There has been a bit of discussion in the last month on the topic of spirituality, especially on scienceblogs.com.
P.Z. Myers, at Pharyngula, in a post titled "Spirituality"? Another word for lies and empty noise writes that
Near as I can tell, it means making up vague nonsense about special values only religious people can have, and getting a cool million five for insisting on it. What a sweet scam, and what a useless lot of hot air.
Mike Dunford, at The Questionable Authority, takes another tack in Science and Spirituality:
The sense of wonder and awe has been very important in my life, and very real. I do not ascribe the sense to something supernatural, but at the same time I cannot dismiss it as an unimportant byproduct of brain chemistry. Perhaps "spiritual" is the wrong word for the feeling that I've tried, probably unsuccessfully, to describe, but it's the only word that I have for it.
And Jason Rosenhouse, at Evolutionblog, weighs in with A Note on Spirituality:
For example, my local bookstore has a Spirituality section. The books shelved there are wall-to-wall nonsense. For me what comes to mind when I hear the word is some sort of vague, watered-down pseudoreligion along the lines of Deepak Chopra. It probably involves a lot of praise for quantum mechanics and a lot of criticism for ignorant materialist atheist types.
Various people use the words "spiritual" and "spirituality" for various reasons. Religious people often use them in ways that are particular to their particular religion. Pseudo-religious movements often use them in pseudo-religious ways. But I suspect that the average person who claims to be "spiritual" is really saying something quite different, and quite important.
We live in a time of transition—especially in western culture. Not so long ago there was virtually no non-religious thought. The political structures and the cultural structures of the world were permeated and controlled by religion. Isaac Newton's thought, for example, was as deeply influenced by theology as it was by science—and Newton came toward the end of the period I'm talking about.
During those centuries of human culture, there was no distinction between being an authentic, fully alive, worthwhile, human being, and a religious human being. Most of the deepest emotional and psychological aspects of humanity were dealt with through the church, in one way or another, for better or for worse. Our understandings of birth, marriage, death, love, hope, morality, meaning, etc. were all bound up with religion.
Then, along came the physical sciences, and with them political change. Piece by piece, the old world-view was dismantled. The earth, and humanity, were no longer at the center of the universe. The world was not created six thousand years ago. Life, including human life, evolved. The meaning of life was no longer tied to serving the King, whose authority came from the Pope, whose authority came from God.
We entered a new world, in which all kinds of marvels were possible. But in the process, we lost a structure which had for thousands of years tied our sense of meaning, morality, love, and hope to religion.
This new world is in its infancy still, and the old one has not completely passed away.
The new world has successfully won the day for many people, who do not want to be bound by religion anymore. But neither do they want to give up entirely the side of life which contained things like meaning and love.
I suspect that when those people say "I'm not religious, but I am a spiritual person," they are saying just that.
They are saying that they are willing to go with a scientific, in some cases even an atheistic, worldview.
They are saying that they don't want to have their lives circumscribed by priests and pulpits and ancient dogma rooted in medieval philosophic distinctions.
But they are also saying that they still want to lay claim to meaning and hope and love, and the need to find structures that nurture those things.
And I'm with them.
At least, that's what I think today.
