Quote:
Originally Posted by u crank
(on spirituality)
Agree. Completely.
(on religion)
Disagree, with certain reservations. Dogmatic religious beliefs are certainly antagonistic but the list of scientists who held/hold religious/spiritual beliefs is extensive. The two fields are not mutually exclusive but rather somewhat different disciplines. Any attempt to explain a scientific theory with purely religious dogma is a mistake. In my opinion. Spirituality on the other hand is a personal quest that basically sets all other opinions aside. Doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. It's too personal for that.
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To me you sound confused there, because you try to work around this difference that I made when keeping spirituality and religion, as terms, and thus end with trying to see religion and science as less mutually exclusive as they are. If using my "definitions" of the terms, as I explained them in order to be able to call two different concepts by a simple name, then you should see that you cannot have it all at the same time. The scientists you refer to, I also divide into two groups. There are those religious scientist, and since they are religious, they try to put faith and belief beside knowledge, reason and scientific methodology - corrupting all the three latter that way. On the other hands, guys like Heisenberg or Einstein in my book are not to be called religious, but sprititual. None of the two believed in simple superstitious explanations, or deities, nevertheless they stood in awe before the universe, realising that there is more to it and to themselves than they could ever know, but wanted to know.
To me, as I explained both terms, spirituality and religiosity are mutually exlcusive. You cannot be relgious AND spritial at the same time. But since we are mortal and sooner or later reaölsie that our time is limited, we start to ask those big questions. Therefore I would say that man is a sportual being by birth adn essenmce, and even cannot escape to be that. I would just hope he would stop trying so hard to be religious. Many people claim that to be a win. To me, it is a loss of a natural, inbuild quality that we have, due to our ability to be intelligent more or less, self-aware, and to reflect about ourselves and the cosmic context we are embedded in, may it be for our better or our worse. The more spirutual you are, the more you are a heretic to relgious dogmas. The more religious and believing you are, the less you want to know yourself by own experience, the less spiritual you are. You cannot be both. Hence my statement that science and spirituality can come together, but not science and religion, and also not religion and spirituality.
Sounds counter-intuitive, because many people do not draw that difference between what I call spiritual and what I call religious, and think of both as just one and the same. But I think that is a mistake, and that difference is vital and utmost important.
For the same reason, I have come to label myself - when I got asked occasionally - not as an atheist, but as a "
spiritual atheist". And I knew many anti-religious but nevertheless spiritually-feeling atheists in my life as well. I think the difference I make is less rare and less exotic as it may sound. When doing some voluntary counseling job myself long time ago, I often had to deal with people who also refused dogmas and religion and tradition, nevertheless were sometimes desperate about trying to find a convincing meaning in life again. You know, it can happen that there rises this existential hunger for meaning in man, and when it cannot be tamed, then it can push man into deep desperation, and even clinical depression. Man needs a meaning in life, whatever it may be. For some, religious dogmas are good enough, but for others who dig deeper and are not easily to be satisfied with pre-produced answers, that is not good enough. They want more, and thus they become - necessarily - heretics. That can be good for their soul, but since it is a threat to the cult of their social environment, it also can be bad for their bodies - when they are being dragged to a stake to burn them, that is. Religions are a formidable excuse to turn out the worst in man, and they have a splendid historic record of violence and brutality carried out in their name, they breed supremacism to the outside and submission to the inside of a society, and poison human minds with tunnel-view syndrom, hate and intolerance. But truly spiritual people you will seek in vein in such historic recordings.
Selbsterkenntnis just does not serve well as an excuse for trying to submit the outer world.
So let's keep the reason and logic of the scientific mind and religion separate, therefore, for the first is the natural enemy to disclose the irrationality in the latter - something which the latter never will forgive the first. These two must be enemies, and no way there is that I would want it any different.