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Can We Imagine Spirituality Without Religion?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Howard Is
Lucky Mud
I have no need to imagine that. Perhaps it was my mother’s influence, perhaps I was born this way, but what you suggest is natural for me.
I can expand on that if you wish.
We are going to have to be very flexible re what is spiritual though, or defining the term and experience could dominate the thread.
Erebus
Well-Known Member
Yes... probably.
Religion is a more structured and often community focused approach to a variety of concepts including spirituality. The belief in a spiritual world almost certainly came about prior to the existence of any organised religion. While this is a difficult one to definitively prove, it's generally believed that the earliest ancestors of what we'd now term religions stem from early animism and nature worship. If this is true, then there would have necessarily been a moment in which somebody conceived of these notions prior to sharing them.
If you want to get more controversial, it's also possible that this animistic approach is at least somewhat instinctive. I've seen this hypothesis suggested on occasion but couldn't tell you how solid its foundation is. Nonetheless, if this is true (or even true of some people) then it would suggest that there's a concept of spirituality that can exist independently of cultural norms and that would be codified by religion rather than created by it.
With how you are defining the terms?
No.
There is no human who lacks culturally transmitted beliefs that will invariably inform one's belief in and reference for a spiritual world or reality.
No.
There is no human who lacks culturally transmitted beliefs that will invariably inform one's belief in and reference for a spiritual world or reality.
To answer your exact question: yes, we certainly can, and I assume that it happens fairly often and spontaneously.
But it takes a considerable amount of cultural isolation for that to happen. And I am not sure that I agree with those definitions for the words.
Thief
Rogue Theologian
well.....I don't have a religion
but I lean to say religion has dogmatic head nodding
I believe in the Spirit of God
the sons of God are spirit
and we become spirit as we learn this life.....passing into spirit
Yes. There are a growing number of "spiritual but not religious" folk. But this idea was present even hundreds of years ago. For example, Abu Said said something close to this albeit using different language.
Until college and minaret have crumbled
This holy work of ours will not be done.
Until faith becomes rejection
And rejection becomes belief
There will be no true believer.
Howard Is
Lucky Mud
Because if religion - a culturally transmitted belief- is required, we have a circular reasoning problem.
Who started the culturally transmitted belief ? If the belief had any kind of validity, some individual first realised it without religion.
Having asked that question, some research I was doing yesterday comes to mind. It was about the origins of Daoism, and the Wikipedia article I read stated that -
“According to the sinologists and historians Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-djen, some early Daoists adapted censers for the religious and spiritual use of cannabis. The c. 570 Daoist encyclopedia Wushang Biyao (無上秘要 "Supreme Secret Essentials") recorded adding cannabis into ritual censers, and ...
...they suggest Yang Xi (330-c. 386), who wrote the Shangqing scriptures during alleged visitations by Daoist xian, was "aided almost certainly by cannabis" (1974: 150-151).”
Everywhere I look, it’s the same story. Kykeon in Ancient Greece, soma in India, ayahuasca in South America, the Essenes use of amanita muscaria mushrooms, etc etc.
Of course, drugs are exogenous triggers of specific neuroreceptors, which to me implies the likelihood of endogenous triggers.
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Howard Is
Lucky Mud
The conceptual frameworks inevitably acquired will affect a person’s cognition, but I don’t see that as an insurmountable barrier to spiritual life.
From my perspective, spiritual life is much more than conditioned cognitive patterns.
I did note that you said “With how you are defining the terms...”, so perhaps that is the issue.
The Reverend Bob
Fart Machine and Beastmaster
I agree. But as we grow, we can become more spiritual and less religious
Audie
Veteran Member
Our old pal Einstein talked of that.
Personally, I think "religion" just messes
with a person's chance of connecting.
Audie
Veteran Member
nonsense
Audie
Veteran Member
This may be a different thread-topic but I was riding
bicycle this along the East river, and thinking a bit-
Audie talks to herself thus-
Maybe a person cannot really understand spirituality,
if they have no grasp of science....
Our friends who live in a fantasy world like
Christian fundamentalism, what kind of real
spirituality could that possibly have?
Surely spirituality needs something besides
illusion and self deception.
If they understood physics, their world
would evapourate. Then what?
But what about you, Audie-girl? You dont
even know what "spiritual" is. You talk
about, often enough laugh at the
scientific illiteracy of of some who claim
to be "spiritual".
What about you, Audie? If "spirituality"
is anything more than woo woo, you are
spiritually illiterate. Aren't you as busy
denying and evading spiritual matters
as the most moth eaten creationist is,
ducking and dodging science?
The fact that you even say "if" it is
not just woo woo...!
What was it that great men like Einstein
saw, when it all came together and they
were, what? A transcendental experience,
a glimpse of an infinite mystery!
What is that about? Can anyone get there
with "religion" ignorant of the physical world,
or, with the most sophisticated education in
the the physical world, yet blind to the spiritual?
Not being much of a thinker, I didnt get past that.
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Data on religiosity across different age ranges disagrees with you. Regardless of how those terms are defined, I surmise that would depend on the person anyway.
Personally, I find the word "spiritual" useless. I do not use it, and I do not distinguish between "spiritual" and "religious" in no small part because the alleged distinction between the two hinges upon Abrahamic religious norms that do not apply to me anyway.
Seems to me the 'spiritual but not religious' types are on the ascendancy at this point in our culture. So, 'Yes' is my answer.
What a world without i believes i dont believes and i am agnostics!? dimwits? A world where qualities are primary quantification is mere childern playing nothing more?
Paradise but wow that would be rather like a miracle if you asked us.the brain. A whole world of properly functioning human brains no me no i... just experience and speak in alignment to that?
Nope cant imagine that is way beyond what we the brain can imagine. Pay no attention to the wizard davidt way over there he is an idiot. We are running the show he is our brain puppet. "Your eyes I" give you away.