I'm spiritual, but not religious...

[james]

Once I get past the social implications of this (kids today are fucking retards), the turtle with the spear cracks me up every time I look at it.

is that luigi with a betrayer-coin because he is judas??

[Necrometer]

Disclaimer: I used to be almost completely aligned with Riley & StormShadow (and lots of others in here) but I think I've changed my outlook and I sort of resent the trends that shaped that outlook. So I'm no more at odds with you guys than I am with the me of my twenties.

I guess I'm curious what you guys' idea of "spiritual" is-- is it just acknowledgement that there may be some divinity or design, or is it an active pursuit of understanding and closer connection/intimacy with whatever you consider to be higher ? If it's the former then it's just a stagnant meaningless "what if ?" that floats around your head while you chase it like butterflies in a field. If it's the latter, then, even if you don't agree with someone's end results, doesn't it make sense to try to understand the paths taken to arrive there ?

I think what I've been talking about is neither of your proposed definitions, both of which are too limiting in that they seem to posit something outside of a given human. I'm talking about a (ubiquitous?) human sensation that there is meaning in the world. I'd like to argue that fundamentally it's thing through which we are convinced that binary (good/evil) morality is pertinent throughout the universe (far beyond places with life). So yeah, maybe a bit of "man.. it's like, the cosmos man, wooooowwwww...", which is great fodder for mockery, but... it's also totally a thing that happens. Does someone really need to register as a spiritual cosmologist to be entitled to those feelings? I think the modern non-idiot SBNR people are those who know, logically, that there's no coherent higher power at play in the universe, while still yearning for meaning & unifying order in the universe. They acknowledge and accept the undeniable feeling that there's more to life than can be accounted for by philosophical materialism.

For clarity, I guess we could use the Wikipedia description/definition for spirituality (which seems to be written by SBNR people )

Spirituality is the concept of an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the "deepest values and meanings by which people live." Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop an individual's inner life. Spiritual experiences can include being connected to a larger reality, yielding a more comprehensive self; joining with other individuals or the human community; with nature or the cosmos; or with the divine realm. Spirituality is often experienced as a source of inspiration or orientation in life. It can encompass belief in immaterial realities or experiences of the immanent or transcendent nature of the world.
...
Secular spirituality emphasizes humanistic ideas on moral character (qualities such as love, compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, responsibility, harmony, and a concern for others) - aspects of life and human experience which go beyond a purely materialist view of the world without necessarily accepting belief in a supernatural reality or divine being. Spiritual practices such as mindfulness and meditation can be experienced as beneficial or even necessary for human fulfillment without any supernatural interpretation or explanation. Spirituality in this context may be a matter of nurturing thoughts, emotions, words and actions that are in harmony with a belief that everything in the universe is mutually dependent; this stance has much in common with some versions of Buddhist spirituality.

Again, I feel like a lot of the time "spiritual" is a way to have your cake and eat it too--rejecting religion, but avoiding identification as wholly secular, atheist, etc. In that sense, there are literally limitless communities for such people, insofar as there's nowhere they're really excluded from.

But I also think you're obviously a lot more sincere and inquisitive about all this than your average fuzzy-headed New Age yoga housefrau. I think there are a lot of communities for people who feel "grounded in my own experiences and sensations" and have "manufactured their own idols and totems of personal significance"--most obviously, music and art scenes. But I don't really understand why this has to be identified as "spiritual", especially since modernity has manufactured countless lexical placeholders, ranging from high-brow stand-ins like "sublime" and "transcendent" to the more familiar and idiomatic "brutal" or "cult"--or perhaps best of all, simply "heavy".

And if you believe that all of these fall short and only "spiritual" works, that kind of circles back to the same question. I feel like SBNR is this stubborn attempt to return these experiences to an encounter with the Holy, and my response to that is why not pursue religiosity?

Thanks much for this earnest response. Re: your first paragraph addressing communities, I know you know there's a world of difference between communities that won't actively reject a person vs. a place where that person can actively commune with likeminded people in a gratifying way. You cite music and artistic communities and I think they might apply, if we can consider the experiencing of art as a spiritual act.





I guess my main goal here is to argue against the stance that if someone feels spirituality to an extent that they dare mention it, then they'd best get their ass to church lest they face ridicule. Similar sentiment is here from Riley:

If your aim is to commune with whatever you think God is, learning the different ways other people do it will be a benefit.

I don't think it's a benefit - I think it's a huge detriment! I feel like our spiritual side (maybe this overlaps heavily with or gives rise to our moral side?) is an integral part of our humanity and religion has historically cashed in on the gratification we feel when this is accessed. Hundreds of years ago there was no problem with people being introduced to this homogenized mode of spirituality, but today it's extremely problematic because the spirituality is tied to lies and other ideas that are irrational.

The thing I'm frustrated about, and the reason I wanted to start this thread, is: with the rise of a pretty solid and comprehensive science-based explanation of the universe, it's become really obvious that the "facts" religions present are complete horseshit and the kneejerk reaction of the science-driven atheist types is to toss spirituality out along with organized religion. I bought into this trend as well and did everything I could to deny my spiritual side, which was stupid, unhealthy and pointless.

If you guys agree with me that the secular spirituality (as I've defined it) is inherent to all people, then perhaps the "S" in SBNR could be considered totally for an SBNR atheist/agnostic, rendering the categorization pointless? I don't think that's the case, though... there's far too much emphasis from atheists/agnostics on suppressing any remotely spiritual feelings/experiences, which I think is bullshit and a baby/bathwater scenario. A similar outlook endorses logical rationality and the suppression of emotions, right? The suppression of morality? I feel like this is the reason the atheist loudmouths are always devastated in those "is there morality in a godless universe?" debates.

[Necrometer]

is that luigi with a betrayer-coin because he is judas??

that's a solid hypothesis

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

I find all this shit tiresome and insulting to our very real human situation.

People are so eager to build temples around their "spiritual" feelings, without even assessing if these feelings are good things, and not a self-sham, born of a host of upsetting realities, and recast as some indefinable human saving grace, some silver tether to the concept of galactic meaning itself. People privilege their feelings way too much by dint of the power of feeling them—it's easy, feelings are jolts of reality—and so receive them as telegraphs of pure fucking truth, when they're actually the greatest and most distilled lies that exist in the universe.

At least formalized religion has some positive social byproducts, to counteract some of the horrible atrocities it inspires, like culture-binding ritual and art, bombastic spectacle and architecture, the amusement of incredulity. Pope hats. Neighbors who meet in pews every weekend and shake hands.

SBNR is solipsistic, it's a quiet onanism using the friction heat from indignation and despair, and it snubs its nose at religion because it's one less rung up the ladder of crazy, ha. It gets to scoff at anyone who doesn't tickle themselves with vague "connection" feelings, and snidely toot that they've evolved from the dimness of their youth.

Every year I age, it becomes increasingly more difficult to tolerate people yammering away about this. And nothing can come of the argument. I'm going to die an old man grimacing at everyone considering them all savages.

Guess I'm just an atheist loudmouth.

[Necrometer]

Matt! I'm glad you chimed in. I wasn't sure if I should be disappointed because you didn't read my latest rant, or because you didn't find it compelling. Your referential valediction suggests it's the latter, so I won't retread the stuff that's already failed to move you.

How could you so enjoy the Tree of Life movie, which is so drenched in and artistically dependent upon secular-spiritual themes?

People are so eager to build temples around their "spiritual" feelings, without even assessing if these feelings are good things, and not a self-sham, born of a host of upsetting realities, and recast as some indefinable human saving grace, some silver tether to the concept of galactic meaning itself. People privilege their feelings way too much by dint of the power of feeling them—it's easy, feelings are jolts of reality—and so receive them as telegraphs of pure fucking truth, when they're actually the greatest and most distilled lies that exist in the universe.

This is really wild to read, coming from you. Feelings are both a jolt of reality and the greatest lie? I imagined this were a thread on "love" and re-applied your argument to that sentiment, and you came out sounding like a lonely hermit reassuring himself. Your hard-fought battle to suppress these undeniable feelings is exactly what I'm rallying against here...

SBNR is solipsistic, it's a quiet onanism using the friction heat from indignation and despair, and it snubs its nose at religion because it's one less rung up the ladder of crazy, ha. It gets to scoff at anyone who doesn't tickle themselves with vague "connection" feelings, and snidely toot that they've evolved from the dimness of their youth.

My top two classes of ivory tower smuglings are the religious and the armchair atheist with all their eggs in the science basket. Any snide tooting from the SBNR crowd must be moderate in comparison to that from the other two extremes.

[spacehamster]

This board is always at its most confusing to me when people are ranting and raving angrily about what other people think or believe. To me this is all about psychology, and from that angle it's really not that difficult to understand. Life is meaningless and finite, and due to our cognitive wiring that compels us to interpret reality in terms of "stories", we find that fact unbearable. So we have to find ways to cope with it, and that's what "religion" and "spirituality" are.

I don't see how buying into a pre-existing doctrine is somehow a more valid way of making peace with death and the meaninglessness of human existence than making up your own crap. Not to mention modern religions are all completely arbitrary and selective interpretations of existing scripture to begin with. And like Thrashmaster Flash said, talking about "rigor" or "learning" or "masters" in this context also doesn't make any sense - there's nothing to be learned here, and at best, a "master" is someone who has thought about how to overcome his own fear of death and insanity in the face of the meaninglessness of his own existence a lot more than you have, but that doesn't mean any of his answers apply to you.

As for the excessive worship of emotion that Matt brought up, I'm 100% with him on that one, but I don't see how this applies any less to organized religion than it does to the stereotypical New Age garbage that we seem to be angry about here. I think this started as a backlash against the glorification of pure reason in enlightenment, and as such makes sense because the complete suppression of all emotion is unhealthy and compassion is a necessary drive for civilization to function, but now we've swung the other way and we somehow believe because we "feel" something that makes it inherently more valid/valuable than what we think. And that way lies savagery. Emotion in that sense isn't what makes us civilized human beings, it's what we have in common with animals.

[Necrometer]

[spacehamster]

Look, I'm trying to cut back on the italics, you can't expect me to do everything at once.

[BigBrother]

Spacehamster FTW. That about wraps it up.

[riley-o]

hahahahahah

[james]

[Necrometer]

I think this started as a backlash against the glorification of pure reason in enlightenment, and as such makes sense because the complete suppression of all emotion is unhealthy and compassion is a necessary drive for civilization to function, but now we've swung the other way and we somehow believe because we "feel" something that makes it inherently more valid/valuable than what we think. And that way lies savagery. Emotion in that sense isn't what makes us civilized human beings, it's what we have in common with animals.

I'm not sure all this adds up. You really think that our emotions are our main mental trait shared with animals, and that our intellelect is what distinguishes us? You and I must be experiencing rather different emotions. I know this is an extremely complicated question, but my assessment is that our intellect is similar to that of animals with the efficiency cranked up (primarily a quantitative difference), while our emotional behavior is qualitatively () different than that of animals.

And I don't think anything I've posted suggests that an acknowledgment of spirituality is going to permit/promote a feeling taking precedence over a rational conclusion. That's the whole point here: we have these feelings thus we should acknowledge them; this is not mutually exclusive with rational behavior. (Aren't you engaging in irrational behavior by simply continuing to live a meaningless existence, o master of reason and suppressor of feel-good feelings?)

I do like your point that we've developed this squishy "the universe is magic" feeling as a way of coping with the fact that the cosmos is actually dead as a doornail. I've stumbled across similar ideas before (not sure of the origin) - that we are the first animal to become smart enough to become self aware and go a step further to realize that our existence is meaningless, so to promote our survival we co-evolved the spirit instinct to keep us biologically viable. Dejected, nihilist cavemen didn't breed too successfully? I tried to find instances of people writing seriously about this idea, and instead I find: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_evolution This is better, I endorse: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-g ... 18801.html

SPOILERSPOILER_SHOW

Homo sapiens evolved to be socially intelligent. Over millions of years, perhaps more, the primate brain evolved special machinery to allow us to think socially, to build abstract concepts of each other's minds and to react emotionally to each other in a way that more or less maintains the social web. In one theory that is gaining greater acceptance, the social machinery in the human brain is the direct cause of spirituality. Spirituality is the human brain doing exactly what it is exquisitely well evolved to do. It is the functioning of our social intelligence.

If spiders could ever become super intelligent, they might see the world through the metaphor of a web. They might talk about sticky strands of thought. They might envision a universe pulled out of a spinneret. They might judge beauty by radial symmetry. Looking at the moon, they might see a web-in-the-moon instead of a man-in-the-moon. The natural talent of humans is to spin metaphors of minds and intentions, and that is how we evaluate almost everything around us. We understand and react to the world through our social capability. It defines us more than any other trait. Even language is a refinement of social communication. We are truly Homo socialis.

Yet the theory that spirituality is a product of social intelligence seems to have certain limitations. If spirituality is defined rather narrowly as the human tendency to believe in a spirit world -- in ghosts, gods, angels, and life after death -- then the explanation is plausible. We believe in spirits because we are predisposed to see minds in the things around us. But to most people, spirituality has a much larger halo of meaning including moral decency and love and religious awe and an all-embracing sense of fellowship. How are these spiritual experiences products of an evolved social machinery?

It may be that the more emotional, less tangible aspects of spirituality are particularly well explained by the theory of social intelligence.

Awe, for example, is at its root a social emotion. Its utility lies in shaping our behavior toward others, especially others that we perceive to be wiser or more powerful than us. It is one ingredient in hierarchical social structure. Awe of a beautiful landscape, awe of music (another spiritual experience I've written about before), awe of the spread of stars as you look up at night, all of these instances of awe are traditionally connected in a hazy way in people's thoughts and feelings with awe of a larger, deistic presence. In the social-intelligence theory of spirituality, these instances of spiritual awe are the result of bits of a social machinery constantly spinning, constantly computing. Such emotional reactions follow from the human tendency to see almost everything in our world through the filter of the social machinery.

Religious awe may belong to a category of biological trait along with male nipples and the gill slits in human fetuses. It has an understandable evolutionary past. The adaptive advantages that led to it are real, but the present adaptive advantage of it, if any, is not entirely straightforward. It doesn't need an adaptive advantage to be a part of who we are.

Note that nowhere in my description do I condemn spirituality or scoff at awe. I am not calling for its end. I am no so-called New Atheist advocating the debunking of human spiritual belief. I consider my perspective more that of a strict naturalist trying to understand the behavior of a species of animal that happens to be my own species. I have no interest in fighting a cultural war against a natural phenomenon, the intrinsic behavior of us humans, that I am trying to study.

I would love to see us humans tackle our world problems rationally, but it is difficult to do that without first understanding who we are, and my interest, scientifically speaking, is to understand who we are. We are beings that do not see the world literally or dispassionately. We see the world filtered through our most developed talent, our social intelligence, and spirituality is a direct consequence.

Maybe also this:
http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Re ... 067003472X

[Necrometer]

At this point in our evolutionary history, a fundamentally new experience became possible. A person could look at a dead body, remember the experience, think about it, personalize the whole thing, and conclude that the same thing is going to happen to them. Language skills are utilized, and the sentence appears in the mind: "I will die." The conclusion is reached without the person having any first hand experience at all.

The concept is very threatening. Our new cognitive skills would allow a lot more imagination than before, and it would have been very adaptive for us to use this skill to imagine as many way of dying as possible. The more ways of dying we can imagine, the more ways we can avoid. But death anxiety is very stressful. If we were aware of our death at all times, we would be at risk for several psychoses, like the ones that follow the development of the normally fear-laden temporal lobe seizures.

Persinger has theorized that we developed a mechanism that shuts death anxiety off. Spiritual experience.

http://www.shaktitechnology.com/deathanxiety.htm

[featherboa]

seems like that person is importing a lot of white person negative connotation into "i will die"
I doubt she has "someday i will return to the forest" in her head when she's trying to make conclusions.
people are more death-scared today than ever.

[Necrophilic Mallard]

So spirituality is a placebo to help you forget about the reality and inevitability of your own death.
...why is it necessary?

And that CNN article nailed the essence of SBNR.

[Necrometer]

Thank you, Mallard.

seems like that person is importing a lot of white person negative connotation into "i will die"

what happened to cutting white people some slack

[badgevvrecker]

So spirituality is a placebo to help you forget about the reality and inevitability of your own death.
...why is it necessary?
.

Because, for the vast majority of humanity the ego barely even influences hormonal responses in relation to stimulus, much less controls it. Stupidity of the average man in light of the definition of average, etc.

[spacehamster]

I know this is an extremely complicated question, but my assessment is that our intellect is similar to that of animals with the efficiency cranked up (primarily a quantitative difference), while our emotional behavior is qualitatively () different than that of animals.

I can't really categorize it that way. Two things come to mind:

1) Humans more or less demonstrably (or as demonstrably as possible) have a higher capacity for abstract thought than any other species. Thus our ability for symbolic representation from which the ability to use language derives and our ability to conceive of time, to plan actions, to play through ideas in our head, technology, mathematics, etc. This is the difference that made us capable of civilization, but it's still only a distinction by degrees - other primates are capable of it as well, just at more rudimentary levels, infants only develop it over time, and not every one of us is capable of it to the same extent.

2) One of the few things I ever heard in in a pedagogy lecture that really stuck with me for the rest of my life was "emotion is what happens when the brain interprets chemical changes in the body". I'd agree with you that humans experience emotion differently from other species because we're capable of more complex interpretation.

I really don't like "self-awareness" as a distinguishing trait because I find it damn near impossible to prove that other species aren't capable of it. Plus, to be honest, I'm really not sure what it even means or whether it's important.

And I don't think anything I've posted suggests that an acknowledgment of spirituality is going to permit/promote a feeling taking precedence over a rational conclusion.

I'm not saying you did, but I think what Matt was getting at is that the notion that emotion is somehow more exalted than thought is often used to justify poorly thought out "spirituality". It's just what I feel, man. As if that somehow means it's really profound. Taking a shit *feels* good too, is all I have to say about that.

I really like that article you spoiler'd, and I think it's a very plausible explanation for our tendency toward animism and anthropomorphism. But what it doesn't explain is our need for meaning, and I think that's a big part of why religion/spirituality is still so prevalent too. It's the area where science can't compete with religion (and I really wish Dawkins and his ilk would try to wrap their brains around this) - when people ask, "Why are we here?", they're not asking for a logical explanation for how we evolved from single cell organisms, they want meaning, and science can't give them that. And I don't have a good explanation for why we are inclined this way, but I do think it stems from some cognitive mechanism that we evolved for some reason. What's left of it now is that we favor stories with clear dramatic curves and endings, logical cause and effect chains and characters with consistent motivations over the way the world really works, and we have a tendency to interpret the world this way (see 99% of news reporting for proof). And that's why we struggle with the idea that life is meaningless and things don't happen for a reason. The notion of gods or a spirit world doesn't even enter into that. We just very badly want our lives to mean something.

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

How could you so enjoy the Tree of Life movie, which is so drenched in and artistically dependent upon secular-spiritual themes?

Because I can enjoy movies that I don't personally believe in or think are true. And for the record I thought the ending of that film nearly ruined the movie. Really embarrassing. But even silly shit, if well presented, can be moving even if I think it's wrong. I love horror movies and don't want kids to die at summer camp in real life. Did I watch Tree of Life and feel a stirring that said, "boy wouldn't that be great," well, a little. I'd also like a million dollars.

This is really wild to read, coming from you. Feelings are both a jolt of reality and the greatest lie? I imagined this were a thread on "love" and re-applied your argument to that sentiment, and you came out sounding like a lonely hermit reassuring himself. Your hard-fought battle to suppress these undeniable feelings is exactly what I'm rallying against here...

Thanks for oblique attack there. Classy. Let me explain what I meant a little better, because I went too quickly. What I meant is that feelings as "jolt of reality" are prepackaged reality-bending experiences. A feeling redefines reality, in that it colors everything around you, and feels like a true thing simply because of its power and mysterious arrival. But they're the greatest lies because they're pure symptomatic subjectivity, yet are so powerful that we take them for unearned truth. We privilege our emotions simply because they're the oily pool our ego floats in and color everything about us. But feelings are just responses, they are symptoms. Sometimes feelings are very apt and healthy. But often they are not. This is why people end up doing horrible shit.

What I'm saying is these special connection feelings you privilege and build a faith around are more likely a reaction or compensation against your death anxiety. There are fewer assumptions for this being true, than for you having tapped into the magic soup that lies behind all existence.

My top two classes of ivory tower smuglings are the religious and the armchair atheist with all their eggs in the science basket. Any snide tooting from the SBNR crowd must be moderate in comparison to that from the other two extremes.

You have a point here—there are lots of asshole religious and atheist people—but I'm more concerned by how you, and others who argue your line, are so offended by religious and atheist arguments that you somehow find it preferable to engage in shoulder shrug abstraction, an indefinable "who knows?" spirituality that's really about feeling smarter than both religious and atheist people. There is nothing wise about moderation when it's fed by self-serving ignorance and wish fulfillment.

Ross, if you need this dogma-that-is-not-dogma, this ambiguous lukewarm faith, then fine. You're only making a religion of deifying your own "feelings" both mundane and unhealthy, but whatever, it's a human sin. You take your emotions for sovereign messengers and it feels good. To be fair with us, you'll have to recognize the fallible nature of emotions and just say, "but I want to believe." And then I'll leave you with that. Faith. You don't have a church that you go to, but you have a church nonetheless.

Also, I didn't create this thread. You put your spiritual shit out there. You're not looking for honest debate because your faith can't be debated. Instead, please feel free to use this thread to post science links and call people armchair this or that and just attack people. Looking good, bro!

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

Spacehamster just said stuff that I totally agree with, in a much nicer way than I did.

[Kurt Russell's Beard]

Sorry, Ross. I shouldn't have posted in this religion thread. I'm obviously of a different opinion. I like you and hope your life is good. Sorry if I hurt your feelings. Any further messages from me will be POSITIVE.

[Necrometer]

Matt you absolutely didn't hurt my feelings and I'm sorry if my cave-hermit jab came across as more than I intended. All I was going for was an analogy to another dismissable feeling - love - that a "no feelings" advocate might similarly abandon. I really appreciate your contribution to this not-religious thread and I look forward to responding to you (and Mike!) soon in a non-escalating fashion. A busy day of science looms, though...

[storm shadow]

For clarity, I guess we could use the Wikipedia description/definition for spirituality (which seems to be written by SBNR people )

Spirituality is the concept of an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the "deepest values and meanings by which people live." Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop an individual's inner life. Spiritual experiences can include being connected to a larger reality, yielding a more comprehensive self; joining with other individuals or the human community; with nature or the cosmos; or with the divine realm. Spirituality is often experienced as a source of inspiration or orientation in life. It can encompass belief in immaterial realities or experiences of the immanent or transcendent nature of the world.
...
Secular spirituality emphasizes humanistic ideas on moral character (qualities such as love, compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, responsibility, harmony, and a concern for others) - aspects of life and human experience which go beyond a purely materialist view of the world without necessarily accepting belief in a supernatural reality or divine being. Spiritual practices such as mindfulness and meditation can be experienced as beneficial or even necessary for human fulfillment without any supernatural interpretation or explanation. Spirituality in this context may be a matter of nurturing thoughts, emotions, words and actions that are in harmony with a belief that everything in the universe is mutually dependent; this stance has much in common with some versions of Buddhist spirituality.

This is the nub of the problem for me. This excerpt (which admittedly probably shouldn't be taken as a perfect representation of the SBNR crowd as a monolithic block) just reads like a fuzzy, vague way of saying "be a good person, be mindful of yourself and others, appreciate the beauty of existence, etc." All of which is fine, except there seems to be this underlying need to inject everything with a heavily diluted sense of the religiosity. For me, it's enough to appreciate beauty, nature, the human condition, etc. as they are, rather than as signposts on a road pointing to some Ineffable Spiritual Reality that less sophisticated people call God. (That last bit came out a little snarkier than I intended.)

For the record, I actually really appreciate this topic and Necrometer for making it. One of the reasons I don't post as much anymore is that I hate superthreads and dearly miss the days of endlessly rehashing the same debates in countless different threads: whether triggers are false, who or what equals Manowar, Corrupted recommendations, etc.

[fallbacktostone]

i am glad you contributed to this thread.

[Spiritual Retreat Master]

Matt you absolutely didn't hurt my feelings and I'm sorry if my cave-hermit jab came across as more than I intended. All I was going for was an analogy to another dismissable feeling - love - that a "no feelings" advocate might similarly abandon. I really appreciate your contribution to this not-religious thread and I look forward to responding to you (and Mike!) soon in a non-escalating fashion. A busy day of science looms, though...

Matt you absolutely didn't hurt my feelings and I'm sorry if my cave-hermit jab came across as more than I intended. All I was going for was an analogy to another dismissable feeling - love - that a "no feelings" advocate might similarly abandon. I really appreciate your contribution to this not-religious thread and I look forward to responding to you (and Mike!) soon in a non-escalating fashion. A busy day of science looms, though...