"Spiritual" People in Freethinker Groups
Posted on: October 4, 2010 - 7:25pm
Offline
"Spiritual" People in Freethinker Groups
I'm thinking of starting a Freethinkers group and I'm not sure if I want people who say they are "spiritual" in the group. The main reason I want to be in a Freethinking group is to not be around superstitious and supernatural talk. This might be a dick move to exclude Buddhists, or other New Age people, who are not by definition theists. Anyone have experiences from group situations that could be helpful?
- Login to post comments
I notice on online dating sites, a lot of people put in "Spiritual but not religious".
I think this just means they don't know WTF. They think religious freaks are weird but don't want the stigma of atheism.
I would make them define 'spiritual' in a meaningful way.
Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen
What are these people saying is spiritual?
Spiritual people I know tend to have a "there must be more than this", "where did we come from", feelings-driven take on the world.
Personally, I have nothing against non-theistic spiritual people but I can never understand why they don't just accept that their feelings are a product of their humanity.
The fact feelings and so forth exist inside brains does not mean there is an alternative non-physical dimension.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
To be perfectly honest, alot of people seem to use the phrase, spiritual but not religious, these days. It seems that a large number of recovery 12 step movements use that slogan, so as not to appear to push for any sort of religious agenda to those that attend their fellowships. But like it has already been asked, What is defined as spiritual ? Most people that I have encountered, that use that particular title, tend to believe that there must be some all-loving, all nurturing, benevolent force, that they may not necessarily call God, that is watching out for everyone and guiding them. Um, my own personal experiences with people like that, is that they generally tend to say that they are open-minded about spiritual beliefs, until someone mentions something that does not fit into their own belief system. I personally feel that to put faith in anything, whether it is an angry Abrahamic God that is raining fire upon his subjects, or an all loving, benevolent, crystal collecting, want you to feel good deity, it still boils down to saying that people need some sort of higher being in order to improve their lives or live happier. It still seems to knock the idea of having faith in one's self. Now, that is only my impression, from the few people that I have met, that claim to be spiritual people. But that would not necessarily mean that all of them fall in line with what I have described.
“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno
Not really, in the case of New Age-types. Too much 'junkthink' in that crowd. I don't think what you're suggesting is a "dick move" at all. But be careful as it may be difficult to attract anything besides a remote handful of individuals, depending on how intellectually lazy your locale is.
“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)
"Free Thinker" is an ambiguous Term... and subjective to a certain extent... to put it in perspective... Tea partiers believe that they are Free thinkers...
www.RichWoodsBlog.com
Do they really? Oh the humanity.....
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck