One more harm of categorizing

Coturnix compiled the following list of behaviors and conditions as examples of what people might be referring to when they speak of being "spiritual"[ I added the last two]:

• A) People who really believe in ghosts, spirits, talking with the dead and Ouija boards.
• B) People currently under the influence of LSD
• C) People who get the strong emotional feelings of awe when contemplating the vastness of the Universe, the endlessness of Time, the beauty of a mountain, the elegance of a mathematical proof, the amazing adaptations of a tapeworm, or the complexity of the human brain.
• D) People who get into a trance when dancing
• E) Atheists when asked by an angry mob of aggressive, dangerous and heavily armed believers.
• F) Believers when asked by an angry mob of aggressive, dangerous and heavily armed atheists.
• G) Dogs after marking the fire hydrant.
• H) People whose goal is to alienate the least number of potential matches on online dating sites.
• I) People who bought into some New-Age crap.
• J) Westerners who practice an Eastern religion.
• K) People who read their horoscopes, burn the incense, use untested health products from Health-Food stores and keep their dentures under pyramid-shaped toys.
• L) People bearing up with something more than the shrug of stoicism when they are facing the crushing harms that living inevitably dishes out: loss of health, wealth, friends or life itself.
• M)An inclination to experience, when in the presence of particular harmonious groups of persons, the additional presence of that harmony itself.

The term "spiritual" is vague enough to cover belief systems I find laughable but by the same token vague enough to encompass unaccountably compassionate behaviours too. So the basic point of this post is a pretty safe assertion. But there is more than a whiff of cynicism in the post, as if the falibility of intuitive operating is per force always inferior to some more rational view. Not always. Wanting logic in its workings, the intuitive ways cannot guarantee or explain why they sometimes achieve benign states and consequences yet that is a baby some are unwilling to toss with the bathwater.

To imply that acting on anything but logic and verifiable facts is always a wrong or inferior way to live is arrogance...the data simply is NOT available for some conclusions which we must none the less reach. Are we answering the arrogance of fundamentalists or their self serving delusions with more arrogance? The inclination to question does not make one better than the 95% of humanity who are, after all, doing the best they can within their scant resources. Skepticism without humility or sympathy is less effective than it imagines itself to be.

The burden here should be on the mockers of the "spiritual" to use, by coining new categories if need be, accurate labels for the things they disrespect and can prove to be detrimental or selfish. When those are pared away, something may still be left to respect. We who know enough to think it a trivial exercise to debunk the intellectual laziness of new-age healing quackery and appeals to impossible miracles should be wary of the laziness of tossing a blanket category that covers the follies and then castigate by association everything that has fallen under the blanket.

We can not blame our own catch-all for what it caught.

Footnotes: This post grew out of Coturnix's which in turn grew out of several posts on the topic, mostly among the SEED science blogs...its a rich thread and has some good commenting if you dig back through the ancestry that Coturnix has linked to. I see that PZ's post on spirituality in response to Charles Taylor's winning the Templeton prize was actually where I first brought my two cents to the discussion.

The gods must be crazies

Visitors who have some religious faith, do not be put off by the post title: it bears on a much narrower and more realistic matter than it may imply. Not only are you welcome here, you probably have the most important things to say.

I am curious: in America, one of the stereotypes of madness we on the outside of mental hospitals used to hold was of the fellow who was convinced that he was god or alternatively, Jesus. Claim that too loudly and they came after you with a straight jacket. It was funny not because it was crazy but because it was scary. "They'll lock you up next to Napoleon!" Jim Jones was arguably one of these crazies but David Koresh was not.

It is probably a lot harder to come by an accurate census of what the most common delusions are these days. Chlorpromazine and its descendants have emptied the state mental hospitals onto the streets and homeless shelters. The census I really want will never be taken, probably is impossible to gather meaningfully. In countries where Christianity is not the dominant religion and where someone who states that he is the deity is not promptly run thSave as Draftrough with a sword, what are the varieties of religious delusion? Did a Hindu pantheon rant behind the bars of an asylum in New Delhi? Were the funny farms of Tibet full of dishevelled Buddhas and the wards in Canton inhabited by assorted people claiming they were Confucius? I know its insensitive, macabre and Thurberesque, but as data, I think it would be interesting.

[my apology for calving a this post out of its predecessor but that first post wanted thematic cohesiveness and this quest, as I hope will become a pattern, raises a question in a narrow context, suitable for a bounded discussion on the topic of kinds of belief or at least, of believing]

Missionary Impossible: our mission, should you choose to join it...

Most people are not interested in discussing their beliefs unless it is only to have those beliefs affirmed. This precludes productive debate, invites stasis and protects less than just, less than benign, beliefs. There are arguments no one ever wins in the sense of all parties coming to a consensus PoV. These are the arguments that betray the weakness of the human mind, the imbalance of reason and emotion. In a healthy person, reason and emotion work together well enough to not cancel out all productive activity. But in our body politic, each is roughly yoked to our causes, pulling unevenly, taking us round and round in circles.

My mom always told me to mind my people and my questions and never bring up topics of sex, religion or politics. My mom and her advice predate blogging, actually, predate computing. That advice will keep your writing clean enough to prevent Decency Posse's from blasting you out of a job with a presidential campaign...and guarantee such tepid writing as to leave you beneath notice by campaigners or indeed anyone with any reading objective other than putting themselves to sleep.

I am still trying to figure out if I am an agnostic. Regarding deities, I personally happen not to have encountered any. About love, also, I have inconsistent data and nagging uncertainty about the extent to which it is a cultural construct. There are many things about which one chould be agnostic. We shall bring these topics up now and then and perhaps readers will help me pare away any folly, assumption or misinformation under which I may labor.

There are huge classic ambivalences where no two people have the same idea or experience of the subject yet think it worth fighting over: God may only be an idea, a being imagined vividly or vaguely in a million variations who takes over for parents we have outgrown or serves as answer to those who think simple questions must have simple answers. But great is the benefit to those in whom this idea shines as a hope that they are in a benign world because it made some sense for them to be here and as a comforting certainty that their place in that world is necessarily a humble one.

There are huge classic ambivalences where few argue there is no problem but because the practical solutions are so threatening to humanity's fondest traits and dreams, even fewer mention the problem let alone propose or act to solve the problems. Overpopulation.

There are huge topics about which noone feels ambivilent: the juxtaposition of views is then most grating.

My alter ego, Greensmile the executioner, likes the quip. He fails but soldiers on with his soliloquies. I would rather be the facilitor/instigator/moderator and will consider the enterprise a failure if I do not by provocation or invitation get many sides cogently speaking here. Debate or at least exposure of the logical or evidentiary underpinnings of opinions contrary not just to my biases or unfamiliar to my experience but to any of the established currents, left, right or center, will be quite appreciated here.

"here"? Where, pray tell is "here"? I want neutral territory and I don't know if its the topics or the style of anonymous discussions as the webs tools happen to support that or something in the nature of people who would even bother to enter the fray...something there may be that balkanizes, creates no-man's-land in the blogosphere or just needs a wall. Well just see if Frost was right.

Why do we say "Lets don't go there!" just when the conversation is starting to get interesting?