Religion and Spirituality

[TL;DR at the bottom]

What is Religion?

    Religion is hard to define.  Ask an ancient person what religion is and they wouldn't know what you were talking about.  To them, it was not discrete from the state or any other institution, it was all the same thing.  Ask a non-religious person what religion is and they might call it an old cult that holds superstitious beliefs.  To them, religion is interesting but a relic of the past, and something we need to move beyond.  Ask a religious person what religion is, and they'll say it's the truth.  To them, it is a family that knows truths granting key insights a secular person cannot access.  Ask a secular person what religion is and they might say a charitable organization that holds particular beliefs.  To them, it's a reflection of pluralism's diversity and a country's tolerance for freedom of thought and speech.  

    The tension lies between two primary poles; religion as a sociological group that serves a particular function in a person's life, or as a philosophical group that holds a school of thinking about the universe.  Do the rituals come first, or the beliefs?  Is the community behavior more important, or the individual conviction?  

    This question is important to me because I am exploring my spirituality and beliefs through the creation of a "religion".  So then, what exactly is it that I am creating?

    My humble answer is a vision I have in my head, for myself and others.  For myself, I want to have a clear spiritual identity.  I want to be able to say "I am a Terran" and be confident that I can explain myself to someone who can say back with confidence "I am [religious]".  For others, I envision sharing my spiritual progress and hopefully providing a kind of service to those who don't have the time or knowledge to do this work themselves.  This feels particularly important to me when I see people leaving established religions but find themselves spiritually lost.  I have put enough thought into this that I think it could be useful to other people.

    To this end, I will use my own definitions of religion and spirituality to help clarify what I'm up to.

    

    Spirituality: The process of generating truth.

    Religion: An organization and understanding of spirituality.  

    Under these definitions, I am sharing my spirituality in a form people can use.  I call this project a religion because, if I am successful, other people's spirituality can be organized according to the model I've prepared.

Spirituality is the foundation of Religion

    I've landed on these definitions through meditation on my experience within religion and my knowledge about them.  While I was Protestant, I worked hard on my spiritual practice; I said my prayers, read vigilantly, and tried to build a relationship with the Christian God.  Naturally, my spiritual practice was not original, it had been taught to me through my upbringing in the church.  The practices and knowledge I engaged with were prepared for me by the religious authorities.  It was definitely my spirituality; I gained enormous benefit from it and it brought me through some difficult periods in my life, but its structure was organized according to my religion. 

 

    Some respond to this organization with disdain.  A hyperbolic example is a belief that spirituality is something that every person should discover for themselves.  Besides the ironically prescriptive nature of that belief, it seems to assume two main things.  The first is that everyone has the time, energy, knowledge, and desire to discover their spirituality for themselves.  The second is that there are no wrong ways to be spiritual.  I disagree.  Not everyone is capable of structuring their own spirituality, just as not everyone is capable of making their own philosophy or ideology.  A diverse outlook should recognize that skills vary between people, and this includes spiritual skill.  In addition, I do not believe that all spiritual structures are acceptable (just as, incidentally, the people who say spirituality should not be dictated by religion).  For instance, I don't think human sacrifice is an acceptable form of spiritual practice for obvious reasons.  It's important to be willing to say a spiritual practice might be harmful.  Some practices are better than others, whether by their quality to the participant or their ethical merit.  

    With that said, there's plenty of room to explore.  Spirituality has evolved into many diverse forms over human history and this is something that should be celebrated.  There is no right answer for how a person makes sense of their place in the universe, though some answers work better than others.  Finding what works and what needs improvement is a constant project for humanity.

The "Why" Question is the Source of Truth

    The engine of spirituality is the "why" question.  Asking "why" for any given problem or phenomena positions the questioner to engage with their relationship with it.  The "why" question is the foundation of most spiritual tools, where the answer is, in one form or another, "because it's important to you".  This is opposed to "how" questions where the questioner does not need to engage with their own relationship with the problem in order to solve it.  Both questions are vitally important, but only one is important for spirituality.  Answering a "why" question will contextualize the asker's position in the universe to themselves, allowing them to justify their position within it.  When the question comes up again, the answer they discovered before will help to reestablish their justification.  The product of this process is truth.

Spirituality Endures Stress

    I say that spirituality is "justifying" a person's relationship in the universe because spirituality is usually most important during periods of stress.  In our age of alienation, we've cut away a small portion of spirituality and called it "self-care" under the cynical notion that more alienation is necessary to heal us.  But a competent spiritual practice will engage with many aspects of a person's relationship with the universe.  Stress is not the only spiritual motivator, but it will likely be the prime one due to its immediacy.  However, the stress itself is not the engine of spirituality, merely a potential fuel.  Other potent fuels are guilt, ecstasy, sublime, etc.  I might explore these other fuels in a future post, but for now, I will stick with stress because it tends to be most common.

    Stress causes tension between a person's internal world and the external universe, which encourages the person to have a spiritual epiphany.  These spiritual epiphanies try to justify the relationship between the person and their stressor by giving it meaning.  A spiritual epiphany may not necessarily remove the stressor, but it does give the person tools to endure it, commonly called truth.  Afterward, when the person uses the tool (truth), they are engaging in spiritual practice, the point of which is to maintain their justification with the universe.

    These spiritual epiphanies don't necessarily remove the stress, but they usually do a good job of justifying it, at least for that moment.  Oddly, the bad-faith theist argument "there are no atheists in foxholes" (meaning that there are no atheists in mortal danger because they would convert to God under the pressure) actually understands this even though it misses the point.  While it is perfectly possible that an atheist can be in a foxhole, there is a good chance they crawled out of it with a spiritual epiphany or the material to have one.  They wouldn't have converted to the Christian God, but instead gained clarity about what was important in their life or something of that nature.  You tend to hear people say things like, "it really put things into perspective" or "it really put my life into focus" when they experience something stressful or traumatic.  They say it because they justified why the stress was important to them and what they must do about it.  

    Further, it is usually hard to have spiritual epiphanies while comfortable, as many pious people will bemoan.  In periods of comfort, these people will search for ways to continue on their spiritual journey in a controlled setting (or they might ask God to "send them a trial" if they're feeling really ambitious).  These pious people will usually put themselves through difficult trials, such as climbing a mountain, fasting, flagellation, or sitting in pews.  Ecstacy at the release or accomplishment of a trial, especially within the parameters of a myth, is such a powerful experience that it becomes a goal in itself.  These practices usually start to become harmful when spiritual epiphanies are conflated with spiritual practice.  Where an epiphany is an amazing experience that yields a new tool to justify a relationship to stress, it is not appropriate for day-to-day living.  Spiritual practice, on the other hand, is not glamorous or exciting but it is important for getting through day-to-day life, especially when the stressor is chronic or permanent.

  

    Being able to distinguish between spiritual epiphanies and spiritual practice is important for being spiritually competent.  A fitting analogy are tools in a workshop.  A competent craftsman will use the tools at her disposal and buy new tools when she reaches a problem in her work that only a new tool can provide the solution for.  A foolish craftsman will never get new tools and try to use the old ones in ways they were not meant for, possibly putting herself in harm's way.  Another, equally foolish craftsman will go out to buy tools regularly to give them the feeling of productivity without actually accomplishing anything; and fill up their workshop with trash in the process.  In this analogy, buying a new tool is like a spiritual epiphany, and using the tools for work is a spiritual practice.  It is important to know when to do what.

    Spirituality's relationship with stress is why much of it is concerned with death.  Death causes stress through its finality and inevitability, making loved ones wonder why they exist in a universe where death is a reality.  Asking "why" doesn't necessarily denote an intelligence behind death, but it does position the questioner to confront the change that has occurred in their life.  The spiritual practices that emerge from people's relationship with death are fundamentally an attempt to justify their relationship to it.  An encounter with death leads to spiritual epiphanies which are potential tools to deal with death in the future.  Myths about balance, divine judgment, the vitalist soul, and the afterlife emerge as some common examples of these tools.  The rituals, stories, myths, and meditations are practiced regularly, especially when a person dies, in order to manage the stress of the situation.

Science Cannot Replace Spirituality

    Science can never replace spirituality because science answers "how" questions but cannot answer "why" questions.  This is a feature of the Is/Ought distinction and must be considered with the utmost respect.  Answered "why" questions are truths, and they are the tools to endure with a stressor, but they cannot remove it.  In contrast, answered "how" questions are facts, and they are the tools to manipulate a stressor (potentially removing it) but they cannot endure it.  This is why both questions are so important but need to be clearly distinguished.  Trying to answer "how" questions with truths leads to pseudoscience and superstition, and answering "why" questions with facts leads to nihilism and alienation.

    

    An example of a "how" question paired with a truth is the fundamentalist Creationism movement.  They put on a show of being scientific and inquisitive, usually beginning their arguments with statements like, "Newton was a Christian too, so science and religion are totally compatible!".  The reason they say this is because they are trying to provide a foundation to mix their "how" question with their truth, namely, God's love.  Once that is established the essential creationist argument goes as follows, "how did the universe come into existence?  Because God loves you!"  The question engages with mechanisms and physics, while the answer engages with a personal relationship.  Obviously, this is a simplification, but it is not an exaggeration.  The creation week as described in the Bible makes little attempt to provide facts for the "how" question of "how did the universe come into existence?".  Instead, it posits an entirely different question, "why does the universe exist?" and answers it with an appropriate truth; "because God loved it".  God's love is a "why" answer that engages with the reader's relationship to the beginning of the universe.  This answer overpowers Creationists because it is emotionally relevant, making them want to maintain it.  Creationists trying to fit the Biblical narrative into science will come up with elaborate theories and ideas that will sound very scientific and might even have valid insights.  But because they already have the answer to their question written down in their sacred text, they are not honestly engaging with the scientific method.  A Creationist might argue with me by pointing to their body of work and say, "surely that's all scientific!" which could be true, but the creation myth in Genesis is not, and as long as that story is the goal they are striving towards in their scientific pursuit, they will be failing as a scientist.  The result is the pseudoscience of Creationism where thoughtful, well-meaning scientists try to incorporate their truth into their "how" questions.

  

    Conversely, a "why" question answered with a fact can lead to classic nihilism.  Usually, this is a process of one "why" question, "why do I matter?" that is successively and ruthlessly answered by facts.  Depending on where the person begins in their journey, they will experience many truths to their question being broken down by facts.  Platitudes like, "God loves you," or "I love you," or "I love myself," will be replaced by ugly answers like, "There is no God", "Love is biochemical phenomena which compel animals to breed, and you are one of those animals", and "Your ego is an illusion concocted by your brain in order to focus you on surviving long enough to die with progeny".  These ugly "how" answers break down a person's spiritual world until they are left viewing the universe as a giant machine devoid of meaning.  What makes them all the more overpowering is that the facts are correct.  A person is left drowning in this meaningless universe because they are inappropriately placing facts after their "why" question.  The person is alienated from people around them because they believe that their relationships don't matter.  They encounter a mechanical universe that does not care, and so they cannot either.  "Nothing matters," they conclude and might fall into depression or frolic into a caricature of hedonism.  Of course, they do matter, but that is not a conclusion the facts can provide them.

    To return to a point I made earlier in this post, the nihilist is another example of spirituality done wrong.  They are engaging with "why" questions in a way that does not provide them with useful tools for justifying their relationship with the universe, and instead destroy that relationship.  The value of an answer depends on the question it is applied to.  In the same way that Creationism is bad science because it gives a truth to answer a "how" question, nihilism is bad spirituality because it applies a fact to answer a  "why" question.

    The reason why this doesn't work is that a fact cannot justify the premise of the "why" question, which is usually, "why do I have a relationship to this phenomenon?".  An answer to this question must always justify the relationship, which will generate a truth.  Simply describing the relationship does not justify why it exists.  Causal descriptions, themselves facts, might briefly feel like they justify the relationship, but they just kick the can down the road leading to an infinite regress of facts that are unhelpful.  The only way to fully answer a "why" question is by justifying the relationship it references.  The justification produces meaning we call truth, which functions as a tool the person can use again.  

    

    To summarize: Spirituality produces truth through justifying relationships identified by "why" questions.

The Role of Religion

    From here we can begin to get a glimpse of what religion is, and the niche it should inhabit in the modern world.  Religion's niche is to equip a person with tools necessary for having a healthy spiritual practice.  If religion is the organization and understanding of spirituality, then it is a way to share spiritual models (theology and/or ritual and/or metaphysics).  It can be a system of progress and development, where new models of spiritual practice are being discovered and used to make people's lives better.  Understanding truths as generated things can give us a means to produce updated ones, allowing for a concept not explored often enough; spiritual progress.  Just as science is constantly updating the facts in order to make them align with contemporary understanding, so can spirituality be constantly updating truths in order to keep them relevant.  Religions are the institutions that will house this spiritual work, providing safe spaces to explore personal issues and develop methods to approach them with competence.  As a consequence of the nature of "why" questions, religions will be community-based, not clinical or alienating; the emphasis will be on relationships with people because "why" questions are all about relationships.  Religion will not be about laws or facts, it will be about truths, and how to live life to the fullest.  As long as we understand the point of spirituality and the necessity of distinguishing it from science, religion can flourish as a means to develop mental health and social justice.  This conviction is my motivation for Terranism.

TL;DR - Spirituality is the process of generating truth.  Spirituality produces truth through justifying relationships identified by "why" questions.  Religion is an organization and an understanding of spirituality.  Religion's niche is to provide people with the spiritual tools necessary to engage with life.  

Further Reading:

The Case for God - Armstrong

Intelligent Thought: Science Versus the Intelligent Design Movement - Brockman 

The Soul

[TL;DR at the bottom]

Introduction

    Terranism recognizes the Soul as a core idea to its doctrine.  The Soul is the backdoor out of individualism, the intersection of intersectionality, the fundamental emergent entity that you think of when you think of yourself, it is the tangled recursive computer that looks out and in, it is you.  The Soul is the crystalization of social justice and network thinking into one concept. We'll use intersectionality to illustrate it.  

Intersectionality as Inspiration for the Soul

    

    According to intersectionality, it is not enough to simply categorize a person within discrete identifiers, particularly in the context of oppression.  Oppression does not always follow the trajectory of a single factor in a person's life; many times it is an interplay of factors that, while definitionally distinct, interact to create something hideously new.  The foundational example is Emma Degraffenreid who was discriminated against by a prospective employer.  She was discriminated against because she was a black woman, but not because she was black or a woman.  The judge of her case ruled that she had not been discriminated against because the employer hired black men and white women, so therefore the employer was not discriminating against race or gender.  The judge was correct, she had not been discriminated against due to race or gender.  But what the judge failed to understand was that she had been discriminated against due to her race and gender.  It was the combination of the two which was the issue, the intersection between two facets of her identity.  She is more than the sum of her parts; what is disappointing is that discrimination against her was able to recognize this better than the justice system.  This is the error that intersectionality tries to fix.  

    Functionally, the intersection of intersectionality might be called "emergent oppression"; or oppression that is greater than the sum of its parts.  Recognizing the reality of these oppressions is core to moving forward in social justice because the intersection is both one thing and many things.  An intersection requires two or more factors to be intersecting, it cannot exist on its own.  A relationship between two discrete factors is required for the intersection to pop into being.  As a result, all intersections are nodes in a network.  For infrastructure the network is roads, but for a person, the network is so much more.  It is their experiences, environment, culture, health, beauty, intelligence, sex, gender, race, class, diet, age, and so much more.  Social justice benefits from this understanding because it respects the factors of someone's reality without downplaying their agency.  While classist thinking isolates the factors and individualist thinking isolates the intersection, intersectionality emphasizes a network which is both the factors and the intersection at once.  This emphasis on the network, and the emergent oppression that can come from it, give intersectionality a strong and novel foundation to build on.

    Intersectionality is criticized for not being specific with its parameters, but such criticism is missing the point.  There is a profound epiphany at the core of intersectionality which could reach into the very fabric of everyday life.  Compared to that, intersectionality has a clear focus; combatting discrimination.  It only feels broad because it is a tool to help people see the network they are a part of.  Its restrictions are noble and focused on using its epiphany for a specific purpose.  The result is that the epiphany is framed in negative ways (which does not make it bad).  The intersection is of oppression according to intersectionality, and the factors are memberships in marginalized groups.  While necessary to the goal of intersectionality, this negative language shrouds the depth of the network.  People are more than just an intersection of oppression.  While the purpose of intersectionality does not benefit from discussing its epiphany in a broader context, there is still much to explore on our own.  So, with respect, Terranic doctrine takes inspiration from intersectionality and moves beyond its boundaries.

The Soul as a Stitch of Threads

    Terranic doctrine takes the intersectional epiphany and reframes it.  Instead of an intersection of oppressions, Terranism embraces the metaphor of a stitch of threads; each thread representing a factor in a person's life and the stitch representing their relationships.  Just as the stitch is emergent of the threads, so the Soul is emergent factors in a person's life.  And just as the stitches are a part of a larger fabric, so too is the Soul part of a larger World.  While oppressions and disadvantages are a part of this fabric, so are loves and charity.  While other's perception of you is woven into the stitch, so too is your view of yourself.  All the parts of you, whether they are named or merely felt, are intertwined in the complex, intricate, and unique stitch which you see when you look in the mirror or hear when you speak to yourself.  Your Soul is emergent of threads seen or invisible, to become the singular moment that you refer to as "I".  To see a Soul is to see a World.  The connections a Soul has into the world around it create a distinct worldview that is specific to that Soul.  These connections might be similar to another's, or they might be completely unique.  When you witness a Soul, there are innumerable threads connecting it to the fabric of reality around it.  Every stitch sees the fabric in a different way.

    To many, the Soul will sound like a distinct entity downloaded into the body at the point of conception (and verified during Christian baptism), which persists after death.  Terranism rejects this vitalist concept of the Soul.  Science has not discovered any such entity, so we must rethink what the Soul is.  To a Terran, the Soul is mortal and unique.  There is no essential substance of the Soul, nothing immortal or aetherial.  There is no genie in the bottle or homunculus in the brain.  Instead, there is a stitch, emergent and intricate, which is reliant on itself in order to stay together.  It is the interplay between the threads that create a Soul, creating something precious and contingent on the world around it.

    While the stitch is represented by the Soul, the threads cannot be forgotten.  To speak of a Soul is to acknowledge the influences of a person's life while acknowledging their own agency as well.  The stitch will vanish without the threads and the threads will drift away without the stitch.  Sometimes it is hard to witness a Soul.  Many times we just see the stitch or threads and are blind to their relationship.  It is easy to see a person and dismissively say "that's just the way they are," which cuts away the threads from the stitch.  In the same way, there are times when a person is confined to an archetype, which cuts away the stitch from the threads.  A stitch cannot hold without the context of its fabric.  To understand the Soul is to understand its emergence, and not to try to separate the parts from the whole.  It is difficult to witness a Soul; time, energy, and the appropriate tools are all needed.  But finally glimpsing one is worth the effort for it provides a new view of the world and yourself.  Even if the Soul you're engaging with is distasteful, the perspective gained from understanding it is worth the effort.  

    Threads connect the stitches.  All Souls influence each other; to witness another Soul is to develop your own.  Thread is stitched in many different places, allowing different Souls to discover a deep connection with each other.  They will see that their Souls influence and are influenced by each other; they will see their common threads.  These Soul-mates may then look upon their other threads and recognize that there are many more connections between them than either has individually.  This understanding will lead to others.  They will see that their threads aren't just of other Souls, they are of the World around them.  They will see the threads in their environment, objects, kin, land, tools, foods, shelters, and so much more.  All things a Soul has a relationship with is a part of their World.

    Meditation upon the Soul will bring a new understanding of death and Ghosts, without the supernatural vitalist influences.  Death will come to be understood as a relationship more than an end.  To die is for your threads to be rearranged; for your stitch to loosen and threads to be recycled.  Death is a profound continuation of the relationships a Soul had; to follow the threads in which the stitch was connected to.  Ghosts are where the Soul used to be.  To experience a Ghost is to bundle up the threads that were once a part of the Soul's stitch and make them emerge once again, if only for a moment.  The Ghost is not an aetherial globule floating through a haunt, it is a moment when you see the World as if the Soul were still alive.  To witness a Ghost is to notice where someone would've been, or what they would've said, or what they would've done.  It is to make the threads interact like they once did, a collaboration between the memories of the people and environment which knew the deceased Soul.  The threads remain, the Ghost is where the stitch used to be.  

    

The Implications of the Soul

    The Soul is the means to walk away from individualism and avoid falling into the trap of fatalistic worldviews.  For too long have people been exploited and oppressed under the pretext of "well they should just choose a better job," or "why don't they just move away?".  Individualism asserts that the Soul is one aetherial thing, not an emergent thing.  The notion that a person can just "choose" a better situation or "choose" to make their lives better overlook the innumerable threads that influence why a person is in a bad situation in the first place.  This individualistic Soul is cut out of its context, exalted above all else, then blamed for being hurt.  A Soul stuck in a food desert in the middle of a city or trapped in a job that doesn't pay them enough to live is blamed for its own situation; if it is free to do anything, then it must not have the merit required to accomplish what it needs.  It is like starving a child then blaming it for not being strong enough to fight back.  Such thinking stifles introspection, stunts societal improvement, and destroys lives.  Racism, classism, sexism, and other destructive worldviews similarly try to say the Soul is only one thing.  They isolate the threads over the stitch, implying that a Soul can be completely reduced to one particular thread that makes it up.  From these perspectives, the Soul dissolves into a classification until empathy is impossible.  To hurt or kill is nothing to these worldviews.  To reduce a Soul so completely to its threads is to remove all opportunity to understand their agency and value, making it easy to assert they have none.  All these worldviews make the mistake of saying the Soul is one particular thing; an aether for individualism or a particular classification for the rest. To move forward, we must recognize that the Soul is not one thing, it is many things at once.

    The Terranic definition of the Soul is so important because it views the Soul as emergent; which is why the metaphor of the stitch is central.  The stitch does not exist without the threads and the threads do not hold together without the stitch.  The Soul cannot be reduced with this understanding, just as a stitch vanishes if you try to remove its thread from it.  Additionally, emergence provides a reason for the Soul's existence that doesn't rely on the supernatural like individualism does.  Honest meditation upon the Soul will help a person find the balance necessary to move forward into a more just world.  It is a way out of individualism and the reductive worldviews of old.  

    Finally, the Soul is an antidote to alienation.  Engaging with the Soul is to break through the oppressive alienation individualism forces down our throats and then capitalism sells the drugs for.  To look at yourself and see your Soul is to see your connections to the world, why you are in the position you are in, and to realize that circumstance (good or bad) plays a big role in your life.  We can already see the benefits of this kind of thinking with the popular discourse on privilege and oppression that intersectionality spearheads, but we can push it further.  You are not the only person with a Soul.  All humans have Souls, and you can undo the alienation in your life by studying other Souls.  To see yourself as a part of a larger fabric is to find a place in the World.  Other Souls need you just as much as you need them; after all, the stitch falls apart without the fabric.  Individualism will tell you that your Soul only matters to God because He is the one that made it, no one else truly matters.  Already this thought is alienating, but add in atheism and a scientific worldview and suddenly that alienation becomes a stabbing dagger through the mind and heart.  If God did not give you a Soul, then what is your value?  There is none, you are an economic calculation within the capitalist machine.  Nihilism is all that is left at the end of this individualist, alienating path.  However, the good news is that it is totally untrue.  Nihilism only works because the person is still looking at themself as if God was looking at them.  But God does not exist outside of humanity, so that perspective must be shifted, leading us to the epiphany of the Soul.  We must understand that there is no one who looks at the fabric from the outside, there is only us, the stitches, and we are valuable because of the threads that connect us.  No outside arbiter of value is necessary for us to find ourselves valuable in our relationships with everything else.  We are all interdependent, connected, necessary, and valuable.  

TL;DR - The Soul is an emergent entity of the factors in a person's life.  Terranic doctrine uses the metaphor of a stitch of thread to illustrate the Soul.

Further Reading or Viewing:

https://youtu.be/akOe5-UsQ2o

Flesh in the Age of Reason - Porter

So You Want to Talk About Race - Oluo

Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid - Hofstadter