Thoughts on Spirituality, page 1

I am a member of multiple forums. One of my favorites is a close-knit group of friends with a few common ideals. One day during a conversation on religion, he posted the following message. This set of beliefs is one that I hold very close and he put it best, so instead of trying to paraphrase, I'm quoting it directly.

I've "behaved" like a zealous atheist for a while on UD. Though I was one for a while, this "period" of my life has far outstreched that of the "character" I've somewhat created on UD. I remember in some thread someone called me out on posting comments like "god is dead" and so on. The Internet isn't a good place for sarcasm as those were for comedic effect. Nonetheless, I'd like to share my new perspective -- a personal version of secular spirituality.

I was raised Roman Catholic and practiced until I was 18. After rejecting Catholicism, I considered myself a strict, empirical atheist -- inspired by Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. After taking philosophy courses and reading a lot on my own, however, I've grown somewhat frustrated with this type of thinking. As Kant proved, empiricism is far from perfect. My views have gone from theist to atheist to somewhere in between. To a theist, I might be an atheist; to an atheist, I might be a theist. I enjoy Buddhist philosophy and some Christian mystics, particularly Thomas Merton. I don't believe in the god of "being." Instead, for me, god is "love." All in all, I'm trying to find spirituality in a secular world.

Spirituality is something, in my opinion, that can be extracted from religion, the latter which I personally oppose. As I see it, one can successfully integrate spirituality and science, but not religion and science. My spirituality, instead of contradicting science, is influenced by it. The reason I am interested in spirituality in addition to science is because of the inefficiency of pure empiricism. We can't completely trust our senses. Science is only as good as human understanding is. What if this "beyond" is too much for us? I wouldn't say this thing is magical or Divine.

Also, strict empiricism lends itself to a form of determinism that eschews morality, etc. Spirituality is necessary to foster "god" (i.e., love).

One of my biggest problems with Christianity is that many people currently attribute the word "God" to an omnipotent being who has divine influence over the world and our fate. The Catholic Church, for instance, purports this view. This view is almost childish -- a manifestation of our passive acknowledgment that we are universally alone and meaningless (a view with which one can surely disagree).

The funny thing is that the theologians and writers worth reading -- particularly the Christian mystics -- do not. Meister Eckhart, for instanced, explicitly told church leaders that attributing "God" to a being was wrong. Thomas Merton, another mystic, wrote that God was not a being, but love. And so, I'm a fan of Buddhist philosophy. Though, like any religion, it gets too complex and esoteric in its ultimate stages.

So, I guess, ultimately I've come to an atheistic spiritualism. I believe in a metaphysically existent soul, but not an immortal one. It doesn't have a shape or physical existence. It exists in me. It is my consciousness, my being, my love.

So about this universal loneliness and meaningless, I have an existentialist response. We are to derive meaning from meaninglessness.

Overall, this is hardly a complete and perfect argument. I haven't read it over. It's a quick sketch of my thoughts -- I've been meaning to get it on here for a while, but I've been busy. Sometimes I ask myself why I think so much about these kinds of things. (Maybe everyone does?) But, I guess there's something in the pursuit of "knowledge" that makes me happy. And, I think for the first time in my life I've finally come to a point where I've learned something worthwhile. Something that I can keep and hold onto and share with other people.