What is spirituality?

Originally posted by googlefudge
If you redefine it to simply mean that one sometimes feels awe or wonder, or apparently just that a person is thinking... then I say we already have words that mean that.

Your characterization of what I have laid out is a poor imitation of what I actually said.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I do not agree with this definition of 'spirituality', if for not other reason than it makes the
term almost meaningless, as almost anything can now be labelled spiritual.

I would say that to continue to hold meaning as a word, spirituality needs to retain some link
to the supernatural.

If you redefine it to simply mean that one sometimes feels ...[text shortened]... apparently just that
a person is thinking... then I say we already have words that mean that.

I would say that to continue to hold meaning as a word, spirituality needs to retain some link to the supernatural.

I don't think that is correct, but I agree that FMF and Robbies definitions seem too wide.

Originally posted by FMF
Your characterization of what I have laid out is a poor imitation of what I actually said.

I was definitely exaggerating, but that's what it looked like you are saying to me.
If that isn't what you meant then I am not grasping what you are saying.

Originally posted by DeepThought

I would say that to continue to hold meaning as a word, spirituality needs to retain some link to the supernatural.

I don't think that is correct, but I agree that FMF and Robbies definitions seem too wide.

Well then we need an agreed instance of spirituality that does not include the supernatural.

I can't currently think of any.

Originally posted by googlefudge
I was definitely exaggerating, but that's what it looked like you are saying to me.
If that isn't what you meant then I am not grasping what you are saying.

It was what it looked like to you AND you were exaggerating? Which is it to be? 😕

Originally posted by FMF
We have words like religiosity, theism and superstition.

True, but those words again don't mean the same thing [although, again, they may well overlap].

Theism is specific to belief in gods, as opposed to any other supernatural beliefs.

Superstition doesn't always apply to the supernatural. For example: I watched a program where they
were training dogs in the USA to be afraid of rattlesnakes, as without training they often run up to them
and get bitten. So the trainer fits the dog with an electric shock collar and then the owner walks the dog
towards snakes that have been placed in cages [in a field]. At first the dog is really curious about the
snakes and eagerly heads towards the cage but when it gets close [and the snake makes a fake strike]
the trainer shocks the dog with the collar. After a few goes the dog doesn't want to go anywhere near the
snakes because it now thinks that going near snakes causes painful shocks.

That is a superstition, but it has nothing supernatural about it. horses can do something similar, I had a
relative who had a horse that got stung by a bee/wasp while looking at a dandelion. Forever after that it would
freak out any time it got near dandelions because it associated the dandelion with the sting.
Again that's a superstition, but nothing supernatural is going on.

And I don't think that superstition is necessary for having a 'spiritual' experience. At least not definitionally.

And religiosity is again talking about a specific set of ideas that might overlap but are decidedly distinct from
spirituality.

I am not arguing that [say] awe and wonder are not feelings that are associated with spirituality.
But there is something else going on in a 'spiritual' experience in addition to [or instead of] awe and wonder
in a spiritual experience.

Originally posted by FMF
It was what it looked like to you AND you were exaggerating? Which is it to be? 😕

I was exaggerating what it looked like [to me], so both.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Well then we need an agreed instance of spirituality that does not include the supernatural.

I can't currently think of any.

How about "Concerning that which is lacking material body, form, or substance" and/or "Concerned with or affecting the human spirit"?

Originally posted by FMF
How about "Concerning that which is lacking material body, form, or substance" and/or "Concerned with or affecting the human spirit"?

"Concerning that which is lacking material body, form, or substance"

Well I have no idea what that means.
What is an experience that is "Concerning that which is lacking material body, form, or substance"?
Because that could be an abstract experience. Maths is abstract, pretty sure it's not spiritual though.

"Concerned with or affecting the human spirit"

Well this is where I get the "it now just applies to anything" vibe.

Because the way you defined 'human spirit' just about anything we do could qualify.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Because the way you defined 'human spirit' just about anything we do could qualify.

Well that would be because all the things we are capable of on the abstract levels I have mentioned ~ the faculties, the imagination, the behaviour, the impact on others, even the proclivity for superstition, all in combination ~ are what constitute human spirit.

Originally posted by FMF
Well that would be because all the things we are capable of on the abstract levels I have mentioned ~ the faculties, the imagination, the behaviour, the impact on others, even the proclivity for superstition, all in combination ~ are what constitute human spirit.

Which brings me back to "you're defining spirituality and spiritual experience such that anything
could be spiritual and thus the word ceases to have any meaning."

Originally posted by FMF
I am aware of your ideology. But you have to delve into Hebrew mythology to make your religionist case - which is your prerogative, of course. I suspect that DeepThought might be more interested in a discussion on spirituality in a broader, maybe more universal sense, rather than technocratic screeds pertaining to one of the major retail religions and its off-the-shelf curiosity-ending packages of explanations and solutions. 😉

Actually it is Greek Mythology. They believed many such things. They also had a great influence over Christianity. As they merged into the church and culture at the time, they swayed Christian thought into "life after death", every one has an "eternal soul", Tartarus (hell), Trinitarian doctrine, etc.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Which brings me back to "you're defining spirituality and spiritual experience such that anything
could be spiritual and thus the word ceases to have any meaning."

I think my human spirit definition of spirituality lays a sound foundation for an understanding of the human condition and enables explanations to be found for why some people, through their capacity for abstraction and exercise of their unique personhood, arrive at things like humanism and atheism, while others - with more or less the same human spiritual attributes (replete with faculties, potentials and personhood) arrive at things like self declarations of immortality, religiosity, female genital mutilation believing in reincarnation and the like.

I think spirituality seen as a function of the human spirit can act as a prism through which to look at the diverse outcomes of our embrace of that which is lacking material body, form, or substance - and as varied and contrasting as those outcomes may be, they are all rooted in our common humanity.

Originally posted by FMF
I think my human spirit definition of spirituality lays a sound foundation for an understanding of the human condition and enables explanations to be found for why some people, through their capacity for abstraction and exercise of their unique personhood, arrive at things like humanism and atheism, while others - with more or less the same human spiritual attri ...[text shortened]... as varied and contrasting as those outcomes may be, they are all rooted in our common humanity.

I agree.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Which brings me back to "you're defining spirituality and spiritual experience such that anything
could be spiritual and thus the word ceases to have any meaning."

Your comment is demonstrably false, our minds filter out what is essential and what is non essential and thus not every experience has spiritual meaning although we are conscious of it.