Many people say they do not like organized religion but that they are “spiritual.”
There is something about the word that feels right to them.
But what does the word spiritual mean?
Our world has taken enormous liberties with this word.
Religious groups engage in “holy wars.”
Now, there is a play on words for you, “holy wars.”
It’s a grotesque combination of words so egregious that it gives new meaning to the word oxymoron.
Atrocious acts of terrorism are committed.
For example, a busload, café, or office building full of innocent people, to include children, is firebombed.
Those who are responsible for the slaughter claim to be “spiritually motivated,” or that the act is somehow “spiritually justified.”
This is the deranged language of religion.
If each person in a group were asked to define the word “spiritual,” each, and understandably so, would have a different definition.
What does this word mean?
Spiritual may be defined as having to do with sacred matters or sacred things.
We have arrived at the word “sacred.”
It sounds wonderful.
But what does it mean?
Sacred may be defined — in a religion sense — as that which is associated with gods or that which is associated with religion.
When we say that sacred is that which is associated with gods, the question arises immediately, “What and whose god or goddess are we talking about?”
Most people have different ideas about the concept of a god or gods.
Seldom, and understandably so, is there agreement.
When we attempt to define or worship these gods, we create religious problems.
Definitions are divisive and invite conflicts.
Historically, we have had and, to this day, continue to have conflicts.
Worship of these gods is diversionary and distracting.
Our attention gets focused “out there” somewhere, worshipping something we have been programmed to believe exists, is sacred, and by which we are going to be “saved.”
We are going to be “saved” even though we may live horribly unhealthy lives, go to war with our neighbors literally and figuratively, destroy our environment, and deplete our resources.
Yet, we are going to be “saved.”
Unfortunately, life does not work that way.
It doesn’t make sense which is common in the world of religion.
Another understanding of sacred is that which is associated with religion.
We have gone from spiritual having to do with sacred, to sacred having to do with religion.
We haven’t gotten very far.
The obvious question is, “What is religion?”
Religion may be defined as a belief in and worship of a god.
That definition takes us back to gods.
Immediately, the same problematic concerns arise:
What and whose gods or goddesses?
The conflicts over definitions of gods and goddesses.
The diversion and distraction of our attention to these supernatural gods and goddesses.
Religion may also be defined as a belief system that explains the cause, purpose, and nature of life and the universe.
In fact, this is what we have done since the beginning of conscious thought, and with very little knowledge.
Thousands of years before the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, people tried to explain life.
Men and women, priests and priestesses, profoundly ignorant of life as we know it, and with zero science, as it did not exist, often claimed “divine revelation” (communicating with gods and other supernatural entities) as their source of inspiration, knowledge, and authority.
Think about that for a moment.
Communicating with supernatural entities as the source of one’s knowledge and authority!
You will begin to understand from where much of the religious craziness originated that persists today.
With little knowledge and zero science, to explain life these people created gods, fabricated creation stories, wrote books, and formed into fiercely tribal religions with rules, and theatrical rituals, costumes, and music.
This is not something that happened in the early part of this century.
Or in the 1900s, or two centuries ago in the 1800s.
Hinduism, with its multiple gods, began 60 centuries ago!
Judaism began 40 centuries ago; Buddhism and Taoism, 26 centuries ago; Christianity, 20 centuries ago; and Islam, 14 centuries ago.
All long before the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment when in the 16th to 18th centuries, just three to five centuries ago, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, and anatomy emerged and set forth a whole new range of ideas based on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy.
Now there is a novel idea: reason as the basis of authority and legitimacy!
Religious creeds, doctrines, and dogma were questioned, and the authority of religions were challenged.
All for very good reasons.
Today, we do not need “divine revelation” to explain the cause, purpose, and nature of life and the universe.
The generally accepted theory for the cause of the universe is the Big Bang with the expansion of universe beginning 13.8 billion years ago.
We don’t have a clue what the purpose of the universe is or if it has a purpose.
We understand only a very small portion of the universe.
All the stars, planets, and galaxies that we can see comprise just four-percent of the universe.
The other 96 percent is made of stuff astronomers can’t see, detect, or even comprehend.
When we look at the sky on a particularly clear and starry night, and see many stars, we think we are looking at the universe.
We are actually looking at about 2,500 stars of the 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way.
We are not looking at the universe, we are looking at a tiny area of one galaxy, the Milky Way.
And, the Milky Way is one of trillions of galaxies and dwarf galaxies in the universe.
And, the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, faster than 186,000 miles per second, faster than a billion miles an hour.
In that expansion, in just the observable universe (four-percent of the universe), it’s generating about 4,800 more solar systems every second!
In a day’s time that’s an additional 275 million more solar systems just in four-percent of the universe.
Astronomers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, estimate that in the galaxy in which we exist, the Milky Way, there are 100-billion habitable Earth-like planets.
That’s just in our galaxy, one of trillions of galaxies.
The purpose of all of this?
We don’t have a clue.
However, the nature of life and the universe is another matter.
It is here where the enigma unravels.
Here, in reality, in the nature of life and the universe, is where the architecture of life and true sacredness (nonreligious) are revealed.
Sacredness is that in life which, at our peril, we cannot violate, damage, dishonor, or destroy.
This is everywhere evident.