Our aim is religion

--Aleister Crowley

These phrases are meaningless to me.

"This dread and darkness of the mind"
"Can reason lead us to transcendence?"
"So, we must rid spirituality from its supernatural prison, make it secular. Spirituality is a connection with something bigger than we are, seducing our imagination, creating an urge to know, to embrace the mystery that surrounds us and the mystery that we are."



It is possible I experience some of the things that this author is talking about in some fashion, maybe, but not in a compartmentalized, identifiable way. That last phrase just sounds like wonder and curiosity. Not difficult concepts that need to be 'reclaimed' from anywhere. I read this three times, and I don't grok the underlying concept. I do not experience 'dread and darkness of the mind' in a general sense. There are specific moments where I might feel that, perhaps when someone I care about is dying, or my nation is going off to drop bombs on brown people to bring them democracy, that sort of thing. But otherwise I refer to a great line from a great scene in 'The Newsroom'. "I dunno what the fuck you're talkin' about."

You can have a transcendent experience without any woo. Just go outside on a clear night and stare up at the sky.

I think 'transcendence' is a moveable feast, to the subjective viewpoint of the person experiencing it.

Often when I can't really relate to something in a personal way, I have difficulty really grasping the concept.

many of the same sensations that religious people have, at least as they describe it, without any religious context.
I think these are quite common emotions, religion is just their trigger. The mistake is when people think these emotions come from religion and not that they are internal human emotions that aren't unique to religious experience.

If someone thinks these emotional states come from religion, how can you say that it is not so?

and that those who think it is from an external source, namely God, might not realize that the same emotion can be triggered by other things. It is an internal reaction to an experience, not some supernatural spirit touching them.
Just as whatever people are experiencing when the have an exorcism, it's not demonic possession.

source might not realize that the same emotion can be triggered by something else, perhaps even an experience with something akin to a god.

For you it is one thing, for someone else it might be quite another.

I think it's assuming that one's experience is the "real" one and that others are false in some way that is most troubling.

what they attribute the cause might not be accurate.
As is true with many emotional experiences.

and neither do they.

So why not just let people use whatever explanation makes sense to them until there is something definitive.

without taken into account that the same experience can be triggered by things other than the belief that God is touching them.
It is a subjective experience some use to confirm the belief.
I use modern psychological understanding of emotion.
Sorry if I thinks some things are explainable.
Then again you find nothing wrong with people accepting demonic possession if it somehow "helps"

may have actually had one. You don't know. The fact that others may have had something similar and it was due to a seizure, for example, does not mean that is the only way it could occur.

And if they have reached the conclusion that the experience involves some kind of spiritual influence, who has the standing to say it is not true?

What do you think is "modern psychological understanding of emotion"? Who are you referencing here.

You are making incorrect assumptions about me, which I should be used to by now. You have distorted my position on exorcism, but that does not surprise me.

I just don't accept your "nobody can know anything" philosophy.

But I will challenge you anytime you say that you know something without evidence. I will challenge you if you are a believer with a definite stand and I will challenge you if you are not a believer and take a definitive stand.

There are lots of things that are known. The existence of god is just not one of them.

On what can't be known and that there are things that will always be unknowable.

Honestly, I think you are a very bright and thoughtful person who is enslaved by some anti-religion dogma.

The good news, from my perspective, is that you have the capacity to become more tolerant and open-minded about people that have religious beliefs.

You and they are on the same team in so many ways.

I am usually not tolerant of their belief rather than intolerant of the people.
With some exceptions.

You say anti-relion dogma, I say rational thought.

I hear anti-religion dogma and see no daylight at all.

BTW, I think "rational thought" is a major part of the dogma.

It was tongue in cheek. Reread post now.

No idea what the last line means.

The last line is only a comment about certain phrases that have become memes, which I think are dogma.

It's actually a concept explored by Richard Dawkins. They are pat phrases that are used with an air of authority, but they are fragile when challenged.

"Rational thought" is one of them.

without the smileys, which I forgot to put on first time.

Rational thought and critical thinking are by no means catch phrases or pat answers for me. They are intrinsic to my world view.
I accept challenges to all my views, one of the reasons I am on this board.

And it is the reason that I enjoy talking with you.

Getting late here, but I hope we meet again soon.

anti-atheist christian apologetic dogma.

Okay I really don't mean the first part but I'm trying to emulate you and be just as sickeningly sweet and polite when I insult others.

You stay classy cbayer.

I love this kind of discussion. I'm a terrible fence sitter. Not religiously inclined but not clearly logical and rational enough not to be curious about the occult and mystical experience. Me oh my.


Continue.

They had amazing insights and it's a shame they've been relegated to cursory survey courses and specialized studies. Their names should be as familiar as Lincoln.

there is so much more that I don't know at all.

That's easy: use a different word... preferably one that does not reference the supernatural in its root.

Or the Buddhist "mindfulness".

but entirely natural.

He's about 1,400 years too late. The word is now hopelessly buried beneath the combined weight of centuries' worth of religious canon, metaphysical navel gazing, and a veritable Mt. Everest of New Age, old age, and otherwise mystical woo propagated by the religious fringe.

You could waste your time trying hopelessly to "reform" a word that has for a millennia or more been the purview of anti-materialists, or you could choose from the dictionary any word from a plethora more appropriate to the feeling or state of being you are trying to describe.

"only the material exists".

He thinks that - "natural forms express the wealth of interactions between the basic material constituents and the forces that bind and repel them"; and forces are representable as force-carrying particles - photons, gluons and so on.

"Maybe spirituality is composed of those forces" - well, in that case, you might explain how you think that would have meaning.