From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: In need of a label...
Date: 20 Jan 93 23:28:46 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <1993Jan19.031126.43622@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> jws5@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (JUSTIN WINSLOW SOLONYNKA) writes:
>Labels are dangerous when they are given to others without
>consent.  But I'm having trouble giving _myself_ one.
>
>If a person believes that there is a spiritual realm in all
>humans, a realm he likes to call "god", but does not accept
>the Judeo-Christian God, what in the world is he?
>
>He can't be an atheist, because he believes in "god", but
>he can't be a theist, because he doesn't believe in God.
>I was told that I am a Deist.  I don't know.
>
>I do not write this for purely personal reasons.  I need
>answers to many related questions : How do we label ourselves?
>WHY do we do so?  Can one person's Christianity be another
>person's blasphemy?  I have serious problems with the born-
>again movement... which claims to be the "only" way to salvation!
>(At least in this geographic area.)  Can an atheist believe in
>a higher spirituality?  Maybe I'm a rookie-agnostic.
>
>Do we put too much emphasis on the religious labels we give
>eachother?  By some definitions of Christianity, could an Atheist
>be considered Christian?
>
>You get the idea.  I'll be pondering...
>
>sol  |  see the cat?  see the cradle?
>
>-- 

It is certainly possible to believe and actually experience a spiritual
world without yet believing in God.  The two concepts, that of the origin
and  existence of the human soul and spirit independent of the physical body
and the idea of a single being, the Ground of all existence, could be
approached separately.  Our earthly existence is so bound up with the
physical bodily existence that its for many inconceivable that we could
have a conscious existence separate from it.  Yet there are moments in
life and thought when this possibility can dawn on one, and there are
thought forms that can develop this experience further conceptually.

Some, however, say, until I can see concrete evidence of a spiritual
world independent of the physical, I am content to believe that there
is only the material.  One possible starting point would be to contem-
plate ones own thinking - that activity which produced the thought of
matter in the first place.  Not the sense experience which we unite
with the thought of matter, but the thinking activity itself without
which no thought of matter would arise.  This is a starting point.  Next
we could think, not about sense experiences, but about thinking itself.  
This would be another step.

So, yes, an atheist could believe in a higher spirituality and actually
learn to experience this reality.  A characteristic of atheism is that
the atheist places prime importance on experience and thought, as 
opposed to received revelation.  There is nothing to stop an atheist
from developing on his own or receiving through life experience ("scales
falling from the eyes") and understanding that confirms for him
the existence of a higher world and of his own higher nature.

It is true that labels get in the way of a lot of things.

Gerry Palo (73237.2006@compuserve.com)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.pagan