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

Dud. Meaningless. Vapid. Empty. Probably believes in Astrology.

heh does anyone really say this anymore? its an eyeroller for sure

v 90s

C:D: strawmen

dude you've already got the Dawkins thread for proving you're smarter than the god-botherers, are you on a mission or something?

people say this

people like my mom

she does believe in astrology too

most dud thing ever.

i'd 100% of the time prefer "i'm not spiritual but i'm religious"

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

wait we had this thread right?

I'm not spiritual but I am sexy

People definitely still say this, always makes my skin crawl a bit.

"i'm not religious but i am opinionated"

xxp few dozen times iirc

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?

"I'm a deeply spiritual person"?

If the most vociferous Christians weren't insufferable fun-hating busybodies, this phrase would be unnecessary. So I blame them.

C:D: strawmen

― american thinker (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 12 May 2011 19:34 (3 minutes ago)

This is not a strawman, "God is everything, maaaan"-dude, we've all heard people say this.

is this like when non-Christians say they believe in "free will"

"i'm not philosophical but i am a sophist"

Dud - but only because I highly doubt those people actually look for spiritual explanations/experiences they just want to sound open-minded.

You ever hear girls say that? "I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual." I like to reply with "I'm not honest, but you're interesting!"--Daniel Tosh

This is not a strawman, "God is everything, maaaan"-dude, we've all heard people say this.

keep digging

"i'm not a rationalist but i have got a rash"

If the most vociferous Christians weren't insufferable fun-hating busybodies, this phrase would be unnecessary. So I blame them.

I don't think that has anything to do with it. I mean you can believe in god or something without being a Christian. You can have some vague spiritual beliefs without being devout about them. In which case you would be "spiritual" but not religious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzvZmQaJo68

"I'm not a positivist but I'm not very negative, either..."

ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

This reminds me of an old Frank Kogan line--something about the age-old debate between Free Willy and Determinismy.

"i'm not a racist but"
About 1,150,000 results (0.29 seconds)

"i'm not philosophical but i am a sophist"

― wanking on the moon (Noodle Vague), Thursday, May 12, 2011 7:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

<3

"call me old-fashioned, but..."

I used to think
I had the answers to everything,
But now I know
Life doesn't always go my way, yeah...
Feels like I'm caught in the middle
That's when I realize...

[Chorus:]
I'm not a girl,
Not yet a woman.
All I need is time,
A moment that is mine,
While I'm in between.

[Verse 2]
I'm not a girl,
There is no need to protect me.
It's time that I
Learn to face up to this on my own.
I've seen so much more than you know now,
So don't tell me to shut my eyes.

[Chorus]

I'm not a girl,
But if you look at me closely,
You will see it my eyes.
This girl will always find
Her way.

I'm not a girl
(I'm not a girl don't tell me what to believe).
Not Yet a woman
(I'm just trying to find the woman in me, yeah).
All I need is time (All I need),
A moment that is mine (That is mine),
While I'm in between.

I'm not a girl
Not yet a woman
All I need is time (All I need),
A moment that is mine,
While I'm in between.

I'm not a girl,
Not yet a woman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dajn9Bk24CY&feature=related

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.

what i'm getting at is that the devil is in the details

western europeans are not entirely without spirituality or at least have some less conservative form of "religion" when compared to the u.s.

or say whatever to get their kids into a good school

the report is 9 pages long

it's kinda crazy just after glancing at a few pages

I'm not sure why you think that second chart tells a different story?

I'd definitely say it is, at least in part, a case of a difference in definition. Over here if someone says she/he's spiritual, or a spiritual person, that more or less has come to mean this person is not religious. 'Spiritual' here has all the connotations of 'believing in something undefined', ie. something other than all the known religions ("I don't believe in (a) God but I believe there's something"). Regardless of whether it should be defined as such, it's pretty much a given. 'Spiritual' for most people has a negative, airy-fairy connotation here. Again, perhaps it shouldn't have, but it does.

― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre), Wednesday, May 30, 2018 4:26 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would definitely say I'm religious but not spiritual as well. I'm a church singer, I'm at church several times a week, and has been for decades, and it rubs off. But I absolutely don't believe in a 'personal quest for meaning, transcendence' as KM put it, to me the whole point of religion is accepting that transcendent meaning is in the end out of reach, and that I have to make do with my limited understandings.

― Frederik B, Wednesday, May 30, 2018 5:20 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks very much for these posts, LBI and Frederik - this is pretty close to what i expected, as far as how the terms are understood in different ways.

i've typed out epic posts a couple different times and deleted them (trying to do the world a favor for once), but the short version is just that i normally wouldn't describe "goes to church but isn't looking for meaning" as "religious".

in my experience, it's just not that common around here - when people attend a worship service it's usually implied that they believe in what they're hearing as well. as an example of how heated and toxic this subject can be in the US, check this out - https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/364196/word-for-fake-religious-people - the way the question is asked is loaded with assumptions and implied norms, of course, and then the suggestions are things like "closet atheist", "religious pretenders", and "hypocrite".

ironically, i'm married to a big reminder of how that's not true across the board in the US. her family is jewish and most of them attend synagogue a couple times a year but i wouldn't describe them as "religious" at all. they attend services and enjoy the community in the way that frederik and darraghmac described above.

but at least for me, the evangelical influence weighs HEAVY around here

I'm not sure why you think that second chart tells a different story?

― Frederik B, Wednesday, May 30, 2018 9:35 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's more to do with the connotation of "neither religious nor spiritual," which is the chart the tweet focused on

putting aside cultural catholicism and christianity, if you say you are neither religious nor spiritual to a north american, that sounds like you're saying you are not christian/muslim/jewish, which is obviously not the case in europe. to quote the pew survey:

Yet most adults surveyed still do consider themselves Christians, even if they seldom go to church. Indeed, the survey shows that non-practicing Christians (defined, for the purposes of this report, as people who identify as Christians, but attend church services no more than a few times per year) make up the biggest share of the population across the region. In every country except Italy, they are more numerous than church-attending Christians (those who go to religious services at least once a month). In the United Kingdom, for example, there are roughly three times as many non-practicing Christians (55%) as there are church-attending Christians (18%) defined this way.

the chart i posted (the second in the report), clearly says western europeans are non-practising christians, so there is less confusion

i pretend to believe in astrology to talk to girls

Lol flopson that might work in 1995

still works, Ross

Flops whats yr zodiac sign

I had a girl read my chart in front of my ex and say “if you guys got together it would be beautiful and mad” and I was thinking Well, yeah. We did.

i know people that run magic stores, sell Tarot decks, do readings, Reiki, etc. i have friends that give massages and do sound therapy. i have friends that use reclaimed witch & sorcerer imagery for show fliers, zines, art. probably 1/4 of my friends regularly post astrology charts in their social media. i am not going to try and argue with any of them that it isn't real or that magic doesn't really exist. what a waste of time.

ive had my chart read. you can't deny that sitting down and going through a process of self-analysation (however bs the power of the cards may objectively be) can produce some amount of insight or realization as a result. many of my friends have made art inspired by the tarot. some of them have approached the material with a spiritual attitude and some of them with a purely secular aesthetic admiration. both is fine, they are not hurting anyone. if anything they are creating things and partaking in an age-old global folk culture.

thats what our paedo priests said

Tarot as we now know it was mostly ginned up by some Golden Dawn weirdos sometime last century iirc

they saw it on 60 minutes

as i posted on another thread ten mins ago

is that where my rep for inscrutability comes from i wonder

It’s of a piece

i know people that run magic stores, sell Tarot decks, do readings, Reiki, etc. i have friends that give massages and do sound therapy. i have friends that use reclaimed witch & sorcerer imagery for show fliers, zines, art. probably 1/4 of my friends regularly post astrology charts in their social media. i am not going to try and argue with any of them that it isn't real or that magic doesn't really exist. what a waste of time.

In the last few years, I’ve definitely noticed an uptick of interest in tarot and astrology among hipster-ish women I know, mostly in their late 20: buying books, occasionally paying for readings, making comments like, “That’s such a Capricorn thing to do.” The coffee shop I play music trivia at started offering monthly tarot nights, and a each month has a night where people can do chart readings for a particular zodiac sign. They’ll usually say, “I don’t really believe in it, but it’s fun to think about,” though they’ll get defensive if someone mocks astrology or tarot. No idea whether a correlation, but I remember really noticing it after Trump was elected—reminded me of the counterculture interest in astrology and New Age stuff ramping up when Nixon was elected. Searching for a guiding light in turbulent times etc.

i think they're trolling tbh

it's definitely an ironic twitter-induced affectation

I have opinions but it's Friday and pub and just chillax it's all semiotics and fun people

Although I also wanted to ref the best bit in Foucault's Pendulum where the 60s political bookshops turn into 80s magic and new age bookshops

Tarot as we now know it was mostly ginned up by some Golden Dawn weirdos sometime last century iirc

there are precedents for card games and divining systems all over the world from before that. modern tarot decks predate the Renaissance. there is the Italian card game Tarocchini originating in the 17th century. this fits in line with the birth of modern occultism, the alchemy and kabbalah movements, etc. on one level we can call it out as Orientalism or cultural colonialism, yet no doubt influenced by the global access granted from new technology (the printed word).

by the time it hit the 19th century spiritualism movements it was a modern US cultural phenomenon, almost a "fad" by modern standards. tho the coastal elites like the Golden Dawn get the most attention it was more or less a national thing. plenty of poltergeist sighting were spotted throughout rural US. plenty of mediums became local celebrities, holding court, giving readings, which sometimes turned out to be quite the evening social event, complete with booze and nudity. ofc you had your power mad back stabbing nerds translating books and plotting against them but the spiritualist movement goes far beyond the big groups.

I don’t think these people are trolling

My current interest is a girl who charges 60 bucks a pop for an energy healing session. Quite confounding to me

There's no shame in finding interest in stuff like tarot. It piggybacks onto some very old archetypal imagery that seems to hold its power across the millennia. Just look at the Assyrian winged bull sculptures or Tibetan demons, and you can see how this stuff still connects to something in our brains.

The real shame is in thinking these images can mystically reveal the unknowable future, rather than prompt one to see a bit deeper into one's own mind, thereby uncovering some ideas and motives that may not have been visible to you, but were there and operating out of view, subconsciously.

60 bucks a pop for an energy healing session. Quite confounding to me

most physicians, if they are honest, know that very few of their treatments or therapies are doing any of the heavy lifting of healing their patients. it's the body's systems that still must do the lion's share of the work. most medical help is in the nature of minor assistance to the body's immune system or regenerative powers.

I have great respect for the placebo effect, and there's every chance that your friend is doing her clients some good, if only by enhancing the placebo effect, and assisting the body's own healing ability through unconventional means. the 60 bucks is part of the therapy and lends a seriousness to the exchange that both parties believe in. there are WAY more true believers practicing this stuff than outright charlatans.

you know what a body can really believe in, is sixty bucks

Oh Britany

On “He Loves Me,” you sing about having God’s love even while you’re doing whatever the hell you want. Are you a religious person?

I’m not religious. I don’t blame anybody for being religious but it’s not my thing. But I’m definitely a spiritual person. I wrote this song for people who feel they can’t have a relationship with God because they think they have to be Christian, or religious, have all these rules, sins. I was like that, definitely afraid. And then my sister died, and it was like: There is no God. Because why would God do that to a kid? The way she died was very painful to watch.

Then, as I got older, I just changed my mind. I really missed having that connection to something. So I just started learning how to have a relationship with God. And that’s what that song is about.

these rules, sins

is there anything more dud than taking issue with this sentiment?

Who even knows what is meant by "spirituality" at this point? It covers so many bases, including religious and quasi-religious beliefs and practices.

i am for some reason more into people being part of the religious heritage that they have roots in and embodies tradition, transmission from the ancestors, etc. than vague woo woo ideas or adoption of alien belief systems, and do roll my eyes at "im not religous, but i am spiritual" in general, but i suppose that's authenticity shit that i wouldn't be into in other contexts. but the heart wants what it wants.

interestingly both religion and spirituality are quite hard concepts to pin down with exactitude. like explain to me the what religion and spirituality are, and what they aren't, and what the difference is.

I’m not spiritual but I am religious

Already posted that a few years ago lol

i'm not religious but i'd do anything for woo woo

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.