a difference

[Divad123]

There are dimensions of every human that are spiritual, but they tend to fall into two categories: faith and belief.
Belief is spiritual truths learned from your culture, or church. Faith is based on personal spiritual experiences and spiritual truths you have figured out for yourself.
Belief tends to decay into religiosity, or whatever lowest common denominator is found in your religious community. Science is seen as the enemy, and is, because religion parading as science MUST distort science in order to maintain the claim.
Faith tends to flower into a mature spirituality, and faith is not harmed by science. Rather, knowing the boundaries or domains of both scientific knowledge and faith can enhance and strengthen each other.
They can slide into each other, be blended, but this tends to be temporary. Religiosity tends to extinguish true spirituality and true spirituality tends to abandon religiosity as a primitive or one-dimensional misstatement or misunderstanding of what spirituality is about.

[guillaumeb]

1. An intertesting post.

Are you stating that religiosity, as you term it, can lead to complacency? Merely going through the motions?


And welcome to DU, and this forum.

[Divad123]

3. Sometimes

Sometimes as in churches that are 'away from the world' in their theology. Other times it can make flying into a building seem like a good idea. Mostly religiosity, and I mean more than half of folks, religiosity is a form of fundamentalism that gives a rigid world view steeped in legalism and dividing the world into 'saved' and 'sinners' leaving folks approaching life with a fantasy role playing war game. Us vs Satan. Really useful to authoritarians and nothing about a sense of connection to a loving god or universe.

[Major Nikon]

2. What you describe as truths are not factual and have more to do with belief

There is no dimension to me that is based on hocus pocus, so you lost me on your first sentence.

If you chose to believe in those things, more power to you, but the assumption they apply the same to everyone is a bit much.

[Divad123]

4. awareness

What I'm poorly communicating about here is a quality of consciousness. In spirituality there is a change, can be brought about by a lot of different methods-meditation form irrelevant, where you sense a connection to the whole universe. Its brought about by you-can be restoring, and no god necessary.

Spirituality is hard wired into the brain, religion is learned. That's the distinction I was going for. And its not about 'belief', as I just said, that's learned. Spiritual experiences are available to anyone who practices meditative techniques. It makes my life better, so I do it. If you don't need something like that for your life to be fulfilling, more power to you.

This is my other post:

Sometimes as in churches that are 'away from the world' in their theology. Other times it can make flying into a building seem like a good idea. Mostly religiosity, and I mean more than half of folks, religiosity is a form of fundamentalism that gives a rigid world view steeped in legalism and dividing the world into 'saved' and 'sinners' leaving folks approaching life with a fantasy role playing war game. Us vs Satan. Really useful to authoritarians and nothing about a sense of connection to a loving god or universe.

[Major Nikon]

5. These are still your beliefs and not facts

And yet you still insist on stating them as facts as if they were. If you want to believe these things, more power to you, but if you are going to try to pass them off as more than that I can’t agree.

The connection I have to the universe is environmental. Anything which can be just as easily described as magic is pure speculation. I feel no need to engage in pure speculation as an attempt at fulfillment. That’s why god invented whiskey.

[Divad123]

6. standard

Yes, some of what I said is personal observation based on incomplete knowledge. But the basic fact of the quality of consciousness achieved through meditation is based on hundreds of brain scans. It is not a hallucination, those light up different parts of the brain.
Yea, my opinion of learned religion is on the down side, Anyone paying attention to recent history can get that.
BTW-a connection to the universe that is environmental is very cool. Happy to checkout any books you recommend on the subject.

On the flip side, whats your standard of 'this is real"?

[Major Nikon]

7. "Quality" is a subjective observation

There's nothing factual about it. Whatever my "standard" is or anyone else's is also subjective and non-factual.

[Divad123]

9. epistemology

OK, I think I see a little of where you're coming from. I can't resist a little sophistry here and point out that if 'there are no facts' that that itself would be a fact.
But seriously, I'm a 'recovering objectivity' and I start with a simple sentence that everything else flows from: "There is a real world, and I know it". Implicit in this statement are,1, an objective reality, 2, concepts that refer to that reality(definitions, words, and theory in the scientific sense),and 3, and my awareness that I'm aware of this. Ayn Rand used these axioms deductively, where as I see that all experience partakes of them and use them as basic building blocks of thinking. When I say that in meditation your awareness has a quality distinct from that of say, when your playing chess, I'm saying, "Hey, something is different about this"--as distinct as cherry red is form pink.
Or, on the other hand, I did do a lot of acid back in thee 80's.....

[edhopper]

8. If you are talking about a purely neurological state

that can be attained. Then I get what you are getting at.

[Divad123]

10. Not quite

Not exactly-the bliss you can feel during meditation is real in the sense that it's a distinct experience, the pattern of neural activation that the machines read means that it is empirically distinct. Your brain generates your awareness--if you didn't' have the neural networks for It, you wouldn't be able to experience it.

[edhopper]

11. I don't accept the existence

of a mind / brain separation.

There is no consciousness absent the brain.

[Divad123]

12. not saying that

Neither do I. All I'm saying is that the brain generates the mind, and that hard wired into the brain, reflected in conscious experience, are states experientially distinct from everyday, get stuff done mode. I place value on them, I get stress reduction and a sense of well being from them.

I call them spiritual experiences, no god or survival of the soul is implied.

[edhopper]

13. Oh

okay, I get you now. Yes altered states as we used to say. The same spiritual experience that some say is caused by them feeling a God can be triggered by nature or art or an action. like meditation.

[Divad123]

14. Yes

Yes. All the different 'higher' states of awareness that mystics have talked about throughout the ages are real in the sense that they are distinct first person experiences caused not by the hand of some god, but generated by human neural architecture. Culture supplies the myths, your neural architecture allows the experience, and you get the awareness of something greater than ordinary waking consciousness.
Personally, I get a more grounded way of thinking about this shit storm of a culture we live in today, and find I can work towards addressing the problem, but without the rage.

[edhopper]

15. Zen

in the most expansive sense of the word.

[Divad123]

16. And

And its not about being passive. You can separate yourself from the guiding myths of our mess of a culture and chose your own metaphor to structure and ground the experience. Personally, I use motherhood as mine-it helps me heal my own wounds, gives me the love I need to go on, and a fierce protectiveness that doesn't burn me up for the good I hope to preserve.