Except for a brief time after the death of my son, I've lived from one day to the next never thinking there was or wasn't a god. As Alan Watts wrote in his book The Way of Zen: "Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about god while one is peeling potatoes. In Zen, spirituality is simply to peel the potatoes."
After my journey in the front door and out the back door of religion, I've continued to live as if "god" exists only here on earth because of how people's religious beliefs affect their attitudes and actions. In that sense, "god" does exist. But call he/she/it "Legend" for they are many.
So my answer to the OP's question is a very general "Yes." And it's general because words are only handles to carry the idea of something to another person, not the thing itself, until we apply them to our attitudes and actions. And my experience with scriptural words has been that most religious people don't apply them to their own lives.
But I do benefit from reading words that convey how others have defined religious and spiritual. Below are just a few of the words I've collected over the years that juxtapose the words religious and spiritual.
"We only know what we interpret. We can't peek over the edge of our interpretations to see things in the raw." ~Thomas Sheehan
"Start knowing what you really know, and stop believing what you really don’t know. False knowing is the enemy of true knowledge. All beliefs are false knowledge." ~Tantric Teaching
"Spiritual attitudes and practices do not require belief in a supernatural reality or divine being. They can be about love, tolerance, forgiveness, harmony with others, how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things, where the universe comes from, why we are here and what happens when we die." ~Robert C. Fuller
"Spirituality says 'May the heavens open up and angels bless everyone with their own light.' but religion says 'Only Jesus got the light, you're full of shit, and in the dark. We're the only ones that got it, so you've gotta go through us to get it.' Man, in this life, the only thing that is holy is your relationship with your heart, your family and the air you breath." ~Carlos Santana
"We can see a garden is beautiful without believing there are fairies at the bottom of it." ~Douglas Adams
After my journey in the front door and out the back door of religion, I've continued to live as if "god" exists only here on earth because of how people's religious beliefs affect their attitudes and actions. In that sense, "god" does exist. But call he/she/it "Legend" for they are many.
So my answer to the OP's question is a very general "Yes." And it's general because words are only handles to carry the idea of something to another person, not the thing itself, until we apply them to our attitudes and actions. And my experience with scriptural words has been that most religious people don't apply them to their own lives.
But I do benefit from reading words that convey how others have defined religious and spiritual. Below are just a few of the words I've collected over the years that juxtapose the words religious and spiritual.
"We only know what we interpret. We can't peek over the edge of our interpretations to see things in the raw." ~Thomas Sheehan
"Start knowing what you really know, and stop believing what you really don’t know. False knowing is the enemy of true knowledge. All beliefs are false knowledge." ~Tantric Teaching
"Spiritual attitudes and practices do not require belief in a supernatural reality or divine being. They can be about love, tolerance, forgiveness, harmony with others, how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things, where the universe comes from, why we are here and what happens when we die." ~Robert C. Fuller
"Spirituality says 'May the heavens open up and angels bless everyone with their own light.' but religion says 'Only Jesus got the light, you're full of shit, and in the dark. We're the only ones that got it, so you've gotta go through us to get it.' Man, in this life, the only thing that is holy is your relationship with your heart, your family and the air you breath." ~Carlos Santana
"We can see a garden is beautiful without believing there are fairies at the bottom of it." ~Douglas Adams
