About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
5 comments:
"Most believers, however, do not come to religion through philosophical arguments. Rather, their belief arises from their personal experiences of a spiritual world of meaning and values, with God as its center."
I hate the word "spiritual" with the fires of a thousand suns. And this paragraph exemplifies why.
I think that most religious believers come to their views through socialisation (especially by parents), though some also do through powerful emotional experiences. I think it's true that few do through accepting the sorts of arguments put by, say, William Lane Craig.
I think you're probably right. I just think that the word "spiritual" does more damage than it needs to. From the context of the article, I'm interpreting the portion I quoted as meaning something like,
"Most believers, however, do not come to religion through philosophical arguments. Rather, their belief arises from being socialized into viewing the world through a lens of particular meanings and values, which are linked by their community to a belief in a god."
And that I believe! I had a friend recently post to facebook a picture captioned, "The ultimate disproof of atheism." It was a picture of a beautiful nebula. For her, the feeling of looking at a beautiful thing is linked to her belief in God. She seems to actually feel like that wouldn't be possible if God weren't real.
So I believe that part! I just can't stand the use of "spiritual" in the quoted sense. It would be as if I constantly referred to people who claim to have been abducted as "people who have had UFO abduction experiences," and claimed that they believe in UFOs because of a "powerful experience of being abducted." Its misleading about where I stand on the subject.
Sorry, that was me again, I forgot to uncheck anonymous.
Sure - I agree with you on that!
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