The most useless word? continuted

I wanted to respond to the comment posted on my post The most useless word? because I want to clarify my stance. Where I take issue with the term "spiritual" or "spirituality" is in its relation to how people view atheism.

The term spiritual does little more than muddy up the waters of what could be a simpler dialog. When we are talking about belief in a god or gods we are necessarily talking about a dichotomy: either you accept the claim "god exists" to be true or you do not. There is no middle ground there is not "stepping stone" on which to rest. Where, for example, is the halfway point between yes and not-yes?

It may help at this point to use a piece of ordinary paper--the kind you use to (sparingly) print from your computer. Now draw a circle on that paper. At the top edge label the paper "Does god exist?" Within the circle write yes. Outside of the circle would be labelled not-yes. Not-yes includes everything that is not yes: maybe, I don't know, I don't care, I'm not sure, I guess so, etc.

I want to use this concept to talk about the idea of spiritual as a "stepping stone" in two ways. First, if one uses spiritual to describe "an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of their being" then they aren't talking about religion but rather self-discovery. While I still find it useless in this context I will refrain from going into detail on my thoughts about its use here.

The second way I'd like to use the concept of yes and not-yes is in regards to religion. Religion speaks to the belief in a god or gods. Therefore, if someone asks you if you are religious or inquire as to which religion you affiliate yourself and your answer is "I am spiritual" you have not really answered the question. My next question to you would be, "Do you believe in a god or gods?" which would really be a restatement of the first question. In this case there is not middle ground between whether or not one believes in a god(s). Either you believe that a god or gods exist or you do not believe a god or gods exist. Keep in mind that if your answer is ANYTHING but a resounding yes then you are an Atheist.

I would like to talk about what Atheism is in more detail but first I would also like to point out that it has been my experience (tell me if yours is different) that people tend to use the term spiritual almost exclusively in the following phrase: I'm not religious; I'm spiritual. If you have ever said this you are an Atheist. If you've ever spoken with someone who has said this you have spoken with an Atheist.

Contrary to popular belief, Atheism is not the belief that no gods exist. That would be a claim that would need to be supported by evidence. Atheism is the rejection of the claim that a god or gods exist as unsubstantiated by evidence. Imagine I flip a coin and hold it in my fist. Then, I tell you that the coin is facing heads up. I ask if you believe me. If you say "No" are you then saying that you believe the coin is heads down or are you simply saying that you don't have enough evidence to believe my claim?

This is why anything that is not a yes in the above situation is Atheism. If more people understood that this is what Atheism is, nothing more or less, I think the number of Atheists would skyrocket.

I hope that makes my stance on the term spiritual clearer.

Thanks for reading (and commenting!)

Zach

The most useless word?

What is the purpose of language? Why did language develop in the first place? These questions can seem difficult to answer and I wouldn't begin to claim to know the answer. However, we can make some broad assumptions--language was developed, at least partially, if not completely, to help us understand and categorize our thoughts and feelings and, perhaps more importantly, to share our thoughts and feelings with other people.

Wikipedia offers a figure of 6,912 current living languages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinct_language) although it continues, in this article, to suggest that "90% of the circa 7,000 languages currently spoken in the world will have become extinct by 2050" . Language has evolved into a jungle of various combinations of sounds, grammatical nuances, and regional dialects. All of these variations communicate, to varying degrees of efficiency, ideas. But, I believe one word in the English species of language is profoundly less efficient than its linguistic cousins.

When asked what my beliefs are or what religion I am, I almost always hesitate. I want the words I choose to truly express my thoughts. Over the course of my life I have identified myself as Lutheran, Christian, Agnostic, Atheist, Agnostic-Atheist, Militant Atheist, Humanist, and, at times, spiritual. I still identify with many of these--even Christian when being asked about cultural religion. But, I have a particular problem with the last identity in the list, spiritual.

The term spiritual or spirituality offers me precisely zero information about what a person who claims that identity actually believes. If you were to ask me what religion I was I could, hypothetically, give any number of responses. For the most part, whatever response I give would trigger some sort of idea: Christian--Jesus Christ/the Trinity, Muslim--Mohammed/Allah, Jewish--Yahweh (YHWH), etc. But what comes to mind when someone says "spiritual"? Perhaps some sort of "new age" (perhaps just a synonym for spiritual) philosophy on life comes to mind but, then, what is the philosophy? What do spiritual people believe that separates them as a group from other religious thought?

I think there are reasons why people choose to identify as spiritual and not something more specific: it offers a neutral position for a person to take in the often heated and controversial discussions around religion. It offers a space where you can be both theist or atheist depending upon the crowd you are with and the semantic acrobatics you are willing to perform. I can imagine the spiritual person thinking, "I don't accept the claims of [insert religion here] but I don't want people to think I'm an Atheist." If this is how you think, congratulations, you are an Atheist at least in regard to that religion. Generally speaking, when someone identifies oneself as spiritual I more or less assume they are an atheist but just don't know it yet. Until you have identified what you do believe I think it is fair to assume that you don't believe (accept as true) any religion and that you are an atheist. That is the problem with the word spiritual: it doesn't tell me what you believe.

I am willing to accept that the term may offer some meaning to the individual or to a small group of people but only after they have agreed on what it is that actually do believe and have called spirituality.

Why not forgo the inherent confusion with an identity as convoluted as spiritual?

As always, I am interested in your thoughts.

Thanks for reading,

Zach