In my introduction I asked the question “Why do we believe the things that we believe?”.
To truly get some perspective on this, we have to do some groundwork on spirituality and religion, especially in terms of semantics. We have to know what we are talking about otherwise we may not understand each other!
It’s all very ambiguous and everyone has different paradigms (world views) that colour the description, meaning and emotional background of these terms.
As we look at this unraveling process I’ll be working on the assumption that “spirituality” is the innate sense of awe, wonder, mystery, purpose and meaning of life and the universe that we all have.
The term “religion” will be used to describe any system that attempts to define spirituality into a system of beliefs that we can apply to our lives in some meaningful way.
One saying I’ve heard so often is “I’m spiritual but not religious”. I totally get what people mean by this, but it is rather ambiguous when we consider my description above.
For the sake of clarity then, we can’t BE spiritual, in the sense that it’s a belief system. We experience “spirituality” however when we look at the stars, for example, and feel that deep sense of wonder and amazement inside us. This can often trigger a range of emotions from feeling exhilarated and inspired to feeling insignificant and lost, and anything in between!
The moment we ascribe an explanation to those feelings, we enter the realm of “religion”. The most obvious is ascribing some sort of all powerful being as the source of what we experience. But it can be any form of belief from universal consciousness, karma, paganism, new age teachings, chakras and energy etc – anything really, that tries to capture and provide meaning to these deep and powerful feelings.
I realise that this may be difficult for some people, but as I work through this complex topic, you’ll see why I approach it in this way.
As a result then, we have to break “religion” down into many subsets and look at their benefits and short-comings – how well they serve humanity and how much objective criteria they meet in any practical sense. Mind you, objectivity (as in being able to apply scientific methodology) in anything to do with spirituality is exceedingly difficult. We can, however, look at what we currently know objectively with things like quantum physics and apply it to a certain degree, but it’s still a long way off providing the level of objectivity demanded by the discerning atheist!
So before I move on, take the time to think about your own beliefs in the context of my definitions. Try thinking in terms of how well they “work” in addressing our innate spirituality. This isn’t to undermine any beliefs and faith we have as such. It’s to provide a framework for us to examine “why we believe what we believe”.
