What is religion? And is science spiritual?

[Eise]

On 12/22/2018 at 4:35 PM, Itoero said:

Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life.

Not bad. For the first time I've given you a rep-point, for at least a momentary glimpse of light.

On 1/3/2019 at 7:53 PM, Silvana said:

In both spirituality and science, at some point, you have to decide something is true and decide to believe based on that belief.

I think this is wrong. To contrast it with religion: religion is a belief system, spirituality isn't. Spirituality is more a stance one takes to what one thinks reality is. Therefore one finds spirituality in all kinds of world views: theistic (e.g. mysticism in Christianity or Islam) , non-theistic (e.g. in Buddhism), and yes, even in scientific world views.

So this is very wrong:

On 1/3/2019 at 7:53 PM, Silvana said:

So, theoretically, the existence of spiritual concepts could be demonstrated with the right equipment

First, 'concepts' cannot be demonstrated. At most concepts can turn up to be useful to describe nature. Second, spirituality, as described above, is  a description of the kind of relation you strive for to what you think is real, be it God, ultimate reality, or life just as you experience it.

On 1/4/2019 at 5:25 PM, Itoero said:

Aren't Quantum interpretations spiritual...in a sense?

Not in any meaningful sense. 

On 1/4/2019 at 8:54 PM, Itoero said:

People often use spirituality to explain reality

Spirituality does not explain reality. It strives for, as your first statement says, to feel the connection with what one supposes to be real.

On 1/4/2019 at 8:54 PM, Itoero said:

Spirituality can be a way of giving meaning to or explain reality without direct scientific evidence

Yes, feeling connected gives a feeling of meaning. That is in my opinion one of the main motivations behind spirituality.

And no, it does not explain anything, so it is a category error to compare it with scientific evidence.

20 hours ago, Itoero said:

Spirituality is imo used when people form new theories.

Now you are mixing up spirituality with intuition.

On 12/22/2018 at 7:03 AM, Mojoemojoe said:

I have been wondering how religion and spirituality started

Nobody knows. You must realise that we evolved from previous natural species that could not talk, and so definitely had very different minds than we have now. By using language to literally describe things in nature did not arise from one moment to the other. So I assume originally religion and spirituality were not invented by people, but slowly emerged from more primitive forms of consciousness. 

[Itoero]

On ‎1‎/‎6‎/‎2019 at 1:42 PM, Eise said:

Not bad. For the first time I've given you a rep-point, for at least a momentary glimpse of light.

You can remove the reppoint, It was a google-quote.

 

On ‎1‎/‎6‎/‎2019 at 1:42 PM, Eise said:

Spirituality does not explain reality. It strives for, as your first statement says, to feel the connection with what one supposes to be real.

Pffff...Of course it doesn't explain reality.  People use it to explain reality and give meaning to reality. And "to feel the connection with what one supposes to be real." is one of many possible 'definitions'.

On ‎1‎/‎6‎/‎2019 at 3:35 AM, zapatos said:

He did? Can you provide some sort of citation? I'd love to read about that. I'm not even sure what a "spiritual mind" is.

Spirituality can be the same as 'creativity' and creativity is  very important in all science, including in mathematics….especi

Edited January 7, 2019 by Itoero

[Eise]

11 hours ago, Itoero said:

On 1/6/2019 at 1:42 PM, Eise said:

On 1/4/2019 at 8:54 PM, Itoero said:

People often use spirituality to explain reality

Spirituality does not explain reality. It strives for, as your first statement says, to feel the connection with what one supposes to be real.

Pffff...Of course it doesn't explain reality.  People use it to explain reality and give meaning to reality.

Yes. But you said 'People  often use spirituality to explain reality'. And I say: they are 'not even wrong'. It does not apply. Spirituality is not a world view, but a way to connect to what you suppose to be real in your world view. World views can be wrong ('The sun orbits the earth'), but how can you say that a feeling of connectedness is wrong?

[Phi for All]

17 hours ago, Itoero said:

Spirituality can be the same as 'creativity' and creativity is  very important in all science, including in mathematics….especi

Oversimplification and ignorance is what ensues when you insist on these false equivalences to redefine known terminology. You do this a LOT.

[zapatos]

33 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Oversimplification and ignorance is what ensues when you insist on these false equivalences to redefine known terminology. You do this a LOT.

Hmm, seems I heard this before.

[Silvana]

On 1/3/2019 at 2:15 PM, beecee said:

The Higgs Boson was actually a hypothetical developed along the lines of present knowledge, which of course now has been confirmed. It was not a idea dragged out of someone's rear end, but as a result of other basic fundamental particles that obviously combine and interact to explain the universe we see and experience today. A guess certainly, but an educated guess, not a guess based on ignorance.

I don't disagree, my point was that initially, some of the knowledge used to hypothesize the Higgs Boson was not always considered "knowledge" or even proven. It had to be proven each step to get to the Higgs Boson. And the methods and ways to prove it also had to be developed and tested.

[Strange]

1 hour ago, Silvana said:

I don't disagree, my point was that initially, some of the knowledge used to hypothesize the Higgs Boson was not always considered "knowledge" or even proven. It had to be proven each step to get to the Higgs Boson. And the methods and ways to prove it also had to be developed and tested.

(Ignoring the inappropriate word "prove" ...) That sounds like the way science always works: gather some data, build a model, produce some predictions based on the model, test them, hope for unexpected results so new hypotheses can be developed, etc.

I don't know what the connection is with spirituality or belief.