JackC

Ron, there's no definition of spirituality in any of those quotes.

That wikipedia article highlights exactly what I'm talking about. The term spiritual has as many definitions as there are people claiming to be spiritual. I was hoping you could explain your statement "we are condemned to spiritual death for not choosing to follow God's plan for spiritual life" by giving me your definition of the term spiritual but it seems you can't.

Done. Nowhere in that statement is there a definition of the term spiritual though, so I'm no closer to comprehending your earlier post regarding spiritual life/death which is unsurprising if the word is as meaningless as I suspect. If someone cannot at least define what they are taking about, it is quite possible that they don't really know themselves.

How do I know what value to place in your beliefs, you won't tell me what tthey are. Maybe you don't even know yourself.

Nothing wrong with that. Provided you teach creationism in church and evolution in science class.

Incoherent, poorly defined and generally meaningless mumbo jumbo. I asked you to define the term because all I read was: No, we are condemned to [gibberish] for not choosing to follow God's plan for [gibberish] Your answer pretty much sums up the whole problem with the term spiritual. It means absolutely anything you want it to mean and so it is essentially meaningless.

Define "spiritual".

Back then, all the animals lived within walking distance of Noah's house. After they hitched a lift on the ark and Noah dropped them all off again, plate tectonics split Noah's back yard into all the continents of the globe (gardens were much bigger back then). Now New Zealand isn't really an island, it's actually floats and it got isolated faster than the other continents because Noah gave it the motor off the back of the Ark so it could chug across the south pacific (which it still does to this very day). Honest.

Modern cars are complicated, difficult, obfuscated bastard things and working on them is an unprofitable, dirty, painful and utterly thankless task. Mechanics are rarely paid what they're worth.

What if that person were Shinto and prayed to the kami of loopholes?

Sure you can. I took a course entitled "the Physics of Music". Very interesting it was too. You can't convince a colour blind person of the true meaning of green either. But what exactly is the true meaning of green?

If you want to study humanities, you can. Stuff like language and art and music and even religion are all 'things' that exist and can be studied directly. You can't directly study god (theology) because there is no extant god that we can metaphorically poke to see what falls out. In fact, you have to wonder if you can really consider theology as a subject at all. It's pretty much equivalent to Klingon anatomy in the the subject stakes as far as I can tell.

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." ~ H. L. Mencken

I would have expected that if the 5 billion non-christians had any experience that christianity were right, they would all be christians. But you're right, I can only speak for myself and in my experience things that have no evidence to suggest they exist are indistinguishable from them not existing at all. Maybe your experience is different, I don't know.

Charities do not have to operate that way, they could trade things for profit. If the profit system is so much better than non-profit systems, the net result will be an improvement. So why don't they do it?

If it were merely an intellectual choice you would have a very good point. However, I have experiential evidence that indicate I am on the correct path. No worries. And I (and the other 5 billion non-christians on the planet) have experiential "evidence" that indicates you're not.

I reckon the 1.2 billion Muslims on this planet would not agree. But there all wrong aren't they Oh, they are way left of wrong. There are approximately 2850 proposed gods and they all have equal evidence to support their claim of being the correct god. Assuming only one (or none) of them can actually be the "correct" god, you stand at best a 1/2850 chance of believing in the right one. If the real god is a jealous god who doesn't like people worshipping the wrong god and will smite you for it, that means there is a 2849/2850 chance that you are going to be smote.

If profits lead to better and cheaper methods, why don't charities operate for profit?

They may have chosen the life of a soldier, but they ain't well paid and the nation owes them under the Military Covenant. That was the deal, you do not welch on it.

That's fine but if you want to talk about something, you need to know what the hell it is we're supposed to be talking about, otherwise it's just gibberish. RonD tells us that all psychological treatment facilities employ spiritual components to their programs. Now what does that mean? Would it be acceptable to merely raise a metaphorical eyebrow at the complexity of the universe to fulfil the spiritual aspect of the treatment, or would you need to perform a voodoo chicken dance at midnight covered in pigs blood while chanting the Lords Prayer backwards? That information might be important to someone thinking of dabbling in a bit of head shrinking.

Not to me. If that's redefining the term, then, yeah, I guess I am. And that's the problem. The term spirituality is not defined in any coherent way so when X person says they're spiritual, the rest of the planet has no idea what they mean by it. It could be a mild sense of secular awe at the universe, or a full on rature-ready biblical lunacy.

Then doctors are a commodity. Healthcare is a right.

Let's say that fed.gov has decreed that bearing arms is now a human right. Now, let's say that every arms manufacturer in the country decided they didn't WANT to make arms anymore, and quit. What happened to your "right" to bear arms? How are you going to claim it when there's nobody to provide them? Arms are a COMMODITY, not a right.

Because your hypothesis makes non-spiritual people sound like mentally deficient robots masquerading as human beings. Perceive what though? What is spirituality? You need to define the concept before you can figure out if you are equipped to perceive it. Here are two descriptions of spirituality: A capacity to experience awe, reverence and gratitude. The ability to see the sacred in the ordinary, to feel the poignancy of life, to know the passion of existence and to give ourselves over to that which is greater than ourselves. ~ Psychology Today Great, I'm spiritual! ...matters of the spirit, a concept often but not necessarily tied to to a spirit world, a multidimensional reality and one or more deities. Spiritual matters regard humankind's ultimate nature and purpose, not as material biological organisms, but as spirits or energy with an eternal relationship beyond the bodily senses, time and the material world. ~ Wikipedia Oh wait... no. Spirituality is just a load of unsupported gibberish. As I see it, the term "spiritual" is so poorly defined that it can mean virtually anything from a mild sense of wonder to a full-on chronic delusional psychosis. So if by "un-equipped with the facility to perceive something" you mean I'm not a delusional nutcase, I'll take that. But if you mean unable to have a sense of wonder, I think you're wrong. The question is, what do you really mean?

Fixed