That wasn’t a direct insult. Kanicbird didn’t even claim it was his personal opinion. It was an indirect comment aimed at this particular mindset.
I didn’t take it as a direct insult, and I am very used to people who have not experienced spirituality on either side (God/Satan) thinking that people who have are a bit off their rocker, this too has been historical, going back at least to Plato as he described having realized the truth, but now going back into the world of darkness looks like a fool to the people around him.
I can’t think of a good way to respond to this without being insulting, but I can say that comparing your belief in demons to Plato’s philosophical realizations displays an amazing amount of hubris.
If he could do that, create a utopia on earth, I’d welcome him. It would be more than God had ever done.
Socrates was demon possessed/oppressed, this was directly expressed by Socrates, a ‘deamon’ gave Socrates information. I see no reason that his star student who followed in his footsteps was not likewise. As such we are talking about the same spiritual beings, though they didn’t know/understand the evil intent:
From Daimon - Wikipedia
To all those who have responded to this statement and the associated question, my apologies for the statement not being more explanatory. I do understand that humans having evolved from animals would certainly have killed or otherwise harmed others of their own kind but that the motivation for doing so would have been in some aspect or related in some way to self preservation or survival. In essence let us say that humans would have killed other humans for somewhat the same reasons as perhaps the higher order animals.
From what little I know of evolutionary history, there was a time 40,000 to 50,000 years ago when the ‘Great Leap Forward’ occurred with the Cro Magnon ancestor developing what we call ‘conciousness’.
What I perhaps wanted to say was that between that time and the advent of religion if there were ‘x’ number of reasons for which they would harm or kill their fellow humans, the advent of religion has only added to ‘x’ .
That seems to be a somewhat vague to me. ‘Interact with the spiritual level’ - what is this ‘spiritual level’? What happens at this so called level? A belief in the supernatural? A belief in ‘something’ that is outside the natural world? Who do you interact with? What do call whoever you interact with? If ‘God’ is the name then doesn’t that make you religious?
Quite a few people here have attested to this essential idea or theme but perhaps in different ways. I can and do understand that belief in spirituality could be a pre-requisite to being religious, excluding of course the bigots.
I would certainly like to know someone who is only spiritual. What does this person believe? Does he believe that there is a supernatural power somewhere out there? Why and when did this sense of ‘spirituality’ arise? Did it happen because he was ‘educated’(reading, schooling, belonging to some religious group etc) in some manner that predisposed him to believe in spirituality or was it spontaneous? What exact benefit does he derive by being spiritual? Does he feel incapable of dealing with life without being spiritual? If so, why?
The moment you make any mention of your Trinity, you speak for ‘religion’ and not of spirituality per se. Discussion with you therefore is of no consequence.
Perhaps I should have been a little more distinctive in my use of the word ‘religion’ or ‘religious’. What you talk about is probably ‘organized’ religion that has codes and rules. Let me put it this way - any religion can perhaps be broken down into at least two distinct parts, and both perhaps equally important, especially the first being a pre-requisite to the second.
One – the profession and belief that there is a supernatural entity(s) who/which are responsible for the creation of all that we see.
Two- parables, rules, codes of conduct, descriptions etc.
All religions are almost identical on the first aspect. It is that part of religion I had in mind in my post. The belief in ‘God’ and not necessarily a belief in any particular religion.
Therefore in so far as I can understand, spirituality does require a belief in a supernatural entity, thereby making the spiritual person also a religious person without necessarily requiring a simultaneous belief in the codes or practices of any particular religion.
If that is correct, then perhaps such a spiritual person falls in the classification of the deist.
If we do indeed consider such persons as ‘spiritual’ do they denounce religion? In real life I have not seen any person who believes in ‘spirituality’ and also denounces religion.
Did I assert that? Where? I only said that humans have used religion as one of the many reasons to kill other humans. Am I wrong in that? How?
To add, my native language is not English which might sometimes cause problems in my communication.
First, whether or not Plato was possessed has nothing to do with your belief in demons and his philosophy. You’re trying to compare what people think of you when you express your belief in something for which there is no actual evidence whatsoever, and has had many traditionally held cases debunked quite thoroughly, to Plato’s realizations stemming from his philosophies. I’m pretty sure that if people think you both fools it will be for quite different reasons.
The word daimon in Greek did not mean the same thing as the wird “demon” now means in English. A daimon was a minor deity or “spirit” often seen as taking an attendant or advisory role to humans. They could be good or bad but they were not the kind of devils we now associate with the english word.
Socrates said he had a spirit – a daimon – inside him who didn’t exactly tell him what to do, and who would remain silent when he was doing something good, but who would always warn him if he was doing something wrong or immoral. Socrates spoke of this spirit almost as a personfication of his own conscience and said it never failed him. He didn’t always know if he was doing good but he never failed to be told when he was doing wrong.
I’ve heard the vague phrase ‘I’m a spiritual person’ a lot from celebrities, and it usually means one of three things…
‘I’m atheist/agnostic but don’t want to alienate my fans.’ (This is also the case with many politicians/government workers I know, especially in conversations with important people from the Middle East or Southern U.S.)
‘I’m of a certain religion but don’t want to alienate my fans.’
‘I was raised Christian but am too lazy to read the Bible.’
However, what you have organized as “religious One” is exactly the concept that other people are describing as “spiritual,” so that when you ask for special definitions of “spiritual,” you are confusing the discussion. I have ecountered people who disagree with my position, but in my perspective, religion only occurs when a group of people join to express their spiritual beliefs, together. From my perspective, without ritual and myth to bind common beliefs, there is no religion, only individual spirituality.
You might look over some of lekatt’s posts. cosmosdan has a similar attitude (although he does not go so far as to “denounce” religion. It is actually not all that rare a view. (I most often encounter it among people who say things like “I don’t need to go to church; all of nature is my church.” I express no judgment regarding such views; I am merely pointing out one example of a perspective you claim to have never encountered.)
I’d like to point out that I didn’t equate belief systems with mental disorders; I merely stated that one reminded me of another. If you want to get into that, then I will say that, yes, I think (religious)belief systems could be considered a mental disorder, insofar as they posit (and promote interaction with) beings/forces for which there exists no scientific evidence.
As to the biblical references you mentioned-there are a number of scientifically indefensible statements in that book, so please do not attempt to prove the validity of ideas that come from the Bible by referencing the Bible. The fact that something has been written down doesn’t make it true.
Cite?
A theist as per definition is someone who not only believes that God exists but also that this God is the creator of the universe, and that He still exerts controls and influences what happens.
A deist is halfway between a theist and an atheist in that a creator could have been possible but it does not interfere anymore with the creation.
An atheist denies the existence of God.
Where in the range above does the spiritualist fall?
Also, does it follow then, that all religious persons are definitely theists, but that all theists may not be religious, and is this the latter group that calls themselves ‘spiritualists’?
Posters like kanickbird talk of the Lord God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and Satan et al., as believing Christians. When in the same breath they also talk about ‘spirituality’, are they not actually misrepresenting truth and trying to pass off their true self under the garb of something that they are actually not, or because being religious they are also necessarily ‘spiritual’, the former being an order higher in the ladder, and are to be treated, accepted and respected at the same level as those that are spiritual but have stopped short of the ‘religious’ rung in the ladder?
The reason I posted was that in various posts elsewhere I quite often found overtly religious people talk about ‘spirituality’, which to me appeared a rather unethical and diversionary tactic of defending their stance.
The spiritual sense is a sense. Just like vision, hearing, or any of the others, it brings us information about the exterior world. By the spiritual level, I mean merely the things we sense spiritually, just as light is what we sense visually. As for asking what happens at the spiritual level, that’s like asking, “What do people see?” The answer is, “many things.” I myself am a newcomer to this field and I’ve not studied any religion other than my own in depth, so I’m not qualified to give a summary of everything that people find in the spiritual realm. Suffice to say, there are numerous books on the topic if you’d like to learn about it.
IIRC, there are religions (or is it a spiritual philosophy?) that involves no god(s). But they do have some unverified force working, like Kharma, that influences destiny, or even the afterlife.
(Behave, and get reincarnated in a higher form. Misbehave, and come back as a garden slug.)
But I may be misunderstanding a lot of that…
I disagree. Being a theist says no more than that you believe in a god; they don’t have to believe in God, or that their deity created the universe, or that they still exert control. They just have to believe.
I am very much confused by the general definitions of “deist”, especially when the term is brought up in terms of the U.S. Constitution and founding fathers. So i’d quite like another view of this too.
Not so. I think your definitions focus a bit too much on the Christian God, to be honest. Atheism has many possible definitions and they’re not agreed on by everyone. The general definition as it appears to be mostly used on this board is that a strong atheist actively denies all gods; a strong atheist says that they do not and cannot exist. A weak athiest OTOH says that it is possible they exist, but there is no (or not convincing enough) evidence to say they do.
I would not use your definitions, differing with:
Theist - one who believes that (a) god is personal (regardless whether that (those) god(s) have anything to do with creation
Deist - one who believes that there is a entity responsible for creation, but who does not believe that that entity interacts with (or cares about) humanity
Atheist - one who does not believe there is any god. (Denial vs unbelief is the point at which people get into the “strong” or “hard” vs “weak” or “soft” varieties of atheism.)
A person may believe is a spiritual aspect of the world without necessarily being placed in any of the above categories. (Most Buddhists, for example, have a pretty much atheistic spirituality.)
Certainly, most theists have an element of spirituality in their belief systems: soul, dharma/karma, (for some persons) mind, or any non-physical aspect that one perceives of life. The point is that one may have spiritual beliefs that do not encompass a belief in a supernatural being with powers greater than that of humans (god). However, spirituality is not limited to only theists. Similarly, there are persons who believe in the spiritual realm, sometimes even believing in a version of god that is held by people of religion, who reject the liturgies, rites, and doctrines of religion and refer to themselves as “spiritual.”
Here is the definition from meriam-webster:
belief in the existence of a god or gods; specifically : belief in the existence of one *God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world * who transcends yet is immanent in the world.
I honeslty thought I also read the part of this God ‘controlling’ the current world but I can’t seem to find the source at this time.
What in my posts have I written that leads you to this conclusion. FYI I am not a Christian.
In any case, the point I was trying make is the use of ‘spirituality’ and related phrase by the religious as a means to defend and justify their stand which to me appears misplaced and wrong on their part to do so.
Sorry, it is a little different because terms of visionary sense, I can very well describe and define what I see and also reach an agreement with you where both our descriptions are the same. Can you do the same with ‘spiritual sense’? I presume not.
It does not negate the spiritual experience to use a book to help define the beings that one encounters.
Plato’s world soul theory is very like modern day mysticism, in some theories about Christian demonology demons are responsible for such false religions, and they fall under the category of the occult.
This is incorrect, They meant exactly the same. The spiritual beings Jesus cast out were δαίμων [ðaïmon], these are the same beings that are in Greek mythology, the word is the same. It is only in modern day English that we differentiate the term demon from Christian demonology and deamon from Greek mythology, but as the gospels were written they were the same entity.
It is true that deamons were considered by the Greeks as good/bad and neutral and carry out the will of the ‘gods’, in Christian demonology theory demons (earth bound), carry out the will of the fallen angels (in the heavenlies) in their attempt to cause humanity to turn away from God.
I think the problem here is one of reading. Merriam-Webster isn’t saying it’s both of those things, it’s just saying that it could be defined in either of those ways. I think. Either way, I would tend to disagree with Merriam-Webster on it; it seems a far too specific definition.
You keep using “God”. That’s generally the term used to describe the Christian God. Capatalising it suggests you’re referring to the name of a specific being. I’d use “god”. And yes, I had guessed you weren’t Christian. 