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The Faith and Spirituality Appreciation Thread
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Here goes nothing! 
What spirituality/ faith do people have here and what does it mean to you to have it?
What spirituality/ faith do people have here and what does it mean to you to have it?
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Shockingly I have never seen that show (except trailers). Not a believer in karma either - just that people who commit good tend to be happier, and those that do evil (in the broadest sense of the word) tend to be less happy.
Thanks for the thread Flaxseed. Hopefully we can chat, share and debate without the fear of ridicule and rudeness.
KJ44... I believe in Karma, well, more that I really hope it exists. I do believe that you reap what you so and I've seen it quite a few times. I am going to be really peed off if I get to the otherside and find out it doesn't exist. I'm waiting for quite a few people to get what's coming to them.
Isn't part of the Earl subtext that one doesn't accept karma for what it might bring you personally?
Karma is the only thing that stops me taking revenge on my crazy bitch flat mate
Judaism has something kinda similar i guess to MNIE, the writing of an 'ethical will' before you die, so you can say all the things which you should have said but never got the chance, asking people for forgiveness things like that!
I'm never really sure of the difference between spirituality and faith...
I guess all people understand it differently. To me Spirituality encompasses all beliefs in there being something more to us than body parts and genetic make up, like a soul or a spirit. When i say faith usually i assume it means religious faith but faith could also mean faith in spirituality.
I think it comes down to some people dont like to say they have 'faith' they prefer to use 'spiritual'. etc etc. It just depends on peoples own feelings i guess.
Hope that makes sense!
Good point, but I let certain things go, someone being mean, being bad to others, to me, being generally nasty throughout their lives to others, on the belief or hope that karma will eventually catch up with them. It's not about revenge for me, but the way I let pain and hurt go, with faith that there is universal justice of some sort.
damn right! I believe that justice is served after we die, Moses will be reading from the Torah and it will be heaven for the righteious, but for the non-righteous people it will be hell
Of course im sure many righteous people would find it totally boring to listen to Moses as well so i dont think that image works too well!
Yes it does
Funnily enough, although I believe in god, I am agnostic about souls and afterlives etc.
I think faith and spirituality are the same thing, but it's religion and spirituality which interwine but differ.
I consider myself spiritual because I have faith that there is more to the universe, I have faith there is a divine source, but I don't consider myself religious because I do not follow an organised religion.
Was it a particular group of people that treated you like dirt?
Btw, i love Chopin!
Fair enough, but it's inspired many humanitarians to do good works, so there must be something of value there. One would have to be a cynic or simplistic to think they all did it in the hope of reward in the afterlife.
This is only a half arsed opinion but I think that spirituality can be a sense that the whole is more than a sum of the parts.
For example, my degree is in psychology, which included neurophysiology. We studied the purpose of the structures of the brain and the reasons behind human behaviour. Much is still unexplained and the subject of ongoing study and debate but it mostly follows an assumption that there's a logical evolutionary or sociological explanation for what we feel and think.
I have a sense that much of my internal world is beyond explanation in those terms. It involves subjective appreciation of art, the beauty of nature, a desire to question my existence and our place in the grand scheme of things and a natural impulse to take pleasure in using my imagination to enjoy sometimes fanciful or poetic ideas.
I have no faith in religion and no real belief in any deity but I can appreciate and enjoy the ideas and beliefs of others or giggle at ridiculous pythonesque perversions of reality. The desire to share subjective experience with others, the impulse to be altruistic with no prospect of reward just to feel good all qualify.
Spirit? Mind? The brain's way of dealing with the unexplained (most probable in my opinion)? I have no idea but it's an interesting topic and fun to talk about.
That is one of the things I get a bit irritated by in debates - most of the religious people I know do good works because they believe it is the right thing to do... and not because of a 'heavenly reward'. Two of my friends are Anglican priests, both of whom 'took the cloth' in their 40s after careers in the City. They wanted to do something they felt was less self-oriented and felt being vicars would given them the opportunity they wanted. Neither have ever mentioned wanting to build up 'brownie points' for later.
Not only that, but there's also dealing with what should be comprehensible given enough time but is effectively and practically inconceivable for one human being to grasp. Just looking up at the stars and pondering how big the universe is and how old it is for example.
Absolutely. I've quoted this before in a similar thread but Terry Pratchett's idea that 'perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another where the best fruit is' sums it up for me.
It's coming to the end of the third season on E4 so not a good time to start. Maybe rent the 1st series DVD boxset from Amazon or something? It's good comfort telly, it's funny, and
Then I have more personal experiences to remind me and reassure me that there is more to this life and each and every one of us are important in the grand scheme. I just haven't worked out what the grand scheme is yet.
The biologist in me says there must be a natural explanation for it all - but I really don't know... hence my agnosticism about the 'soul'.
I am agnostic over a creator god too - but in both cases it is interesting to explore and meditate on the various possibilities.
TP is a deserved success because he deeply understands how people see themselves in the world.
I might do that - the trailers always seemed amusing, just never got around to it
/ot
And, of course, there's the $cientology connection...