Science and spirituality

[Sriram]

The link seems to be ok.  Sam Harris has written a book called Waking UP.

https://www.getflashnotes.com/waking-up-by-sam-harris/

[ProfessorDavey]

The link seems to be ok.  Sam Harris has written a book called Waking UP.

https://www.getflashnotes.com/waking-up-by-sam-harris/

Ah yes - the hoary old myth that although people are turning their back on describing themselves as religious there is a huge 'hidden' group who consider themselves spiritual, but don't describe themselves as religious.

Not true - certainly not true in the UK. Just 6% of people in the UK consider themselves to be spiritual but not religious. In most cases people describing themselves as spiritual also consider themselves to be religious.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Ah yes - the hoary old myth that although people are turning their back on describing themselves as religious there is a huge 'hidden' group who consider themselves spiritual, but don't describe themselves as religious.

Not true - certainly not true in the UK. Just 6% of people in the UK consider themselves to be spiritual but not religious. In most cases people describing themselves as spiritual also consider themselves to be religious.

This is certainly worth discussing. I think it shows secular education in the UK to be failing in it’s task to teach that people are more than mere units in an acquisitive and materialist universe and that is not a good thing.

I think it also peculiar that the more ignorant and removed from spirituality people have become the more hostile they are to it. Public atheists are obviously successfully selling something pernicious.

[jeremyp]

Bernadette not only experienced the interpretation of photons hitting her eye.  She also experienced the vibration of air molecules hitting her ear drum which she interpreted to be words spoken to her by the apparition.  During the sixteenth vision, after three attempts to get the apparition to say who she was, the apparition eventually replied with the words "I am the immaculate conception".  Was this just some random gust of wind whistling through the trees?  I think not.

We don't know what it was. It might even have been her lying. The one thing we can be fairly sure of is that it wasn't the real Virgin Mary hwho had been dead for around 1800 years.

[ProfessorDavey]

This is certainly worth discussing. I think it shows secular education in the UK to be failing in it’s task to teach that people are more than mere units in an acquisitive and materialist universe and that is not a good thing.

I think it also peculiar that the more ignorant and removed from spirituality people have become the more hostile they are to it. Public atheists are obviously successfully selling something pernicious.

I think young people growing up today have a pretty attuned sense of matters that go beyond acquisitive materialism - hence their clear concerns about environmental issues and issues of equality and fairness. These are clearly ethical matters.

You might not like it that young people seem to reject traditional religion and indeed spiritualism as a kind of pound-shop religion, but the reality is that plenty of young people are very well attuned to the self of self and also to the needs to respect others sense of self. From what I can see our current education system helps support his far more than was the case when I was growing up in the 70s - a time when ethical understanding was simply seem as an adjunct to religious education (or instruction) and RE was effectively top down christianity imposed on children on the basis that 'this is what we belief' whether or not kids actually believed it.

Sorry that a more open and discursive dialogue with children within our education system about ethics and belief is leading kids to reject your religion - but that speaks volumes about the credibility of the christian message, not the education system.

[jeremyp]

You are making some unqualified assumptions here.
The doctrine of the immaculate conception does not feature in the major teachings of the Roman Catholic church.
In fact few Roman Catholics know what the phrase really means.  Many believe it refers to the virgin birth - but it actually refers to Mary being born without original sin.  A 14 year old child brought up in a poor family is highly unlikely to have any such knowledge.

According to Wikipedia "Soubirous attended the day school conducted by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction from Nevers". I think she was pretty likely to know a lot of the tenets of Catholicism including the immaculate conception. Even if she didn't know what it was, she almost certainly had heard the term and knew it related to Mary.

[ProfessorDavey]

According to Wikipedia "Soubirous attended the day school conducted by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction from Nevers". I think she was pretty likely to know a lot of the tenets of Catholicism including the immaculate conception. Even if she didn't know what it was, she almost certainly had heard the term and knew it related to Mary.

Indeed and the fact that this had become official catholic doctrine just 4 years before her 'visions' is, I suspect, also pretty important. This would have become something pushed front and centre within doctrine and teaching following in those incredibly impressionable years from 10-14.

Also notable that she described the image as being like the depictions of the virgin Mary in churches, which she would have seen all the time. There is no reason to imagine that Mary looked like this at all and those images are a catholic creation. So had she really seen a vision of the virgin Mary, surely this person would have looked like a 1stC Palestinian woman, not a stylised catholic creation. Again indicates a high degree of subtle or not so subtle psychological 'suggestion' going on, even if she or the priest aren't just flat out lying.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I think young people growing up today have a pretty attuned sense of matters that go beyond acquisitive materialism - hence their clear concerns about environmental issues and issues of equality and fairness. These are clearly ethical matters.

You might not like it that young people seem to reject traditional religion and indeed spiritualism as a kind of pound-shop religion, but the reality is that plenty of young people are very well attuned to the self of self and also to the needs to respect others sense of self. From what I can see our current education system helps support his far more than was the case when I was growing up in the 70s - a time when ethical understanding was simply seem as an adjunct to religious education (or instruction) and RE was effectively top down christianity imposed on children on the basis that 'this is what we belief' whether or not kids actually believed it.

Sorry that a more open and discursive dialogue with children within our education system about ethics and belief is leading kids to reject your religion - but that speaks volumes about the credibility of the christian message, not the education system.

Even in this post you cannot help conflate religion with
Spirituality. I'm not talking about religion.
If they see themselves as more than mere units of materialism in it's many forms then they are exercising their spirituality. Not as you present it, poundshop religion.

[ProfessorDavey]

Even in this post you cannot help conflate religion with
Spirituality. I'm not talking about religion.
If they see themselves as more than mere units of materialism in it's many forms then they are exercising their spirituality. Not as you present it, poundshop religion.

But that is because, certainly in the UK, the two overlap. As I've said just 6% of people in the UK see themselves as spiritual but not religious. By contrast 20% see themselves as both religious and spiritual and 18% as religious but not spiritual. 55% considered themselves neither spiritual nor religious.

So spiritual is basically a sub-set of religious, except for a very small, 6% rump.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

But that is because, certainly in the UK, the two overlap. As I've said just 6% of people in the UK see themselves as spiritual but not religious. By contrast 20% see themselves as both religious and spiritual and 18% as religious but not spiritual. 55% considered themselves neither spiritual nor religious.

So spiritual is basically a sub-set of religious, except for a very small, 6% rump.

I think i’ve Already commented on the successful Misdirection and conflation wrought by materialists.
This is yet another example of word piracy.

[ProfessorDavey]

This is yet another example of word piracy.

Nope - it is called evidence. I know you aren't very keen on evidence Vlad, but that's your issue, not mine.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope - it is called evidence. I know you aren't very keen on evidence Vlad, but that's your issue, not mine.

It's evidence of how they identify and how lots of people don't really know what spirituality means.At the end of the day not feeling yourself to be a spiritual person doesn't mean you aren't acting or functioning spiritually...which isn't the same as being religious. So that's a big so what from me.
It sounds like there might have been a few leading questions in the survey. Who carried it out?

[ProfessorDavey]

It's evidence of how they identify and how lots of people don't really know what spirituality means.

Sounds rather like a no true Scotsman argument.

But there is an issue here - spirituality is a vague and ill-defined notion. Something that can mean anything to anyone. That being the case I suspect the numbers of people hanging their hat on spirituality is over inflated as anyone can define it as they wish. Were there to be a tighter and clearer definition I suspect we see fewer, rather than more, people identifying.

At the end of the day not feeling yourself to be a spiritual person doesn't mean you aren't acting or functioning spiritually ...

Oh so Vlad knows better than individuals whether those individuals consider themselves to be spiritual or not. This is self-identification so it isn't up to you to tell them they are wrong. And it has to be as there is any formal definition of spirituality, nor some kind of card carrying membership that would allow others to 'count' the numbers. Self identification is all we have - unlike ...

...which isn't the same as being religious.

True - for religion you can also measure actual practice - you can objectively measure people attending religious services for example.

However that is irrelevant to my point which was to counter the hoary old myth of a vast and hidden pool of people who don't consider themselves to be religious, but do consider themselves to be spiritual. Certainly in the UK this isn't the case, and most of europe seems to be similar. Typically (certainly in the UK) the proportion of people claiming to be spiritual is less than that claiming to be religious. And those claiming to be spiritual is largely a sub-set of those claiming to be religious - in the UK just 6% claim to be spiritual but not religious.

It sounds like there might have been a few leading questions in the survey. Who carried it out?

No leading questions and carried out by the Pew Research Center which I would suggest is the world's most respected organisation that carries out analysis of religiosity.

[Outrider]

It's evidence of how they identify and how lots of people don't really know what spirituality means.

Nobody knows what 'spiritual' means, it's so devoid of any attachment to anything demonstrable that it either means nothing or the interpretation is so individual as to be effectively meaningless outside of that person's own head.

At the end of the day not feeling yourself to be a spiritual person doesn't mean you aren't acting or functioning spiritually...

Ah, the 'we all believe in God really', argument, remixed for the Age of Aquarius. It was nonsense then, and it's still nonsense now. Not spiritual as a manifestation of spiritual is up there alongside atheism as a religion.

O.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nobody knows what 'spiritual' means,

I do, Professor Davey does and as he points out, the pew research group think they do too.

it's so devoid of any attachment to anything demonstrable that it either means nothing or the interpretation is so individual as to be effectively meaningless outside of that person's own head.

Exaggeration. Yes It isn't a scientific term but that's the point. The sense I mean it in is the broadest. It is concerned with those aspects of human life not described by science...morals, beliefs, values, self esteem etc.

Your limiting it to what hippies do is comic caricature vis 

Ah, the 'we all believe in God really', argument, remixed for the Age of Aquarius. It was nonsense then, and it's still nonsense now. Not spiritual as a manifestation of spiritual is up there alongside atheism as a religion.

O.

[Outrider]

I do, Professor Davey does and as he points out, the pew research group think they do too.

And yet your entire point appears to be that when they say what they think it is that's not what you think it is.

Exaggeration. Yes It isn't a scientific term but that's the point. The sense I mean it in is the broadest. It is concerned with those aspects of human life not described by science...morals, beliefs, values, self esteem etc.

It's not even hyperbole, it's just the actual case. It's not merely that it's not a scientific term, it's that it's beyond ideas like 'honour' or 'virtue', which can have common cultural elements with grey areas around individual interpretations of the fringes, it's that 'spiritual' is all fringe. Take two adjacent people's take on it, and you get a random mish-mash of formalised religion, space-age woo, oriental mysticism and folklore.

Your limiting it to what hippies do is comic caricature vis

Whereas your trying to include the behaviour of people who decry the notion of 'spirit' as somehow intrinsically spiritual doesn't rob the notion of any sort of coherence or validity? I look forward to your next post on the spiritual aspects of not stamp collecting.

O.

[ProfessorDavey]

I do, Professor Davey does and as he points out, the pew research group think they do too.

No I don't - indeed in my most recent post I said that it was a "is a vague and ill-defined notion".

And actually nor do the Pew Research Center - indeed this is from the very beginning of the piece:

"Spirituality and religion can be defined in many different ways, and the distinction between the two concepts often is muddy."

And the data I used are entirely self-defined, both in terms of what an individual may consider spiritual to mean and secondarily whether, by their own definition, they consider themselves to be spiritual. Hence the question asked that relates to the data I quoted is:

"Generally speaking do you think of yourself as a spiritual person?"

Now Pew also go on to ask some further questions about elements that may be considered to define spirituality, but these are further questions after the main question above. Hence:

"For the purposes of this analysis, spirituality refers to beliefs or feelings about supernatural phenomena, such as life after death, the existence of a soul apart from the human body, and the presence of spiritual energy in physical things such as mountains, trees or crystals."

Pew additionally asks about some of these aspects, for example whether they have a soul, feel connection to things that cannot be seen or measured scientifically, whether they believe in fate, reincarnation, practice meditation etc.

But none of this affects the main question on whether someone considers themselves to be spiritual which is defined by and answered by (i.e. self identification) by the individual.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/05/29/attitudes-toward-spirituality-and-religion/

[ProfessorDavey]

It is concerned with those aspects of human life not described by science...morals, beliefs, values, self esteem etc.

Nonsense - morals, beliefs etc aren't necessarily linked to spiritualism. I consider I have a pretty well defined sense of values, ethical principles etc - I don't consider myself to be spiritual and I don't consider these matters to be based on spirituality as they arise from human existence, intellect and overarching societal and cultural influence. None of this sits necessarily within spiritualism - sure some people may consider their values to be driven by their belief in spiritualism. But for others values, morals, etc etc have nothing to do with spiritualism.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nonsense - morals, beliefs etc aren't necessarily linked to spiritualism.

Let me stop you there. Spiritualism is belief in and making contact with human and angelic spirits. In it's broadest sense spirituality encompasses those aspects of human life not susceptible to material investigation in my days as a school governor we were charged via the national curriculum to educate and develop the spiritual aspects of our charges and that was in all schools. In other words non religious spirituality.

I consider I have a pretty well defined sense of values, ethical principles etc - I don't consider myself to be spiritual and I don't consider these matters to be based on spirituality as they arise from human existence, intellect and overarching societal and cultural influence. None of this sits necessarily within spiritualism - sure some people may consider their values to be driven by their belief in spiritualism. But for others values, morals, etc etc have nothing to do with spiritualism.

You do not consider these to be spiritualism(sic) because you have a narrow interpretation of spirituality which conflated spirituality with religion.

As for the results of the pew research group into religion, the last word religion should have alerted you to the emphasis on the research.

[ProfessorDavey]

Let me stop you there. Spiritualism is belief in and making contact with human and angelic spirits.

Well that's your definition, other definitions are available which rather proves my point that there is no agreed definition of spiritualism, merely a series of vague and ill-defined definitions.

And I don't even understand, let alone accept your definition. I certainly don't believe in angelic spirits as I don't believe that angels exist. But what on earth is a "human spirit" - I have no idea and without being clear what you mean then I cannot say whether or not I believe in it. I would have thought that most definitions of spiritualism are based on the notion that there are things that sit outside of materialism - but as far as I can see anything associated with human cognition, intellect, emotions, beliefs etc etc. are clearly manifestations of our complex physiology and neurobiology, so most definitively material in origin.

In it's broadest sense spirituality encompasses those aspects of human life not susceptible to material investigation

Which would count out pretty well anything associated with human physiology, psychology, emotions, interactions, beliefs etc etc which are most definitely susceptible to material investigation. There are whole branches of science devoted to them.

... in my days as a school governor ...

That is a terrifying thought. What kind of school Vlad - faith or non faith.

[Outrider]

Let me stop you there. Spiritualism is belief in and making contact with human and angelic spirits. In it's broadest sense spirituality encompasses those aspects of human life not susceptible to material investigation.

That's two different entirely different definitions in one paragraph, neither of which has any demonstrable basis.

In my days as a school governor we were charged via the national curriculum to educate and develop the spiritual aspects of our charges and that was in all schools.

The National Curriculum, though, and the Education Act 2002 (and the subsequent Academies Act 2010) fail to provide any definition of 'spirit'. Ofsted's doesn't provide a definition, but does explain what it looks for in this area:

ability to be reflective about their own beliefs (religious or otherwise) and perspective on life
knowledge of, and respect for, different people’s faiths, feelings and values
sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning about themselves, others and the world around them
use of imagination and creativity in their learning
willingness to reflect on their experiences

That doesn't sound anything like the definitions you put up, so that's a third. (I do take issue, slightly, with 'respect for different people's faiths' - their right to them, perhaps, but not the faiths themselves).

In other words non religious spirituality.

The problem isn't with divorcing religion from spirituality, or with trying to see religion as some sort of 'subset' of spirituality, but rather with giving any sort of meaning to 'spiritual'.

You do not consider these to be spiritualism(sic) because you have a narrow interpretation of spirituality which conflated spirituality with religion.

No, I have a problem with 'spiritual', because it's intrinsically linked to a notion of 'spirits' which don't appear to be real.

O.

[ProfessorDavey]

The National Curriculum, though, and the Education Act 2002 (and the subsequent Academies Act 2010) fail to provide any definition of 'spirit'. Ofsted's doesn't provide a definition, but does explain what it looks for in this area:

Quote from: Ofsted
ability to be reflective about their own beliefs (religious or otherwise) and perspective on life
knowledge of, and respect for, different people’s faiths, feelings and values
sense of enjoyment and fascination in learning about themselves, others and the world around them
use of imagination and creativity in their learning
willingness to reflect on their experiences

All of which seem to be clearly manifestations of the 'material' human mind - in what manner are any of these the manifestation of some kind of non-material 'spirit' (whether human or angelic) Vlad?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

All of which seem to be clearly manifestations of the 'material' human mind - in what manner are any of these the manifestation of some kind of non-material 'spirit' (whether human or angelic) Vlad?

It was you who brought up Spiritualism mistaking it for spirituality the broadest definition which has been spelled out for you on numerous occasions.

If you think these things like beliefs, feelings, creativity etc are measurable using science then be my guest.

In my opinion it won't be long before you reach the explanatory gap in each case.

Take as much time as you like.

[ProfessorDavey]

If you think these things like beliefs, feelings, creativity etc are measurable using science then be my guest.

All of these things are manifestations of human neurobiology are are eminently measurable by standard neurobiology techniques, e.g. MRI

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-you-tell-someones-emotional-state-from-an-mri/
https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/brain-imaging-reveals-why-some-people-are-more-creative-than-others-296433

Not only that but creativity (and a whole range of other emotions, beliefs, feelings etc) have a genetic link. So for creativity:

https://www.healthline.com/health/can-you-inherit-creativity-science-says-yes#Your-artistic-skills-might-be-as-heritable-as-your-eye-color

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Regarding spirituality and the national curriculum

http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/ncc1993/smdev.html