Thanks for the thread, Lexi.

I think it's interesting to contemplate the varying degrees of identification gleaned from religion when comparing the experience of modern secular man with his medieval counterpart.

From an essay by William Barrett titled "The Decline of Religion":

"The decline of religion in modern times means simply that religion is no longer the uncontested centre and ruler of man's life, and that the church is no longer the final and unquestioned home and asylum of his being....The waning of religion is a much more concrete and complex fact than a mere change in conscious outlook; it penetrates the deepest strata of man's total psychic life....Religion to medieval man was not so much a theological system as a solid psychological matrix surrounding the individual's life from birth to death, sanctifying and enclosing all its ordinary and extraordinary occasions in sacrament and ritual. The loss of the church was the loss of a whole system of symbols, images, dogmas and rites which had the psychological validity of immediate experience....In losing religion, man lost the concrete connection with a transcendent realm of being; he was set free to deal with the world in all its brute objectivity. But he was bound to feel homeless in such a world which no longer answered the needs of his spirit...To lose one's psychic container is to be cast adrift, to become a wanderer on the face of the earth. Henceforth, in seeking his own human completeness man would have to do for himself what he once had done for him, unconsciously, by the church, through the medium of its sacramental life...."

Poirot,
Thanks for the interesting quote. Of course, "man" here has to be read as "Western man" (and woman).

Lexi,
Your last post confirms my impression that you are more of a genuine Christian (of the Catholic kind) than most of us can claim to be. Especially your last sentence would indicate that your experience of spirituality is “genuine” in the sense that it is not seen as emanating solely from this, material, world as is the case with many Buddhists and even some atheists (“secular spirituality”, c.f. http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/features/finding-the-sacred-in-the-secular).

Dear George,

I also commend Lexi for her genuine spirituality.

"your experience of spirituality is “genuine” in the sense that it is not seen as emanating solely from this, material, world as is the case with many Buddhists and even some atheists"

I read Martin's article, but he did not mention Buddhists at all. Just because some Buddhists do not believe in God does not imply that they consider spirituality to emanate from the material world. Many Buddhists actually consider spirituality to emanate from Shunyata, the void.

Another mix-up is that the article is named "Finding the sacred in the secular", but SACRED and SPIRITUAL are not identical: many atheists, including Buddhists, consider material aspects to be sacred, but in contrast, I suspect, very few would consider the spirit to be emanating from the material (the later would be more descriptive of primitive/pagan tribes).

Dear Yuyutsu,
>>I read Martin's article, but he did not mention Buddhists at all.<<

Yes, “secular spirituality”, for me a new term until recently, is being used only in connection with atheists, and I gave the link just to explain this. As for Buddhists, maybe instead of “many” I should have written “some Buddhists”, since, of course, not all Buddhists see their spirituality reducible to its material carrier. Some certainly do, at least our atheist friends claim so, and I don’t think it is just a wishful thinking on their part. In my opinion, classical Buddhism, like e.g. pre-Enlightenment Christianity, could not distinguish strictly what was and what was not "material", i.e. accessible through science.

TODAY one can understand what I called Sagan’s maxim (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=9389#150883), and agree or disagree with it. In the second case that extra realm can be called the Divine, the Holy Other (Rudolf Oto), the spiritual realm etc. Or Shunyata, if you like. At this level Christians and some Buddhists believe the same thing about the irreducibility (to the material) of this Reality, only model it differently.

One can make only a posteriori statements about what was and should and what should not be considered material in the original, pre-scientific, context. Dalai Lama in his “The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality” (Morgan, 2005) says

“if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims”.

Well, a contemporary Christian scholar would never make a similar statement about Christianity. Not because it is not true, but because it would be void. [Like my grandfather’s joke, “when St Michael hears the church bells he kneels and prays” (St Michael was a statue). Of course, this implication is not wrong only void.]

Nevertheless I'd appreciate your opinion whether Dalai Lama can or cannot be counted among those who “consider spirituality to emanate from the material world”. (ctd)

(ctd)

I agree with you that there is some confusion with the words “spiritual” and “sacred”. See for instance http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/06/17/137219683/science-sacred-spiritual-what-is-in-a-word that you might also be interested in. I do not agree with the contention of this article - and I presume neither would you - but I think we cannot ignore these attempts by some atheists/materialists to appropriate the concept of “spirituality” or (Otto’s and Eliade’s concepts of) “the Sacred”. And I do not think this is necessarily regrettable.

As for myself, this article reminds me of the old joke about the missionary and cannibals (The cannibals valued the missionary’s ability to forecast the weather, until they found out that this was due to his rheumatic leg. So they killed and ate him, except for that leg that they used as a barometer.)