Spiritual / Mechanistic paradigms

[palebluedot]

I read an interesting article by a PhD concerning the inability of us so-called scientifically minded folk to appreciate spirituality.

The link is here - allow an hour to read it properly - its 2 or 3 webpages in total

http://www.city-net.com/~alimhaq/text/religiospirituality1.htm


I have to say that this is the best bit of reasoning in favour of a spiritual dimension from a believer that I've seen in a long time.  It doesn't attempt to prove God, neither is it in my view any better as an explanation than Dawkin's crtitique of the human propensity to religion, but it did make me think.

I do think that I can identify the fatal flaw in the argument but I'd like to see what other's think beforehand, unless you want me to say.

Be warned, its heavy stuff but quite easy to follow if you concentrate

I thought this forum was the best place to invite opinion on this.

[Davin]

I found the article boring as all hell and can be summed up by one sentence near the start of it:

The main problem in the attempt to make sense of the religo-spiritual aspects of human being is quite simple: We don't know what we're talking about!

I did not find the article heavy, it's really just a bunch of crap I've heard hundreds of times but using uncommonly used words and verbose sentence structures. The kind of bullshit I did in college to turn a 5 page paper into a 20 page paper to meet the submission requirements. I'll break down the first paragraph to demonstrate:

One thing that has always struck me is that when it comes to issues of religion and spirituality everyone thinks they can pontificate without any actual study of the issues!

I think people talk about spirituality without studying it.

Or, they remain within the realm of a child's education on the issues.

<Ad hominem can be dropped without any loss of useful meaning>

This section will lead you through, in a simple manner, some of the issues involved, and will leave you with a beginning grasp of how to understand religion and spirituality in a way that I am sure will make sense to you.

This will teach you about religion and spirituality.

For those of you who think that religious talk is nonsense, you will begin to discover how it actually makes sense, and discusses aspects of experience that are yours simply because you are a human being!

People that think religion is nonesense will see that it makes sense.

The religions make sense. They are not fantasy. They are not just imaginative thinking. They are not just neurotic compensations or opiates of the masses.

<Useless statements that can be removed without any loss to meaning>

Now we can compare:

One thing that has always struck me is that when it comes to issues of religion and spirituality everyone thinks they can pontificate without any actual study of the issues! Or, they remain within the realm of a child's education on the issues. This section will lead you through, in a simple manner, some of the issues involved, and will leave you with a beginning grasp of how to understand religion and spirituality in a way that I am sure will make sense to you. For those of you who think that religious talk is nonsense, you will begin to discover how it actually makes sense, and discusses aspects of experience that are yours simply because you are a human being! The religions make sense. They are not fantasy. They are not just imaginative thinking. They are not just neurotic compensations or opiates of the masses.

I think people talk about spirituality without studying it. This will teach you about religion and spirituality. People that think religion is nonesense will see that it makes sense.

Now imagine how much time could have been saved if the whole article was more efficient.

Edit: Also it's 5 webpages and about 20 normal pages of text.

[palebluedot]

Yep - its ponderous I know.

But what of the central argument?   That of the holistic "field model"?

My reaction was that the spiritual element was not necessary - it could be easily contained in the "Social" element.  This is the flaw as I see it and why the argument fails to elevate spirituality.

I also failed to see how the superstitious paradigm could be automatically given equal standing to the mechanistic paradigm.  It not so much a case of a worthwhile tool being lost and needing rescuing, but more a case that it was replaced because it was useless and wrong!

The supersticious paradigm is akin to Aristolean "natural philosophy" which determined that men have more teeth than women only through deduction.  So alien was emprical evidence that it took over 1500 years before anyone bothered the count them and check.   The reason Descartes and Newton blew Aristottlean principles away was because Aristottle was fundamentally wrong too many times.  

But I want to consider it more before dismissing it.  And certainly, there is more to the social and subjectve realms than mere chemical processes.

[Davin]

Like I said, nothing we haven't seen before hundreds of times, this article just made it more boring and drawn out than I usually hear it. This is stated in the end of the article:

Spirituality is that area of human experience that treats of our awareness of, and response to the mystery of reality. In that we are potentially aware of this mystery by means of everything we experience our spirituality is of foundational importance to healthy human being.

So what the person calls "spirituality" is what normal people call curiousity and learning. Imagine me not wasting 10 minutes of reading and a very long time in my memory if the person just stated that at the beginning and left it at that. Not to mention the pompous professor phonation my presuposition of the person possesses.

[palebluedot]

OK!  I was hoping it might stretch us a bit but hey ho!

[The Magic Pudding]

Thanks Davin.

[Crow]

Danvin - Totally agree about the article being "boring as hell" and way too bloated.

I think the author is wrong in suggesting that people of scientific reasoning don't understand spirituality in fact I would say the opposite is true by seeing spirituality as nothing more than what it actually is, removing all romantic supernatural ideologies.

One thing that "grinds my gears" is when people say "ohhh this music/art is sooo spiritual", give me a fucking break its just something that resonates with there memories/emotions and is totally subjective to the individual.

[xSilverPhinx]

'Spiritual' is definitelty one of those overly used and abused words of our time.

I think the author is wrong in suggesting that people of scientific reasoning don't understand spirituality in fact I would say the opposite is true by seeing spirituality as nothing more than what it actually is, removing all romantic supernatural ideologies.

This.

[The Magic Pudding]

One thing that "grinds my gears" is when people say "ohhh this music/art is sooo spiritual", give me a fucking break its just something that resonates with there memories/emotions and is totally subjective to the individual.

I agree but I don't think "just," is the word I'd use.
A representation of emotion, love, longing, despair, joy, or physicality deserves more than a dismissive "just."
I can tell some music is just cynically pulling peoples strings, but the stuff I listen to is sublime. 
Attempts to communicate feelings and aspirations seems an admirable thing, it may be spoken in a language we don't consciously recognise but it is our language, we don't have to thank god for it.

I have doubts about the wisdom of sending a disk of classical music off with a voyager probe, do we really expect ET to like this stuff?

[Recusant]

Verbose, yes, but not entirely without merit. McAuliffe is a Catholic who converted to Islam and his PhD. is in Formative Spirituality.

The discipline of Formative Spirituality, conceived by Father Adrian van Kaam, seeks to scientifically explain the unfolding of a healthy human spirit and locate its obstacles.

I think that anybody who has a PhD. in such a field is likely prone to producing prolix prose.

From the article:

The human spirit is that capacity to be aware of, and respond to reality-as-mystery.

Human spirituality is the practice of, and application of skills that increase awareness of reality-as-mystery, and improves response to that awareness such that positive consequences are observed physically, subjectively and socially.

Spirituality is distinct from psychology or sociology.

I think this is reasonable (though I'm not sold on the final sentence) but when McAuliffe goes further to say:

Think of "mystery". It is a not knowing. It can elicit a lot of anxiety, anticipation, suspense. You experience mystery when a loved one is late coming home. When you wait for that important decision that's in the mail. You feel it when they draw the daily number. What about the mystery of evil? Is it evil, or just how we interpret it?? This is our reality. How are you going to deal with it? How you deal with it is your religion.

(Emphasis in original)

I think he goes too far.  Like many religious people, it seems he simply cannot imagine a human being who actually is not religious in some way.  Thus the canard: "Atheism is a religion too!"  A person can acknowledge that the mysterious is and probably always will be part of reality. Their means of dealing with that mystery is not always religious however.