Spiritual Personality Types

[Storm]

Originally Posted by Tau

An atheist by common definition is someone without any beliefs in anything untestable....

No, that's a rational empiricist. Atheist means they don't believe in God.
a·the·ist –noun a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
[Origin: 1565–75; < Gk áthe(os) godless + -ist]

I know what the word is supposed to mean.

Apparently not....

Your occultists are just that, not true atheists.

No, he was an atheist of the Polytheist type.

[TurkeyOnRye]

I agree, there's a lot more grey than those 4 personality types, but I think that any sort of spirituality or lack of spirituality can fit somewhere around those four types. I think this is largely due to generalization. Like Storm said, it's a matter of attitude and methodology; the example used a catholic in the atheist personality type to convey a "spiritual personality type"

[DallasApple]

If I had to choose?? I would think myself a mystic..I know that wasnt the question..

Anyway I think many people can be spirtual schitzophrenics....Like me..

Love

Dallas

[Mjolnir]

That interpretation is very good. It pretty much covers everything. I might have to check out that book.

[Storm]

Oh, it's a great book, and Smith explains the concept much better than I. Of course, he took a whole chapter to do it.

[Quagmire]

Part of my beliefs is that if you're trying figure out what catagory you belong in, you're thinking about yourself too much.

Seriously, I know about as much about what I believe as I do about God; that is to say all I ever get are hints and clues, and most of those surprise the hell out of me.

I also believe that if you talk to someone else long enough about what they believe, you'll find out they're in the same boat.

On the surface, most people don't have a problem telling you what catagory they fall into, but on a deeper level, people drift from one catagory to the other, probably from moment to moment, without even realizing it.

We're all hypocrites.

[Guitar's Cry]

Originally Posted by Tau

Well I think you have represented each 'type' fairly accurately, regardless of what Smith says, although there are probably a few more.

I think Smith is probably aware of that. He's actually a pretty renowned religious scholar: Huston Smith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I like categorical analysis because it breaks down and focuses certain features of a person's experience. Quagmire makes a great point: most people probably dance between the categories at different times. But this illuminates some key differences in how an individual approaches a given belief system. It exemplifies how a Catholic mystic can understand a Hindu mystic more so than a Catholic monotheist sometimes.

[Storm]

Yeah, there are very few people I could easily categorize, and I'm not one of them.

[Charity]

Good job Storm and I think I would like to read the book.....Thanks