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I'm not spiritual, I'm religious
Hey, this probably comes as a surprise to about 1 in 10 people but I don't think I believe in the existence of the soul. This usually ends up being fun to explain to other religious people—as much fun as it is to explain to non-religious people. I think it's actually Christianity which makes me confident in the lack of a soul!
So among the many problems I have with the soul is the idea of a continuously existent subject: that subset of beliefs which holds the soul is the eternal thing inside this hollow shell. The gnostics and their various kissing cousins who believe that luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. (In fact we are luminous beings, but this does not mean we have a soul. ) In this scenario, the soul is that substantial core of the being which exists beyond time, and maintains whether the human lives or dies. In religion, the soul is the thing which is damned or saved. In the absence of religion where soul belief is still maintained, the soul is the thing which is worth believing in, the soul is the thing distinguishing the person from the rest of the universe.
Any half-awake atheist has a lot more tools than we do for describing why either of these scenarios is a fat lot of ridiculous hot air.
But it's the religious person for whom the soul is a far more dangerous entity. Because if you stare it in the face, the soul renders God pointless. Rendered as pointless as some think evolution does (I maintain evolution doesn't, but I'll post that shit later). If the soul in this rendition exists, what point is there for a creator? A redeemer? Indeed, if the soul is the representative of the eternally existing subject, the "I" in "I am", then there is nothing really meaningful happening in creation, and certainly nothing in redemption. In this structure, the sinner doesn't sin, his flesh does. His luminous being is intact, awaiting liberation from this shell. Oh? Sin damages the soul? Then enough sins stain the soul and damn it? If we are not crude matter, why would our actions against other crude matter (theft, murder, rape, or any of the "7 Deadlies") count? They wouldn't, we wouldn't be harming anything real, it would be our crude matters doing their natural crude things to other crude matters while the souls recline awaiting their liberty.
A second scenario, in which the soul is not eternal, but is still the core essence of what constitutes a person, is also unsatisfactory. I am not "I" without a soul. It is the soul, added at the moment of creation or birth or some time, which makes me a whole person. Why? That's a pretty good question: why does this crude matter need this addition? God breathed on the clay—some consider this the imbuing of the soul—so we need this "divine spark" at the moment of conception or the moment of personhood, in order to be a person.
As before, the problem of sin actually calls attention to this quite effectively: if I can resist sin, I can maintain this divine spark, I can keep out the howling wind of the void and keep the flame lit. My task is then to protect this soul spark from others and from myself. I am a lamp, a treasure in earthen vessel, to corrupt a well known Pauline phrase, and if I tend it, it will burn on. This gives my body something to do, certainly, which is perhaps better than the kind of extreme gnosticism I mention above (I might even admit it's straw man gnosticism). It gives me the responsibility of tending the soul.
Unfortunately, this still doesn't really give the creator anything to do. (Yes, at this point the atheists still with us in this conversation are clicking their tongues and considering the matter closed) You might as well not believe in God if you believe in a soul.
Or more precisely, you don't need to believe in a particular God who takes away the sin of the world. The cross and the resurrection in this scenario are utterly pointless acts of divine child abuse: if we must simply take better care of our souls, Jesus is killed because God wants to set an example of the extremity to which we must go for the care of our souls.
But if you dump the stupid soul, you get some wide open opportunities. The easily distractible among you are about to throw up your hands but here goes: I don't believe in soul, but I do believe in spirit. Particularly because I believe in the Holy Spirit.
Oh come on! What the fuck is the difference between soul and spirit? Right?
Spirit is the emergent life of relationship. The Holy Spirit is the unifying emergence of God in relationship to God's self and to the world. (In this and other regards, I maintain the trinity is the only doctrine that makes any damn sense. )
Human spirit emergent from humans in relationship. Thus, I am this crude matter. And so are you. But in relationship, material things acquire spiritual force. When we speak of the spirit of an age, we are talking quite specifically in these terms, about the assemblage of efforts and matrices of relationships during a time which produce numerous effects. When an ugly mob assembles and commits to the course of violent genocidal action, then the spirit that arises is an evil spirit, or a host of evil spirits. Sometimes we relate with people and things, and out of this relationship pours a spirit of artistry or craftsmanship, a painting, a composition. Nothing with spirit is born in isolation. Soul requires no relationship, it's the continuously existing subject for which all things are objects. Spirit is the continuously evolving substance of relationship.
Buber's Ich und Du? Like that.
I suppose I'll get around to writing more about this.
So among the many problems I have with the soul is the idea of a continuously existent subject: that subset of beliefs which holds the soul is the eternal thing inside this hollow shell. The gnostics and their various kissing cousins who believe that luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. (In fact we are luminous beings, but this does not mean we have a soul. ) In this scenario, the soul is that substantial core of the being which exists beyond time, and maintains whether the human lives or dies. In religion, the soul is the thing which is damned or saved. In the absence of religion where soul belief is still maintained, the soul is the thing which is worth believing in, the soul is the thing distinguishing the person from the rest of the universe.
Any half-awake atheist has a lot more tools than we do for describing why either of these scenarios is a fat lot of ridiculous hot air.
But it's the religious person for whom the soul is a far more dangerous entity. Because if you stare it in the face, the soul renders God pointless. Rendered as pointless as some think evolution does (I maintain evolution doesn't, but I'll post that shit later). If the soul in this rendition exists, what point is there for a creator? A redeemer? Indeed, if the soul is the representative of the eternally existing subject, the "I" in "I am", then there is nothing really meaningful happening in creation, and certainly nothing in redemption. In this structure, the sinner doesn't sin, his flesh does. His luminous being is intact, awaiting liberation from this shell. Oh? Sin damages the soul? Then enough sins stain the soul and damn it? If we are not crude matter, why would our actions against other crude matter (theft, murder, rape, or any of the "7 Deadlies") count? They wouldn't, we wouldn't be harming anything real, it would be our crude matters doing their natural crude things to other crude matters while the souls recline awaiting their liberty.
A second scenario, in which the soul is not eternal, but is still the core essence of what constitutes a person, is also unsatisfactory. I am not "I" without a soul. It is the soul, added at the moment of creation or birth or some time, which makes me a whole person. Why? That's a pretty good question: why does this crude matter need this addition? God breathed on the clay—some consider this the imbuing of the soul—so we need this "divine spark" at the moment of conception or the moment of personhood, in order to be a person.
As before, the problem of sin actually calls attention to this quite effectively: if I can resist sin, I can maintain this divine spark, I can keep out the howling wind of the void and keep the flame lit. My task is then to protect this soul spark from others and from myself. I am a lamp, a treasure in earthen vessel, to corrupt a well known Pauline phrase, and if I tend it, it will burn on. This gives my body something to do, certainly, which is perhaps better than the kind of extreme gnosticism I mention above (I might even admit it's straw man gnosticism). It gives me the responsibility of tending the soul.
Unfortunately, this still doesn't really give the creator anything to do. (Yes, at this point the atheists still with us in this conversation are clicking their tongues and considering the matter closed) You might as well not believe in God if you believe in a soul.
Or more precisely, you don't need to believe in a particular God who takes away the sin of the world. The cross and the resurrection in this scenario are utterly pointless acts of divine child abuse: if we must simply take better care of our souls, Jesus is killed because God wants to set an example of the extremity to which we must go for the care of our souls.
But if you dump the stupid soul, you get some wide open opportunities. The easily distractible among you are about to throw up your hands but here goes: I don't believe in soul, but I do believe in spirit. Particularly because I believe in the Holy Spirit.
Oh come on! What the fuck is the difference between soul and spirit? Right?
Spirit is the emergent life of relationship. The Holy Spirit is the unifying emergence of God in relationship to God's self and to the world. (In this and other regards, I maintain the trinity is the only doctrine that makes any damn sense. )
Human spirit emergent from humans in relationship. Thus, I am this crude matter. And so are you. But in relationship, material things acquire spiritual force. When we speak of the spirit of an age, we are talking quite specifically in these terms, about the assemblage of efforts and matrices of relationships during a time which produce numerous effects. When an ugly mob assembles and commits to the course of violent genocidal action, then the spirit that arises is an evil spirit, or a host of evil spirits. Sometimes we relate with people and things, and out of this relationship pours a spirit of artistry or craftsmanship, a painting, a composition. Nothing with spirit is born in isolation. Soul requires no relationship, it's the continuously existing subject for which all things are objects. Spirit is the continuously evolving substance of relationship.
Buber's Ich und Du? Like that.
I suppose I'll get around to writing more about this.
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(Anonymous) 2009-03-09 01:14 am (UTC)(link)I love Jesus, and Budda makes me smile!!
By the way, I just took my phsyc. exam for the synod today!! FUN
Becca
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when i say i am not religious but spiritual i'm not taking pot-shots at people who do associate their beliefs with organized religion. i'm more trying to hint that my ideas about the realm of spirituality are not part of an organized religion and that i don't go to any church or ascribe to any particular belief. basically i'm saying i'm not atheist but i'm also saying i'm not agnostic. i've got my own beliefs formed over time snagged from wherever i feel they resonate, but i'm also not religious but i don't practice any particular faith.
basically i'm saying you shouldn 't have to be driven crazy by people saying that necessarily. like when i say it i'm not saying anything about you, i'm only saying something about me.
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YOU—who aren't so much in a position where you're going to eventually be professionally religious—I'm going to be quite a bit more understanding. And of course I know you personally so that's completely different.
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Oh good! Do you get your results and follow up yet? Let us know, we'll pray for you as you prepare. Don't let the candidacy process get you down (it certainly did me): always remember they try very hard to ensure it's spirit-led. Even when they're using the tools of the secular world (like the MMPI) they have prayed and meditated over their utilization.
Also, they help weed out the real crazies from the people simply crazy enough to dare to answer the call!
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This is a very interesting dilemma you posit. And the process of your thought makes me think we have some similar conclusions about, shall we say, the "spirit" of the Bible and its teachings.
I agree wholeheartedly that evolution and God can easily co-exist. The message of evolution is simply that things are constantly changing. However it started, God could still have been there. And in general, I tend to take the view of the architect god that set some wheels in motion and then sat back to watch what we would make of ourselves.
For me, the big turning point in my faith was understanding the council of Nicene and the filioque controversy. When I realized that a group of guys in 300 AD voted on which books were in the Bible, it helped me understand that some of those books were just written by some dudes and said some good things. More specifically, I now think of Paul as the Dear Abby of the NT. Sure, he gives some good advice, but I don't think he's divinely inspired beyond trying really hard to do the right thing. This relieved a lot of pressure I felt from Paul's views on sex, which definitely are hellenistic in the mind/matter area.
If you're not familiar with the filioque controversy of the same era, it's pretty much the argument of whether the holy spirit proceeds from the father or from the father AND the son. That latter of which limits gods ability to act in this world to the name of Jesus. While I can believe that Jesus is a bridge to a relationship with god, I can't believe that god is powerless outside of christ. I mean, maybe the advent of christ is the reason we as people no longer need miracles, but I can't believe that a god of love is ignoring anything not deeded over to him through Jesus.
Anyway, more to point, I am no longer sure how to define that spark that makes us alive. I totally get the issues you're illustrating above, and I think it's interesting how a soul can be used to negate the need for god. Personally, I think all those words are clumsy ways to say "self". There is something in this bag of meat that gives us thought and teh idea of self. I realized in my biology course that whatever this self was and however it worked after death, I was sure that self was bound to this world. And if that is the case, than we already know that nothing in this world actually goes away, it just changes. So whatever my "self" my experience of life actually is, it will always be a part of this world. Now, I'm not saying I'll be consciously aware of it. But it has made me question the idea of reincarnation and what happens to that spark of life. I doubt it leaves. I bet it does somehow incorporate into the world around us. Will I "experience"it? Who knows. However you put the actual definition of such things, my goal is to protect the flame in the vessel and to let it burn as brightly and fiercely as I can let it while i contain it in this life.
Amazing how hard it is to really dig into some of these ideas, innit?