You can’t possibly have a target you are looking for. The best you can do is just gain more knowledge and see where it takes us. At some point some of us might say all this chaos just makes too much sense, there has to be something. Others may not feel that way.
And it has consistently taken us away from “spiritual concepts”. The more we learn, the more nonsensical, erroneous and just plain unnecessary they appear to be.
As we understand them now! I find it difficult to comprehend that you think it takes us further away just because we understand more.
That didn’t answer my question at all. At least, I hope not - if that’s how you’re trying to describe your epistemology, then what you’ve basically described is a gut feeling. That’s not a good measure of the truth value of a claim. That’s not a good measure of anything.
Let’s unpack the question. My issue here is that you (and many others) are claiming something which exists but cannot be examined by science, scientific naturalism, or empirical naturalism. However, to my knowledge, these are the only epistemological frameworks we have available that consistently and reliably offer us accurate results. Without them, anything we claim to “know” can hardly be said to be worth more than conjecture. In other words, my issues comes down to this: how do you know this to any reasonable approximation of certainty?
Now, you can propose an alternative model. You can propose a different epistemological framework. But if this is it, then I see no reason to accept that model. “I just feels that way”? No, that’s not proof of anything. That’s not a good model to have, because two people using the same methodology can be in the same situation and come to different outcomes. This is a basic test of epistemology, along with “does it allow for contradictory truths”, and yours fails quite poorly, as you yourself seem to admit.
Or maybe you just responded too broadly. I’m talking specifically about how you know about things which you claim cannot be examined by our only reliable epistemological model.
Oh, this one’s easy.
The basic answer is, virtually every single time, throughout history, where we’ve seen a problem and thought the explanation was supernatural in origin, we turned out to be wrong. We never turned out to be right - the few that didn’t end up being proven wrong are in that situation because we have no reason to believe one way or the other.
To give an example: we used to think that lightning was the gods being angry at us. This is a worthless explanation with no explanatory or predictive power even if it weren’t wrong. But it was wrong. Just like the claims of disease being caused by demons, epilepsy by demonic possession, flooding by Poseidon, and the like.
Every single time we’ve learned more about the universe around us, the domain of the supernatural, of the gods, has shrunk. That’s what Der Trihs is talking about. It used to be they lived above the clouds on high mountain peaks. Then we went up there, and found no gods. Then they were in space. We went there, too, and found no gods. Now they’re outside the universe, whatever the hell that means. Every time we learn more about the universe, the further away we move from “god did it” having sway.
Sure, meditate and reflect and otherwise relax. But when you start researching the spiritual, it’s hammertime.
One thing I see, and data bears out, is that people who identify as religious tend to have better outcomes when their health is at stake*. There are some known influences, like many religions have some version of “your body is a temple, take care of it” or forbid alcohol, drugs and smoking. There is also a social impact, in that if you’re a member of a church, you tend to have people who are willing to help you get to doctor’s appointments, cook you meals and come clean your house when you’re in chemo. These things are all possible to have without religion, of course, but statistics do bear out that religious people enjoy these privileges at higher rates, on a more consistent basis, and that their health outcomes are better as a result.
What I also see, and I haven’t figured out if this is good or not, is many addicts who overcome their addictions by becoming addicted to church. I suppose it’s arguably more healthful for them to be hitting the Bible rather than the crack pipe, but my own ethics meter - the one that is uncomfortable with people relying on any external Thing to get through the day - really pings when I see this. I haven’t figured out if that’s just because I’ve internalized our society’s disdain of addiction in any form whatsoever, or if it’s really a dangerous dependency.
I see that as destructive religious thinking in and of itself. I saw sooooo much of that when I was running in the Alt Medicine circles, and it can be really horrible. One of my teachers opined that it was a vestige of our Puritan forefathers, this idea that if one is Righteous and Right minded and acts in Right ways, nothing bad will ever happen. Therefore, if you get sick, you have clearly done something Wrong. You have failed, worse, you have Sinned, you are Unclean, you are Unworthy. And so they purge and detox and fast and exercise to an extreme …when the fact of the matter is, eat right and exercise all you want, you may still get cancer. The world is an imperfect place, and so are our bodies.
I totally believe you that that example was given, and that it wasn’t the point of your post, but I also feel compelled to point out that vaccination rates in Mexico and Latin America are pretty good. Better than in some parts of the US, these days. I only bring it up because it’s a pernicious myth, that these dirty unvaccinated immigrants are bringing their diseased selves north. I feel compelled to fight it whenever it rears its ugly head. I hope you can forgive me. 
*Some interesting studies on the issue of health and religiosity:
Robert A. Hummer, Christopher G. Ellison, Richard G. Rogers, Benjamin E. Moulton, and Ron R. Romero,“Religious Involvement and Adult Mortality in the United States: Review and Perspective,” Southern Medical Journal, Vol. 97, No. 12 (December 2004), pp. 1223-1230.
Jeffrey S. Levin and Preston L. Schiller, “Is There a Religious Factor in Health?” Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 26, No. 1 (March 1987), pp. 9-35.
George W. Comstock and Kay B. Patridge, “Church Attendance and Health,” Journal of Chronic Diseases, Vol. 25, No. 12 (December 1972), pp. 665-672.
Exactly so. It’s a little like the “missing links” in the fossil record that creationists like to refer to: over time, we keep filling them in. There are fewer and fewer “gaps” every year. We’ve never found the theory of evolution refuted by a miraculous gap that can’t be explained.
Now, such a thing could happen. A miracle might occur, and evidence of spirits might arise. Inductive observation is not the same as proof.
But inductive observation is the basis for setting the odds, and, at this point, the odds of evidence being found for spirits are pretty darn long.
Meanwhile, the more we learn about the brain, the fewer places there are for spirits or souls to be hiding. Descartes could say the soul connected to the body via the pineal gland…because no one knew, in his day, what the pineal gland really did. We know better today.
(Bigfoot might exist in the Pacific North-West…but the places he might be hiding grow fewer and fewer every year. It won’t be long before Bigfoot hunters start quartering the wild woods with drones. In time, we really will be able to close the books on that search.)
It is true that to a certain extent human beings can be regarded as a self-destructive species but the problem resides in the fact that the things that coagulate a community are two-faced: they will encourage division, ruthlessness and violence as well.
Spiritual concepts can lead to bad outcomes that have nothing to do with extremism or violence. Much more common is that such concepts can lead one to make bad life decisions.
Here’s an example: a retired someone I know, whose religious activity up to recently has been confined to study, church volunteer work and prayer, has become convinced that some disaster is approaching that will shake the economic markets to their foundation*. Therefore she is deciding to take all her money, which is all she has to live on besides social security, out of the stock market and into very safe instruments but that generate virtually no income. This may not be disastrous, depending on how long she keeps it up, but it means she will be using up her capital at a much faster rate than before.
*The reasoning is hard to explain, but it’s based on a bunch of coincidences and the only reason she believes these are meaningful is that the whole argument depends on faith that nothing happens by chance. Ergo, God’s plan is going to cause some disaster. It has been useless, so far, for me to try to explain this fallacy using logic, since my arguments lack faith and are therefore invalid. She calls her attitude “rational” if you can believe it.
I think you’ve made a common but very significant error here. Looking through a telescope is “looking for whatever is out there.” Looking through a microscope is, too (for a slightly different understanding of “out there”). Meditation and reflection are not.
I’m not knocking meditation. Science has shown it to be beneficial (though the benefits are not exclusive to it). But it is not informative. Certainly not about anything “out there.” If meditation tells us about anything (and I don’t think it is at all clear that it does, at least when compared with more scientific methodologies) it tells us only about ourselves and our own mental and emotional state. The idea that by deeply studying one’s own internal states, one can learn anything at all about the rest of the universe is one of the most pernicious errrors in the history of thought. It is a seductive idea that through omphaloskepsis I can learn about the creation of the universe, but it is wrong. It is also supremely arrogant. Why should your feelings tell you anything at all about the world (rather than about yourself)? As a cause of philosophical confusion and superstition, it is matched only by the belief that one’s feelings and thoughts directly effect the universe. Banish both of these ideas from your mind.
Nearly anything can lead to bad outcomes. The questions is whether spiritual concepts do lead to bad outcomes more often than not.
Life decisions are usually based on non-rational processes. It is their post-factum justification that may take a rational expression.
Any type of faith (including liberalism, mercantilism, nationalism, communism, vaganism, or yakuza’s code of honor, to mention only a few) can lead to bad life decisions. The only members of our species that lack any type of spiritual concepts are feral children.
Show me something that I believe based on faith, and I will stop believing it. It’s that simple. Or what do you mean by “spiritual” concepts? I mean, I believe that the democrats are better for the country in their current incarnation than the republicans are in theirs. You might call this liberalism. This isn’t based on faith, though. This is based on extrapolation from basic principles and a preponderance of the evidence.
Bashing humanity doesn’t make “spiritual” things any better. And the problem is that “spiritual” beliefs create division where there was none, reduce people’s concern for consequences and for other people, and often openly encourage violence. And they produce nothing of worth in return.
Bad, overwhelmingly.
Faith is the denial of reality; the assertion by someone that something is true regardless of the evidence. Faith based beliefs are never true save by sheer luck, since if they were true they wouldn’t be based on faith in the first place, they’d be based on evidence.
Faith only ever leads to good “life decisions” by random chance, due to faith based decisions by definition not being based on reality. And I don’t see what half of those things have to do with faith.
And plenty of people have no “spiritual concepts”.
It may not effect objective reality or the universe, but your feelings and thoughts sure as hell do effect your life. Someone obsessed with eating a pineapple on top of Mount Everest and who puts all their effort into making that thought a reality has a million times better chance of actually doing it than someone who wants to but doesn’t really care either way.
That’s why I said “directly effect.” Nearly every superstition invented by humanity is based on the idea that you can either learn something or effect something without actually doing anything related to the goal. If you actually do something, then obviously that’s different. Actions have an effect. Thoughts and feelings by themselves only affect the person having them.
Yes, and I think it is critical to note that even if spirituality doesn’t have a huge negative effect on the individual (which is debatable), it certainly seems to on society as a whole.
For one thing, just how much it’s held back our progress. We’ve believed in superstition and wishing things to be true, for most of our history. As soon as we formalized the idea of skepticism and testing hypotheses, mankind’s progress exploded.
The only reason people such as the OP now talk about science and belief being compatible is because the former has been so successful the latter can no longer decry it.
Since I did zero follow-up, have zero investment in that anecdote, and honestly the person that related it to me was kinda flighty, I’m going to consider this ignorance fought. Nothing to forgive, you did a good thing.
**Are Spritual Concepts Harmful?
**
Yes and no. If I choose to belief that a god resides under a flat rock in my backyard and I go bow down before the rock every day, then no. However, if I start telling other people about it and trying to get them to worship the rock, then yes.
I don’t understand why the OP felt the need to drag science into the discussion in the first place, what with the bit about “looking for God” as a way of “advancing science”?
Certainly, spiritual concepts may be found to be either harmful or harmless whether or not they actively contribute to scientific progress.
And, for that matter, spiritual concepts may be harmful or harmless whether or not they may be scientifically proven, scientifically falsified, or even scientifically tested in the first place.
To directly answer the title’s question: No, “spiritual concepts” aren’t harmful per se, any more than “moral concepts” are.