Mankind has, in the 20th century, finally realized that all things can come about without a supernatural source, without divine guidance.
Many enlightened ones are accepting that, but thousands upon thousands of years of thinking otherwise takes time to root out of the species.
Many people are still at Stage One or Two of your opening post, fanciful superstitious beliefs and rituals, appeasing the gods or shunning the evil spirits.
In my own lifetime, I had to purge myself of the idea that an ancient book written by various people to manipulate the masses and mislead peasants and loaded with superstition and ritual and god-appeasing, was not from the hand of a supernatural source. I had to reject the programming that actual scientific evidence was not valid, and had to be rejected if it didn't fit into the stories of the ancient book.
So give people another couple of hundred years before they really wake up, will you?
It is a sad commentary when people reject the solid evidence of the human genome project, the science of evolution, physical evidence found in the ground from archaeology. It is even worse when they almost literally put their fingers in their ears and go "LA LA LA LA." But we are still there. Mankind still has a great placebo effect from those thousands upon thousands of years of "belief." Give him another couple of hundred years to wake up.
But Terry, individuals can wake up now. A couple hundred years ago, without DNA and without knowing what evidence lay hidden in the ground, many people became diests. They figured out that a supernatural power was not helping them. They were so enlightened and ahead of their time. Nowadays it is easy to be agnostic or atheist. So much data helps us to connect with our rational side. But we are just at the beginning baby-steps of figuring this stuff out.
I still feel great "spirituality" in myself, but not from an ancient book or from a supernatural source. Terry, you can learn a lot from the fictional Star Trek character, Spock. Even without a need for God, we still have to have something beyond logic and rational thought. Spock taught us that as we were growing up in the age of information, we still needed emotions. We get burned for trying to love, but we continue to love. We get rejected by those we wish to befriend, but we continue to befriend.
"Spirituality" is everything to do with life that is not "secular." We pay the bills and buy the groceries, but then we go beyond that.
Because our enjoyment of life is so important, because our desires to laugh and love and be moved are so vital to us, it is going to take a couple hundred years more to put aside the ancient book and the irrational fear and the desire to please a nonexistent god. But we will get there.
