Spiritual atheist.

[StregaModerator]

I used to have this short video posted on my TA account Lily, of Alan Watts talking on “sort-of” spirituality without a god 🙂

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by  Strega.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

@Kuba – “our immersion in a ‘soup’” – as WinterLily says, this soup is “within us and without us” to paraphrase The Beatles. I agree that the essence of spirituality is perhaps two things: 1) transcending the boundaries of the self or ego; 2) experiencing the “tendency to thrive” of all living things. This 2) in itself is “within and without us” – both personal and transcendent.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

The Alan Watts video is pretty awesome. But I don’t follow his logic that life after death must exist because we must go on experiencing.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by  Simon Paynton.

[StregaModerator]

Laughs I don’t think Alan Watts is particularly logical, but it’s a nice view of our place in the universe. It’s all speculation, and if there were to be an afterlife there’s probably a huge beurocracy with eternal waiting rooms, a la Beetlejuice 🙂

You should perceive “reality” however it pleases you to do so. If you find life easier to experience with an imaginary overlay, I’m not going to stop you. I think that’s the whole point regarding religions really. They’re just a particular tinted lens by which you elect to perceive the world. The idiotic part is when you’ve chosen your lenses, that if you’re of a religious bent, you try to make your lenses the de fact “right” lenses for everyone else, whereas even two people of the same denomination of the same religion in the same parish will see through quite differing lenses, because they’re tailored to each individual by each individual.

This is why people can bomb, mutilate and destroy other people whilst still calling themselves adherents to a religion of peace.

I’ll use my specs, thanks, and you can use yours.

[Winter LilyParticipant]

@simonpaynton I think life after death is what most people dream of happening because the fact that it just goes dark is hard for most people to feel comfortable about I’ll even admit that it makes me a bit uncomfortable sometimes. But the truth is and always will be:

“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

• This reply was modified 7 years, 8 months ago by  Winter Lily.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

“experiencing the “tendency to thrive” of all living things.” – also, nurturing it is part of spirituality and established religion. @strega, this is real, not imaginary, that’s the whole point. It’s based on firm evolutionary biology. But it’s also THE main fact/value crossover.

I think my analytical approach is valid, but it’s also a bit dry, and is complemented by other more poetical approaches à la William Blake, Jesus etc.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

@WinterLily – that’s a cool quote. I like Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “Probably, I’ll black out in a few seconds, and after that it won’t matter.”

Personally I believe in life after death because I’ve seen various evidence.

[StregaModerator]

@simonpaynton I don’t think you have thought this “life after death” thing through completely. Let’s say I get hit by a car and it damages my brain, so I’m semi-vegetative. Do I get my old brain back? Let’s say I have epilepsy, or perhaps another mental disorder. Is that cured? Would I even be the same person if it was? How about a small child or baby that dies. Do they continue after as a perpetual child? Supposing I was born with a brain tumor and it was surgically removed successfully. Do I get the tumor back? When I die at 90 years old, do I come back as a decrepit nonagenarian? Or fit and healthy again? How about transgendered people who have elective surgery to change gender? Do they get reverted to their original gender again? There are so many more examples I could give, but I think that’s enough to start with.

Simon, simply saying “I don’t know” isn’t going to be good enough to support your theory.

[_Robert_Participant]

@strega,
In one of the oddest Bible versus God showed Moses his ass…

Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the LORD said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put theein a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen…

My conclusion from “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live ” is that if you are a man you are recomposed at your best age when you get to heaven, you take a one look at god, and then he kills you again, this time for good…but all women get to live forever.

[StregaModerator]

@_Robert_ So men get killed but all women live forever? Cover me in chocolate and throw me to the lesbians!

I’ll miss you, Robert.

[_Robert_Participant]

Maybe god’s face is hideous. Worse than butt ugly, obviously. Maybe he looks like a plate of spaghetti.

Butt, to get back on topic..it seems so awesome to be “spiritual”. Like you are somehow deep and unmaterialistic. Like you can exist as an essence.

Being constructed from atoms forged in an ancient supernova is enough to make me feel connected to the universe. Being the product of millions of years of evolving DNA code seems ‘spiritual’ enough. Knowing that the energy in my body will “live on” and be conserved until the end of the universe (if it ever ends)…..well that’s enough spirituality for me these days.

[Kuba AdamówParticipant]

…and if, just if, Alan Watts does not get through (he may not—I, personally, do get him, but I’m weird :)) on the topic of transcendence, here’s the quote from another great mind of his time who might have more impact:

“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

That was Bruce Lee, paraphrasing old tao and zen masters (you’ll find the very same analogy in Bernardo Bertolucci’s ‘Little Buddha’, too). Now, you just don’t argue with Bruce Lee, right?

[SteveInCOParticipant]

You probably COULD argue with Bruce Lee about stuff like that, and he’d be civil.

Argue with him over the ownership of his wallet, on the other hand, and you’ll find yourself stuffed into a trash can you didn’t realize was big enough to hold you.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

@strega, I think your question is an interesting one, but it can only be answered if life after death exists. You’re right, I don’t really know the answer, but I have a recording of what is supposed to be the materialised – real – 3D – spirit of a 2-day-old baby who had “passed” thirty years earlier. This recording is from 1949 at a home circle in the UK, on a BBC Radio 4 programme. I presume they were talking to a baby on the floor, I don’t know.

Douglas
The whole 28-min programme

[Winter LilyParticipant]

What if somebody wanted to be a druid and an atheist is that even remotely possible?? Or a pagan atheist? Wiccan atheist? Etc. In truth I think it’s possible to be atheist anything. Wiccan atheists believe in using god/goddess in a symbolic way and use the energy around them to do there spells and prayers. But is it possible to use energy in that way?

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