C/D: "I'm not religious but I am spiritual."

i believe in astrology

astrologomy

can't decide whether to SB u for the astrology or the display name

http://www.birdsasart.com/rootjpegs/AtlanticPuffin4.jpg

Anyway, here is a puffin. He looks like he might be kinda spiritual but i doubt he has a fully developed cosmology.

wth?

I'm not spiritual but I am religious!
~~Pharisee 4 Lyfe~~

puffin looks more "soulful" imo

http://www.fairislebirdobs.co.uk/images/Puffin.jpg

contemplating the demiurge, urlier today

guys how does meaning work, im worried i might be vapid

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01318/bittern_1318554c.jpg

Bitterns, on the other hand, are predominantly agnostic.

http://thumbsforhire.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/dancing-blue-footed-booby.jpg

The Blue-footed Booby practises a variant of Sufism.

guys how does meaning work, im worried i might be vapid

― ogmor, Thursday, May 12, 2011 7:49 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

board descrip plz

Wait, wtf is dud about this? You're not allowed to have a sense of spirituality without being connected to some kind of organized religion?

― geir was right (wk), Thursday, May 12, 2011 3:39 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

its just a cliche & its easy 2 react cynically when someone says it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ORCnvGnaAM

http://www.realbirder.com/NorthEast%20England/Shag3.JPG

I don't like seabirds much, but I do like a nice shag.

I don't think that has anything to do with it. I mean you can believe in god or something without being a Christian.

Strictly speaking, of course you can. But where I live, annoying Christians have so poisoned the adjective "religious" that additional clauses are required lest folks get the wrong idea.

The only moving thing
http://thumbnails27.imagebam.com/13197/e9fc6f131966534.jpg

http://joelws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/cnn-spiritual-but-not-religious-300x216.jpg

CNN weighs in:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/personal/06/03/spiritual.but.not.religious/index.html?hpt=C2

its just a cliche & its easy 2 react cynically when someone says it

Yeah, I get that. I just seems like an accurate description of the majority of people I know. I know very few people who go to church, apart from a couple of relatives. And yet I only know a few people that consider themselves atheists. So everyone else is basically "spiritual but not religious" right?

But it would definitely be an annoying thing to say unprompted.

like just blurting out on the bus?

no, in that context it's fine

You get the 'spiritual' thing in fashion quite a bit - and it annoys me when I know damned well the person is basically agnostic and does a bit of yoga.

lol but I feel like that would describe more people who would use this term.

Good thread. I like the Puffins.

Ever asked someone who says this what they mean by "spiritual?" The response is usually:

"I just believe there's something else, something we can't see."

Ok.

it's called gravity

"there's something else, something we can't see" was basically your definition of god on that other thread Shakey, wasn't it?

no. you guys really need to brush up on your reading comprehension.

Ever asked someone who says this what they mean by "spiritual?" The response is usually:

"I just believe there's something else, something we can't see."

Ok.

That bothers me far less than the people who believe in something that's equally kooky and poorly though out, but very specific. The wishy-washy-ness masks an uncertainty which could lead to further doubt.

no. you guys really need to brush up on your reading comprehension.

still trying to figure out how gravity is something we can't see

fwiw, I did not offer a personal definition, I pointed out several different ways that the concept of God has been elucidated in various theological traditions.

xp

still trying to figure out how gravity is something we can't see

lol. you see the EFFECTS of gravity. you don't SEE gravity itself. gravity does not reflect light.

science brigade really bringing it today... *sigh*

gravity is a force, it doesn't have mass, etc.

keep fightin off them hordes, shakes

why do I bother

lol "science brigade." You know, being an atheist doesn't necessarily mean you know shit about science.

but you have a very narrow definition of "see"

you mean... the definition used by science?

you see the EFFECTS of gravity. you don't SEE gravity itself. gravity does not reflect light.

so gravity = god and the effects = the prophet?

I mean come the fuck on here. this is physics 101. What you can see is the spectrum of light reflected off material objects. Gravity is not a material object.

I wasn't even trying to make an analogy here, I was just making a loljoke about "unseen" things at work in the universe

being an atheist doesn't necessarily mean you know shit about science.

also lol @ atheists believing in things they don't understand. sounds familiar.

I know, but I was just fucking with you because you were loling at something that to me sounded identical to what you were claiming was the common monotheistic concept of god yesterday. And it also struck me as being pretty funny since gravity is something that we can in fact observe and measure while god is not.

((i was making the point that the successfully trolling 'science brigade' you're so valiantly defending us against, but you know, have fun))

and wtf does "believing in things" have to do with anything?

"I'm not really scientific but I am an atheist."

"probably believes in orgone"

I'm not a bigot, I hate god and science equally.

What about Dorkus Maximus: the God of Science?

And it also struck me as being pretty funny since gravity is something that we can in fact observe and measure while god is not.

― geir was right (wk), Thursday, May 12, 2011 3:01 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

really? we can measure gravity but not god? fire up the presses!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3eTsNEgmL8

God is 3'!

^^^divine revelation

"I'm physical but I'm not a physicist"

it it like how people get mad at the simpsons Viking thing?

Old answer: dud, mostly
New answer: classic, mostly
But:

this is the 'everything but country and rap' of religion

― iatee, Thursday, 12 May 2011 19:38 (nine years ago)

afaic spirituality is anything that isn't positivistic atheist materialism*

religion (*let's include this for a gratuitous hot take) seems to require the kind of cultural rootedness and historical continuity which is probably great if you're not some kind of misfit, the kind who doesn't want to be saved in the prescribed ways- or if you're in a religious community that's so open and nondogmatic it might as well be SBNR

Being this - potentially classic. Saying it - dud.

If it were phrased as, "I recognize in myself an innate need for belief in something intangible that makes the world meaningful to me and helps me keep my fear of death at bay, but I refuse to connect that to any organized religion," I don't think anyone would have a problem with it. The "I'm not religious but I am spiritual" line is a dud because it's a.) cliched and b.) permanently associated with white people co-opting indigenous cultural traditions.

i don't even own a spirit

complaining about the line is as much a cliche as the line itself but b) is a serious problem

this is white problem in general but it comes through a lot in the spiritual stuff. probably it's still perceived as a kind of frontier, maybe also as a potential source of some kind of moral absolution or existential justification in the colonial context idk

Lily Dale otm

lol mookie

but i cant start a thread at all, like?

Let people say things imo

Feeling feverish atm and self-isolating, sorry if this is incoherent
Dud because it's ambiguously critical of religious observance without making clear any distinction in name or (imo) in practice a lot of the time. "Spirituality" could mean asceticism. Or it could mean superstition, or animism, or universality or religious mysticism, or any combination of these things and others which are very often properties of "religion" as well. Since there are names for these things, we might as well use them imo instead of drawing distinctions where perhaps there are none and creating false dichotomy.

It's easy enough to say that you're a solitary practitioner, or have indeterminate supernatural beliefs, or dabble in the practices of one or more religions without observing any of them stringently.

Re: white people co-opting indigenous and nonwestern modalities- It irks me, for example, when "seekers" refer to religious traditions like Buddhism or Daoism as "philosophy". Like, maybe to you? Western Yijing studies for example have been plagued by a Sinophobic attitude that the Chinese are unfit custodians of their own heritage imo.

Assuming RBNS = observing religious traditions in which you do not necessarily believe, its meaning is much clearer than SBNR

Wonder why

RBNS honestly describes probably 75% of self-professed "Christians" ime. The other 25% are evangelicals who hear voices telling them to stone unbelievers.