ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

I do wish there were another term that didn't have the silly new age associations of "spirit" or the medieval associations of "soul" or weird psychological associations of "psyche" but still managed to convey the same concept. I suppose it's impossible because it is such a heavily imbued concept to start with - and how at odds it is with the current vogue for strict Materialism that has dominated thinking for the past century or so.

Like I said if you're not aware of James Hillman's work - he's some kind of Post Jungian I guess - he makes interesting play with "soul", "spirit" and "psyche" and manages to work in an area where they are not straight metaphors, not religious but not strictly material either. He can come across a bit New Age-y maybe at times but I get a sense of real rigorous thinking under his wordplay.

Yeah, I googled him after posting that, as I wasn't familiar with him (though I am generally interested in Jung and post-Jungians) so I will check him out, sounds interesting.

FWIW, the person who expresses most of what I think about these subjects is the philosopher Mary Midgley. She seems to tread a balanced line.

-I am an atheist, religions are wrong or misguided and I see no point in indulging them
-I am an atheist, personally, but I accept that the spiritual or religious experience may be useful to others

see even this is too binary. I'm definitely down with the first one, but not quite so arrogant or hubristic as to deny the second. organised religion might suck imo but that doesn't mean i'm completely blind to the benefits it might have for individual communities or people. and likewise as a diehard materialist i might think that spirituality is just a psychological phenomenon, but it's a real and potentially useful phenomenon nonetheless.

Yeah I am mainly interested in a Materialist Spirituality I think.

said material should be approx 80 proof imo

I think that would make you fall into the second of the categories, then, on account of the whole "it's a real and potentially useful phenomenon nonetheless" thing.

Maybe I should start another poll, but I dunno, I don't think ILX needs two religion polls at once.

I have just recently read the book "The Authoritarians" and I'm really interested in exploring a lot of these concepts of "authoritarian" and "dogmatic" and "fundamental" personality types that were discussed in the book. ACtually I should check if there was an ILX thread about that book.

x-post to Ledge

personal poll option for me would be i am an atheist but don't care about religion as long as it doesn't impinge either my daily life or the state i'm a citizen of in a detrimental way etc etc

As they say, sarahel, "beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy" ;-)

I am a materialist, but I'm obviously capable of deriving awe, serenity, joy and wonder from art, nature or even just seeing friends or whatever (as is everyone on the planet who is halfway functional). I don't think it necessary to describe these feelings as 'spiritual', I'm just into stuff. The word definitely has new-agey connotations for me, rightly or no.

I'm not trying to have a snipe though, I appreciate these terms are ill-defined, and any rational attempts to engage with them are welcome.

I don't think it necessary to describe these feelings as 'spiritual',

See, to me, this is the kind of necessary point of reclaiming the word "spiritual" from the woo-pedlers and the nutjobs? (i.e. people who have something to sell, or people who have some power to gain, to take the emotional content off those epithets.) That it is simply a definition. This is what the word means, these experiences. The error is in saying that the "spiritual" emotional or psychological or whatever experiences are solely the province of organised religion or new age hippies.

But, I do recognise that words can become irredeemably tainted. I just think it's a shame.

Fair point. I have no attachment to the word so am happy to discard it.

Also for me it implies that there are things going on beyond the physical realm of chemical reactions in my brain, which I don't think is the case.

When I have those 'spiritual' feelings, that is.

^ with chap on all of this.

See, I'm agnostic when it comes to Materialism. I simply don't know if this is the case or not, and I don't think it's within our current state of knowledge (about the state of consciousness, the actual workings of the brain, etc.) to really be able to definitively say.

I honestly don't have the data available to say if there is a "something else" or not. I've read a lot of the "consciousness is mysterious, quantum mechanics is mysterious, they must be related" type writing on the subject and I'm not convinced. But I do, as Mary Midgley has often written, think that strict Materialism is a clumsy simplification that takes into account a whole host of preconceptions, some of which rely on pretty shaky philosophical ground themselves. (I do not feel confident enough, though, to encapsulate her whole argument.)

depends on how you want to define strict Materialism but I wd have it in the ballpark of "we can only reasonably claim that what can be measured exists" and I find counter-claims a lot more difficult to rationalise

See I find it entirely satisfying an explanation that a system as complicated as the brain can lead to weird side effects like consciousness. There could be 'something else', but there doesn't need to be, IMO.

Like I've alluded to, I fully admit all my feelings on these matters are entirely suppositions, but suppositions based on a lifetime of thought and observation. I could be wrong, I suspect I'm not.

i'm not entirely immune to the 'consciousness is pretty fucking weird and not at all like anything material' line of argument myself. but i think it's possible to have those doubts without opening the door to the idea of a soul or spirit, or anything typically supernatural.

clapton is beelzebub

willing to believe in the devil, but not god tbh

while I'm an athiest (used to be agnostic), I'm a lot less 'hard line' about it than I was when I was younger. I was very combative about religion when I was just turning 21 and enjoyed flinging it in people's faces.

Now I'm much more content letting those who partake in religion partake it in peacefully, only interjecting if they bother to intrude on my own beliefs or act like complete and utter dicks about their own beliefs. And in the circle of people I keep close to me, there are few if any people who do the latter.

Obviously the world and America has given me much reason to dislike or despise religion, but essentially I was never meant for religion. I questioned God to my mom when I was 8 or 9 years old -- it didn't make sense to me. The concept of being subservient never stood well with me, and when I was in youth group growing up, some of the people around me flat out scared me. There were no freethinkers - original thoughts would die of loneliness in their heads. I didn't want to become that way.

With that being said, I have always had a lot of interest in studying religion in general -- just not following one.

i dig and kinda envy how great religion can be, i just cant do it myself.

^^

i was brought up atheist, had a religious phase from about age 9 to 14, then returned to atheism, and i appreciate that experience for the stuff it taught me about the western tradition, more than anything else. religion seems useful to people! i appreciate that! but, you know, i just don't know how to believe in god, and i'm not all that good at being part of a ~community~.

it's funny, i supposed i'm just very unreflective, but it never crosses my mind to wonder about why or how I feel e.g. unbearable delight at something beautiful, whether that's purposeful or a fluke of the chemical reactions in my brain or something else -- the whys and hows seem entirely unimportant to me.

Hardcore and would never go to a cousin's wedding.

bcs of the religions or bcs of the cousins?

Religious weddings do make me feel a little uncomfortable, there's always some bullshit about being incapable of love unless you accept God in the service.

If there's hardcore surely it shd be at the stag?

daraghmac, both!

yeah feel u there jeff.

there's always some bullshit about being incapable of love unless you accept God in the service.

jeez. don't think we have that. i mean, yeah damned to burn forever and sorry about that what can you do, etc, but not denying the capability of love or anything that i recall

raised a catholic. used to go to church most sundays, unless i was playing football. last time i went to church was for my mum's funeral. don't believe any of it anymore, and don't think i ever really did truly believe any of it.

Haha, at the one I'm thinking of it was couched in very non-combative CofE language, but that was definitely the meaning. (xpost to Darragh)

Are there any Jewish ILXors reading who are atheist/agnostic but still at least semi-observant? My housemate's like that and has difficulty putting it into words why she is. It's something she genuinely wants to do, doesn't seem to be just for her folks' benefit or whatever. I don't know anyone who was raised a xtian who falls into this category.

I can't speak for Mrs V but she's a Catholic who still regularly attends church but doesn't have a strong sense of God afaik

Yeah, I was gonna say, there are probably a number of Catholics like that too. I had a room-mate who was an agnostic Jew. She would still light Hannuakah candels and sing prayers and make latkes. I totally respected her need to find value in latkes.

I'd like a religion that makes lattes.

but would you give your life to the lattes?

Ok, I would have to be secret atheist in the latte cathedral.

"it's funny, this guy shows up without fail every week for the service, but as soon as the lattes are dispensed he's nowhere to be found....."

I'd like a religion that makes lattes.

I'd def. go religious for that. Perhaps even become whatever their equivalent of a nun is.

Well, off you go to join the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, and you can have all the sweet, milky coffee your heart desires!

It is interesting, the people who abandon the faith side, but keep the ritual side, because it gets at that notion that religion is an expression of human culture, not the sole cause of it. The expression of one's culture, one's background, remains significant, even after the philosophical defining signifier has gone. (There might be a correlary in the debates last week about people who remain faithful to class culture or labels, even after the class signifiers have gone.) People just like feeling connected to their roots, to who they are and where they come from. (That might also be considered a "spiritual" need in the non-religious sense of the word.)

i voted "I am atheist/agnostic but I was raised in a religious tradition and I like to maintain at least some contact with that"

i was raised as a Unitarian Universalist, which doesn't particularly demand acceptance of a higher power, and i've found i still get something out of the occasional church service/sermon without having to make any hard decisions about that sort of thing

it gets at that notion that religion is an expression of human culture, not the sole cause of it.

I think this is probably a good summation.

I wasn't raised with any church (my parents married in an Episcopal/Anglican church my dad's parents kind of treated like a social club, surprise) and after doing a tour of all my friends' religions over the course of a school year when I was 11, I went full-on atheist. Maybe my grandmother's funeral being hijacked by Jehovah's Witnesses had something to do with it too, was more like an infomercial for JWs than a memorial for a dead person TBH (until then I didn't know that when my mom and her sibs were kids, they spent 5-10 years as JWs because said grandmother was a loony). That doesn't mean I'm not fascinated by religions themselves - my high school had a great comparative religions course and I've always been interested in myth, so good fit.

Having gone to a school with lots of Jewish people, I have lots of 'lapsed Jewish' friends who've married out, etc - but I find I am taking one of these to Golders Green next week to seek out hamentaschen.

I ended up voting "spiritual but not religious" and tried to just cut off the supercillious dismissive end of that option, but it's not a perfect fit.

Because I am still, obviously, very interested in religion, and do not think it should be abolished, mainly because of its cultural importance (in both senses of the word: 1) as belonging to a group of people and 2) it seems to inspire some really interesting art) as well as its providing a framework for allowing people to keep a "spiritual" (in my definition, as stated above) element in their lives.

I was obviously raised Christian - my mum is a priest, my dad is a hardcore atheist, I was presented both sides of the story and taught to make up mine own mind. I was intensely religious as a child, went through a period of being intensely *anti*-Christian in my rebellious late teens and early 20s, but it's like a question that will never leave me alone. Spent most of my 20s and early 30s being officially "agnostic" - while still being really interested in and learning about *all* religions - but the recent culture wars have actually tipped me into the theist camp. I think that the right to *Freedom* of Religion (or indeed, freedom not to have one) is something worth fighting for. And that means fighting for the right of people to *have* one if they have that kind of a personality bent.

I am probably some kind of vague Deist (the vagueness comes from the constant need to examine and ask questions, not from lack of having thought about it) - on account of the deep-level order and symmetry of nature and maths (insert quips about anthropic principles and "goldilocks universe" here). I *choose* to call that deep level order and symmetry "god" (and my appreciation of it "spiritual") - even knowing the whole host of negative associations with that word, *because* I want to reinforce the importance and primacy of that idea. So when people start talking dismissively about "the supernatural" WRT spirituality, I just want to laugh because there's nothing *more* natural than my particular god-concept.

But then again, this might just be lapsed Episcopalianism coming out in me, that I want to keep hold of a lot of those lovely cultural traditions that I was raised in, even after I've left the Church. (I have recently been re-reading the books of Madeleine L'Engle that I loved as a child, and was rather startled to discover the seam of theology running through them - and really wondering if my philosophy is related to hers *because* I read these books so heavily as a child, or because we were both so steeped in the liberal Episcopalian tradition that we both absorbed similar ideas - and/both, probably.)

Voted the first option -- "I am a hardcore atheist. I don't want to go anywhere near a house of worship unless it's for my cousin's wedding." -- but it's not like I get in people's shit about it. My family know I'm an atheist (it's on my lol Facebook page), but:

- My mother and her family are mainline Protestants, and a few seem to have become born-agains late in life.
- My mother-in-law and her husband are evangelicals; in fact, he's an ordained minister in their denomination.
- My father is a secular Jew, but recently started investigating meditation and other Eastern spiritual practices after battling throat cancer.

So, frankly, when family members start up with the god talk, I mostly just keep my damned mouth shut. I will say that, particularly regarding my in-laws, my observation is that their religion as practiced seems to actually bring them nothing but misery. They are in some dire personal and financial straits, and seem to be waiting for Jebus to bail them out without doing anything on their own, then are confused when nothing gets better. And they are in those straits because he quit a perfectly good job as a project manager at an architectural firm to become a minister, eventually sinking all their savings into purchasing a storefront church which dealt primarily with drug addicts. Who really don't tithe quite enough to support a full-time minister.

Anywho, believe what you want to believe -- it makes no nevermind either to me or to what is/isn't true.

Seems to be a bit of a backlash on against Category 1 Atheism

nope, just aginst being in people's faces about it tbh

It spills over

i used to think i didn't really have a problem with people being 'religious', until a close friend of mine told me he was thinking of becoming a priest. i said i was happy for him and that i'd support him, but inside i was a bit, i don't know, confused. i think he's gone off the idea now though.