All your points may be valid. Eagleman could be a soft atheist who is oopn to the possibliity of there being something more. It’s the attitude of openness that appeals to me.
I agree. Kant who contributed significantly to the modern understanding of our epistemological limitations said “I have limited knowledge in order to make room for faith.”
But ask yourself Felix just why religion apeals to some because of it’s formal aspects. Formalism did not beging with Catholicism however. Formalism conveys the idea, the feeling of power, of control in ways that sola fide cannot. It gives the believer a lever, a known market value, meaning that they know to do R in order to get S.
You can be open about hypothesis, but at some point, when life presses against you and you no longer can afford to remain at play, as far as the alternatives are concerned, you commit to one thing. It is a lack of spirituality that may drive the average pagan to keep alternative possibilities as if the were supplemental life insurance. On the hours before your death, what will you believe? Will you then be as comfortable with your uncertainty as you are now? Will you not rather risk to be…absurd?
I’m sure formalism has it’s charms for some. According to anthropological theory ritual may have preceded belief. However, I don’t see it as essential for spiritual religion now.
I wouldn’t say I am comfortable with my uncertainty even now. But it’s the way I understand things epistemologically. It doesn’t rule out faith. In fact, if we certain about something, what role is there for faith? People who are certain about the Ultimate positively or negatively either are incapable of faith or don’t need it.
I don’t mean to intrude on a good discussion; I just wanted to share my opinion on the matter of the following:
Comparably, this is somewhat like suggesting that we don’t need communal language.
Not everyone needs to learn English in Japan, for instance, but on the larger scale; if you suggest that the world can work without such a thing as a common form to assume the context of communication and experience with, then we would be rather mistaken on how the social paradigm of the human being works.
I’ll circle back to this in a moment.
Spirituality, as I put it, is a finger of humanity. Just like science, art, politics, tools, academia, and the like are fingers of humanity.
There are four principle relationships of humanity as far as I see it: the human’s relationship with their self, the human’s relationship with other humans, the human’s relationship with inanimate things, and the human’s relationship with the universe as a whole - the state and condition of existing as a human.
The first is intrapersonal. The second with interpersonal. The third is mesaphysical. The fourth is metaphysical.
You could equally title the last two as: mesapersonal and metapersonal.
If, for instance, you are as yourself; then intrapersonal metaphysics is all that is required.
However, for the gross movement of humanity; with regard to how to feel in context about existing in a highly emotionally charged and reverent manner; interpersonal metaphysics is vital to a tangibleness of life.
Circling back to the above now. That is to say, that if humans want a community of unified comprehension of what it is to exist as a human existentially, then the ontological uniformity through thought (belief; mind), action (practice; body), and sensation (emotion; spirit) is required to accomplish a tangible context with which to communally convey the linguistic transference of the idealized experience, and the experience of attempting that ideal.
Uniformed Warrior Religion or Spirituality, for instance, is historically well known to be a very robust and powerful asset for a community of warriors of a given civilization.
This doesn’t mean you need to draft artificial projections, but instead, it means that the linguistic ontological index must be relatable and productive to the individual as much as the community.
A human of great spirit by their self is no one at all. They may as well be a rock in a pond for as much human as they have engaged in being.
The great humans of spirit, religious and not, have all been communal and strive to create or expand a linguistic index for which the community references.
Buddha did not strike up a chord with so many by being a hermetic hidden man of spirit, nor did he repeat the same linguistic index preceding him without alteration.
Instead, he communally shared his expansion of the ontological index from the culture by which he existed.
On a gross scale, humans tend to share a break through of ideology as best as they can accomplish. And the ideology of how to perceive existing on a deeply emotional level of relationship with existence itself in all of its facets is fairly paramount to the majority of human beings.
Ritual, to bring it around to the point at hand, causes a communal linguistic index of bodily exchange with existing and links it directly to the belief (thought; mind) and emotion (sensation; spirit).
If you all move the same together with the same belief and the same emotional attachment, then you are uniting the community as if the community is a collection of cells of one body, one mind, and one emotional range.
It will always seem useless to the onlooker that does not have any attachment of mind or emotion to the communities index of tangible relation.
But it will always be around in thousands of forms; and not just in purely religious contexts.
That’s my take on the matter anyway.
I would think it is bad to say we don’t need ritual at all, but i do think that we have an over reliance on it, or a sort of addiction. Think of this many believe that it is best to have Faith in God, which is to choose to believe regardless of all the evidence such as to have that non-100% belief non-knowning thing influence your descisions and so on… but if people are over ritualistic then people tend to think they come closer to God by simply doing physical things rather than achieving spiritual growth. Like wise people will often force the bible on a child, make them go to church (another ritual), and drive the idea of God into them, and instead of hveing Faith in God, and choosing to believe, they accept without actual understanding that God must exist and assume that they can know that God exists. All this detracts from growth.
We humans have a tendancy to find something that works and keep doing it too much untill it breaks. We see it in a child playing with a toy forcing it this way and that untill it falls apart, and then they cry, does this realy get completley overcome with age?
Which is why you see what you see around you today; lots of anti-theists and lots of new spiritual pursuits getting more serious chances.
The first new pursuits are commonly just augmentations to previous methods; those are the easiest.
The more radical are commonly smaller and stay there until one of them really hits a chord that everyone feels is what they have been wanting and latches on to it.
It also doesn’t hurt if you can coincide that production with an oppression. People tend to really latch on to things they like even more when someone tells them that they cannot have it. 
To clean something you must first wet it and then dry it.
Postmodernism seems to have a single objective (meta-)truth. Isn’t that a contradiction?
Is there any religion that does not have ritual aspects? Are the beliefs and practices of one isolated person a religion?
More or less.
I liken it more to plate tectonics and creation of new land. To get more land, you have to really shake things up and the fringes of the expansive land will be the most violent regions as one body of land is subducting to another, and the subducting land will fuel the explosive force of the overriding land that it will use to make new land.
But after the major subduction takes place, you’ll have new land and fresh resources for the current to carry while the subduction crawls along more softly for a while ever inching once again to another major event.
Hello Felix,
— I wouldn’t say I am comfortable with my uncertainty even now. But it’s the way I understand things epistemologically. It doesn’t rule out faith. In fact, if we certain about something, what role is there for faith? People who are certain about the Ultimate positively or negatively either are incapable of faith or don’t need it.
O- Every certainty, about the phenomenal world, requires faith. If it doesn’t, then it is quite analytical and divorced from experience. This is why many have criticised atheism as requiring as much or much more faith than theism. Both are certain and both because they have faith in some form of apprehension unquestionably.
But here is the rub. We might be perfectly talking about different things. What is “spiritual religion”? Are there any examples of it? For me religion is about both personal wholeness and social coherence. You look at some of the major religions and you see that despite the intricate differences about God, each has something to say about how the individual belongs to a much larger group that extends through time. It offers a clear identities, and with these you achieve a social coherence. Even Protestanism, which regards salvation as an individual matter, you still have a social narrative of the few, the saved.
That for me is basic of every religion. How can you have the few saved without knowing who that could be? How could you have the four noble truths or a step by step path, which is a form of rite, without faith, without certainty in them? “Spiritual”…I don’t know what you understand by that, but I would not define it as absolute “openess” to every possibility even the possibility that you know nothing for sure, nor will you ever know.
That said, I am quite open to the possibility that I know little or perhaps nothing because I know that what is important is not what but that I believe. It is that that gives me meaning and coherence. The difference stems from how close one wants to be from…the Divine. To me there is a difference between spirituality and religion. Religion, I believe, has to potent missions: Social Coherence and Personal Wholeness. It can do this because it links us to a broader picture (re-ligare? true or not I can see why some associate it to the origin of religion). Religion is sure of itself and of it’s rites- that is how they achieve identity. Spirituality however, for me at least, is vague and cannot deliver detailed information. All I can tell you is about moments in time, emotions, feelings that fail to link with each other into a grand narrative. My spirituality cannot give you social coherence about spiritual matters, otherwise it would be a religion, nor can it it give anyone who tries it personal wholeness. To this day I don’t know of any mission I was created to carry out, no grand plan for my life. Again, I can afford this Spirituality the way the majority of mankind probably cannot. Spirituality is for me at least just a sense that one has about the Nature of reality, nor do I need certainty, or faith, because this feeling cannot be altered. I live in it, I see by it. No one needs to tell you you are you…you just know it and from it you can negotiate reality and without it…well, there is no you, much less anything before you.
Omar—
If “certainty” requires faith, can it accurately be said to be certain? Perhaps, in the moment it is. But, upon reflection one becomes aware that it was uncertainty that required the exercise of faith in the first place.
By spiritual religion I mean those religions that emphasize subjective experience over outward formal rituals. I agree that no religion is purely spiritual . Even yoga has a social dimension.
Well you never do know. The Bible teaches that only God knows the human heart.
Faith and doubt go together in all but the saint or the total fanatic. And one who is not in either of those categories has ample cause to question whether saint or fanatic do not have doubt at least unconsciously.
Without attempting to say what spirtuality is on the positive side I would define as the antithesis of corporeal. So the mind is more spiritual the body and there are perhaps deeper layers of spiritual consciuosness than discursive thought.
Nicely put. I don’t dispute your understanding of religion and spirituality. Perhaps we could agree that kinds of spirituality exist within as well as outside of formal religious institutions.
Hello Felix,
— If “certainty” requires faith, can it accurately be said to be certain? Perhaps, in the moment it is. But, upon reflection one becomes aware that it was uncertainty that required the exercise of faith in the first place.
O- I don’t agree. To be uncertain is quite human. We have imperfect senses and bad memory, a combination that naturally brings about the permanent fixture in human awareness of uncertainty. On the other hand, to be certain is a comfort that only God, as we imagine the Divine, would possess. It requires an overcoming of that mortal imperfection. This requires that we place our faith in some aspect we can at least trust and making it, by that faith, more powerful than our weakness. Plato was therefore quick to note the failings of our humanity, but only because, by faith, he had imbued his reason with the power to overcome his weaknessess. One can be said to be certain. The issue here is that it would describe how a person feels, his faith, what he believes to be the case and not what is actually the case. A fallible human is not without the ability to say: “I am certain that…”
— By spiritual religion I mean those religions that emphasize subjective experience over outward formal rituals. I agree that no religion is purely spiritual . Even yoga has a social dimension.
O- It is baptized by it’s overt or formal rituals- that is why it is a religion. To me it seems that spiritual is too strong a word for any religion, because as religions, they have to conform to a definition that cannot be entirelly up to the subjective of a fella.
— Well you never do know. The Bible teaches that only God knows the human heart.
O- Jesus also said that blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of God. We can always pick at the Bible like a leprous person picks a scab because it is a record driven by various factions and various ideas that evolved over time over a loosely knit social group. The insistence on purity by the members of the Chosen People only highlight the need that existed because the historical conditions were of a group that was not as pure.
— Faith and doubt go together in all but the completely holy or the total fanatic. And one who is not in either of those categories has ample cause to doubt whether they do not have doubt on some level perhaps unconsciously.
O- Maybe a certain kind of faith, because, for example, some might say that doubt is a sign of someone having little faith. Peter certainly had his doubts about going in the water with Jesus, and when Jesus rescues him, he said: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
Now, for others, “doubt” can become spiritual, religious even, as seen in the Via Negativa, but then it struggles to remain what it started out as, because the more form is added the less doubt can actually be claimed.
— Without attempting to say what spirtuality is on the positive side I would define as the antithesis of corporeal. So the mind is more spiritual the body and there are perhaps deeper layers of spiritual conscuiuosnees than discursive thought.
O- I agree, and because of this a spiritual religion might be a contradiction because a religion is discursive thought.
— Nicely put. I don’t dispute your understanding of religion and spirituality. Perhaps we could agree that kinds of spirituality exist within as well as outside of formal religious institutions.
O- With that, I agree. It’s nice to see a series of post that reach a point of agreement. It’s been a pleasure to have this exchange with you Felix.
Interesting that you cite Plato here, as Platonism was such an important influence on early Chriaitan theology. I don’t recall what Plato said about faith. But. I recall in the Symposium he characterized eros as a divine/human product so perhaps faith was similar to him. To faith, faith may appear to be divine or semi-divine.
Well then let me re-phrase. I see spirtiuality essential for true religion. And spirtual religion is more spontaneous springing as it does from the inner life of the person. Ritualistic religion is less spontaneous and more a matter of conforming to an outward practice. Depending on what we categorize as ritual, a certain amount may also be indispensible. So if prayer and meditation are considered rituals maybe ritual is unavoidable. Certainly there are ritual prayers. But are all prayers rituals or do some spring spontaneous from the heart free from ritual adherence? Those I would think are more spiritually genuine then ritual prayers.
I still disagree that practice has no use and it is a simple reason why.
It is because I agree with you on what Spirituality is.
And as such, if you want to bend your spirit to your will; how do you do this?
You do this through evocation of your psyche and emotions spiritually.
How do you do that?
One of the most relied upon methods is through physical representation.
If we can tangibly morph that which we want that is intangible into a tangible form and control it, then we can more easily provoke our psyche to engage our emotions spiritually in the same light.
Ergo, even a private practice is considerably relevant.
A highly spiritual human without practice of principles is no different than any slothenly bum because they haven’t any power of evocation over their own spirit.
They are merely a highly resonating impulse sensory novelty and that’s about it.
Do not mistake me to mean that our over abundance of practice without substance in our current sociological paradigm is preferred.
But I’m neither going to throw the baby out with the bathtub.
I’m not sure what you are talking about, but it sounds painful.
But as I asked before: are all spiritual practices necessarily rituals? And even if they are, can’t they be graded on a relative scale in terms of say spontaneity and authenticity versus nominal going though the motions of meaningless forms?
The same thing as an physical and audible sigh caused from the intangible thing of stress.
The sigh grants some control over the stress sensation.
Practices do the same thing, but in more avenues than simple sigh.
In my opinion, no.
Because a ritual is a ceremony, and a ceremony is defined by its containing culture or sub-culture for a specific formal act.
For instance, the inauguration of the President of the United States is a ritual.
Simply meditating is not a ritual. It is a practice, but not a ritual.
The same is for many practices.
You can take many rituals and isolate one of its practices and use it outside of the ritual, and you can take any practice and turn it into a ritual. But neither are inherent of the other.
Yes you could, but why care?
I think you mostly have a problem with practice without substance.
Which I agree with you on that. I think most around here will.
By the way, spontaneity does not equate to authenticity outright.
Or better said, just because something is not spontaneous doesn’t make it inauthentic.
I create my own practices for myself regularly. I take my time creating each one and refine it over a longer period of time.
They are not empty motions. I make specific use of the meaning of each motion and form, and they come from my authentic emotions of spirituality.
Practices can be the result of long meditations on the matter.
They do not have to be impulsive reflexes.
In fact, spontaneous reactions are not practices.
Practice attempts to help spontaneous reflexes have a particular tendency of reaction, rather than flailing blindly in “authentic” attempt to function.
In the practice, however, what you want to keep is the “authentic” impulse that a person had; you only want to refine their functional control over how they react.
You want a practice to meet the person half way so that the practice is for the person and the person is for the practice.
You don’t want a line-dance-a-thon of sit-kneel-pray-sit-kneel-pray’s anymore than you want to run everyone through the mindless martial arts practices.
Here’s something from a smart guy on the matter of practice and form.
I would like to especially highlight the following, which I believe sums up our sociological entrapment with practice and form today in regards to spirituality and religion:
“The most pitiful sight is to see sincere students earnestly repeating those imitative drills, listening to their own screams and spiritual yells. In most cases, the means these “sensei” offer their students are so elaborate that the student must give tremendous attention to them, until gradually he loses sight of the end. The students end up performing their methodical routines as a mere conditioned response, rather than ‘responding to’ “what is.” They no longer “listen” to circumstances; they “recite” their circumstances. These pour souls have unwittingly become trapped in the miasma of classical martial arts training.”
To which, I believe Bruce Lee was absolutely correct in saying:
“Through instinctive body feeling, each of us ‘knows’ our own most efficient and dynamic manner of achieving effective leverage, balance in motion, economical use of energy, etc. Patterns, techniques or forms touch only the fringe of genuine understanding. The core of understanding lies in the individual mind, and until that is touched, everything is uncertain and superficial.”
But that does not mean that Bruce Lee did not practice at all.
Hardly.
It meant that he understood that practice needs to form to the individual so that the individual can form to the practice; so that the practice becomes an authentic extension of the person.
If a practice does not increase the articulation of an individuals authentic impulse of spirit without drowning that same spirit, then it is worthless.
So you don’t really need a metric by which to gauge practices anymore than your own self.
If a practice is not reaching towards you and you towards it; if a practice is not malleable to your needs spiritually; then it is meaningless for you to participate in that practice.
If only one small part of a practice is what you connect with, but the rest is empty to you; take that small part and incorporate that as you want and leave the rest to its owner.
In my opinion, our cardinal issue is that, as a society, we still think of religion and spirituality like those sensei above thought about martial arts.
Collectively, we think there is one correct form, that will prove through its form, that it is the best and right way; the right form.
They thought that no matter the physicality of the person, the form would succeed in making the person the best they could possibly be at martial arts.
We collectively think that no matter the spirituality of the person, the form will succeed in making the person the best can possibly be at succeeding at right spirituality.
Two faults are in there; thinking every person can be connected with the same as any other, and thinking of spirituality as a succeeding margin to grossly win at.
But these faults do not mean that practice is a fault itself.
Practice is helpful. But practice that does not touch with the individuals understanding in their individual mind is uncertain and superficial.
I agree with Mr. Lee completely on that.
It took great efforts for Bruce Lee to socially challenge these ideas against his backing tradition.
Imagine how much greater the challenge is to something as large as a societies overall religious tradition?
It seems to me to be futile in so many regards due to the sheer volume.
Instead, we can each look to our own self and not concern over the volume of empty practice and focus on forms around us spiritually.
We can instead focus on what practice does help us individually and what does not; take what helps and leave what does not.
All the while, staying focused on our authentic impulse of spirit that guides what practices we try so to help that authentic spirit grow in articulation in our lives.
Bruce Lee wanted his physical prowess to be one with him in every respect. He practiced endlessly to that aim. Borrowing from anything that gave inspiration to his authentic vision for his self.
I see no issues with each person doing the same for their own spirit instead of their body.
Evolution was neither successful by uniformed ambiguous non-individualized form, or by removal of practice in all forms from growth.
Evolution has been successful because there is a generalized form that is tailored to the individual and couples with practices which borrow from anything found to be useful to the ends needed by the species.
Indeed, that sums up what has caused humanity to be so successful at all; adaptability.
It seems strange to take our greatest asset and simply toss it out under a wash of uniformed non-individual practice.
But again, this is why I still maintain that practice - on the individual levels, and yes, in groups in some forms for communication - are perfectly fine; in fact needed.
OK, I’m going to cut myself off there…this is something I could go on and on about at great length so I kind of got carried away there. Apologies for that.
Stumps --At the point where you disagreed with me I was talkiing about rituals not spiritual exercises or practices in general. Bruce Lee confirms what I was saying and even goes further when he says:
Your use of the term ceremony as synonym for ritual is apt. I agree that spontaneity does not guarantee authenticity. Spontaneity is a necessary but not sufficient element for authenticity. Finally, I don’t reject ritual absolutely. I view ritual as a means rather than an end. Some people find rituals more helpful than others. Different rituals work for different peple. Some may not need them at all to achieve spirituality.