically try to change other people. Even "spirituality" is just a word, you really can't name it.
Some good comments. I agree with poppers & awildflower.
To me spirituality is inner growth and learning to be in tune or harmony with the universe we live in.
Unless you are Neil Armstrong, that means being in tune with nature on planet Earth.
I think there is a bit of a false dichotomy in the question. Religion is communal spirituality, at least as I conceive it. It's a spiritual community. For people to share spiritual experience and ritual is as natural as anything human can be.
BTS
Because of God there is spirituality
Because of Man there is religion
I think religion is a connection with man and spirituality is a connection with God. I think spirituality has to replace religion or your existence after death will be with the one you followed.
I've given the question of SPIRITUALITY a lot of thought.
I think it is a misnomer.
SPIRITUALITY is an anti-concept.
An anti-concept is an unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept.
The use of anti-concepts gives the listeners a sense of approximate understanding.
But in the realm of cognition, nothing is as bad as the approximate . . . .
Let me explain what I mean:
Observe the technique involved . . . . It consists of creating an artificial, unnecessary, and (rationally) unusable term, designed to replace and
obliterate some legitimate concepts—a term which sounds like a concept, but stands for a “package-deal” of disparate, incongruous, contradictory
elements taken out of any logical conceptual order or context, a “package-deal” whose (approximately) defining characteristic is always a
non-essential. (This last is the essence of the trick.)
By substituting the word SPIRITUALITY (which, it must be granted, can mean anything to anybody) for "christian, buddhist, anostic, etc. which have
actual meanings and definitions.....communication is obliterated. The issue of "what" one is believing is derailed.
It becomes a nebulous cloud of mere attitude toward belief itself.
We cannot communicate with others if our words are drained of conceptual honesty.
SPIRITUALITY is a way of saying you are NOT an atheist, but, without saying you have any belief system of value that can be described.
It is a NON-THINKING person's dodge and spin when asked a direct question!
In other words: it is bullshit.
Well, if there is a word that better describes what we term spirituality, I'll be happy to use it.
It probably is an overly used word, particularly to those who have alternative beliefs and are allergic to traditional organized religions, but words that describe non verbalized experiences or emotion run that risk...we spout on a lot about love a lot too, but it's probably a subjectively different experience for each person who claims the emotion.
In strict dictionary terms, religion and spirituality are actually synonyms...they are considered at least to some degree synonymous, but words change with usage, and more recently, people have begun to make distinctions in the way they use those two terms.
People are trying to find a way to express the internalized experience of transcendence, which is a real psychological phenomenon, it can be scientifically measured as positive changes in brain chemistry, brain activity and physiological response, as opposed to ritualized and instititutionalized expressions supposedly based on such experiences.
This is because, in part, there is a need to differentiate. The personal, subjective experience has always been there, but the ritualized expression of it, the community institutions are not always satisfying and for some people not only unnecessary, but actually detrimental to the experience of trancendence.
They serve two very different functions, for one thing. Ritual binds us socially, gives us commonality as it recognizes important personal or natural events, such as personal rites of passage or events in nature that effect us all. Transcendence is personal, entirely subjective and difficult if not impossible to share on a community level.
Priests or clergy in human society now mainly serve ritual and social functions, but do not always accomodate or facilitate personal transcendence, inner emotional or psychological exploration, although they can and some do specialize in counseling or psychological counseling. There were other recognized social roles in other societies that did recognize the power of such experiences, the shaman, the yogi, the medicine man, but it's hard to find a contemporary counterpart to that in modern religion, except, interestingly enough in modern psychology.
Today, it's the therapist, whether affiliated with a religious entity or not, who guides us on our personal inner journeys and helps us make sense of them. They even use some of the same tools, hypnosis or various relaxation techniques, even drugs, when called for, to assist that. I've heard many in that sort of work describe psychologists as the secular shamans or priests(in the older, more basic sense of spiritual facilitators, not as enactors of ritual) of our modern culture, and I believe that's true.
Which just goes to show you can do such things without the context of specific creed or religious doctrine...they just are part of human nature and always have been.
People are trying to find a way to express the internalized experience of transcendence, which is a real psychological phenomenon, it can be scientifically measured as positive changes in brain chemistry, brain activity and physiological response, as opposed to ritualized and instititutionalized expressions supposedly based on such experiences.
This is because, in part, there is a need to differentiate. The personal, subjective experience has always been there, but the ritualized expression of it, the community institutions are not always satisfying and for some people not only unnecessary, but actually detrimental to the experience of trancendence.
What separates humanity from the other portion of the animal kingdom is our RATIONAL advantage. It is our strength as a species.
We prosper and advance when we build our intelligence upon clear definitions and facts without ambiguity.
The quest for transcendance and the psychology of internal mental constructs bubbles beneath our surface. For us to claim it we have to name it.
The mind must disambiguate to understand.
We are a SELF. To be an individual SELF requires self-mastery. To master our SELF requires understanding of that self.
The fuzzier we think, the more general we become in our conceptual data the more we lose that SELF to a cloud of UNKNOWING.
The danger? We become a REACTING thing rather than a THINKING person.
Reactive life is the life of lower animals who exist in a world where actions are triggered by the un-named unknowns. It is instinctual and not intellectual.
Every time we allow an anti-concept into our head and start using it--we annhilate our rational grasp of real life in the real world.
We deteriorate. We lose our edge. We are absorbed into a scrum of half-thinking brute intuitions where we float like a jellyfish in the public
consciousness which is no-man's-land for individuals.
IF WE DEFINE OUR SELF as "one who believes" but that belief is un-named, nebulous and visceral "transcendance" we are no longer human.
