What is Rational Spirituality ?
[NOTE : this article is much longer than normal. Unfortunately, this is a necessary evil, given that I am introducing a whole new subject. I apologize for any eyestrain in advance.]
Faced with the vast and incredible spacetime, and man's relative insignificance in it, we ask ourselves questions like "what is this ?", "why am I here ?", and "how can I integrate this ?".
This is the beginning of spirituality. Every field of knowledge must have an object, a goal : this is our object and our goal.
We must answer these questions in a rational manner, because reason is our sole means of knowledge. All religions do not make the slightest effort to do this, although a few have some worthwhile things to say.
What is needed is a rational exploration of spirituality, like science is a rational exploration of nature, and Objectivism is a rational exploration of philosophy.
This is, no doubt, a daunting program. I do not propose that I have all the answers, or even most of the answers. No one rational proposes this anyway.
Atheism is a timid beginning. Refuting the idea of gods is obvious, but does not lead anywhere else. Atheism is purely negative - it proposes nothing of its own right.
Some religions are atheistic, such as Buddhism, Wicca, Pantheism or LaVeyan Satanism, but being atheistic does not make one rational (although it seems only atheistic religions have anything interesting to say at all). To truly begin the study, we must start from more fundamental premises.
There is traditionally only one solution to the question I have proposed at the beginning, and that is to say that humans are "special" or "saved". Thus you get religion.
Another solution, which is more personal, is simply to ignore it away. This is possible but unsatisfactory.
The basic premise of rational spirituality, at least how I conceive it, is that :
Human beings are an integral part of reality, and no more special than any other part of reality (apart from our conscious point of view).
This is confirmed by science and philosophy. In fact, one may note that all of science and philosophy basically unraveled, during their entire course, the ultimate realization that we are not special !
* Metaphysics has told us that reality is objective, apart from our own mind, and our whims, emotions, desires, etc.
* Astronomy has told us that the Earth is not the center of the universe, but one planet orbiting a star in a quarter of a galaxy.
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