[lbo-talk] Question re: Religion vs "spirituality"

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

B:-
> Run into folks who say they're not "religious,"
> they're just "spiritual"? Yet you realize they really
> mean the same thing after all?
> 
> Is there some acerbic quote or something -- seems I
> remember seeing one -- that deflates this kind of
> posturing? I.e. the posturing of "I'm not RELIGIOUS,
> I'm just SPIRITUAL."

I've heard that a lot too, and from intelligent people, mainly Unitarian
Universalists.  It seems they understand religion as an authority-sanctioned
creed or dogma, and they do not want to do anything with it.  But they do
not want to give up their belief that there is something larger than the
individual or even sum of individuals, and that something larger is
interconnectedness of all beings, humans, animals, nature.  

This belief is really a form of pantheism - perhaps the most hated "heresy"
by mainstream religions - whose main tenet is that there is no distinction
between the sacred and the natural, or perhaps that the nature as a whole is
a form of the sacred.  However, the concept of "sacred" or even "-theism" in
the term pantheism sounds to Christian to these folk, so they seem to prefer
"spirituality" - which definitely has Wiccan, pagan and non-christian
connotations.  Conventional religions (especially Catholics) hate pantheism
because it undermines the raison d'etre of the priestly class, who claim to
be intermediaries between the natural and the sacred.  If there is no
difference between the natural and the sacred, who needs an intermediary?

I have to admit that I view pantheism i.e. its central tenet of one world
that is both "natural" and "spiritual" as quite intellectually appealing,
more so than positivistic scientism.  Positivistic scientism is, after all,
a dogma that shuts the door for certain forms on inquiry (namely those not
accepted in current scientific practice), whereas pantheism keeps all the
options open, even those beyond the current level of scientific knowledge,
without falling into the trap of religious dogmatism and fundamentalism.  

Another thought - getting rid of the concept of creed or dogma seems to be
an interesting response to the challenge to religious authority posed by a
democracy.  Religious authority is needed to maintain coherence of the
religious system of beliefs - logic alone is insufficient to answer all
inconsistencies and contradictions (cf. the Goedel theorem) - and executive
decisions must be made to settle ambiguous issues.  In the Catholic and
spun-off churches that executive power resided with the chief officer of the
church e.g. the pope or the King of England, who was deemed "infallible"  -
which simply means that his decisions in the matter of doctrine are final
and not subject to any further challenges, pretty much as the rulings of the
US Supreme Court).  

However, the supreme human authority is incompatible with people who
internalized the principle of equality or democratic governance - such as
the US colonists, or Muslims.  Yet, giving up the notion of supreme human
authority comes with a price - opening the door for uncertainly and
ambiguity resulting from insufficiency of logic to settle doctrinal
inconsistencies and contradictions (that pesky Goedel theorem again).  Som,e
people, like Unitarian Universalists, had no problem with such a situation
and made the next logical step of jettisoning the notion of creed and
doctrine altogether.

However, many people have difficulty dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty
(which I believe is a form of mental disorder) - they need certitude.  So
how do you restore certitude without a recourse to a supreme human
authority?  By insisting on literal interpretation of the religious
scripture aka fundamentalism.  This may explain why fundamentalism has
considerable following in populist societies (such as US or Muslim), but has
little traction in Europe which retained the conventional notion of
religious authority vested in the chief officer of the church.  

In sum, pantheism or "spiritualism" (which are really two words referring to
one thing) is the renunciation of the conventional religiosity based on
dogma, authority, and certitude without falling into fundamentalism or
positivistic reductionism.

PS. Perhaps the most famous European pantheist was Baruch Spinoza, a 17th
century Dutch Jew (no coincidence here, since kabalistic Judaism is a form
of pantheism as well).  

Wojtek