As far as spirituality and theology go I too agree that they are not even legitimate fields of study since they are not based on observation,experimentation, or objective evidence.When it comes to christianity if you take away thier bible they have nothing from which to argue their stance from.Their whole belief system is based on belief in the myths in their so called holy writ and their psycho-emotional responses to those myths.The so called "feeling" of the presence of God is all in the mind in my opinion and can be influenced by many psychological factors.

I agree.

EvF

(May 18, 2009 at 10:17 am)chatpilot Wrote: As far as spirituality and theology go I too agree that they are not even legitimate fields of study since they are not based on observation,experimentation, or objective evidence.When it comes to christianity if you take away thier bible they have nothing from which to argue their stance from.Their whole belief system is based on belief in the myths in their so called holy writ and their psycho-emotional responses to those myths.The so called "feeling" of the presence of God is all in the mind in my opinion and can be influenced by many psychological factors.

I haven't been following this through but I must ask if art is a "legitimate field of study"? How about English language? I certainly hope so because my youngest is a superb writer and hope to go on to study English and eventually be an author ... perhaps I should tell her it's a waste of time?

Kyu

But art and writing is something physical that you can study. That's how you study it. Or at least artistic ideas or creative ideas and calling THAT spirituality rather than simply a form of art or creativity is just added on the label spiritual when it's no different to creativity basically. Dressing up the term with 'spirituality' doesn't make an artistic or creative idea any more creative or artistic. So how is it a field of study in and of itself any more than art or creativity? It's nothing special above it 'spirituality' in such a case would be merely a useless able added onto it to probably do something such as giving the illusion of profoundness.

Spirituality and theology how do you study that anyway? There is no method, people just make it up to support their beliefs (or something to that effect).

EvF

Well seems to me you've all firmly camped in no mans land with the Creationists. There was no need for the theatricals to prove it.


Yeah I knew 'philosopher' was incorrect, I was hoping for some artistic leeway there. You all have no understanding of the subject of faith and so naturally make ill informed conclusions. That's not a good thing. That's ignorance.

If theologians don't make observations then what is the Bible all about? Precisely that. That you narrowly define 'observation' in a nazi like manner with science as the only descriptor is your problem, and not mine.

Spritism is superstition. Spirituality is another subject.

Like I've said, it's so convenient to dismiss something so easily.

I don't need to dismiss it because I haven't accepted it because there's no evidence.

And if I DID accept it i'd hope I'd reject it because there's no evidence. And only accept it if it turned out there WAS.

I no of no evidence of the truth of anything 'spiritual'.

EvF

Then that firmly places you with the nutters Evie

(May 19, 2009 at 3:35 am)fr0d0 Wrote: Then that firmly places you with the nutters Evie

A nutter for wanting evidence before he believes something.
Yeah, wow, that's insane, who'd be so ridiculous.... *ahem*


You say we have no grasp of the subject of faith, but it isn't a subject at all.

fr0d0 Wrote:If theologians don't make observations then what is the Bible all about?

Last time I looked, it was an internally inconsistent collection of stone age mythology, along with several disagreeing accounts of the life of a man for which there is no other historical evidence.
How is this related to any observation?

fr0d0 Wrote:Spirituality is another subject.

Since there's no reason to believe that humans have spirits, souls, whatever, I'd say spirituality is a non-subject. You can't study spirituality, there's no evidence to be gathered or observations to be made.

Quote:Since there's no reason to believe that humans have spirits, souls, whatever, I'd say spirituality is a non-subject. You can't study spirituality, there's no evidence to be gathered or observations to be made.

You can actually call spitituallty to be name for a feeling. Think Dawkins said he felt spirtual when observing some things in space. In that way I don't think the word spiritual nessessarily have to be connected with religion.

However otherwise do agree with you. You can't study sprituallity, specially if it meant as something religious, since there no evidence for it.

(May 19, 2009 at 5:57 am)Giff Wrote: You can actually call spitituallty to be name for a feeling.

In that case, I think neuroscience would be a better description than spirituality