Thursday, May 07, 2009

Faith in flux...

The Pew Forum has put out an interesting study with the title of this post. From a summary by Blow:
..most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later choose to join one...While science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious, the cold, hard facts are just so cold and hard. Yes, the evidence for evolution is irrefutable. Yes, there is a plethora of Biblical contradictions. Yes, there is mounting evidence from neuroscientists that suggests that God may be a product of the mind. Yes, yes, yes. But when is the choir going to sing? And when is the picnic? And is my child going to get a part in the holiday play?

As the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism — that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It’s the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship...Being regularly surrounded by a community that shares your convictions and reinforces them through literature, art and ritual is incredibly powerful, and yes, spiritual.

1 comment:

  1. Deric, this is a timely post for me, (synchronicity?) as this morning, I'm writing around this idea: The Human Endeavor is comprised equally by the scientific endeavor, and the spiritual endeavor. (spiritual being that which emerges from physical processes but exist and operate as non-physical processes.)

    One thing I would note in this context is that often, those who originate themselves in one side of our endeavor at the exclusion of the other, will unconsciously include the other in their self singularised form of the total human endeavor: Those who center on the spiritual, will conceive some portion of their spirituality in terms of technology, (ie, prayer/medicine) while those who center on the scientific, will find some portion to conceive in terms of meaning. (i.e., method/god).

    Because Human Being is the only species to exist with the Human Endeavor, we will see analogies in nature that point to aspects, but never the totality of what it means to be fully human. For this, we are on our own; and I would argue that the success of the Human Endeavor will depend on a deep dialogue between both of our underlying and uniquely human endeavors, though different, are equally necessary to the ultimate wholeness of our species.

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