Who can tell me what words like 'spiritual', 'immoral' and 'moral' really mean?

ideogenous_mover said:

Sort of like there is the concept of the cake, and then, seemingly infinite ways to decorate the cake.

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Since we find supernatural beliefs in just about every known society, it appears that they may serve some beneficial social function, such as tribal solidarity, and the 'answer' to questions about natural phenomena, luck, fertility and so on. Since they don't agree on what the supernatural beings are or do, I think it's clear that those beings aren't objective phenomena but independently imagined / created in each case.

ideogenous_mover said:

It at least seems to get more mysterious, anyway, the farther away you get from some kind of 'objective' physical truth

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The existence of the evolved moral tendencies I listed is derived from experiments, many with very young children, even pre-verbal children.

Vinayaka said:

Not me. I'm not spiritual or moral enough to even decide how I personally view such words. So best to follow my hero Twain. "better to remain quiet and have people think you're a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubts"

Best wishes on finding someone who can educate you, Sir.

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Im interested in all replies but I particularly have looked for two, one of which is/was yours.
I also couldn't tell about either, which why I'm asking.

blü 2 said:

'Spiritual' means 'of the spirit', and in religious contexts 'spirit' means the immaterial part of humans, quite like the soul, hence that part of humans which is in touch with the immaterial worlds of religion. (My own view is that the 'immaterial' exists only as a set of concepts or imagined things and qualities in individual brains.)

"Morality" concerns the rules of the proper way to act towards and with others. Human morality has an evolved part and a learnt part. The evolved part is a set of moral tendencies which approves of child nurture and protection, dislikes the one who harms, likes fairness and reciprocity, respects authority, is loyal to the group, and gets a sense of self-worth from self-denial. The conscience and the capacity for empathy complete the evolved part of the kit. The rest, concerning how to relate to others depending on their relationship, authority, sex, age, place of origin and so on, how to dine together, how to excrete, how to celebrate life stages like coming of age, pairing, birth and death (and so on) are acquired from one's upbringing, culture, education and experience, and may vary quite widely.

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Your para on morality is most interesting, thank you. After reading it I begin to wonder if animals might not have their own version of all this, their own rules and natures.

I'm asking these questions because I mistrust these words on so many occasions and in so many contexts when I see them.

Brickjectivity said:

In modern times 'Moral' is a commitment to a particular way of life, because you decide what to believe is right and make that belief real. 'Moral' used to mean something a little different more in line with wisdom or common sense about practical matters as in the story of the tortoise and the hare, but its used for both or either. ***edit*** unless you're either a child or a slave in which case moral is whatever you are told it is and right or wrong is whatever you are told to think.

'Spiritual' is one of a class of words that go through phases of different common meanings. Sometimes they are analytical words used to refer to the process of reason. Sometimes they are used in the paranormal sense, whimsically or mysteriously. I think whatever the language, you're going to find this kind of transition in the terms.

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Thank you , and I had overlooked the use of 'moral' as in 'guidance or deeper lesson'. Almost like 'life truth'.
That's the only use I like imo.

Twilight Hue said:

It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

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In such cases these words are very inexact because the listener or readeray have different eyes for these words altogether. This could be a good reason for not using them, possibly?

Clara Tea said:

DEFINITIONS OF SPIRITUAL AND MORAL:

Deeds define. Deeds differ from dictionaries.

Boy molesting priests are said to be spiritual and moral. Little boys are told to hush up about where the priests' hands were, or they will ruin the reputation of the spiritual and moral church.

Beautiful young ladies, who had refused sex with fat, gross church elders, and now face charges of witchcraft, are told to hush up about where the elder's hands were, or they will ruin the reputation of the spiritual and moral church. The community supports ugly elders against innocent women (after all....who is more moral?).

The Religious Right sanctimoniously supported the man they put in office, President W. Bush, as he murdered 1,000,000 innocent Iraqis (well....they were located somewhere in the Middle East, so they deserved to die). W. Bush didn't wait for proof of terrorism. Moreover, knowing full well that Niger was not involved in terrorism, W. Bush (and Cheney) had asked Wilson to lie about Niger in order to create a war, and when Wilson refused, they outed Plame (CIA wife) via Robert Novak. (source: below). All this was on intention lies about intel, and the torture camps were behind the back of "most of" Congress (some Democrats and Republicans knew and were silent).

Plame affair - Wikipedia

What do modern events have to do with the definition of spirituality and morality? Definitions continue to define as deeds continue to define them.

Professor of law, John Woo of Chapman University, as attorney for W. Bush, redefined the term "torture," so that W. Bush could deny that torture ever existed. But, Adolph Hitler could have also denied that torture occurred, since torture of any kind no longer existed after one tells lies by redefining terms.

Thus, one could redefine "spiritual" and "moral" and tell lies about their meaning.

Taliban religious and political leaders of Afghanistan captured bin Laden and top aides just 9 days after the 911 attack, offered to turn them over to the US if they had proof of terrorism, so W. Bush attacked his allies, the Taliban. Then W. Bush bore false witness (calling one of them the "doctor of death)," in order to get support for his unjust war. W. Bush said that he was "fightin' evil" and he was opposing the "Axis of Evil." As long as people think that they are fighting evil, they project the false idea that they are spiritual and moral, even though they are using Satan's motus operandi of pretending to be on a holy mission of God.

Spiritualism is supposed to be about the religious belief in the soul (not about the physical world).

Moral is supposed to be about good and bad.

Satan rules by fear (phony Orange alerts), greed (lower tax for the rich, ignore the homeless), lies (pretends to fight evil, though he is the essence of evil, and redefines the truth). Follow the trail of dead bodies, torn by war, and starving homeless people, and you will find Satan.

Pastors often use such fear tactics (visions of the fires of hell) to scare people into following them.

Pastors often use greed, to ask for all of our money, with the promise that somehow God will give them back ten times as much money. "Cast thy bread upon the waters."

Jesus objected that churches have expensive bobbles, and lock their doors to the homeless (as churches do today).

On His sermon on the mount, Jesus said "judge not, lest ye be judged." But, if we don't judge who Satan is, and recognize Satan by his deeds, we risk following Satan, and leaving a trail of dead from wars and those dying of hunger. We must judge Satan to reject Satan.

We must open the eyes of others, as you have done, to be truly spiritual and moral.

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Wow!
You have exploded the deceit and misuse of these words with much more efficiency than I ever could have.
In fact so many have misused these words so much for so long that it might be best to rest them for a long time in the hope that on their return they can be respected once again.
But that's just me and my opinion.

Polymath257 said:

In my view, there are no 'spirits' or 'souls'. They are both nouns made up to describe certain emotional states which we either like or dislike.

Morality has to do with how we interact with other people and the world around us.

My moral views are very simple: Think& Care.

Think about your actions and the consequences they have for others and Care enough to change those actions if they end up harming others.

From what I can see most evil in the world comes from neglecting one or the other of these: those who do not care about others will put their beliefs above the health and fulfillment of others will often try to kill off those who disagree. We see this in abundance in politics and religions.

Those who do not think through the consequences of their actions often cause great suffering even if their intent is good.

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You put it all so we'll imo.
I'm dad to say that when I see these words thrown around my suspicion radar goes in to overdrive.

Link said:

There is morality as is (almost nothing agreed upon).
There is morality as ought to be (that which we are all disagreeing about).

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That's the thing.
These words have become do inexact that I don't know why any bother yo use them.

F1fan said:

Actually humans and other animals share a basic evolved morality. That is why most all social animals cooperate and work together.

It is the issues of culture and meaning that lead tribes of humans to disagree. Even members of ISIS will work together and cooperate as they kill outsiders. They think they are doing God's will, and being moral. So we can assess morals intellectually and assess whether they hold up to more sophisticated standards. We see many more dogmatic people adopt a set of ideas and assume that are absolute and beyond human judgment. yet these mortals assume themselves authorized to judge those who don't believe the same as being dead wrong. This is how they can act without a higher moral sense, and become obedient agents for religious or political dogma.

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Thus these words cannot be trusted, I think. Or rather, not everybody who uses them.

Conscious thoughts said:

I do not have all the answers, but different teachings has different angle on what they teach, so the understanding will look a bit different to each person.

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In which case it might be better to use words which more people can definitely understand?

oldbadger said:

I begin to wonder if animals might not have their own version of all this, their own rules and natures.

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If you look at the evolved rules I mentioned, you'll notice they're appropriate for us as gregarious primates, living both as individuals and as members of cooperative groups. Cooperation is a very powerful quality to have.

And other animals who live in groups ─ most of our monkey kin, meercats, herd animals and so on ─ have also developed evolved responses that facilitate group living. That's where we get the socially important concept of the peck order from.

oldbadger said:

Who will tell me what words like 'spiritual' and 'moral' really mean?

Our languages change, a sure fact. For example, in recent years the word 'multiple' has become the 'it' word to replace words like 'many' or 'several' or 'a lot of'..... as annoying as 'nice' used to be considered by English academics.

And maybe words like 'spiritual', 'moral' and 'immoral' have as well??
But I perceive these words to (mostly) be shams, liars and deceptions...spoken or writ large to fool folks in to believing that things and action are good, bad, fine, outrageous, decent or any other 'thing' that is required to adjust peoples' minds..

Several years ago I was amongst lots of religious people at a soup 'n' chat meeting when I mentioned that I visited a Christian Spiritualist chapel sometimes. The whole table became a ranting shouting mayhem of people trying to tell me that those people belong to Satan, that Halloween is evil and that they are nothing to do with Spiritualism........ I had only mentioned this venue because a host had told me that she hosted 'spiritual guidance' meetings on certain days. Yeah........ Spiritual....both Holy and Satanic, all in one word.

And Moral/Immoral........ Does it have its own clear meanings or has this just become another 'it' word for folks to use in rhetoric?

Well...... there's the question....... so who can help?

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If I recall, the Bible says that even those who are not acquainted well with Jesus, or at all, still have a conscience written in their hearts. That usually means stealing, adultery, lying, things that upset them inwardly. Romans 2:14,15 - For when people of the nations, who do not have law, do by nature the things of the law, these people, although not having law, are a law to themselves. 15 They are the very ones who demonstrate the matter of the law to be written in their hearts, while their conscience is bearing witness with them, and by* their own thoughts they are being accused or even excused.

oldbadger said:

Who will tell me what words like 'spiritual' and 'moral' really mean?

Our languages change, a sure fact. For example, in recent years the word 'multiple' has become the 'it' word to replace words like 'many' or 'several' or 'a lot of'..... as annoying as 'nice' used to be considered by English academics.

And maybe words like 'spiritual', 'moral' and 'immoral' have as well??
But I perceive these words to (mostly) be shams, liars and deceptions...spoken or writ large to fool folks in to believing that things and action are good, bad, fine, outrageous, decent or any other 'thing' that is required to adjust peoples' minds..

Several years ago I was amongst lots of religious people at a soup 'n' chat meeting when I mentioned that I visited a Christian Spiritualist chapel sometimes. The whole table became a ranting shouting mayhem of people trying to tell me that those people belong to Satan, that Halloween is evil and that they are nothing to do with Spiritualism........ I had only mentioned this venue because a host had told me that she hosted 'spiritual guidance' meetings on certain days. Yeah........ Spiritual....both Holy and Satanic, all in one word.

And Moral/Immoral........ Does it have its own clear meanings or has this just become another 'it' word for folks to use in rhetoric?

Well...... there's the question....... so who can help?

Click to expand...

basically spiritual is a synonym for mental, or basically the idea of self's psychological state.


moral would be treating all as one and not based on relationships, or outward appearances.

immoral would be based again on behavior of how one treats self and other as self. does self follow the golden rule and apply all rules unbiased to all, or does self show favoritism? playing favorites isn't usually seen as a rule based on behavior as much as it's based on relationships and outward appearances.

oldbadger said:

Who will tell me what words like 'spiritual' and 'moral' really mean?

Our languages change, a sure fact. For example, in recent years the word 'multiple' has become the 'it' word to replace words like 'many' or 'several' or 'a lot of'..... as annoying as 'nice' used to be considered by English academics.

And maybe words like 'spiritual', 'moral' and 'immoral' have as well??
But I perceive these words to (mostly) be shams, liars and deceptions...spoken or writ large to fool folks in to believing that things and action are good, bad, fine, outrageous, decent or any other 'thing' that is required to adjust peoples' minds..

Several years ago I was amongst lots of religious people at a soup 'n' chat meeting when I mentioned that I visited a Christian Spiritualist chapel sometimes. The whole table became a ranting shouting mayhem of people trying to tell me that those people belong to Satan, that Halloween is evil and that they are nothing to do with Spiritualism........ I had only mentioned this venue because a host had told me that she hosted 'spiritual guidance' meetings on certain days. Yeah........ Spiritual....both Holy and Satanic, all in one word.

And Moral/Immoral........ Does it have its own clear meanings or has this just become another 'it' word for folks to use in rhetoric?

Well...... there's the question....... so who can help?

Click to expand...

Wohow. Big Topic. I would like to see what you think of the following views.

Spirituality.

Spirituality generally has nothing to do with spirits. Unless it is referring to spirits people maybe drinking to attain a higher spiritual state or something of the sort.

The word spiritual has long lost its meaning in my opinion. It also has subjective propositions. 27% of the scientists who call themselves agnostics also call themselves spiritual. These things change from what your sample is. Scientists would have a different number, LGBT community will have different numbers, religious communities will have different numbers etc etc. E.g. 39% of LGBT community identifies as "Spiritual atheist/agnostic" - Kubicek et al. 2009.

I will directly refer to a Muslim view. Spirituality has two connotations. The knowledge of God and behaviour. Ironically, these two are intertwined for a Muslim by direct theological teaching of scripture. This is called "righteousness". It is the sense of mind one person has that stops them from doing what is considered "bad things". This is fundamentality, spirituality. Thus, it is behaviour. By the way, I am not talking about groups or what people say in this particular matter, but as I said this is based on fundamentals of theology, not those who call themselves saints, turn into lions, do magic and ward off evil spirits etc etc.

A spiritual atheist would be predominantly the same when they identify themselves that way. The one difference would be that there is no "Knowledge of God" in that equation. Above this, there maybe some nuances where atheists claim they are spiritual methodologically in order to understand things better. That last sentence was of course from a study by a theist, the rest are from atheist researchers. Not that simple to conclude in a few words. Very interesting topic. Ecklund and Long 2011.

What is moral and immoral?

I think as moral psychology puts in a few words, people tend to have a basic understanding of good and bad. This is individually considered as moral and immoral. Philosophers have gone to town with all kinds of stuff so there is no way all of that can be put here. But generally there are two simple partings on morality. Individual morality and social morality. Stemming completely from a secular thought, social morality is fairness, which helps to govern society and to control individual behaviour. Social morality considers whether an action threatens society’s good. Thats a completely naturalistic perspective. These two would of course conflict. Is Neo liberalism in economics of a society good or bad? Should software be free of charge or not? Like Unix or Linux vs Microsoft and MacOS. When Cisco tried to stop china manufacturing Huawei routers, china said "we dont abide by copyright laws. So come to china and sue us".

Then you get moral relativism and absolutism. Relativism will have individual, cultural, and situational relativism. A sociologists would find relativism all over the place, but scientific beliefs may differ in various societies does not prove that scientific truth is relative. Religious groups may have relative situations, cultures built on situations, individuals built on cultures or rebellions etc etc but may also consider objective morality absolute whether it ontologically exists or not.

Good topic. Nice reads.

blü 2 said:

If you look at the evolved rules I mentioned, you'll notice they're appropriate for us as gregarious primates, living both as individuals and as members of cooperative groups. Cooperation is a very powerful quality to have.

Click to expand...

In accord with your next paragraph I think that laws and rules might fit with everything in nature and not just primates. If so, then we are still firmly bonded in to ......nature, and not that much progression forward after all.

And other animals who live in groups ─ most of our monkey kin, meercats, herd animals and so on ─ have also developed evolved responses that facilitate group living. That's where we get the socially important concept of the peck order from.

Click to expand...

And that shows clearly just how base humanity still is....... a pecking order based upon abilities and disabilities which will suit for the survival of life in general, but many humans are still deluding themselves that some aware and interested God has raised them above all in to 'spiritual' and 'moral' pathways towards some heavenly goal.
To read and hear about the spiritual paths and moral goals of various religions and then have to hear their able followers ranting about looking after disability......... just shows how we have barely risen any baseline of nature.

YoursTrue said:

If I recall, the Bible says that even those who are not acquainted well with Jesus, or at all, still have a conscience written in their hearts. That usually means stealing, adultery, lying, things that upset them inwardly. Romans 2:14,15 - For when people of the nations, who do not have law, do by nature the things of the law, these people, although not having law, are a law to themselves. 15 They are the very ones who demonstrate the matter of the law to be written in their hearts, while their conscience is bearing witness with them, and by* their own thoughts they are being accused or even excused.

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You quoted Paul, who was trying to explain what @blü 2 showed so much more clearly in his post above. All nature follows rules and laws, and by insisting that humans follow those guidelines Paul simply shackled us to the baseline of life......... the rules and laws of nature. He just didn't know better.

Until humanity can leave this baseline which struts ability in arrogance over needy disability we're still going to have to put up with religion telling us how spiritual and moral it is both before and after it rants about helping disability.

That's the problem......... spirituality and morality are used as deceptions to fool both the speakers and the listeners.

Fool said:

basically spiritual is a synonym for mental, or basically the idea of self's psychological state.

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Hi......
Well, that's yet another meaning for 'spiritual' on this thread.
See how far from the Spiritualist Medium's 'spirit' that wanders.

moral would be treating all as one and not based on relationships, or outward appearances.

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So why would anybody use that word, when words like impartial, genuine, just and fair can describe this so much better?

immoral would be based again on behavior of how one treats self and other as self. does self follow the golden rule and apply all rules unbiased to all, or does self show favoritism? playing favorites isn't usually seen as a rule based on behavior as much as it's based on relationships and outward appearances.

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Ah! Well..... I've never met anybody yet who can eat for others, or pump their blood.
So far on this thread I've read about many descriptions of this word, from 'sexual thoughts about strangers' to crime to selfishness, and those descriptions are so much more clear when written thus.

An example of how crooked the word 'immoral' (and moral) is, some of us here agree that Hitler probably thought that he was a moral man with few immoralities...... even if he did like his girlfriend to abuse him (I have heard).

oldbadger said:

In accord with your next paragraph I think that laws and rules might fit with everything in nature and not just primates.

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The rules of nature are all under the roof of evolution, whose very simple rule is that if you fail to reproduce ─ by dying, for example ─ your genes are not represented in the next generation. Therefore all of life is derived from a biological system that favors the most reliable reproducers. To put that another way, the closest thing to an objective meaning for life is to live long enough to reproduce, whether you're a very complex human or a single-celled microbe or anything in between.

And living in cooperative groups has worked for humans, even though our reproductive processes routinely produce one child at a time, and require the child to be directly cared for throughout the first five years or so of life ─ which goes to the human tendency to pair-bond.

oldbadger said:

If so, then we are still firmly bonded in to ......nature, and not that much progression forward after all.

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If you mean H sap sap is a kind of animal, no argument from me. If you mean that morals in the modern West are as basic as the Bronze Age morals described in eg the Torah, then I strongly disagree. For example, in my lifetime I've seen Women's Lib take hold, though it's still a work in progress, and I think BLM (and its equivalents around the world) also represent very important moral progress.

firedragon said:

Wohow. Big Topic. I would like to see what you think of the following views.

Click to expand...

Hi Firedragon.....

Spirituality.

Spirituality generally has nothing to do with spirits. Unless it is referring to spirits people maybe drinking to attain a higher spiritual state or something of the sort.

The word spiritual has long lost its meaning in my opinion. It also has subjective propositions. 27% of the scientists who call themselves agnostics also call themselves spiritual. These things change from what your sample is. Scientists would have a different number, LGBT community will have different numbers, religious communities will have different numbers etc etc. E.g. 39% of LGBT community identifies as "Spiritual atheist/agnostic" - Kubicek et al. 2009.

I will directly refer to a Muslim view. Spirituality has two connotations. The knowledge of God and behaviour. Ironically, these two are intertwined for a Muslim by direct theological teaching of scripture. This is called "righteousness". It is the sense of mind one person has that stops them from doing what is considered "bad things". This is fundamentality, spirituality. Thus, it is behaviour. By the way, I am not talking about groups or what people say in this particular matter, but as I said this is based on fundamentals of theology, not those who call themselves saints, turn into lions, do magic and ward off evil spirits etc etc.

A spiritual atheist would be predominantly the same when they identify themselves that way. The one difference would be that there is no "Knowledge of God" in that equation. Above this, there maybe some nuances where atheists claim they are spiritual methodologically in order to understand things better. That last sentence was of course from a study by a theist, the rest are from atheist researchers. Not that simple to conclude in a few words. Very interesting topic. Ecklund and Long 2011.

Click to expand...

You can describe everything in the above paragraphs without using the word spirit, etc....
And most agnostics and atheists react hugely if it is suggested that they are spiritual in any way. That was tried some years ago here..... Actually it's a new thread because we should try that again..... something like 'atheists and agnostics, do you believe in spirits, spiritualism, ghosts, superstitions, etc...... (when an atheist wrote that he sometimes touched wood all hell broke loose!

What is moral and immoral?

I think as moral psychology puts in a few words, people tend to have a basic understanding of good and bad. This is individually considered as moral and immoral. Philosophers have gone to town with all kinds of stuff so there is no way all of that can be put here. But generally there are two simple partings on morality. Individual morality and social morality. Stemming completely from a secular thought, social morality is fairness, which helps to govern society and to control individual behaviour. Social morality considers whether an action threatens society’s good. Thats a completely naturalistic perspective. These two would of course conflict. Does Neo liberalism in economics of a society good or bad? Should software be free of charge or not? Like Unix or Linux vs Microsoft and MacOS. When Cisco tried to stop china manufacturing Huawei routers, china said "we dont abide by copyright laws. So come to china and sue us".

Click to expand...

Some of us reckon that social morality is deeply embedded in all life, and for humans to still be rooted in it shows what a short distance we have travelled...... for instance we still have pecking orders based upon ability and disability.

Then you get moral relativism and absolutism. Relativism will have individual, cultural, and situational relativism. A sociologists would find relativism all over the place, but scientific beliefs may differ in various societies does not prove that scientific truth is relative. Religious groups may have relative situations, cultures built on situations, individuals built on cultures or rebellions etc etc but may also consider objective morality absolute whether it ontologically exists or not.

Good topic. Nice reads.

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That's all above my paygrade, firedragon, but maybe some others can join you in that area of thought.

blü 2 said:

The rules of nature are all under the roof of evolution, whose very simple rule is that if you fail to reproduce ─ by dying, for example ─ your genes are not represented in the next generation. Therefore all of life is derived from a biological system that favors the most reliable reproducers. To put that another way, the closest thing to an objective meaning for life is to live long enough to reproduce, whether you're a very complex human or a single-celled microbe or anything in between.

Click to expand...

OK..... but I think that the rules of nature are more complex than just 'reproduce or fail'. Pick any life-form, and species and you'll observe a strong set of rules and laws under the absolute of 'reproduce!'.
....and which we as still firmly entrenched within.

And living in cooperative groups has worked for humans, even though our reproductive processes routinely produce one child at a time, and require the child to be directly cared for throughout the first five years or so of life ─ which goes to the human tendency to pair-bond.

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QED.... a demonstration above, of a set of rules under the absolute of 'reproduce!'

If you mean H sap sap is a kind of animal, no argument from me. If you mean that morals in the modern West are as basic as the Bronze Age morals described in eg the Torah, then I strongly disagree. For example, in my lifetime I've seen Women's Lib take hold, though it's still a work in progress, and I think BLM (and its equivalents around the world) also represent very important moral progress.

Click to expand...

Yes...... we are still just another animal, but I think you've got the rest of your [paragraph the wrong way round. The Bronze age rules in the Torah were an amazing collection dedicated to the building up of a secure, strong, healthy and successful community of people. They provided for the inclusion of some outsiders and looked after women quite well.. .... I can imagine women being quite comfortable with their places back then, and some men less happy.
Womens Lib has not progressed well around the world, not even in the west, and the BLM movement is a snail which needs to become a hare.
And Ability still looks down arrogantly upon Disability, from both sexes.