[t-3]

If you don't mean to suggest you believe in some strange metaphysics without any grounding in reality, why do you call it spirituality? What "inner world" are you "exploring"? Can that be done in plain language without any mysticism? Why or why not?

[thin_carapace]

we are monkeys following logic that was determined by other monkeys. our experience of reality is equivalent to that of a brain in a jar. blind belief is blind belief whether placed in science or religion. breaching the gap of blindness necessarily involves a leap to test ideas with personal faith. such a notion is not necessarily compatible with an atheistic perspective insisting reality is solely that which may be verbally quantified by monkeys. a dog knows to sit on command but has no idea about the concept of sitting, does that make the concept of sitting unreal?

[tokioyoyo]

I can see how they mean "the search for the unknown" in itself is already some sort of spirituality.

[t-3]

It doesn't have to be. Searching out the unknown is seeking out new knowledge, seeking to diminish ignorance. You don't need to believe in higher powers or anything like that to search for new knowledge. Spirituality is a shortcut to a unverifiable, unfalsifiable knowledge that some explanation for phenomena exists, but not at all the kind of thing anyone actually interested in truth or expanding their own knowledge would use to explain anything.

[psd1]

I agree that "metaphysical" and "unverifiable" are traits of spirituality, as i understand the word. I consider theorem and animism to be categories of spirituality, but not the totality of it.

I describe myself as a humanist, and to me that approximately means a spiritual existentialist with no belief in spirits. From existentialism you can, of course, reach nihilism, a philosophy that is not so much wrong as unhelpful. But existentialism doesn't teach that there is no meaning; it teaches us that meaning is whatever we want, and it's important because we say it is important. From there you can end up back in any school of philosophy you want, but with a grounding that's compatible with living on a ball of rock hurtling through space.

[LocalH]

Militant atheists like you are almost as insufferable as militant theists

[dubbie99]

Or you could you know, answer the question…

[LocalH]

I don't believe in any "God". I believe that only the universe is any "supreme being". Is that woo? Maybe. But it helps me be kinder than any religion seems to teach others.

[psd1]

That raises an interesting point.

The big religions of the world all explicitly teach kindness - personal and concrete kindness practiced by you, the follower.

Is that what they effectively teach? Or is it just window dressing on top of underlying hegemonisation?

A/B testing is likely impossible and i can't see how you would measure kindness. Nonetheless, my conjecture is that religion likely shifts people in the direction of kindness. I suspect that believers who are cruel would typically also be cruel without the religion.

I assert that there are more direct and effective waits of developing compassion, but that they require a base level of self-awareness higher than the median found in neoliberal nations. Perhaps religion is close to optimal for those who need extrinsic motivation to develop any self-government.

Furthermore, it looks to me like neoliberalism leaves a philosophical vacuum which demands filling with something, and that something is all too eagerly supplied by charlatans. We should evaluate religion relative to whatever philosophy would take its place. Tribalism, fascism, supremacy: these are perennially seductive. Religion is not incompatible with these, but it might crowd them out.

[robobro]

There's an XKCD for that! https://xkcd.com/774/

[antonvs]

You think asking for explanations and evidence makes someone a "militant atheist"?

What do you call yourself? A militant woo-merchant?