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Monday, July 09, 2007
Religion, Spirituality and Cows
Yesterday Fran was kind enough to share his Ruminations on mummeries, Druids and the relentless assault on Christianity (among others), wherein we find this:
This would make a fine jumping-off point for an inquiry into what constitutes “spiritual belief,” especially as contrasted with religious belief.
Indeed it would, and so I’ll take up the cudgel and have a go at a little intellectual knocking-about--all in the name of education, of course.
The beauty of taking on the mantle of “spiritual belief” is that, first, it proclaims that one is not a crass scientific materialist like a Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris--that’s so, you know, noninclusive; however wrong they may be, these atheists at least know what they think. “Spiritual” folks don’t like that hard-edged certainty; they believe in something, however shadowy and vague, and they want you to know that. Being “spiritual” is nice, and it doesn’t require a commitment to anything specific that would have to be defended as Truth.
That’s the difference between spirituality and religion. Religions make truth claims about how the world began, where Man came from and where he’s going. Religions have rules of conduct, specific rituals and practices to be adhered to, sacrifices of time and resources to be made. Religion, in sum, ain’t easy, whereas “spirituality” is as easy as falling off a log.
Some years back, when I was still a single man, I gave some of those Internet dating sites a try. Among the many questions one answers in compiling a profile is Religion, and of course there are plenty of Christians looking for Christians, Jews looking for Jews and Agnostics looking for anyone.
There was also a category called “Spiritual, but not Religious” and after awhile I realized that the vast majority of women who thus described themselves were sending a signal not about their spirituality but about their willingness to engage in sexual intercourse without benefit of marriage. Specifying a religion, especially Christian, was thought to turn away a large subset of eligible bachelors--the ones who didn’t want to buy the cow, so to speak.
To me, that says more about “spirituality” than a further thousand words would.
Thus endeth the demonstration.
Comments
Nobly put, W. You’ve delineated the difference nicely.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 07/11/2007 at 07:13 AM
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