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[Gee]

Summary: emotion and spirituality are posited to be intimately related.

But which is causal? Emotion -- a force? "God" -- a deity? It is clearly not thought.

Gee

I'm thinking it's a combination of entropy and chaos, resulting in the probability that ordered entities may emerge. From there, it's a matter of "survival of the persistent". Qualities that lead to persistence will logically tend to increase in reality. It's not technically natural selection, which only applies to biology, but a larger tendency of reality of which natural selection is a part.

I'm thinking that your above explanation does not have a damned thing to do with spirituality, be it religious or nonreligious. Either that, or I have completely missed your point.

Digging deeper, past entropy and chaos would seem speculative. Maybe God is the Great Programmer of this particular universal simulation? At the core of all things, anything can be postulated - from The Void to a humanoid deity to multidimensional membranes to endless cycles.

You have already dug too deep, as it appears to me that all of the above is speculation.

Gee

[Lagayascienza]

Life might have a lot to do with spirituality. Without life, maybe there is there is no spirituality. If this is so, then origins and nature of life and how they are an outcome of entropy is relevant to the discussion.

Sean Carrol recently made a nice short video on bigthink about entropy, complexity and life. (Sorry I am unable to post a link to it but it's easy to find)

If it is true that life is just the most efficient way for entropy to do its thing, for the universe to wind down, (I believe something like this is probably true) then I don't see how to get something spiritual out of that process unless humans put it in. Is spirit, then, just a human construct? If not, you would need to go back to first cause to get to spirit. If it exists. And if we do that we seem to be again in the realms of pure speculation.

[Sy Borg]

Summary: emotion and spirituality are posited to be intimately related.

But which is causal? Emotion -- a force? "God" -- a deity? It is clearly not thought.

Gee

I'm thinking it's a combination of entropy and chaos, resulting in the probability that ordered entities may emerge. From there, it's a matter of "survival of the persistent". Qualities that lead to persistence will logically tend to increase in reality. It's not technically natural selection, which only applies to biology, but a larger tendency of reality of which natural selection is a part.

I'm thinking that your above explanation does not have a damned thing to do with spirituality, be it religious or nonreligious. Either that, or I have completely missed your point.

Digging deeper, past entropy and chaos would seem speculative. Maybe God is the Great Programmer of this particular universal simulation? At the core of all things, anything can be postulated - from The Void to a humanoid deity to multidimensional membranes to endless cycles.

You have already dug too deep, as it appears to me that all of the above is speculation.

Gee

You asked 'Which is causal?", not "Which is spiritual?". I answered your question regarding causality. I did not think you expected me to answer the meaning of life in one fell swoop, but to provide initial thoughts as part of a larger discussion.

Thing is, emotion is not a cause. It only emerged with brained animals. Until then, no emotion. There was complexity and there were drives, even hunger and satiation, but these were not emotional. The first emotion was probably fear. Anger would have also been an early emotion. Things have complexified since.

There is no such thing as digging too deep, and speculation is not only fine, but absolutely essential to original thought, just that unfounded ideas should be treated as such. Unfounded ideas ideally would not form the basis of religions and other dogmas, where speculation is heaped upon already highly questionable claims.

[rainchild]

As an atheist, I still find myself uttering phrases such as “Oh, my god!”, “God only knows!”, “Heaven help us!”, “Why the hell did you do that?”… I don’t think that this is an indication that I haven’t fully ditched religion; that I still harbor belief in god(s) or hopes of ending up in heaven and not hell when I die. It’s just habit, and an indication of how deeply these expressions, which denote shock, surprise, fear, etcetera, are imbedded in our language. I understand that they just express emotions and that they do not refer to anything that I consider to be unreal such as gods, heaven or hell. By continuing to utter them, I don’t think I’m subconsciously trying to keep a foot in both camps.

I agree. In order to affirm that expletives reveal our actual values and foundational beliefs, we would have to impute the idea that excrement is sacred to those who utter "Holy Sh**!" We would have to credit those who addressed others as "you [S.O.B.]" with believing that dogs give birth to humans. Those who shouted "[eff] you" would have to be scolded for propositioning the objects of their anger. The idea that our expletives reveal our true ideological stances really is that ridiculous.

On the spectrum of belief in the supernatural, it seems to me that there are atheists like me at one end and, at the other end of the spectrum, there are fully practicing religious believers who organize their lives around religion, some of whom even go around knocking on doors in an effort to convert others to their religion. Between these extremes there are agnostics who just don’t know. I this middle area, I understand that there are also those who call themselves “non-religious but spiritual”. Some of these even say that they don’t believe in anything supernatural and yet they still call themselves “spiritual”.

I don't think that spirituality has to be placed on any continuum of religious belief vs. unbelief. It can be, but it need not be. For some, spirituality means turning one's mind away, however temporarily, from the illusions that we find useful in our everyday lives.

• One such illusion is the equation between our interactions with other humans and "the world." If a family secret is revealed on the Internet, we think that the "whole world" knows it. But mushrooms, dogs, and most of the mass of the universe doesn't know the former secret. Only other humans do.
  
  Another such illusion is the confusion between our descriptions of reality and reality itself. Some of the equations of physics must describe an underlying reality; there's no other way to explain the way we can use such equations to bring new things, like lasers and particle accelerators, under the sun. But the equations remain descriptions--partially accurate descriptions, perhaps, but descriptions nonetheless. Were this not the case, the entire universe would have morphed into something new when Einstein gave us a new account of gravity--which is absurd. As it happens, Newton's & Einstein's equations describe the same universe.
  
  Still another such illusion is the notion that "subjective" is a synonym for "unreal" or "non-existent." As the psychologist Jung pointed out, the psyche, though confined to the brain, is real. There are such things as dream states. Our imaginations do have contents, and our subjective sensations are the most evident states of affairs that exist.

It may be an indication of my own limitations, but I have trouble getting my head around this section of the middle area of the spectrum. If one does not believe in the supernatural then surely one is an atheist, no? What does it mean, what could it mean, to be a “spiritual” atheist? Is it just trying to keep a foot in both camps? Is there a way to be a spiritual atheist and still maintain a straight face? Are there any spiritual atheists here who could tell us how they manage it?

Neither Zen Buddhism nor Atheistic Existentialism require supernatural beliefs. So too with the notion that the universe described by the sciences is sacred. So too with the notion that relaxing our tongues and letting our thoughts float in and out of our minds is, in its proper place and time, as productive an activity as engaging with the world physically and intellectually.

[Lagayascienza]

Thanks, rainchild. I agree that we can place spirituality on a different sliding scale than religion. I hadn't thought of it like that. And, if you are right about Zen etc, then that could be another approach to spirituality that does not require religion.

[Belindi]

Thanks, that's a good answer. The low blood sugar/hunger example makes clear that science and phenomenology are just different perspectives - 1st person vs 3rd person and the one does not trump the other. If I've understood correctly, phenomenology is about how hunger feels subjectively. Science is about the relations between physical elements that result in the subjective feeling. However, some phenomenologists assert that science does not rest on a sound metaphysical foundation. I don't agree with this assertion.

Phenomenology is more thah a subjective view I think. In fact I would not separate it from science as such. Many scientific disciplines such as archaeology, anhtropology, psychology and sociology can use phenomenological perspectives and are better for them.
Phenomenology asks what is objectivity - and I would argue that it might be better qualified to be able to answer that question. How do we experience objectivity? What does it mean to seek it? What behaviours does it encourage?
You can tell when a person is devoid of this way of thinking; unable to draw scientific and experiential references. Those that cannot fathom the role of cultural, historical and personal influences on what we would like to call "objective" morality, for example.

I endorse Sculptor. Unless there be there be the 'first person singular' who is experiencer all sciences, including not only the human sciences but also the natural sciences, could be done by artificial intelligence machines.

Not sure what you mean.
I cannot agree with the last phrase.
AI is incapable of science. They can be guided to help us find answers but you still need to want, desire, have purpose, volition.
AI is just a language machine.

I agree my last phrase does not make sense. I'd like to amend it to " ---------there would be no science." That's to say there would be no science because only experiencers experience want, desire, purpose, volition. This is because only experiencers face towards the future. Inanimate entities are nothing but their pasts.

[Sculptor1]

Phenomenology is more thah a subjective view I think. In fact I would not separate it from science as such. Many scientific disciplines such as archaeology, anhtropology, psychology and sociology can use phenomenological perspectives and are better for them.
Phenomenology asks what is objectivity - and I would argue that it might be better qualified to be able to answer that question. How do we experience objectivity? What does it mean to seek it? What behaviours does it encourage?
You can tell when a person is devoid of this way of thinking; unable to draw scientific and experiential references. Those that cannot fathom the role of cultural, historical and personal influences on what we would like to call "objective" morality, for example.

I endorse Sculptor. Unless there be there be the 'first person singular' who is experiencer all sciences, including not only the human sciences but also the natural sciences, could be done by artificial intelligence machines.

Not sure what you mean.
I cannot agree with the last phrase.
AI is incapable of science. They can be guided to help us find answers but you still need to want, desire, have purpose, volition.
AI is just a language machine.

I agree my last phrase does not make sense. I'd like to amend it to " ---------there would be no science." That's to say there would be no science because only experiencers experience want, desire, purpose, volition. This is because only experiencers face towards the future. Inanimate entities are nothing but their pasts.

Thanks

[Dr Jonathan Osterman PhD]

As an atheist, I still find myself uttering phrases such as “Oh, my god!”, “God only knows!”, “Heaven help us!”, “Why the hell did you do that?”… I don’t think that this is an indication that I haven’t fully ditched religion; that I still harbor belief in god(s) or hopes of ending up in heaven and not hell when I die. It’s just habit, and an indication of how deeply these expressions, which denote shock, surprise, fear, etcetera, are imbedded in our language. I understand that they just express emotions and that they do not refer to anything that I consider to be unreal such as gods, heaven or hell. By continuing to utter them, I don’t think I’m subconsciously trying to keep a foot in both camps.

On the spectrum of belief in the supernatural, it seems to me that there are atheists like me at one end and, at the other end of the spectrum, there are fully practicing religious believers who organize their lives around religion, some of whom even go around knocking on doors in an effort to convert others to their religion. Between these extremes there are agnostics who just don’t know. I this middle area, I understand that there are also those who call themselves “non-religious but spiritual”. Some of these even say that they don’t believe in anything supernatural and yet they still call themselves “spiritual”.

It may be an indication of my own limitations, but I have trouble getting my head around this section of the middle area of the spectrum. If one does not believe in the supernatural then surely one is an atheist, no? What does it mean, what could it mean, to be a “spiritual” atheist? Is it just trying to keep a foot in both camps? Is there a way to be a spiritual atheist and still maintain a straight face? Are there any spiritual atheists here who could tell us how they manage it?

If you don't believe me, then confirm it with Here-And-Now that the best and the only true non-religious spirituality that is viable for true atheists is Buddhism :

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=19194

[rainchild]

This may be true of existing or prominent religions and ideologies, but I don't see how some future atheistic belief-system can be ruled out, and I don't know how you ruled out atheistic existentialism, e.g., of Sarte.

[Lagayascienza]

I endorse Sculptor. Unless there be there be the 'first person singular' who is experiencer all sciences, including not only the human sciences but also the natural sciences, could be done by artificial intelligence machines.

Not sure what you mean.
I cannot agree with the last phrase.
AI is incapable of science. They can be guided to help us find answers but you still need to want, desire, have purpose, volition.
AI is just a language machine.

I agree my last phrase does not make sense. I'd like to amend it to " ---------there would be no science." That's to say there would be no science because only experiencers experience want, desire, purpose, volition. This is because only experiencers face towards the future. Inanimate entities are nothing but their pasts.

Thanks

Thanks, Sculptor and Belindi. That is all helpful. I agree that their is "valuing" behind the scientific enterprise and that AI, for the foreseeable future, could only be a tool for human scientists.

[Lagayascienza]

This may be true of existing or prominent religions and ideologies, but I don't see how some future atheistic belief-system can be ruled out, and I don't know how you ruled out atheistic existentialism, e.g., of Sarte.

Yes, that could be a possibility, rainchild..

[Sculptor1]

This may be true of existing or prominent religions and ideologies, but I don't see how some future atheistic belief-system can be ruled out, and I don't know how you ruled out atheistic existentialism, e.g., of Sarte.

I feel obliged to say that the idea " future atheistic belief-system" is a contradiction in terms. Such a thing is baseless since it does not rely on beleiving anything. Atheism is not believing.
What would be the "system"- based on what exactly?

Existentialism is what it is. Adding the word "atheistic" only draws attention to the fact that it would not include references to a god or gods. I think the term would be useful when drawing a distinction between Keirkergard and Sartre, but the fact that Sartre has not god in the picture does not add anything. SImilarly compare Heidegger with Sartre, and we find that they do not share qualities because they are both atheists. Their own take on existentialism reflects their person, not the absence of something.

[Lagayascienza]

This may be true of existing or prominent religions and ideologies, but I don't see how some future atheistic belief-system can be ruled out, and I don't know how you ruled out atheistic existentialism, e.g., of Sarte.

I feel obliged to say that the idea " future atheistic belief-system" is a contradiction in terms. Such a thing is baseless since it does not rely on beleiving anything. Atheism is not believing.
What would be the "system"- based on what exactly?

Existentialism is what it is. Adding the word "atheistic" only draws attention to the fact that it would not include references to a god or gods. I think the term would be useful when drawing a distinction between Keirkergard and Sartre, but the fact that Sartre has not god in the picture does not add anything. SImilarly compare Heidegger with Sartre, and we find that they do not share qualities because they are both atheists. Their own take on existentialism reflects their person, not the absence of something.

Yes, I see what you mean, Sculptor1.

But what if we go down the Continental road - what if we talk about "value" as primary? We don't need any gods for that. Couldn't we still "believe" that something like the "value" that the phenomenologists talk about is primary, perhaps the "ground of being"? If we take on board Kant's idealism as refined by Husserl (which still leaves us the physical world of science) then, aren't gods out of the picture, along with religion with all its crazy dogma and doctrine? It's outlandish metaphysical baggage could be jettisoned, no?

But I may be wrong. I know only a little of Sartre's existentialism, and I've refused to read Heidegger, whose prose is impossible and against whom I harbour a prejudice because of his Nazi affiliations, so maybe your take on them is correct.

[Dr Jonathan Osterman PhD]

I don't see how some future atheistic belief-system can be ruled out.

True.

Well, then let's wait for it. No rush.

There was also one present atheistic belief-system that I forgot to mention:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=19198

[Dr Jonathan Osterman PhD]

But what if we go down the Continental road - what if we talk about "value" as primary? We don't need any gods for that. Couldn't we still "believe" that something like the "value" that the phenomenologists talk about is primary, perhaps the "ground of being"?

La Gay Scienza, if you want to be spiritual, then you need to learn first that there is no such thing as a serious sensible non-religious spirituality school that would blindly believe in the experimentally falsified random Darwinian Evolution: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=19198

No serious sensible non-religious spirituality school teaches Big Bang and that our Universe is largely chaotic, random, and material. The Laws of Nature are a perfect instance of Intelligent Design.

If you decide to adopt such a non-religious spiritual world-view that proposes mental values, qualities, and meaning, to be primary, then you need to realize that mental values, qualities, and meaning, are mentally subjective and morally neutral.

Because anyone can develop their own subjective mental value system, like Adolf Hitler did, such a subjective non-religious spirituality will contribute to human conflict only, and this means more suffering for everyone.

Any spirituality, religious or otherwise, was meant, in principle, to contribute not only to individual happiness at the expense of other people, but to happiness, ideally, of all humans, and even animals. This is the reason why Creator God, in his perfect moral Omniscience, decided on the best objective set of values for all humans, so you don't have to learn from your solipsistic mistakes, while hurting other people in the process.


" Couldn't we still "believe" that something like the "value"
that the phenomenologists talk about is primary, perhaps the "ground of being"? "

No. Because values, qualities, and meaning, are NOT the "ground of being".

The ultimate ontological ground of all existence is consciousness : viewtopic.php?f=4&t=18952