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Defining spirituality

#11
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:What were those a reminder of? Rolleyes

LOL! All reminders of your stupidity since I can't delete them anymore.

Quote:In a secular account of spirituality, values, meaning, growth, and transformation do not have any source other than the "emphasis is on subjective experience", which is the "narcissistic subjective beliefs" I already mentioned

Funny, I didn't see anything about narcissistic subjective beliefs. Let's go over this again shall we?

"In modern times the emphasis is on subjective experience and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live," incorporating personal growth or transformation, usually in a context separate from organized religious institutions. Houtman and Aupers suggest that modern spirituality is a blend of humanistic psychology, mystical and esoteric traditions and Eastern religions."

Still nothing about your alleged animating principle there. Let's check this other account of spirituality:

"Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience—something that touches us all. People may describe a spiritual experience as sacred or transcendent or simply a deep sense of aliveness and interconnectedness.

Some may find that their spiritual life is intricately linked to their association with a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue. Others may pray or find comfort in a personal relationship with God or a higher power. Still others seek meaning through their connections to nature or art. Like your sense of purpose, your personal definition of spirituality may change throughout your life, adapting to your own experiences and relationships.

Spiritual questions
For many, spirituality is connected to large questions about life and identity, such as:

Am I a good person?
What is the meaning of my suffering?
What is my connection to the world around me?
Do things happen for a reason?
How can I live my life in the best way possible?"

https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/what-spirituality
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#12
Magical Realist Offline
"“Spirit” comes from the Latin word “to breathe.” What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin. Despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word “spiritual” that we are talking of anything other than matter (including the matter of which the brain is made), or anything outside the realm of science. On occasion, I will feel free to use the word. Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or of acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both."---Carl Sagan
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#13
Syne Offline
(Apr 26, 2018 08:44 AM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:What were those a reminder of?  Rolleyes

LOL! All reminders of your stupidity since I can't delete them anymore.
You could delete the duplicates in 2016 and 2017, when those were posted...yet you didn't bother, even when you could.
IOW, it really doesn't change anything if you refuse to delete duplicates now. Been happening for quite some time.
I see them once, mark them as read, and never see them again...unless someone replies to them (so maybe you should thank SS for reviving your latest duplicate thread).
Quote:
Quote:In a secular account of spirituality, values, meaning, growth, and transformation do not have any source other than the "emphasis is on subjective experience", which is the "narcissistic subjective beliefs" I already mentioned

Funny, I didn't see anything about narcissistic subjective beliefs. Let's go over this again shall we?

"In modern times the [b]emphasis is on subjective experience and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live," incorporating personal growth or transformation, usually in a context separate from organized religious institutions. Houtman and Aupers suggest that modern spirituality is a blend of humanistic psychology, mystical and esoteric traditions and Eastern religions."[/b]

Still nothing about your alleged animating principle there.
If you emphasize subjective experience above all else, you are a narcissist. And if you're a narcissist, you really don't care about any animating principles...only self-justification.
As long as you keep citing secular sources, I have no doubt you'll continue to find no animating principles, as that is contrary to ad hoc self-affirmation.
Quote:"Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. As such, it is a universal human experience—something that touches us all. People may describe a spiritual experience as sacred or transcendent or simply a deep sense of aliveness and interconnectedness.

Some may find that their spiritual life is intricately linked to their association with a church, temple, mosque, or synagogue. Others may pray or find comfort in a personal relationship with God or a higher power. Still others seek meaning through their connections to nature or art. Like your sense of purpose, your personal definition of spirituality may change throughout your life, adapting to your own experiences and relationships.

Spiritual questions
For many, spirituality is connected to large questions about life and identity, such as:

Am I a good person?
What is the meaning of my suffering?
What is my connection to the world around me?
Do things happen for a reason?
How can I live my life in the best way possible?"

https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/what-spirituality

Without any foundational principles, any of those questions can be answered in a subjectively self-affirming manner. It's a hollow gesture.

But all this does reinforce that you don't understand spirituality and for the same reasons as secular people in general.

The modern idea of spirituality sprang forth from the individualistic tendencies of Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism, which greatly emphasizes the power of the individual’s inner or mental essence, arose in response by figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau to New England Calvinist traditions that preached predestination and the doctrine of the Trinity. Emerson and Thoreau believed in neither predestination nor the Trinity; they subscribed to Unitarianism.7 Unitarianism states that while Jesus Christ was the son of God and a man, he was not himself an aspect of God as is believed by Trinitarians.

The Transcendentalists became known for their rejection of what they considered to be the conformity of church congregations. They instead advocated a life spent in isolation, during which time God could be experienced. These experiences, the Transcendentalists held, were the only ways in which a person could come to know God. Emerson went so far as to advocate that Jesus, as a man, celebrated the greatness of man and gave man an avenue in which to share in the divinity of God and take on a likeness to God.8

Transcendentalism paved the way for some of the key aspects of modern spirituality. The individualistic nature of Transcendentalism led many people in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to question organized religions and their definitions of what is sacred and holy. As a result, Transcendentalists moved away from ritualized worship and began to seek out ways in which the individual could connect with the beyond.
- https://www.exploregod.com/what-is-spirituality


There's a very good reason you recently touted Emerson and completely failed to differentiate transcendence from transcendentalism. Oddly enough, most secular people now believe in predeterminism, even though transcendentalism began as a response against its religious variant, predestination. But that odd embrace of predeterminsim seems apropos with the modern "spirituality" eliminative redefinition of meaning and the sacred.

(Apr 26, 2018 07:22 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: "“Spirit” comes from the Latin word “to breathe.” What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin. Despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word “spiritual” that we are talking of anything other than matter (including the matter of which the brain is made), or anything outside the realm of science. On occasion, I will feel free to use the word. Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or of acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both."---Carl Sagan

Thank you for so aptly demonstrating the eliminative materialism I just mentioned.
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#14
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:You could delete the duplicates in 2016 and 2017, when those were posted...yet you didn't bother, even when you could.

Right..I don't check every thread I post for duplicates. Never have. So the fuck what? It can't be remedied anymore thanks to your bitching.

Quote:There's a very good reason you recently touted Emerson and completely failed to differentiate transcendence from transcendentalism

Actually I touted Emerson, Muir and Whitman for their spirituality. You were the one that erroneously defined them all as "transcendentalists". Which is besides the point since transcendentalism involves a transcendental experience of the world.

Quote:If you emphasize subjective experience above all else, you are a narcissist.

That's an ignorant statement. All experience is subjective, and not for that reason narcissistic or invalid. Life itself, it's values and meaning and purpose, is subjective and relevant to human experients. That's why spirituality is so powerful..because it IS such a deeply subjective and personal experience.

More on the common contemporary meaning of spirituality. Note again zero reference to some animating principle of the physical body..

https://theconversation.com/what-does-it...tual-87236
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#15
Syne Offline
(Apr 26, 2018 08:43 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:You could delete the duplicates in 2016 and 2017, when those were posted...yet you didn't bother, even when you could.

Right..I don't check every thread I post for duplicates. Never have. So the fuck what? It can't be remedied anymore thanks to your bitching.
The point is that you leaving duplicate threads around isn't the stinging reproach you seem to imagine. Speaks more to your laziness.
And quit bitching about the consequences for your own bad behavior. I didn't make you the intellectually dishonest and trolling piece of shit you are.
Quote:
Quote:There's a very good reason you recently touted Emerson and completely failed to differentiate transcendence from transcendentalism

Actually I touted Emerson, Muir and Whitman for their spirituality. You were the one that erroneously defined them all  as "transcendentalists". Which is besides the point since transcendentalism involves a transcendental experience of the world.
LOL! So now you don't think they were transcendentalists? Rolleyes
And you're doubling down your moronic conflation of transcendence with transcendentalism.
Hell, you're even contradicting yourself, saying that transcendentalism is erroneous to spirituality AND that "transcendentalism involves a transcendental experience".
Quote:
Quote:If you emphasize subjective experience above all else, you are a narcissist.

That's an ignorant statement. All experience is subjective, and not for that reason narcissistic or invalid. Life itself, it's values and meaning and purpose, is subjective and relevant to human experients. That's why spirituality is so powerful..because it IS such a deeply subjective and personal experience.

More on the common contemporary meaning of spirituality. Note again zero reference to some animating principle of the physical body..

https://theconversation.com/what-does-it...tual-87236

Learn to read. You missed "emphasize...above all else". Note again, the secular bastardization of meaning. If your spirituality were powerful, it would affect your actions. It doesn't because it is glorified navel-gazing.
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#16
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:If your spirituality were powerful, it would affect your actions. It doesn't because it is glorified navel-gazing.

LOL! How do you know it doesn't affect my actions? Because I'm not some moralizing hypercritical prig full of hate and spite like you my spirituality isn't valid? Like I've said before, you are the least spiritual person I've ever met in my life. Nothing about you qualifies you to be a judge of my spirituality. Every thread you touch turns into petty bitching shit. Even this thread has been reduced to your own pathetic level. It's no wonder you don't know what spirituality means. You've never experienced it. "It's the animating principle in our bodies." lol!
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#17
Syne Offline
(Apr 26, 2018 11:07 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:If your spirituality were powerful, it would affect your actions. It doesn't because it is glorified navel-gazing.

LOL! How do you know it doesn't affect my actions? Because I'm not some moralizing hypercritical prig full of hate and spite like you my spirituality isn't valid? Like I've said before, you are the least spiritual person I've ever met in my life. Nothing about you qualifies you to be a judge of my spirituality. Every thread you touch turns into petty bitching shit.

Ah, but you are a "hypercritical prig full of hate and spite". It drips from every post where you're confronted with ideas you don't espouse. Your "spirituality" has not made you more accepting or understanding. Every thread is exactly what you make it, and if you were more self-aware, you'd realize that I give you what you dish out first. I'm the mirror you find ugly and vile.
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#18
Magical Realist Offline
(Apr 26, 2018 11:21 PM)Syne Wrote:
(Apr 26, 2018 11:07 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
Quote:If your spirituality were powerful, it would affect your actions. It doesn't because it is glorified navel-gazing.

LOL! How do you know it doesn't affect my actions? Because I'm not some moralizing hypercritical prig full of hate and spite like you my spirituality isn't valid? Like I've said before, you are the least spiritual person I've ever met in my life. Nothing about you qualifies you to be a judge of my spirituality. Every thread you touch turns into petty bitching shit.

Ah, but you are a "hypercritical prig full of hate and spite". It drips from every post where you're confronted with ideas you don't espouse. Your "spirituality" has not made you more accepting or understanding. Every thread is exactly what you make it, and if you were more self-aware, you'd realize that I give you what you dish out first. I'm the mirror you find ugly and vile.

No..it's all you. Petty bitching and dredging up personal details about people from other posts and whining to the mod when you don't get your way and derailing threads and attacking people's spirituality and sexual orientation and spreading your toxicity like a malignant cancer thruout this whole forum. Believe me, it's all you. This thread was supposed to be an exchange about what is most noble and transcendent in our experience. But you've turned it all into shit. Your petty childish shit over and over again. And they wonder why I deleted my threads. And they wonder why most members never post threads here.
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#19
Syne Offline
(Apr 26, 2018 11:27 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
(Apr 26, 2018 11:21 PM)Syne Wrote: Ah, but you are a "hypercritical prig full of hate and spite". It drips from every post where you're confronted with ideas you don't espouse. Your "spirituality" has not made you more accepting or understanding. Every thread is exactly what you make it, and if you were more self-aware, you'd realize that I give you what you dish out first. I'm the mirror you find ugly and vile.

No..it's all you. Petty bitching and dredging up personal details about people from other posts and whining to the mod when you don't get your way and derailing threads and attacking people's spirituality and sexual orientation and spreading your toxicity like a malignant cancer thruout this whole forum. Believe me, it's all you. This thread was supposed to be an exchange about what is most noble and transcendent in our experience. But you've turned it all into shit. Your petty childish shit over and over again. And they wonder why I deleted my threads. And they wonder why most members never post threads here.

First, any adult should know not to post "personal details" online. And second, what personal details? O_o
Why are you whining about people mentioning things from "other posts" when you're the one who voluntarily posted them? O_o

And what part of this is "derailing" or "attacking"?
(Apr 25, 2018 10:00 PM)Syne Wrote: "The term spirit means "animating or vital principle in man and animals". It is derived from the Old French espirit which comes from the Latin word spiritus (soul, courage, vigor, breath) and is related to spirare (to breathe). In the Vulgate the Latin word spiritus is used to translate the Greek pneuma and Hebrew ruah."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality#Etymology

"Suffix
-al [-ual]
Of or pertaining to."
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-al#English

"-ity
a suffix used to form abstract nouns expressing state or condition"
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/-ity

Regardless of its "secular context" or "use in scholarly research", its etymology has always been pertaining to the state or condition of the action or animating principle of living.

Can't be bothered to use the delete button to remove duplicate topics?

Nothing. It's only your replies that become derailing attacks. And you want to know how I can tell you only use my posts to vent your own hateful soul? Because you're not using the ignore feature to keep from seeing them. If they are truly so ruinous, why don't you remove them from your sight? You can't, because you thrive on the hate I allow you the excuse to spew...or the justification for your persecution complex.
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#20
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:Because you're not using the ignore feature to keep from seeing them. If they are truly so ruinous, why don't you remove them from your sight?

I have to read your crap to make sure you're not lying about me or obsessively dredging up shit just to belittle me. I have the right to defend myself here. And I always will, however muddy that makes me after wrestling with the pig.
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