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Lots of people wonder WHAT the soul is. Lots of people wonder WHERE the soul is when someone has died. Very few people wonder WHERE the soul is when someone is still alive.

In my last post I suggested that we should think about “the self” as a practical approximation for “the soul”. Continue reading →

Believing in Hard Spirituality

As I mentioned in my previous post doubts in hard spirituality seems to be on the rise even if it will be an uphill climb for materialistic evolutionary psychology. While over the long haul I think it stands to reason that dismissing hard spirituality is an up hill climb, in the short term maintaining belief in a hard spirituality is a struggle for many.

My relationship with what I’m reading in evolutionary psychology is just as complex as my relationship with what I read of evolutionary biology. I respect these scientists and have no ground to doubt much of what they assert. The final leap to materialism (or perhaps the initial presupposition of materialism) I don’t share. Continue reading →

A couple of people have commented to me about my blog posts under “the self book” tag with some helpful comments. I’ll clarify something.

I use the blog to work out language and ideas, organize and record quotations, brainstorm. What you read here isn’t necessarily “chapters from the book”. I need to do a lot of thinking about a lot of things.

Actually getting the wording right, the audience right, the presentation right is another part of the process.

It isn’t dissimilar to what I do with my blog post I make in sermon preparation. Stuff feeds into it, but my blog posts are not my sermon. pvk

Christian Smith has done some interesting sociological research on religious beliefs of young adults. His books Souls in Transition and Soul Searching paint a picture of the religious assumptions of youth in American across the religious landscape. It was in Soul Searching that I first came across his term Moralistic, Therapeutic Deism or MTD.  It’s 5 governing beliefs are these:

1. A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God is not involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die. (– Kindle location 267-276).

If find broad consensus among most of the people I know around these, even atheists if you can redact God from this picture. Continue reading →

Towards a working definition of “Spiritual” or “Spirituality”

I’m going to do a little series on this word in the pursuit of an intelligible metaphor for the spiritual within our skeptical, secular context. This is part one.

“Spiritual” is one of the most frustrating words for me. It is close to becoming a meaningless word.

When I think about how the word is used I think about my friend Forrest who is a magician. “Spiritual” means, as best I can discern its usage today, the thing under the fancy handkerchief that Forrest is about to do something to or with. It’s covered, unseen, the focus of attention. It’s just out of sight, but everyone is interested, involved, fascinated, making assertions about what is not too clear.  Continue reading →