Excerpt #92 from my book, Religion, An Obstacle to Human Progress
Many of us say we do not like organized religion but that we are “spiritual.”
There is something about the word that we like.
But what does spiritual really mean?
Our world has taken enormous liberties with this word.
Religious groups engage in “holy wars” (now there’s a play on words — it gives new meaning to the word oxymoron) where acts of terrorism are committed.
A busload of innocent people, including children, is firebombed and those responsible claim to be spiritually motivated.
Physicians are murdered over the complex abortion issue, and the killers explain that the murders are spiritually justified.
If each person in a group was asked to define the word “spiritual”, each one, and understandably so, would have a different definition.
These kinds of ambiguities are common.
You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say ‘God is love’ they will claim that you are taking things out of context! – Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist
WE JUMP TO THE DEFENSE OF OUR VICES.
After 19 years of evangelical preaching, missionizing, evangelism, and Christian songwriting, Dan Barker “threw out the bathwater and discovered there is no baby there.”
Truth does not demand belief.
Scientists do not join hands every Sunday, singing, ‘yes, gravity is real! I will have faith! I will be strong! I believe in my heart that what goes up, up, up must come down, down, down. Amen!’ If they did, we would think they were pretty insecure about it. – Dan Barker
The truths that we seek are not “out there” in the eternal and boundless.
That’s not where we live.
If we spent a fraction of the time and energy that traditional yogis and “holy men and women” devote to years of meditation to achieve “nirvana” (whatever that is and whatever value it has) and other similar states, there is no end to what we could achieve.
The irony is that people want real answers.
People want answers about the here and now, not about “out there.”
People understand kindness.
And want it.
People want to be healthy.
People don’t want to destroy our ecological systems.
So, why do we do all these destructive things to ourselves, to others, to our environment?
The reason is that for as much as we understand, we really don’t understand much.
We are trying to find our way.
We are trying to transcend our youthful (as a species) and destructive ways.
And in many ways, we are succeeding slowly, painfully, incrementally.
We’re getting there.
We are beginning to understand our reality and our potential.
Some are in the vanguard of this effort.
Most are just learning.
People are gaining interest in that which is extraordinary all arounus, and losing patience with the unanswerable and empty pursuit of what might be “out there.”
Confucius said, “Man doesn’t trip over mountains. Man trips over molehills.”
When we just do the little things right, we will be in awe of what we will experience in our lifetimes.