 Originally Posted by juroara
it's interesting that the first emotion you attribute to birth is fear. the first emotion I attribute is love. that is self-love!!!
It's irrelevant really; you can probably utilize any emotion that is attributed to a God. I was just choosing fear as it is easy to illustrate in animals as well.
other baby animals can't afford to cry and scream, the noise could attract a predator. well lucky for us we've been on top of the food chain. human babies are not born with the fear of death.
All things are intrinsically born with an aversion to pain and death. Though I think what you may mean is that they may not fully comprehend what death is. However, we can certainly agree that all things are born with a fear of pain.
ever just wanted to curl up in your blanket?........warm.....and safe? ahem...womb  .
when we were babies, religion, spirituality, God - those thing's aren't on our mind. Only one thing is.......'MEEE!!'. Me. Me. Me. Me. ME!!
but it was through our selfish self-love, that we could center on ourselves and develop our self awareness and self identity, and grow into healthy independent individuals. when children aren't given the love and attention they need - then we see a stunt in the growth of independence and individuality.
This is digression. I was really just singling out that emotion to demonstrate an entirely different point.
where does religion and spirituality fit in the mix?
first we need to clearly define what spirituality and religion is
that's NOT spirituality. spirituality has NOTHING to do with behaving in a certain way. in fact, spirituality is NOT even something you believe in.
we you are describing is CULTURE. evolution shows that we are social creatures that have always lived in a 'tribe'. and nature shows that all 'tribes' even in the animal kingdom develop 'rules'. such as "I am alpha". the more complicated our rules became, the more we needed reasons for having them.
We really do not need to debate the semantics of which kind of spirituality a child believes. I am just stating that it is clearly evident that we a born with a leniency towards spiritualism. It may also be because all of our ancestors were born that way and it is, in fact, genetic now. How it manifests in our future life is another topic entirely. What my point simply was is that it is actually evolutionary beneficial to be born believing in spirits. Thus, we are.
Culture and society, on the other hand, are also very important concepts. I entirely agree about their importance. However, it is not really what I am aiming at.
what is spirituality then?
spirituality is: A PROCESS OF MENTAL, EMOTIONAL AND SELF EXPANSION. spirituality says there is bigger picture than we currently know. AND we should become consciously aware of this bigger picture
that bigger picture can mean God. It can mean Heaven.............but it can also mean YOU. does this mean science is spiritual? It can be. And there is a very famous spiritual scientist, Einstein.
when does science stop being spiritual? It stops being spiritual when it's materialistic and says "there is nothing more to life than what you see now". Because that's not an expansive view is it? It does just the opposite. It makes reality feel smaller.
Well, I do not think what you are saying here contradicts what I have been saying. So, I am dubious that you are seeing my point. I am simply debating the idea that we a born with a predisposition towards spirituality and it then manifests relative to the culture we are born in.
As for science becoming a "non-expansive view" - I have to significantly disagree. However, that is another topic. I would just refer you to look up Existentialism and then tell me that that is "non-expansive" without a twinge of guilt.
Spirituality is in our blood. It's the very fabric of our evolution. Something made us convinced there is more to life, there is more to the heavens, there is more to ourselves than we currently know. It changed us so much, we crawled into dark and dangerous caves just to worship this unknown.
I cannot tell if you are debating against me or for me now. I have basically already said this. So.. I agree.
Both have from time to time fallen in the same dead ends. Religion became a dead end when it stopped asking questions. When it stopped the expanding force found in spirituality. That's when we turned to science. When science became a dead end and says you're nothing but a victim to DNA - people became upset and depressed. And what happened? Thousands of people stopped looking to science for their answers and turned to ancient religions instead.
I think you may find that the numbers point quite to the opposite. There are, in fact, more growing people not believing in God and they are smarter and happier. I can quote the numbers for this, but I have done so in so many other threads that I suspect you may have already seen it.
Being religious doesn't mean being spiritual. Religion has rules and laws, morals, conduct, and has pre-defined reality. Spirituality isn't any of those things. It is simply a force of nature that man is wholly enveloped in. However, the spiritual force is described in virtually all religions. In Christianity it is the Holy Ghost.
We can still say that being religious is nearly synonymous to being spiritual. Either way, my argument was that we are born predisposed to spiritual/religious ideals. I don't even know if I would call it an argument.
Honestly, the sooner we realize we are all spiritual by nature, the sooner the world can be a happy place  . Spirituality beckons us to worship (which means to be in awe), to center and ground ourselves, but also to celebrate and enjoy ourselves, each other and every moment. We are still, and always will be, the wild humans dancing around a fire.
I do think we are born spiritual in nature. However, I think that it is only beneficial as we are children. As we get older, I would argue that religion and spirituality are actually delusions (just like Santa Claus) and that, in fact, taking scientific approaches are all around better in all aspects. This is still giving room for the possibility of being wrong on things. Though this is a little digressive my main idea.
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