SPIRITUALITY AND PANTHEISM

By Nelson Jones


Modern Britain is "spiritual" but not religious. That's the headline finding of an opinion poll, and accompanying report, released this week by the Christian think-tank Theos. The ComRes poll - which confirms a trend identified in several previous surveys - found that well over half those questioned (59%) said that they believed in some kind of spiritual being or essence. There were substantial, though minority, levels of belief in specific concepts such as spirts, angels and "a universal life force", whatever that is. One for the Jedis, perhaps.

Even a third of people who described themselves as non-religious were prepared to own up to having some such ideas, while a mere 13% - and only a quarter of the non-religious - agreed with the statement that "humans are purely material beings with no spiritual element". And more than three-quarters of the survey agreed that "there are things that we cannot simply explain through science or any other means".

Theos seems to be impressed by the apparently limited appeal of scientific materialism, seeing in it evidence that hardline atheism of the Richard Dawkins variety has little popular appeal, despite the high media profile it has garnered in recent years. Its director, Elizabeth Oldfield, writes that it is "notable is that those same voices have not managed to convince us that humans are purely material beings, with no spiritual element". The implication is that there's a huge untapped reservoir of spiritual longing and that it would be wrong to attribute the decline in religiosity in this country, stretching back decades, to a spread in actual unbelief.

Yet it's hard to see much comfort in these figures for the future of religion. To return to the headline figure, the 77% who believed that some things couldn't be explained "through science or any other means." Any other means, presumably, includes religion itself. And even many scientists doubt that science is close to explaining some natural phenomena. Consciousness, for example, is often called the "hard problem" because even in the age of MRI scanners it remains profoundly elusive. A sense that life has mysteries, that there are things - love, for example - that will always remain beyond a reductive scientific explanation, doesn't necessarily make someone religious. The poll found quite low levels of belief in more specifically religious concepts: a mere 13% believed in Hell (Heaven was twice as popular, implying a national spirituality skewed towards the feelgood), while a quarter believed in angels and around a third in life after death.

Take the findings about the power of prayer. An equally small proportion (17%) believed that prayer could "bring about change for the person or situation you are praying for" as believed that prayer had no effect whatsoever. By far the most popular view was that prayer "makes you feel more at peace". Such an idea of prayer as a kind of therapy is of course at least as compatible with atheism as it is with religious conviction.

It's wrong, I think, to equate the kind of nebulous "spirituality" that surveys such as this latest one invariably discover with either a yearning for religion or as a debased survival of it (as in the famous remark attributed to GK Chesterton that when people stop believing in God they will believe in anything). Organised religion is at least as much a form of communal belonging as it is a vehicle for private spiritual fulfilment. Its specific doctrines and often arbitrary codes of conduct, to say nothing of its claim to pronounce on matters of private and public morality, have very little to do with such basic questions as the existence of God or whether there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by Richard Dawkins. "Spirituality" may often take a religious form or employ language that we think of as religious, but it makes more sense to think of it as being just part of the human condition - even if a minority of people are indifferent or positively hostile towards it.

Another point is that words like "spirituality", and even "God", are infinitely flexible, capable of accommodating everything from the most devout religious belief to purely scientific wonder at the beauties of the cosmos. The other day, Oprah Winfrey told an atheist guest on her show who had spoken in such terms that if she believed in "the awe and the wonder, and the mystery, then that is what God is" and "I don't call you an atheist." But the guest, Diana Nyad, responded that it was quite possible to have a spiritual sense without God; "there’s spirituality because we human beings, we animals, we plants and maybe even the ocean and the stars, we all live with something that is cherished and we feel the treasure of it."

Even Richard Dawkins is prone to making similar declarations. In The God Delusion, for example, he wrote that "a quasi-mystical response to nature and the universe is common among scientists and rationalists. It has no connection with supernatural belief." For many people of course there is a natural connection, but the Theos survey, like others, would imply that it is often quite weak.
An interesting question is the extent to which "spiritual" ideas impact on people's lives in modern Britain. The Theos survey discovered that 40% of the sample (and a small majority of women) had at some time engaged in a "New Age" activity - for example, a Tarot card reading or a Reiki healing session. These activities seem to be equally popular with those who describe themselves as religious and those who do not, which may trouble more orthodox members of the clergy. But these findings don't prove that spiritual matters questions are more than peripheral to most people's day-to-day existence, most of the time - or that they think much about them when they aren't answering loaded questions from pollsters.

We could well, in fact, be looking at the kind of "benign indifference" that Kate Fox, in her bestselling Watching the English, identified as the default national response to matters of spirituality and religion. Theos can portray their findings as a challenge to the New Atheists, imagining that they are on a mission to convert a naively believing world to godless materialism (as a minority of them, perhaps, are). But if anything it's even worse news for traditional religion. It seems that the churches have shed their congregations despite the fact that atheist materialism remains a minority taste. What this suggests is that much of religion's former success derived from social convention rather than inherent human spirituality, which can survive anything, including disbelief in God.

This post contains a powerful message. It's time this message went viral. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com

Venitis Law of Faith: Faith is retarded thinking that keeps you away from God.  You have to become faithless, in order to start your journey to God!  You have to discover God your own way without intermediaries. God's truth should replace faith.  You might discover that God is the universe!

Venitis Law of Religion: Religion is spiritual slavery. Church is the business of religion. Religious monopoly turns bishops to ayatollahs, and churches to Sodom and Gomorrah.  Spirituality, pantheism, and metaphysics should replace religion. Most scientists are pantheists!

The Occidental democratic practice of singling out religious liberty for special treatment under the law is not in sync with the world we live in today. The current status quo is predicated on a fundamental inequality.  For example, a boy might be permitted to carry a dagger to school as part of his Sikh religion, but the same dagger would not be allowed if it were part of a family tradition. Namely, your claim of conscience counts if it is based in religion. My claim of conscience doesn’t count if it is not based in religion. That is a pernicious and indefensible inequality in the existing legal regime.

 

The origins of religious toleration can be traced back hundreds of years to the European wars of religion. That turmoil gave way to greater acceptance of diverse religions, an important achievement of Western democracies.  However, Occident’s preferential treatment for religious toleration is not in step with changing times. While we understand the historical reasons why our constitution singled out religion and religious liberty 200-plus years ago, in the world we live in today, you don’t have to be religious in order to have a conscience.

 

While some might wish there was a way to grant exemptions to all claims of conscience, this would lead to almost insurmountable practical problems. It would be tantamount to legalizing civil disobedience.  While courts can verify a person’s involvement in a religion and that religion’s particular beliefs, non-religious claims would be much more difficult to verify. We don’t have a way to peer into a man’s soul to see if his claim of conscience is really a legitimate claim of conscience.

 

Courts still should monitor for laws that arise from intolerance — for example France’s ban on headscarves worn by Muslim women as an example. But avoiding laws motivated by intolerance is different from granting special religious exemptions from neutral laws. Such special treatment for religion often defeats society’s promotion of the general welfare. If we start carving out exemptions, we defeat the purposes of those legitimate objectives.

Meme is a cultural invention that passes from one mind to another and thrives, or declines, like a gene.  Memetics explores the concepts and transmission of memes in a similar fashion to genetics.  A meme's success is due to its contribution to the effectiveness of its host.  Memeplex, like the genetic code, is a set of ideas that reinforce each other. Religion is a memeplex.

 

 

 

Religions, scams, and hoaxes succeed because they exploit powerful psychological processes. These processes are the very ones that have enabled humans to survive and create art and technology, but also transform Homo Sapiens into Homo Suckers!  30% of people are pantheists, 25% Christians, 20% Muslims, 14% Hindus, 7% Buddhists, and 1% Jews.

Albert Einstein says:The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can for me change this.  For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything chosen about them.

Because religions claim divine favor for themselves, over and against other groups, this sense of righteousness leads to violence because conflicting claims to superiority, based on unverifiable appeals to God, cannot be adjudicated objectively. Religions do tremendous harm to society by using violence to promote their goals, in ways that are endorsed and exploited by their leaders. Abrahamic Religions are inherently violent because of an exclusivism that inevitably fosters violence against those that are considered outsiders.  Abrahamic legacy is actually genocidal in nature.

Spirituality is the search for an ultimate reality, a transcendent dimension of the world, an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his being, or the deepest values and meanings by which people live. Spirituality is often experienced as a source of inspiration or orientation in life. It encompasses belief in immaterial realities or experiences of the immanent or transcendent nature of the world. Spirituality is more personalized, less structured, more open to new ideas, and more pluralistic than religion.    

Spirituality is not related to religion. Spirituality and religion lock horns!  Many people define themselves as spiritual but not religious. Spirituals believe in the existence of many different spiritual paths, emphasizing the importance of finding one's own individual path to spirituality. Most people identify themselves as spiritual but not religious. Religion is a memeplex organized by churches, whereas spirituality is defined as an internal individual search.

Spirituality exists wherever we struggle with the issues of how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things. This is true when our questions never give way to specific answers or give rise to specific practices such as prayer or meditation. We encounter spiritual issues every time we wonder where the universe comes from, why we are here, or what happens when we die. We also become spiritual when we become moved by values such as beauty, love, or creativity that seem to reveal a meaning or power beyond our visible world. An idea or practice is spiritual when it reveals our personal desire to establish a felt-relationship with the deepest meanings or powers governing life.

God is a vision of the highest values of truth, justice, love, and goodness toward which we strive. In this sense, God is a standard against which to measure ourselves and our achievements. God reminds us of the relativity and limitations of our own ideas. God serves as a corrective to our biases and a basis for critical reflection. By bringing together our highest ideals in a single symbol, God provides a focus for personal devotion or communal worship. 

We experience God as love, light, power, and wisdom. The God we pray to is both transcendent and immanent, a part of us but also greater than us. Sometimes we experience God as a light that comes to us in the darkness. This light emanates intense love and compassion and leaves us feeling joyous and connected to all of creation. Other times, we simply hear God's guidance as thoughts. It seems similar to a nudge or sometimes a whisper. This guidance usually comes suddenly and clearly, and it can arrive while we are deep in prayer or simply going about our business of the day.

Many Churches are dens of murderers, because those judged guilty of heresy incurred harsh penalties including death by fire.  Religions are on the way to eventually turning into mere historical curiosities. The central conclusion about religion has to be that it has not made any lasting impact on human ethics, the primary engine for its existence. In this respect alone, religion has failed dismally.

Now some Churches have issued restrictions to human reproduction and stem cell research. Many religions have concerns about where scientific research is going and the risk it is posing to their beliefs. In the long run these restrictions will not be effective. There can be no doubt that science will eventually triumph.

Every attempt to reconcile religion with science and technology is a virtually unattainable goal.  A discouragingly futile effort to achieve consistency between science and religion is broadly ongoing today. A dominant factor is individuals’ repeated but failed attempts to seek at least a rational link between religion and ethics. Ethics is a major factor in science but plays no discernible role in technology. Ethics consists of wise guides for human behavior that are vitally important to civilizing pursuits. They ensure the survival and prosperity of the human society. By contrast, religious precepts and prohibitions usually impose a hostile burden on outsiders and infidels who reject adherence to traditional and ancient norms, most of which long ago reached obsolescence.

Religion is incapable of granting believers the thought that there may perhaps be errors in its tenets that might contradict any part of the platform on which they stand.  H.L. Mencken witheringly summarized how science could overcome the limitations of theology and autocracy: Every time the scientists take another fort from the theologians and the politicians there is genuine human progress.

Pantheism is the belief that everything composes an all-encompassing immanent God and the universe is identical with divinity.  Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal god. Pantheism was popularized in the modern era as both a theology and philosophy based on the work of the seventieth century philosopher Baruch Spinoza.   Einstein says:  We followers of Spinoza see God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul as it reveals itself in man and animals.  I do not believe in a personal God, and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.