Can atheists reconcile with theists?

[Windwalker]

Well, this is awkward. Reading the part of my post you quoted, I honestly have no idea where I came up with that or what I was saying. It doesn't reflect what I mean to say, or feel I meant to say. Basically - I think I started writing one thing, and ended with half of another thought.

Hey, welcome to the club! I respect and value self-honesty, especially when I can do it.

At any rate, I feel that, for the most part,"beliefs" only really matter to humanity as a whole if they can be demonstrated to adhere to reality in a way that demonstrates practicality of the belief - that is, be inter-subjectively verified or at the very least, inter-subjectively studied (even if the same conclusions can't be reached for subjective reasons), and have common, reproduce-able results.

This is where the waters can get rather deep and rather murky. I trust you are with me here. In principle this is true, but this verification is against something which is already presumed to be consistent with what the outcome should look like.

For instance, in ancient cultures where the tribal deity is collectively held as in charge of the unpredictable outcomes of social evolution, or natural systems such as weather and crop production, a system of belief has its checks and balances which others can go to for confirmation. "Check what the scriptures say", is comparable to "What do you see in the telescope? What does the data tell you". It's the same thing in practice, even if the tools are less sophisticated in the former case. The function is the same.

What is considered a "delusion" is relative to the group whose system you are operating within. To the prerational mythic system found with a lot of mainstream religions, to believe in evolution is considered a delusion. In a rationalist context, to not believe in it is considered a delusion. In other words, "one man's trash is another man's treasure". Truth and its value is mostly contextual.

There are too many beliefs that hold no promise of productivity for others who don't hold them.

That is true within the context of modernity. But if you lived in a premodern world, you'd have no use for all this "high-falutin science talk." All you care about is if your neighbor is being honest with you in the price of the grain he is trying to sell you so you have enough cash left over to meet your family's needs. The interests are not the same across the board, and the value we place upon things we care to confirm or support in some fashion is not of ultimate importance universally.

All systems, whether prerational, rational, or post-rational, are designed for productivity of truth and meaning to those who operate within those domains.

There is no productivity for me to gain, no actual use that I might have for your God. Nothing I can use it for consistently with the same results each time I set about using it - unless (and I feel this is important) I am very consistent in the ways in which I delude myself.

Those within the system do not consider themselves deluded. They see those outside their own system as deluded, such as you might see a theist believing God is watching over the affairs of mankind.

The issue here, with modern atheism in point, is that because they are operating within a different sphere, or domain of thought than those within a mythic system, they rightly see "no productivity for me to gain", precisely because the system doesn't translate its symbols of meaning adequately across domain lines. It "doesn't translate" in other words.

It really all boils down to language. If you speak within a certain language system, one of signs and symbols and shared values and meanings, everything works relatively hunky dory. When you cross those language barriers into another culture, then they don't work anymore. It's really that simple.

But instead you have everyone arguing with each other which words are the right words, which symbols are the factual symbols and such. Both are doing the same thing. The atheist in seeing theism as an evil, is doing the same thing as the theist who sees atheism as an evil.

Does any of this make sense?

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Does any of this make sense?

It does make sense, yes. But the one thing I noticed you didn't touch on or respond to was the idea of reproduce-ability. This is one of the really big differentiators in religious/spiritual/supernatural expectations versus reality. I can mix baking powder and vinegar and be guaranteed the chemical reaction. There exists an ability to rely on the outcome of this, where there is no such guarantee with any religious expectation. If "God" is the force you accept behind crop growth, then when the crops fail (possibly due to your own negligence!) by what measure can you "try to do better?" When you expect and assume that a God had its hand in it, you might feel completely helpless to affect the outcome, and accept "God's judgment" and God's action as "just the way it is." And this is a huge failing, no matter when the time it is/was done, and no matter the presuppositions that existed within your society.

I guess my point is, the things we've learned over time in various spheres of knowledge, were only ever there to be discovered and understood, AT ALL TIMES. And it was most decidedly "religious" or "dogmatic" thinking that slowed or halted the progress toward gaining that understanding.

 

[Windwalker]

It does make sense, yes. But the one thing I noticed you didn't touch on or respond to was the idea of reproduce-ability.

The oversight was not intentional. Perhaps I didn't want to overburden the text which was already fairly compacted? I'll attempt to address that point now. BTW, I enjoy discussing things like this at this level. Thanks for the discussion.

This is one of the really big differentiators in religious/spiritual/supernatural expectations versus reality.

Before we get into the meat of this, I want to address the framing of this as you have here. You lump religion, spiritual, and supernaturalism as all one thing. They really are not the same, and often are in conflict with one another.

Religion has a tendency to want to kill its mystics, who are at the pinnacle of spirituality. I think this which I just posted here in this link here to this thread in talking about what developmentalists study and term SQ, or Spiritual Intelligence. You can see very clearly in how spirituality is defined that it is distinct from religion, and that it applies to all humans, regardless of religious proclivities.

But then aside from that, spirituality most definitely does not stand against "reality". It, to me, is very much what connects someone to reality. It grounds them. It is what defines being in touch with reality. It is lived experience, and the quality and texture of being in the world itself. That is what spirituality is, and theist and atheist alike share it in by virtue of being human. Spirituality is not "beliefs". It's Being.

Moving on....

I can mix baking powder and vinegar and be guaranteed the chemical reaction. There exists an ability to rely on the outcome of this, where there is no such guarantee with any religious expectation.

I would disagree with this on a number of points. Now while certain things in life are predictable, exhibiting consistent patterns which can be mapped out and formulated into predictable responses, most of reality is not so apparently well-ordered. While if you know the math you can predict where Jupiter in its orbit will be exactly 1000 years from today, no one can predict where their dog will be 5 minutes from now.

Only the most rudimentary forms of nature, like rocks and chemicals and anything else on the lowest rungs of the complexity ladder offer themselves to us this way. The rest of it is an order of increasing complexities and greater unpredictabilities. So, even with science as a tool, there is no such guarantee of expected outcomes either. And religion tends to deal far more in the messy, fuzzy, murkey realms which tend to lay beyond the tools of our current sciences.

But, to predictability offered by religious or mythic systems. Again here, I want to stress and differentiate this from Spirituality, which is all-encompassing of all systems of belief, from rudimentary magic, mythic, traditionalist, rationalist, transrational, with both theism and atheism. Spirituality is not a system of beliefs. Systems of belief are attempts to talk about and describe spirituality.

As far as mythic systems, which were were talking about to begin with before we introduced spirituality into this, they are functional systems in that people utilize a certain preditiblity from them. If they didn't have that, they would be non-functional, and would be abandoned in search of another system which did.

What really is the determining factor is the system's viability within a particular environment. Think of these things in terms of evolution, where changing environmental pressures lead to modifications and adjustments, and a new stable system emerges to fill the niche. It's the same thing with belief systems and modes of thinking as well.

I'll try to explain better and build on that as I continue to respond....

If "God" is the force you accept behind crop growth, then when the crops fail (possibly due to your own negligence!) by what measure can you "try to do better?" When you expect and assume that a God had its hand in it, you might feel completely helpless to affect the outcome, and accept "God's judgment" and God's action as "just the way it is." And this is a huge failing, no matter when the time it is/was done, and no matter the presuppositions that existed within your society.

That is one example which can test the faith one has in that system of thought. So is someone dying when a drug was supposed to make them get better. And related to that, so is believing the weather man's forecast for sun and it rains instead. As pointed out earlier, when we move beyond rocks and chemicals and all the lower level bits, things get increasingly more messy and fuzzy, and attempts to fix handles on these things so we can securely grasp them is a type of self-delusion we can easily fall into. The rational mind, "want's answers".

So within the mythic system, the answer to unpredictable is built into it to help to keep the system consistent as a way to understand and cope with the messiness of reality. "God has a plan that you as a human can't understand. Have faith all will be well". You see how that as a system offers a functional framework?

It's not all about predictability. It can't be in the world of science either. It can't be in life, because life is far beyond being predictable to that point. Why would we want it to be? How boring that would be. Like watching the same episode of Gilligan's Island everyday for your whole life. Nothing in it would be a surprise.

So the mythic system we are discussing at the moment, has predictability built into to it. It may not be as robust as modern science, and that's fine. That's evolution. That's growth. That's development. If let's for comparison sake say that the mythic system of religion (not all religion is mythic), is on an evolutionary scale like Cro Magnon man, and Modernity with its modern empirical sciences is like modern man. This does not mean that the Cro Magnon man is an evolutionary mistake, because it's not modern man.

Maybe an easier analogy is that of ages. Mythic religion is like an 8 year old, and modern science is like a 14 year old. Being 8 is fully functional, but limited in what it can do and understand because it has not developed the capacities that a 14 year has by comparison. Being 8 is not a broken 14 year old. Being 8 is developmentally necessary in order to build up the 8 year old's capacities that remain and become part of the 14 year old. The 14 year old owes its 14 year'ness to the 8 year old. It should thank the 8 year old, rather than being an underdeveloped child and image that who he was an 8 year old was "stupid", because he imagines today that he's so much smarter, and has all this stuff pretty much figured out now.

Systems like these will evolve when the necessity of greater explanatory powers, predictibilies, and not to forgot, overall depth, becomes a requirement of the environmental pressures. Moving into the ages of mass communications, beginning with the first printing press, puts a strain on greater requirments for the sytems to attempt to address.

Historically what happened is the Church, instead of evolving it's system to attempt to speak to that newly emerging reality of modernity, doubled-down its efforts to promote and preserve the mythic system. And modern science blew right past them, outside of being underneath the umbrella of the Church. The Church in its efforts to halt evolution, resulted in the splintering apart of the three main areas of human knowledge, science, art, and morality. (refer to Kant's 3 critiques).

Today we have no cohesive system that ties all 3 of these domains of human reality together. And this is where modern atheism is running amok, trying to get rid of the mythic God, but losing any chosive system to turn to as a replacement. That is why I believe mythic-style religion remains pervasives. There really isn't anything else to replace it as a whole. It becomes a bit of a cafeteria style system in the meantime until one possibly emerges through syncretism that might finally replace the mythic-style religion.

I could go deep diving into these thoughts more, but I'll leave it there for the moment. Hopefully this is making sense to you. I live, eat, breathe, and sleep this stuff.

I guess my point is, the things we've learned over time in various spheres of knowledge, were only ever there to be discovered and understood, AT ALL TIMES. And it was most decidedly "religious" or "dogmatic" thinking that slowed or halted the progress toward gaining that understanding.

We're kind of saying the same thing in what I just finished saying a moment ago, but with one particular difference worth noting for us.

"At all times". This gets into some murky waters, but I hope you're enjoying going into these with me. It seems like you do, and that makes me happy. Let's get messy!

Part of this messiness is the recognition that what we assume we are seeing using the tools we devised to help us see these, including systems of thought and science, is not actually seeing actual reality, but a model of reality devised by the human creative mind, with all of its subjectivities in tow. It does not mean what it discovers is "rubbish". Not at all. It has certain utility that makes it a good, functional system of thought that can be applied in more reliable ways than previous systems could offer based on their natures.

The view of reality we have today, through modern sciences, is brilliant! It takes us deeper and deeper into the Mystery of Creation. I capitalize those for a reason, because I view all of it, from the particulars to the whole as brilliantly beyond what our best sciences of today can hope to penetrate or comprehend. Systems within systems of systems, infinitely interconnected as a living, breathing, evolving whole. And not just the exteriors of the world of matter, but of the interior domains of the subjective self. It is beyond comprehension, but not beyond our apprehension with our lived, conscious, being. I digress...

So part of that realization is addressed in postmodernist philosophy with a term, the Myth of the Pregiven World. It is recognized that nature is not just "laying around waiting for us to discover it". The belief that it is is mythological in nature. It's an assumption of faith. The sciences don't work that way, and nature isn't like that either. Once you move beyond a basic Modernist, Newtowian linear reality into the domains of the quantum and nonlinear, it becomes apparent what a slanted, lopsided view of reality we are dealing with when approaching reality with that linear paradigm. It's a myopic view of self and reality.

In other words, just like mythic religion had to open to advancing knowledge, but failed to, so too our current systems of investigation into the natural world needs to open, and it is starting to somewhat. And this does not mean you can now just use some anything-goes, New Age pseudo-paradigm approaches. It has to have some rigor and reach for it to be useful. Today, we already have the accepted Complexity Sciences, with systems theories and the like.

This is just how the Universe keeps things evolving, building one success on top of an earlier success. It keeps going. It's impossible to fully grasp what we are seeing, or think we know about it.

I'll take a breather here from that attempt at a bit of a mind dump. Again, I hope you may find some thought in there you appreciate, or that you wish to discuss differences or questions over.

 

[QuestioningMind]

Let's clarify this. If you met some theist who says "I believe that God definitely exists," and your response is "I don't believe you can say that definitely like that. It's a belief", you would be correct. That is not atheism however. I would say that to them too.

Atheism instead says in this scenario "Unlike you, I do not believe there is 448 marbles". It has made a declaration of disbelief that 448 is the correct number. It doesn't generously say, "It might be, but I'm not willing to say that definitely like you." That is the voice of an agnostic, "not knowing" either way. Your analogy does not reflect the actual situation. Atheism, in your example is A-448, or "not-448".


If that is what they say, then your response should be, "Neither you nor I can state that as a fact." Instead however, the atheist says, "No, you are wrong. God does not exist". That is a positive affirmation of belief. I sounds like you're soft-pedaling this to make atheism sound safer, more like agnosticism.

I say be bold, and say what you actually believe! Stand up and say it proudly. I didn't shy away from it when I called myself an atheist. It's perfectly fine to say you believe God doesn't exist, if that's what you believe.


And you affirmatively reject all those beliefs, correct?

If that is what they say, then your response should be, "Neither you nor I can state that as a fact."

You are ignoring the reality that I AM stating it as a fact. I am saying that I believe FOR A FACT that there are 448 marbles in the jar. And then I am asking you if you ALSO believe FOR A FACT that there are 448 marbles in the jar. It's a simple YES or NO question. Either you DO believe FOR A FACT that this is the number or you do not believe FOR A FACT that this is the number. Again, just because you say NO, I do not believe FOR A FACT that there are 448 marbles, it is NOT the same as saying I believe FOR A FACT that there are NOT 448. Atheist are ALSO claiming to believe FOR A FACT that a god or gods exist. It isn't do you believe it's POSSIBLE that MAYBE there MIGHT be a god... the question is, do you believe that a god DOES exist.

So in the above scenario, if you tell me that no, you do not believe for a fact that there are 448 marbles in the jar, you are not JUST stating that you don't believe FOR A FACT that the number is 448, but you are ALSO telling me that you think it's IMPOSSIBLE for there to be 448 marbles?

I say be bold, and say what you actually believe!

I DO say what I actually believe. I state that I lack a believe in any god because I have yet to be presented with sufficient verifiable evidence that any god actually exists. That doesn't stop the theists from claiming that they believe FOR A FACT that a god DOES exist. Nor does it stop them from correctly labeling me as an atheist because I do nor share their belief FOR A FACT that a god does exist.

 

[atanu]

Yes, theists are asserting a belief. But atheists are not. They are simply saying that they don't share that particular belief, and they do not then go on to replace it with some contrary belief.

Why is this so very hard for you to understand?

Spoiler: Lacking belief in lack

When you say “I do not share belief ‘t’, first you are implicitly asserting that you know what belief ‘t’ entails. Thereafter you can claim a lack of belief in ‘t’. But counter positive of ‘lack of belief in ‘t’ is “Belief in no ‘t’”.

The expression ‘lack of t’ will be meaningful if we know what it is for ’t’ to be present somewhere. If we know what it is for ’t’ to be present somewhere, then we know the manner of presentation of ’t’. In the cognition negation of ’t’, ’t’ is the counter-positive of the negation of ’t’.

I” have lack of belief in the existence of Evangelical" means exactly same as "I do not believe in the existence of Evangelical"

I lack a belief that you lack a belief.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Spoiler: Lacking belief in lack

When you say “I do not share belief ‘t’, first you are implicitly asserting that you know what belief ‘t’ entails. Thereafter you can claim a lack of belief in ‘t’. But counter positive of ‘lack of belief in ‘t’ is “Belief in no ‘t’”.

The expression ‘lack of t’ will be meaningful if we know what it is for ’t’ to be present somewhere. If we know what it is for ’t’ to be present somewhere, then we know the manner of presentation of ’t’. In the cognition negation of ’t’, ’t’ is the counter-positive of the negation of ’t’.

I” have lack of belief in the existence of Evangelical" means exactly same as "I do not believe in the existence of Evangelical"

I lack a belief that you lack a belief.

Ha, ha! Yes, very droll.

But what does your "lack of belief" entail? How does it inform you choices, your actions or your understanding of anything? And that, my friend, is the real key to this business of "belief" that some few are so fussed about (insisting that since they have it, I must, too).

See, it is my opinion that a belief that has absolutely zero meaning to you in terms of you think and live, plan and do, is a meaningless belief and of zero value, so why have it? So I ask again, how does your lack of belief in my lack of belief inform who you are, and how you live?

Now, I know many people, Christians, Muslims, Jews and others, whose beliefs do inform their being. And while you many not understand this, because of my lack of such belief, I at least respect them for that...when they act according to their beliefs. Thus, a Jewish friend might say, "I'd really love to go to the mall with you today, but it's sabbath, and therefore I can't." Or the Muslim who refused my offer to buy him a drink, because alcohol is forbidden. Or the Christian who would love to tup his neighbour's wife, but can't because of his beliefs. (That last one, by the way, I think is the wrong choice, since the best reason not to boff the neighbour's wife is simple respect for both the neighbour and wife, but leave that...) I do not share the beliefs that inform the behaviours in these cases, but I respect their fidelity to those beliefs.

But now look at the atheist, and ask how non-belief in God informs him in like fashion. What is he NOT permitted to do by virtue of no other belief than the NON-EXISTENCE of God? Well, I suppose you might say "pray," but without a god belief, there actually is no urge to pray that requires satisfying.

I am trying to tell you that my disbelief in the existence of gods has absolutely nothing to do with who I am, how I think, how I make my personal choices, what I feel good and bad about, how I treat other people. All of those things are certainly informed by the many other beliefs that I certainly do have, but not by a non-belief in gods. I have many beliefs that inform my actions, as does everyone. But nothing about my life is actually informed by anything that I do not believe.


Oh, and thus I hope you see that you were in one sense correct...I don't lack beliefs, and in fact I have lots of them. They just don't happen to include anything like a deity busy whipping up worlds, or insisting on special diets, how to mutilate your children's genitals, or who you should hate because of their own beliefs.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

It's not desperate need. It's the same need you would have in dealing with an evolution denier when what they are stating is not a fact. I see it as a desire for integrity and truth. And yes, that's a good need. I encourage understanding these things as something Atheism 1.0 needs to look at so it can move its love of rationality even beyond itself, turning the same light of scrutiny it does on theism upon itself. Atheism 2.0 is looking a lot more promising, IMO.

You see, I have absolutely nothing against atheism as a belief option. I think getting beyond the mythic-literal image of God holds a great deal of insights and promise for future understanding of the nature of reality. But it is a first step. Why do you think I was one for over a decade, being a champion of its flavor of rationality over the superstitious and unfounded claims of myth proposed and taught as though it was scientifically valid? It helped ground me in some semblance of a sensible reality.

I could write many flowery praises for atheism and its contribution to the larger picture. I could write that because atheism is part of who I am. I didn't divorce from it. I graduated from it, just as I graduated from theism. The God you don't believe in, I don't believe in either.


First of all, that's offensive. It's like a Christian saying to an ExChristian, "You were never really a true Christian", or "It was presumed faith". Would you like me to send you my atheist baptismal record for your review?

But a couple interesting things here I'd like to point out. That you should phrase it, "which turns out not to be what you believed at all", is exactly to the point of this discussion. You are thinking in "belief vs belief" terms. An atheist says "the belief in God is not true". The Christian says the opposite. This says exactly to me that your perception of atheism is that it was something I "believed in", and lost faith in it as it was "not true."

It is not a matter of true versus false to me. It is to atheism. It is to theism. It is not to me. Theism and atheism are simply two ways of looking at the same thing. They are both true, and both false in that they have the impression their ways of perceiving ultimate reality (and that is what God represents), is either this, or that, true or false, black or white, on or off, etc. To me both are just paint brushes of differing colors painting the same thing from different perceptions.

As I said, both theism and atheism are part of me. They are not "wrong". They are understandings.
​

And as far as speaking of atheism in general, I most certainly am qualified to speak to it. You think my saying I am a former self-identified atheist with all my group participations and memberships, somehow now disqualifies me to know anything about this? And BTW, you are presuming to speak for atheists too, since you are speaking for all them in denial of what I am saying here.


Yes, and this is a view I think that atheism does a service to dispel to many to help us move beyond such a limiting perspective. What you just described is the mythic-literal view of God. When we live in such a modern world with education available to teach us about how to reason in order to understanding a more complex and nuanced society, and world we live in, such views cannot withstand the scalpel of critical thinking that way. They aren't designed for that purpose, and should not be treated as such either.

I think a better way is for atheism to recognize the nature of what mythologies are, and what functions they have for us a humans and humans in social and cultural contexts. Understanding they are not rational constructs (the inherent contradictions you cited), does not make them invalid on a different level. In a different context, these systems of belief make sense and provide a relatively cohesive whole to those within that system, such as those living before the Enlightenment in the 17th century.

In modern times now however, if we get far enough beyond a "this is right and that is wrong" style of thinking, we can understand that we ourselves, in our atheism, construct systems of belief upon which we hang the fabric of reality that we see ourselves and reality through. We do the same thing as the mythic believers do.

Once we recognize, and come to terms with that, that atheism is a much a belief in ultimate reality as theism is, then we can say "hey we're both doing it, so why can't I recognize none of it is really about "facts" or "logic" when it comes to talking about something so enormously abstract as the nature of Existence itself?

So that's where I go with this, and where it comes from, in part. Hopefully some of this makes sense.


I think I may be clearing something up for myself in trying to talk about this. When you are saying the "idea of God", what I am hearing is that when you think, or thought of the "ultimate reality", and that is what people are pointing at when they introduce God as a concept, it was the image of that with its depiction to you from them that you found wouldn't fit that. In other words, consciously or not, you had to have a screen upon which to place that image, which either fit well enough as it does for some, or not well enough as it did for you.

Cleary, you were too rational to accept the depiction they offered you. It didn't fit into how your mind works when imagining ultimate reality. It didn't me either. I am like you this way. To assume I believe the way about Ultimate Reality today as they depict it, would be a mistake.


Your beliefs about ultimate reality do. You just don't have a deity figure in it. I don't either. I see "God" or "ultimate reality" as infinitely beyond the depiction of our mythologies.


No, you are still motivated by how you view ultimate truth of existence, on some level or another. Everyone is, even if it isn't a burning question in the forefront of their minds. You live life as if the material world is all there is, and that has meaning and shapes everything you do. None of which is without merit.


I am listening quite well and attentively. I just do not accept that to state "I do not believe God exists" to be something different than saying "I believe God does not exist". They are identical. It is a belief that ultimate reality is not the depiction of God you learned, or that any God exists. I hear said otherwise, but I don't believe it. It's a really hot-button issue for a lot of atheists (not all have a problem calling it a belief), therefore, it's a "sensitive" thing. I surmise that is because it sounds too much like saying "faith", which, God forbid, is beneath reason.


Try this: "I do not believe God exists." vs. "I believe God does not exist". Both are saying the same thing. Both are a positive assertion. And that's fine, if that's how you choose to believe. Either way is fine.


But they have made a positive assertion that the believe he won't be. They are asserting they believe it won't be him.


Do you think religion and theism are the same thing?


I did not say that. I am talking to you in the belief you actually are. I spent more time on this post than most. What I am saying is don't assume I'm not intelligent or insightful in what I am saying. Hopefully, you can see I am not just some hack.

A very long post, and one that seems to say we need to step back a bit. From what you write, I cannot understand how you think about "God" at all, so why don't we just try and de-muddy the waters on that? So, a few simple questions:

• Is the god you believe exists "personal" in any way...that is, has it an identity that it is itself aware of?
• Is the god you believe in in any way party to what happens in the universe that we, as humans, can perceive?
• Is the god you believe in interested in us, or does it care about what we do, or need our approval or worship?
• Can the god you believe exists change the laws of nature by pure volition?

That ought to do for now...

 

[atanu]

Ha, ha! Yes, very droll.

But what does your "lack of belief" entail? How does it inform you choices, your actions or your understanding of anything? And that, my friend, is the real key to this business of "belief" that some few are so fussed about (insisting that since they have it, I must, too).

See, it is my opinion that a belief that has absolutely zero meaning to you in terms of you think and live, plan and do, is a meaningless belief and of zero value, so why have it? So I ask again, how does your lack of belief in my lack of belief inform who you are, and how you live?

Now, I know many people, Christians, Muslims, Jews and others, whose beliefs do inform their being. And while you many not understand this, because of my lack of such belief, I at least respect them for that...when they act according to their beliefs. Thus, a Jewish friend might say, "I'd really love to go to the mall with you today, but it's sabbath, and therefore I can't." Or the Muslim who refused my offer to buy him a drink, because alcohol is forbidden. Or the Christian who would love to tup his neighbour's wife, but can't because of his beliefs. (That last one, by the way, I think is the wrong choice, since the best reason not to boff the neighbour's wife is simple respect for both the neighbour and wife, but leave that...) I do not share the beliefs that inform the behaviours in these cases, but I respect their fidelity to those beliefs.

But now look at the atheist, and ask how non-belief in God informs him in like fashion. What is he NOT permitted to do by virtue of no other belief than the NON-EXISTENCE of God? Well, I suppose you might say "pray," but without a god belief, there actually is no urge to pray that requires satisfying.

I am trying to tell you that my disbelief in the existence of gods has absolutely nothing to do with who I am, how I think, how I make my personal choices, what I feel good and bad about, how I treat other people. All of those things are certainly informed by the many other beliefs that I certainly do have, but not by a non-belief in gods. I have many beliefs that inform my actions, as does everyone. But nothing about my life is actually informed by anything that I do not believe.

Oh, and thus I hope you see that you were in one sense correct...I don't lack beliefs, and in fact I have lots of them. They just don't happen to include anything like a deity busy whipping up worlds, or insisting on special diets, how to mutilate your children's genitals, or who you should hate because of their own beliefs.

I told you. I simply lack belief that you lack belief.

 

[atanu]

This is a somewhat lighthearted attempt to try and find common ground around the fringes of beliefs of both -
Turn on the captions if you cannot understand his accent
Fair warning - he does not answer the question in a straightforward way - but that is typical of the way he interacts - his goal as stated is to encourage self realization rather than provide answers - belief versus knowledge

The Hindu astika schools of thought span duality and monotheism all the way to atheism - and really allow for personal customization of belief. I think some of what this gentleman is referring to, comes from Samkhya

Any and all thoughts welcomed

Not at same time and on same subject.

 

[atanu]

A very long post, and one that seems to say we need to step back a bit. From what you write, I cannot understand how you think about "God" at all, so why don't we just try and de-muddy the waters on that? So, a few simple questions:

• Is the god you believe exists "personal" in any way...that is, has it an identity that it is itself aware of?
• Is the god you believe in in any way party to what happens in the universe that we, as humans, can perceive?
• Is the god you believe in interested in us, or does it care about what we do, or need our approval or worship?
• Can the god you believe exists change the laws of nature by pure volition?

That ought to do for now...

Very interesting questions. But, I will suggest that since god is an unknown, god be replaced with ‘self’ in all questions (including the third question). And I will request Evangelical to answer these.

 

[Windwalker]

A very long post, and one that seems to say we need to step back a bit.

Sure. That's a good idea. I'll happily clarify as much as is possible.

From what you write, I cannot understand how you think about "God" at all, so why don't we just try and de-muddy the waters on that? So, a few simple questions:

I'm not sure how "unmuddied" this is going to make things. I'll try my best, but unavoidably answering this is going to run into paradoxes. And paradoxes are pretty much not a friend to our minds that like things in terms of clear definitions. I'll give it a try though.

• Is the god you believe exists "personal" in any way...that is, has it an identity that it is itself aware of?

There is a quality of the nature of existence which is all encompassing, all embracing. All things are connected with each other in a seamless fabric of reality, which can only really be described in ineffable terms. This can be experienced as impersonal, and it can also be experienced as personal.

When I speak of "God", it is not some "entity" outside of one's own self. It is the deepest part of one's own self, as well as the deepest part of everything else outside one's self. (paradox alert). This "God" is the Source and Ground of all existence, of which we and everything else, "Live and move and have our being", to quote the Greeks.

It can be envisioned as a dieity form if one choose, and that texture and quality of the Ineffable may be found through that image. Or one can access that Ground of all Being, without that, which is the Buddhist path to the realization of that Divine Reality, as I like to call it. A personal deity form, is the Face we put upon the Infinite in order to see it from a dualistic perspective.

I'll see if I can't clarify what that means better as I continue.

• Is the god you believe in in any way party to what happens in the universe that we, as humans, can perceive?

I don't "believe in" God. That's the point of this thread. I know that there is a all-embracing Reality beyond just the one our dualistic mind separates out of it, seeing everything as "other" to each other, rather than an interpentrating Whole. I know this through direct experience. It is a lived reality.

This is why I say, and the guru in the video of the OP was saying too, that you move beyond beliefs, that God exists or does not exist, into actual knowledge. What is my experience, and that of most mystics, is that these images of God that our minds believed in, dissolve into vast, infinite Emptiness, or as other religions might term it Godhead, the Divine Nature, or Ultimate Reality, etc.

At this point, you have now moved beyond believing'ness into Knowledge. It can be understood in terms of theism, or it can be understood in terms of atheism, if you had to try to put it in dualitistic terms. This Reality, is nondual in nature, which means that it cannot be divided up in terms of God or Not-God.

Does all this have anything to do with what happens in our experience of the world or the universe? Of course. It's the paper upon with all the lines are drawn. Without that paper, no drawing can be seen, felt, tasted, or experienced in any fashion. The notes of a song cannot be recognized without the Silence between the notes.

• Is the god you believe in interested in us, or does it care about what we do, or need our approval or worship?

The god you are describing is a human dualistic personification of Ultimate Reality, envisioning it as outside of us to look to in hopes to connect with this Source within us and the world. Holding such an image in mind for many, can have the effect of putting you in touch with that Quality that runs through all of creation, what I would describe as Divine.

It's nature is that of Infinite Love, Infinite Awareness, and a long list of other qualities of an Absolute nature. Within the complex maze of our existential psyches, I'll term it here, from within us we may project, and I'll stress that work project, upon all of this that which we need to do for ourselves to unblock us from accessing that Divine Reality within us, through such things as the practice of gratitude, thanksgiving, etc. These are activities of Love, and the practice of them gets us in touch with that Love within ourselves, and we can "unite" with "God" in this way.

All of it is metaphors, visualization in order to experience an Absolute Reality that is beyond all of the images and beliefs. Religion and it's rites and practices are simply tools to help us. "God" is not an ego-based human that has needs. We have the needs.

• Can the god you believe exists change the laws of nature by pure volition?

I don't think of God in terms of the Old Testament. That's a very mythological image of the Divine. I do believe however, that the miraculous does happen. It's happening every second of every day, and we can see it when we can function at that level of Awareness. It's how all of reality is constructed, where everything affects everything.

None of that however translates in my thinking to some image of a god sitting on a cloud and sending a lightning bolt down to destroy an enemies chariots.

That ought to do for now...

I tried my best here to attempt to put this into words. While it may have clarified some of how I don't think about it, I'm not so sure that it maybe didn't muddy it more for you. It takes a shift in how we perceive reality, away from an either/or, this vs that dualistic reality. It becomes rather more a both/and reality. Hence, atheism and theism are both/and, in a nondual container.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Before we get into the meat of this, I want to address the framing of this as you have here. You lump religion, spiritual, and supernaturalism as all one thing. They really are not the same, and often are in conflict with one another.

I didn't necessarily mean to equate them, but what I was going for was comparing their bases of evidence, required mind-sets to accept certain things within those spheres of knowledge/ideas/etc.

But then aside from that, spirituality most definitely does not stand against "reality". It, to me, is very much what connects someone to reality. It grounds them. It is what defines being in touch with reality. It is lived experience, and the quality and texture of being in the world itself. That is what spirituality is, and theist and atheist alike share it in by virtue of being human. Spirituality is not "beliefs". It's Being.

Unfortunately, this all depends on how one defines "spirituality, which is an extremely nebulous term.

I would disagree with this on a number of points. Now while certain things in life are predictable, exhibiting consistent patterns which can be mapped out and formulated into predictable responses, most of reality is not so apparently well-ordered. While if you know the math you can predict where Jupiter in its orbit will be exactly 1000 years from today, no one can predict where their dog will be 5 minutes from now.

But this doesn't mean that a dog's actions are entirely unpredictable. And this is where I take issue. We can at least study a dog, and learn its motives... even on an individual basis - that is, animal by animal. Just the fact that there is something to actually measure/observe/study in these "less predictable" areas still puts us leaps and bounds beyond anything someone trying to learn something about the supernatural or "God" has at their disposal.

Only the most rudimentary forms of nature, like rocks and chemicals and anything else on the lowest rungs of the complexity ladder offer themselves to us this way. The rest of it is an order of increasing complexities and greater unpredictabilities. So, even with science as a tool, there is no such guarantee of expected outcomes either.

Again, this doesn't matter as much as that there is something there to be measured/predicted/observed/etc.

And religion tends to deal far more in the messy, fuzzy, murkey realms which tend to lay beyond the tools of our current sciences.

Restating an earlier point here - time after time after time it has been shown that the knowledge that religion has traditionally acted as a cheap stand-in for has been there to be discovered all along. Granted, there are areas where concrete "knowledge" probably can't be had - as you pointed out, knowing a "personality" inside and out doesn't really seem possible, and may not be. But there is not much gained in simply throwing up your hands and "giving it to God" so to speak.

That is one example which can test the faith one has in that system of thought. So is someone dying when a drug was supposed to make them get better.

There is a difference here that your analogy glosses over. In the case of person not responding to medication and still dying, even when the doctor said this should work, there are personal factors that are likely at play in the situation that caused the medication not to work for that person. My point being, usually, if not always, there is a reason or a cluster of reasons that something doesn't work when it normally does. We may not be able to discern the exact combination of attributes/properties of the situation that led to the failure of our "predicted" outcome to come to fruition, but that doesn't mean that something supernatural had a hand in any of it. A doctor is never going to look for a "supernatural" cause for an ailment, and a court is never going to accept supernatural claims as proof of guilt or innocence. These should be taken as powerful statements as to the validity of these supposed areas of thought.

So within the mythic system, the answer to unpredictable is built into it to help to keep the system consistent as a way to understand and cope with the messiness of reality. "God has a plan that you as a human can't understand. Have faith all will be well". You see how that as a system offers a functional framework?

I see only a framework for exactly what you said - "coping." But what if your goal is to try and prevent the "bad" situation from happening again? Where is there any sort of help/framework/productivity toward that goal in a "mythic system?" It is basically useless when put to that task. The only thing you have is that you are prepared to "cope" again the next time it happens. This also says something profound about those types of systems.

"At all times". This gets into some murky waters,

For predictable systems for which we do have concrete knowledge of cause/function, I insist that the knowledge was there at all times. For example - the boiling point of water under normal atmospheric conditions - or the fact that the boiling point of water can change based on atmospheric conditions. It's not just "sometimes when I put water over flame, it starts to bubble." The reaction was always there, ready to be observed, discovered, and then later utilized - regardless how "magical" anyone might have thought it was to begin with. And who can say that higher levels of "messiness" or those "murky waters" you mentioned aren't the same? That there aren't things you can discover that lay bare the processes behind them? Their causes, effects and most fundamental aspects. If we simply assume they can't be discovered then that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Much better to be open to the possibility that it isn't out of reach, and not accept that a sufficient explanation has already been found in "God" or "that's just the way it is."

In other words, just like mythic religion had to open to advancing knowledge, but failed to, so too our current systems of investigation into the natural world needs to open, and it is starting to somewhat.

But it cannot and should not open so wide that it accepts "knowledge" for which there is no evidentiary backing, and no method for observation or reproducibility. That simply can't happen. That is decidedly a huge step backward.

 

[Windwalker]

Sorry for the delayed response. Been too busy to spend the time I needed to respond.

Unfortunately, this all depends on how one defines "spirituality, which is an extremely nebulous term.

Describing most anything coming out of lived human experience can be vague as well. What exactly does someone mean when they use the word love? That can mean anything from a really excitable liking of something or someone, to a warm fuzzy tingling in the stomach, to an attachment to something you can value one day but not the next, to an attitude and philosophy of life that guides one's choices, to a state and condition of being itself, and anywhere in between on that spectrum.

The key to understanding what is meant is to listen to the context in which the person using that term is pointing to. Our language is not robust enough to deal with abstractions like this on that level. It's not a fault of the fact of spirituality, but rather a matter of a lack of adequate vocabularily. It falls upon us as the one hearing it being used to figure out from the context of the person speaking as to what they are pointing to. This is the nature of following along with metaphor and poetry.

While someone might say the "spiritual" is a place where disembodied entities bump into each other and try to talk to us between the realms, other clearly do not. Clearly you can tell enough that is not what I am saying, so that idea shouldn't be considered as part of the possible meaning as I am using it. I don't think saying it's "vague" allows someone an out. It is in fact pointing to something which can be rationally discussed on a certain level.

I like what was in that link I shared. I'm sure I could add more, but it generally is what I would agree with. Here it is again for reference: Link

1. Self-awareness: Knowing what I believe in and value, and what deeply motivates me.
2. Spontaneity: Living in and being responsive to the moment.
3. Being vision- and value-led: Acting from principles and deep beliefs, and living accordingly.
4. Holism: Seeing larger patterns, relationships, and connections; having a sense of belonging.
5. Compassion: Having the quality of "feeling-with" and deep empathy.
6. Celebration of diversity: Valuing other people for their differences, not despite them.
7. Field independence: Standing against the crowd and having one's own convictions.
8. Humility: Having the sense of being a player in a larger drama, of one's true place in the world.
9. Tendency to ask fundamental "Why?" questions: Needing to understand things and get to the bottom of them.
10. Ability to reframe: Standing back from a situation or problem and seeing the bigger picture or wider context.
11. Positive use of adversity: Learning and growing from mistakes, setbacks, and suffering.
12. Sense of vocation: Feeling called upon to serve, to give something back.

Those work well for enough for me. Let's stick with those in this conversation, and forget about the magical imaginations of what some others may mean by "spiritual".

Again, this doesn't matter as much as that there is something there to be measured/predicted/observed/etc.

First, there is a difference between quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data would be like the number of hairs on your head. Qualitative data would be like the softness of your cat. Both examples I borrowed from the link explaining the difference.

Using the list I just supplied addressing what is considered to indicators of a developed spirituality, those are all something that can be delineated, even though they are qualitative in nature. And based upon the presence of those as guiding principles and foundational motives of the spiritual person, you can make predictions of possible outcomes. There is no argument about this. And the measurement of it, is a qualitative one. You listen to the descriptions of the personal reporting them, weigh them against what others say, compare and contrast them, and create a map even if you wish.

This is what developmentalists are looking at in things like intelligence, reasoning, empathy, ego development, spiritual development, as other such qualitative things. They exist as actual things, even though they are not quantitative. They can be understood and looked at objectively as well, and alongside quantitative data. In other words, it's still actually real data.

Restating an earlier point here - time after time after time it has been shown that the knowledge that religion has traditionally acted as a cheap stand-in for has been there to be discovered all along.

Both yes and no. It depends what areas you are looking at. First, we need to tease apart what you are seeing in religion that doesn't fit with what is later discovered, and then ask if this is true in all religion, or is it part of some and not in others. In which case, then it's not "religion" but a particular approach to a particular thing within some religion some of the time. Correct?

What I believe you are pointing to are things like using mythological symbolism to try to explain things like natural phenomena. Examples would be, "We're having a drought because God is angry at us", or that humans were literally made out of literal dirt and literal spittel from God's literal mouth. These are simply the way the mythic-literal mind frames and conceives of reality. It is not something that defines what religion is, as there are great swaths of those within the same religions who do not think in these terms.

But when it comes to truths about the best ways to live one's lives to experience the greatest degrees of love, meaning, and fulfillment as a person, these tend to be timeless truths that are not replaced later on. They endure, and are considered timeless because they fit and work in any age, in any situation. "Love works no ill", is a truism. It is also a qualitative truth that has practical and predictable outcomes.

So bottom line, you cannot reduce religion to a mythic-literal mode of reasoning applied to the explanation of natural phenomena, which science clearly outpaces. Mythic-literal thought is considered a particular developmental stage, as James Fowler detailed in his research: Chart of James Fowler's Stages of Faith | psychologycharts.com

Granted, there are areas where concrete "knowledge" probably can't be had - as you pointed out, knowing a "personality" inside and out doesn't really seem possible, and may not be. But there is not much gained in simply throwing up your hands and "giving it to God" so to speak.

Well, what is meant by "giving it to God"? There is an actual, tangible, positive result that arises when one surrenders trying to "figure out" Reality, and actually just immerse oneself experientially in something. Think of it like trying to figure out the taste of an orange through research and data collection observed in those who tell you what oranges taste like, as opposed to just setting down all that research and picking up the damned orange and putting it in your mouth. The latter, will tell you exactly what an orange tastes like, without the need for rationality to try to tell you what it is. Right?

But again, I wish to emphasize, it depends who is saying that, and what they are trying to say. Are they trying to say that if you just "give it to God", then you don't have to worry about the Theory of Evolution? Then they truly aren't understanding what "surrender" means, and when it is and is not appropriate as a practice. "Giving it to God," or dissolving our efforts to try to figure out the nature of our own lived reality, is common in all advanced stages of spiritual practice. That is why it is considered transcendent knowledge. It transcends reason, while not doing violence to it, as you see in the prerational mythic-literal approaches to faith.

There is a difference here that your analogy glosses over. In the case of person not responding to medication and still dying, even when the doctor said this should work, there are personal factors that are likely at play in the situation that caused the medication not to work for that person.

I don't mean to gloss over anything. It's probably more a matter of trying to not type out every possible thing that might be questioned later on. My posts are pretty packed already. Yes, this is true and I agree, but my point was when someone places faith in something, depending on how they hold that believe, the failure of something they believed in can lead to a crisis of faith. This is as true of the person believing the medicine would cure them, as it is to the person who believed religion would tell the the truth but it failed to deliver for them.

How many ExChristians for instance are so happy now that they have found science to tell them the truth after discovering in their words, that "Religion was all made of BS"? Was it religion, or how they were, and also currently are, approaching finding truth itself? I argue it's the latter, not the former. It's simply the switching out of faith in one object for faith in another. But it's the same modus operandi at play. When that system exhausts the limits of truth for that person, then off they go hopping to the next, "I'm so glad I've found the real truth now" field to explore. Until they realize the futility of such a search.

(Continued in next post.....)

 

[Windwalker]

(Continued from previous post)

My point being, usually, if not always, there is a reason or a cluster of reasons that something doesn't work when it normally does. We may not be able to discern the exact combination of attributes/properties of the situation that led to the failure of our "predicted" outcome to come to fruition, but that doesn't mean that something supernatural had a hand in any of it.

Well, to a reductionist an holistic systems approach is considered "supernatural", because it's not quantitative enough for them. One can approach knowledge at a higher, more complex and nuanced level without falling into prerational "God did it" explanations. But to some, those are too "fuzzy" and "vague" to satisfy the way their brains are choosing to frame truth and reality to them. If they put too much faith in it a reductionist reality, for instance, they end up in as much dissociation with reason as a theist does in rejecting evolution.

A doctor is never going to look for a "supernatural" cause for an ailment, and a court is never going to accept supernatural claims as proof of guilt or innocence. These should be taken as powerful statements as to the validity of these supposed areas of thought.

But none of what I am talking about or proposing is suggesting supernaturalism. That would suggest I'm in favor of prerational systems of thought. That's not the case for me.

I see only a framework for exactly what you said - "coping." But what if your goal is to try and prevent the "bad" situation from happening again?

That is obviously built into the mythic system as well. The proof of that alone without looking at specific examples is that is has operated successfully in human history for ages in order to keep social systems humming along. If not, they would have devolved into chaos and torn themselves apart. They have an internal consistency to them which provides a functional framework in all three main areas of human life: "Truth, Goodness and Beauty," or Epistemology, Morality and Aesthetics, the Transcendentals if you want to call it that.

As one example of preventing bad things from happening, think of it's systems of laws that threaten judgmentment against violations of codes of conduct. This falls under the "Goodness" category or that of ethics and morality. While the system may seem primitive to us today, it nonetheless provided a functional system that kept things together for thousands of years. "It's all BS" cannot do that. It truly doesn't matter whether or not they are logical or appropriate to us today. They are still a functional system, not "crap", as some like to simply dismiss them without careful consideration.

Where is there any sort of help/framework/productivity toward that goal in a "mythic system?"

One just needs to read the OT. There are a great many rewards and punishments spelled out on its pages. It has motivated thousands of years worth of generations to follow the system. People don't follow what doesn't work. Why would they? Would you keeping trying to drink water with a slotted spoon? Would you keep a hammer around that didn't stay attached to the handle, or a screwdriver the tip was broken off of?

It is basically useless when put to that task. The only thing you have is that you are prepared to "cope" again the next time it happens. This also says something profound about those types of systems.

You'd have to give an example where you see it as useless to the task? Obviously to be kept around and used as long as it has, it has usefulness. And here is my point, it becomes useless when the task it is being asked to perform is beyond its capability. And that may be what you are keying in on. But that does not dismiss it's actual utility that has been proven useful prior to this new task.

Yes, certain of these tools need to be replaced because the tasks are too challenging for it. Mythic religion in a modern age, struggles to be the one-stop tool box it used to be. No argument there. It needs to be modernized a bit, to say the least.

For predictable systems for which we do have concrete knowledge of cause/function, I insist that the knowledge was there at all times. For example - the boiling point of water under normal atmospheric conditions - or the fact that the boiling point of water can change based on atmospheric conditions.
It's not just "sometimes when I put water over flame, it starts to bubble." The reaction was always there, ready to be observed, discovered, and then later utilized - regardless how "magical" anyone might have thought it was to begin with.

But here is the magical thing. The scientific view of "what it is" is just as much a view as the mythic view was. It provided functionality for them, however they imagined the cause of water boiling was, as it is to the modern age person who understands molecular properties. The scientific view is a model of reality, just as much as the mythic view is a model of reality. They are both models. And that is the point.

One can argue one's model is "better", but that doesn't make it not a model. There are many ways to look at and talk about the exact same thing. If the model is useful to the need in hand, then it is a functional tool, or "truth" to the one believing in and using it. "Facticity" is a matter of functional truth. The actual reality of a thing, is frankly beyond anything our thinking minds can model out. There is a reason for this, I could explain if you wish.

And who can say that higher levels of "messiness" or those "murky waters" you mentioned aren't the same? That there aren't things you can discover that lay bare the processes behind them?

I believe we can, but not when trying a reductionist approach. You need to shift away from this into the complexity sciences where you are dealing with things like systems theory, emergentism, and such. As one example. I believe we have to shift away from a "hard science" approach, to the so-called "soft sciences".

There is this unrealistic belief that because science is so successful using physics studying rocks, that we can apply the same to the whole of reality. That's an outdated, outmoded belief, yet still popular in some circles, especially in the laity who like the idea of some concrete, fixed, static, immutable, everlasting law of things that tells us the Answer with a capital A.

I consider this a holdover of mythic thought, where God and Divine Authority promised such to us. Since religion couldn't go the distance for us to this end, Science now will. It's still mythic thought, yet operating "scientifically", rather than "scripturally". The hoped for goal is the same.

Their causes, effects and most fundamental aspects.

Direct cause and effect relationships gives way to holistic systems, when the world is viewed as systems and systems of systems within systems. Linear causality is a brain-trick, a slice of time out of a grand holistic whole. So, as I pointed to before elsewhere, we are still only talking models of reality, not reality itself. Believing one's model of reality is the truth of Reality itself, is the same with every mythology about the world. A linear worldview, is a mythology.

If we simply assume they can't be discovered then that is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

No. What I am suggesting is by all means seeks to discover truths. But realize that you haven't found the truth of the thing you are looking at as it is. You have simply found a more descriptive language to find within that particular window, or worldview you are looking out through. And that is the truth of all perceptions looking at Reality. They are all created mental models. And when something doesn't align with that perspective, it is discarded. In reality, you aren't affirming reality. You are affirming that perspective's view of Reality.

Much better to be open to the possibility that it isn't out of reach, and not accept that a sufficient explanation has already been found in "God" or "that's just the way it is."

I agree with this. The same thing can be said of someone who is stuck in their "sciency" view of reality. We need to not let even our own frameworks of truth and reality restrict us, as they all invariably will at some point in their lifetime of usefulness to us.

But it cannot and should not open so wide that it accepts "knowledge" for which there is no evidentiary backing, and no method for observation or reproducibility. That simply can't happen. That is decidedly a huge step backward.

I concur completely. It should withstand the rigors of the worldview you are currently seeing reality through. Rationality is a necessary positive for the whole structure of greater and greater awakening of the human mind. It is a stage of development. To deny or repress this in order to preserve one's current level of development, leads to problems.

As far as religion and the pursuit of a spiritual life, to repress reason is like keeping one's leg in a cast forever. It does not lead to freedom of movement, which a spiritual life is all about. Anti-rationality in religion, is anti-spiritual as well. And you could add that same in reverse, Anti-spirituality in Science and Reason, is anti-rational. If it doesn't try to understand at all, it's no different than the Christian who buries his head in the sands of faith.