Sprituality vs Religion

Originally posted by apathist
Essentially a definition. Obviously biased, though, just like your definition for 'religion'.

If my definition is so 'obviously biased' you should have no difficultly explaining it rather than relying on retorts.

Originally posted by twhitehead
So like the continents on the second planet around Alpha Centuri?

No. We know how to send probes and take telemetry.

Originally posted by twhitehead
If my definition is so 'obviously biased' you should have no difficultly explaining it rather than relying on retorts.

Start with standard dictionary definitions, graduate to technical and philosophical definitions. Hell, go to wiki.

Originally posted by twhitehead
...
My challenge was to give a definition that meets common usage but remains coherent.

I did so. So far you tried to knock it down once and failed.

Originally posted by apathist
Good! And for the Clarke quote:

Anything really amazing is really amazing. Kinda tautological, Mr. Clarke.

Except that is not the insight that Clarke provides. The insight he provides is that advanced technology is amazing to the uninitiated. Your version was just a cheap copy with no real insight.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Except that is not the insight that Clarke provides.

And turning my quote into a tautology lost my meaning, as well.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I too am reluctant to use it. But when a scientist talks of having a spiritual experience while looking at Jupiter through a telescope, I understand what they mean and do not automatically take it to be a religious experience. I would typically not describe it that way myself.

Yes, difficult to argue with that. In a strictly non religious sense, spiritual should be freely used to describe a profound experience.

These religious chaps have stolen words like spiritual or faith from my general vocabulary.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Your version was just a cheap copy with no real insight.

If there is an afterlife, for example, you think it would be wrong to suppose it would be a natural occurrence?

Originally posted by FabianFnas
I don't understand how Houdini did it, but it has nothing to do with supernatural.

But what happens with the soul after the death *is* supernatural and cannot ever be understood, nor be treated with science. Right? 😉

Then there is the distict possibility what we consider our 'souls' is just a human construct with no reality at all. Nothing to hang an immortality tag to, nothing to worry about being burned in hell and so forth. Be happy with the years you are given since there is most likely nothing more. You die you turn to dust. You live on in your children and works.

Originally posted by apathist
No. We know how to send probes and take telemetry.

No, we don't.

Originally posted by apathist
If there is an afterlife, for example, you think it would be wrong to suppose it would be a natural occurrence?

No. But I wouldn't call it a supernatural occurrence either. Nor would I think it indistinguishable from the supernatural.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Then there is the distict possibility what we consider our 'souls' is just a human construct with no reality at all.

That depends on your meaning of the word 'soul'.

Nothing to hang an immortality tag to,
If we find a way to copy a brain into a computer, will that be a soul?

You live on in your children and works.
Do you? Your soul, or something else?

Originally posted by twhitehead
No, we don't.

Yes, we do. I'm wondering if you're okay.

Originally posted by twhitehead
No.

So what would you call events that occur but are not natural?

Originally posted by apathist
So what would you call events that occur but are not natural?

Miracles. 🙂