That's contradictory. Is there any reason not to read the collected utterances of Jesus, his followers and others before that (tell me, why don't you adore the Hebrew Bible?) like you read the works of Plato, Soctrates, Epicurus, Cicero, Seneca, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Satre, ..., ..., ...? There is no justifictation to regard any contributed discourse by any historical person higher than any other by default (e.g. the bible). Have you considered to study Christian theology, caspian?

I'd suggest the same as caspian. Read the bible, put some serious thought into it, and at >90% probability, you'll be an atheist when you finish it.

As I said, semantics.

"The term spirituality lacks a definitive definition,[1][2] although social scientists have defined spirituality as the search for "the sacred," where "the sacred" is broadly defined as that which is set apart from the ordinary and worthy of veneration.[3]"

Yes, the sacred, which has nothing to do with anything anti-reality. Even the 'experience of God' that people have during religious experiences, psychedelic experiences, whatever, is "within-reality" and "conforms" to natural law, it's just natural law that we don't fully understand. And before you respond with how that's anti-critical thinking, no, it's just that we don't fully understand how the human brain works, and no, I'm not using that as an excuse to come up with nutty metaphysical postulations. Obviously the 'experience of God' has nothing to do with any kind of external subject imposing or introducing itself to a human subject, but the *experience itself* is real and can be mapped based on neurophysiology, although the field of psychology of religion/spirituality/wonder/sacredness/transcendence/whatever you want to call it is young.

Spirituality is a metaphor, a linguistic (mis)label, for real, subjective human experience. And the "numinous experience" in all its varieties, whether they be connection with nature, a feeling of union with a monotheistic God, or others, are all fundamentally similar. The experience is real; the interpretation is problematic.

Also, I'd encourage you to read some philosophy of science. Empiricism has worth and I do agree that it correlates with and has some foundation in reality, but Kuhn's discussions about paradigms of scientific thinking are based on reality as well. Scientists think they're totally objective and "just observing the facts," but it's not that simple. Philosophical presuppositions will always color empirical and scientific observation, from WHAT they're looking for to HOW they're looking at it.

It is self-correcting because it fits the new evidence within its own paradigm. It cannot do otherwise. It is impossible in a science experiment for nature to reveal itself in any other way than in scientific terms. So how can science be self-correcting? The frame of reference is fixed, and never questioned.

Nietzsche sums it up well:


One of those powers could be the spiritual, which science has been reframing in its own terms for centuries.

Because it always has been? A good example is the theory of humours vs germs.


"could be", worthless weasel words. You, nor anyone, has no way of knowing. Ergo, it's useless in terms of knowledge.

This discussion is turning into a series of misunderstandings, not surprisingly since the questions aren't simple. Nahsil is right, you really should read up on the metaphysics and philosophy of science. Kuhn is decent and more generally I recommend Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics and the essay Science and Reflection.

Yeah, I guess he has a philosophical point there, but eventually it boils down to science being the foundation of our way of living and the method we have achieved our current technological degree, and spirituality being that funny feeling.

We could run an experiment to see the value of each. Someone who thinks spiritualism or whatever is worth as much as or more than science, which Nahsil seems to think if you read his post with a skewed pair of eyes, goes a week without internet, cell phones, microwave oven, flights, a car, canned foods, electricity, AC, etc., and I could, as a proponent of science spend the same amount of time without communion, horoscopes, confession, prayer, tarot, monastery, fortune telling, anyone checking my aura and whatever, church/mosque/synagogue, and whatever you people see fit, and we'd see which one holds more practical value. Which, eventually, is what matters. You could perhaps try and guess which part of the experiment gets repeated every month.

I don't mind people having their own personal mumbo-jumbo, as long as it has zero effect on me. I've written that many times in the past here. But the fact remains, all ideas are not of equal value.

Personally, I find worth in "spirituality," and I think that it's an important psychological development in terms of evolutionary psychology (I wrote a fun paper on the evolutionary origins of religion/spirituality), but only forms that can find consonance with "empirical reality," because reason and intellect are important as well. Stuff like Taoism, like a lot of Hinduism and Buddhism.

I'm a pluralist so I tend to try to find the value in both sides of an issue whenever possible. Even crap like monotheism can have worth, as long as it's cleaaaaaaarly seen as symbolism/mythology.

Percy Shelley wrote that humanity's external and technological mastery had developed at a far faster rate than its emotional/intrapersonal/interpersonal development, and that's the core issue here for me. Whether you believe in humanistic values or not, and whether you agree with Stanislav Grof or not (he's pretty out there, transpersonal psychology is something I'd like to like but have a hard time swallowing):

"In the last few decades, it has become increasingly clear that humanity is facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions. Modern science has developed effective measures that could solve most of the urgent problems in today's world--combat the majority of diseases, eliminate hunger and poverty, reduce the amount of industrial waste, and replace destructive fossil fuels by renewable sources of clean energy. The problems that stand in the way are not of economical or technological nature. The deepest sources of the global crisis lie inside the human personality and reflect the level of consciousness evolution of our species." - Stanislav Grof

I'm not suggesting that "spirituality" is the only way to get people to be less shitty human beings, far from it, but I've actually reviewed psychological literature, multiple studies, that showed that people who'd had "religious experiences" on psychedelics tended to be more conscientious, less materialistic, etc. Those may not be valuable things to all of us, but they are to me. Also correlation and causation can get mixed up--maybe those hippie folks are the ones who gravitate toward taking psychedelics, but I think it's probably more than that. It has potential (the "numinous experience," not psychedelics, they just triggered a psychological phenomenon). Interesting research, I've got the studies if anybody's curious.

Nice wikipedia blurb about numinous experiences:

"Noted atheists Christopher Hitchens, Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have maintained that the idea is not necessarily a religious one and expressed their views on the importance of separating the numinous from belief in the super-natural.[2] For example, when one experiences awe and fascination with natural phenomenon such as majestic landscapes, night sky or deep appreciation of fellow human creations such as art and engineering marvels. At times like these a feeling of the numinous would be capable of overwhelming the mind and body, yet it would not necessarily to be interpreted as supernatural or of divine origin. According to these views, the very fact that one feels inspired by such encounters extends the depth of feeling of the numinous and makes accessible a real sense of humane solidarity with ourselves and with our natural world. Christopher Hitchens perceived a degree of absurdity in what he considered the cheapening of a real-world experience through divine dilution and the assumption that humanity is incapable of such depth of feeling without a super-natural cause. Hitchens maintained that the admiration of moral courage in others (often a powerful source of numinous feeling) would similarly be cheapened by the spurious use of 'divine permission'.[3]"

I'd agree. The religions and spiritual systems that I'm most intrigued by are really pretty secular in the sense of not endorsing nutty fairytale/supernatural stuff, and also tend to be congruent with empirical observation.

Sorry, I like this stuff.