Another question for atheists, spirituality (page 3)

JW83

I'm with Tetrapod! Life is amazing, awe-inspiring, we live on a beautiful planet, and my daughter is wonder personified. Is that spirituality??

katiekitten

I get a good feeling when I see people doing nice things for each other - random acts of kindness.

I wouldnt call it spiritual, but its great when your faith in humanity is restored.

talesin

lonely sheep

I'm with you, Talesin.

{{{{all}}}}

tal

*don't let them get us down* class

Midget-Sasquatch

Hey Talesin,

You've put my feelings into words beautifully and even helped me see where this little thought path is heading. Take care.

ColdRedRain

"(edit) examples: The birth of your child... inspiration at a work of art... awe of the universe at large."

The first feeling, I honestly cannot give an opinion on it because I'm not a parent. The second one, I can give an opinion on. The reason why we have art in the first place is because we're creative creatures, and art is just an offshoot of our natural creativity.

mtbatoon

I agree that the term spiritual is a bit vague and so it should be. I've always seen it as a feeling of confusion but without the panic. It may be a triggered response to get our brains working in a manner that will find out more. If Edison ran out in to the street and grabbed the nearest hick and showed him his new light bulb they would be in awe. Behind a house I use to live in there was a hay field. One night I looked out and there was a full moon shining brightly in the sky, there where no clouds and the night air was crisp. The whole field was blue and swaying in the night breeze, a truly beautiful sight. The blue came from the refraction index of the cold air and the breeze from areas of high and low pressure, beautiful physics.

I can get the same feeling of spirituality from smoking marijuana. Like all our emotions it's a chemical reaction.

Abaddon

The 'wow!' feeling is still there regardless of whether it makes you feel very lucky to experienece it and determined to make the most of being able to experience things, or whether it makes you want to sacrifice a chicken to the sun god to say thank you.

Sherri

JamesThomas said:

We don't need gods or religion to give us what we already are.

(edited to add: religions may have originally used myth and stories to help point to this inner grandeur, but along the way we took the stories to be true, and rather than awaken and enlightened us, they blinded us and put us to sleep.)

I agree with you 100% - we don't need these things. But why do so many of us (the rhetorical us) insist on clinging to them? We're talking about the majority of humanity here -- this inner desire to find meaning in our existence and to express that desire by attaching ourselves to some man-made stories. Is this some kind of flaw in our psyche, our inability to face up to the possibility that THIS IS IT? Or is it some kind of a survival mechanism? A frustration with never KNOWING anything, feeling better because we have an explanation, albeit an unprovable, illogical one? As you can see, I struggle with this. Having known the 'truth' for such a long time, I'm now faced with the fact that I know sweet FA. Scary, but exciting.

greendawn

At the end of the day the inclination of man to believe in a superior intelligent creator is innate and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it though some people find it more rational to believe in evolution.

Another question for atheists, spirituality