Are some people "hardwired" for a spiritual life...?

Question

while others are not?

I was talking to my agnostic (athiest?) dad the other day (I'm 37, he's 58). He is intelligent and compassionate, and is active in serving the poor in his community. When we talk about spirituality/religion (God), he and I speak a different language.

To my dad, religion is ridiculous. He uses many of the same argumets athiests use at this site.

For me, my faith/religion is not about "believing ridiculous things" or being "scared to die" (as my dad would say) but rather connecting with a truth/spirit that never fails to alter my troubled heart.

While my father and other athiests simpy see religion as a means of control and containing a bunch of unbelievable stories, many of us cannot imagine living a life without the Spirit, without a connection to the divine.

ideas?

While I am a Christian, a "spiritual life" is obviously not limited to Christianity. My athiest friends find little interest in meditation either, yet I have meditated many times and see great value in it.

Again, it's seems that some of you and I are speaking a different language.

Answer 1

I would agree, but only if you mean "hardwired" in a metaphorical sense. I think there are two fundamentally different ways to look at this issue.

Some people are Solipsists, which means they agree with Aristotle's ancient philosophy and imagine their own subjective experience is reality and that the physical realm is an illusion created by their mind. Solipsism began 500 years before Christ and was universally accepted by educated Western men for a minimum of 2100 years. The Dark Ages were nearly devoid of technological progress precisely because most people believed that the physical realm was imaginary and that subjective experience was actually real.

People who are Solipsists are frequently also Idealists. Plato's Idealism maintains that intellectual concepts are more "noble" than the objects they represent and that human beings can think because the gods place such concepts into human minds. For example, a stick of wood can be consumed by fire, but the idea of wood is eternal and exists in the realm of the gods. Humans know about "woodenness" because the gods place such noble thoughts in our minds.

About 390 AD, St. Augustine of Hippo invented the concept of the immortal human spirit (the soul). Augustine combined Solipsism with Idealism and further asserted that God loans each new human a bit of His own immortal essence at the beginning of their life. The experience of living grows God's gift into an immortal human soul. Augustine's theology achieved two important goals. It provided an explaination for how human conscious awareness was possible and it explained how Christ's promise of eternal life was metaphysically possible. (Christ used paternalistic allagories to discuss eternal life and did not specify a practical mechanism for how it could be possible.) The triune philosophies of Solipsism, Idealism, and Soul dominated Western civilization for another 1200 years after St. Augustine.

About 1590, the physics experiments of Galileo Galilei, followed immediately by those of Isaac Newton, proved conclusively that the physical realm was absolutely real. This implied that subjective experience might not actually be reality and the Catholic church began systematically executing thousands for the heresy of Materialism. The last known stake-burning for Materialism occured in 1850 and the victim was a Mexican medical doctor who insisted that consciousness awareness was the result of a living human brain.

The electronic vacuum tube was invented at the beginning of the twentieth century and quickly led to the electroencephalograph (EEG). This device proved beyond all doubt that all thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and memories arise from the neurological structures of a living human brain. Plato's unsubstantiated philosophy was completely discredited by readily varifiable physical evidence. EEG evidence also confirmed that Solipsism was false because subjective experience was found to be just that -- wholly subjective, not real.

With both Idealism and Solipsism utterly discredited, it is painfully obvious that Augustine's contrived Soul was also utterly meaningless. Reality simply doesn't work that way, period. Modern college educated people understand that objective (physical) reality contains all the matter and all the energy in the universe. They also understand that human beings are able to perceive only a tiny fraction of physical reality. We can see only a few thousand of the nearest stars, of the countless trillions that exist. We cannot see atoms and molecules, but they are absolutely real. The warmth we feel on our skin and the colors we see with our eyes are but a small fraction of the total electromagnetic spectrum, also absolutely real.

Your question speculated that some people may be "hardwired" for spiritual life. Well, I mostly agree, except that I would say that some people are "religious thinkers" -- Solipsistic Idealists, who imagine their thoughts, their subjective experience is actually real. For these people, God seems obviously real, and prayer seems a practical way to influence future events. The other type of person, like your father and myself, I call Objectivists. (...a term I am borrowing from Ayn Rand.) Objectivists know that objective reality is absolutely real and that their own subjective experience is an illusion, created by their own living brain, based on limited sensory information about physical reality and modulated by their own expectations.

It's always dangerous to generalize, but it does appear to me that you are correct, in that there are at least two distinct philosophical viewpoints involved in this religious debate. There are the Solipsistic Idealistic believers and the Scientific Objectivist non-believers. Anyway, that's how I see it.

Edit: You added the issue of meditation, which I have tried many times. Frankly, like so many others I was totally unable to achieve anything at all through meditation. Many "spiritual" people I know and admire use meditation successfully. I've no doubt meditation works for some people and I'm equally convinced it does absolutely nothing for others. Although I have not specifically studied this issue, it seems to me that Solipsists, who regard their own subjective experience as reality, would see great value in meditation. Scientific Objectivists, such as myself, who regard their subjective experience as an illusion created by their living brain, are unlikely to see much value in meditation, and may not even be able to achieve a meditative state at all. Personally, I have spent many, many hours trying to pray and attempting to meditate. My efforts were always totally ineffective and the only thing I ever felt was foolish and somewhat embarrassed.

Answer 2

I think this is a good question, but one that's hard to answer. We were talking about something like this in Sunday school yesterday. The lesson was on Numbers 13-14, when Moses sent the spies into the Promised Land, and all but Caleb and Joshua believed that they were too small and weak to conquer the Canaanites. We pondered how it could be that how many thousands of these Israelites had seen all the miracles God had done for them in the desert, but couldn't believe that He would lead them into the Promised Land. Caleb and Joshua had experienced the same things they had, yet they believed God and had faith while the others didn't. What was different about them? Were they "hardwired" to have faith whereas the others weren't? And how can one be hardwired in this way? If you take two hardwired parents and they have a child, would that child also be hardwired for a spiritual life?
Sorry, I'm afraid I have more questions than answers.

Answer 3

I would say more likely is that some people have a pre-disposition for religious belief or 'faith' and others don't. It's like having a pre-disposition for alcoholism or drug addiction (without the nasty physical side-effects of course).

What you call being 'connected with a truth/spirit' that alters your 'troubled heart', an atheist would call an active imagination and ability to convince yourself that your natural feelings and reactions are coming from outside yourself rather than inside.

Ironic that so many people would rather assume an outside, supernatural influence than simply consider that humans themselves are capable of such things.

Answer 4

Believe all you want, but be aware that your brain is cognitively wired for agent detection (and to believe in the supernatural), which has an undeniable survival value, but if you persistently succumb to it's pitfalls, you will have to deal with the many problems associated with cognitive dissonance (the mind's strategy for dealing with a potentially colossal mistake).

And no, a connection "to the divine" is not necessary for anyone to have a rich, fulfilling spiritual life, mind and spirit being emergent properties of organized matter.
.

Answer 5

I read into your story a little bit and have some comments.

Religion has different roles for different people. Your father probably doesn't understand them because he doesn't appear to need them. He probably feels that the 'point' of religion in today's world is to be the best person he can be. Given that he's active in serving the poor of the community, he probably already feels that he's doing the best he can.

Some people need to feel 'connected' to God, to make sense of their environment or to have that faith to rely on whenever there is nothing else to support them. Your father probably feels that he is strong enough to support himself, which makes Faith in something other than himself seem unnecessary.

To respond to the very first answer of your post: Not every person who holds themselves to their own standards use themselves as the basis for their litmus test. As an agnostic, I fuel my conviction from my drive to be the best person I can be, but I have a catholic background and upraising, which has provided me 'my' sense of 'moral direction.' And, I fail it constantly, but the point of practicing is to practice, one never really achieves perfection.

Now to 'answer' your question:
I don't think people are necessarily 'hardwired' spiritually (or not, as the case might be.) The culimation of their personal experiences guides them into what they believe. For any person to say that they 'believe' "THIS" and only "THIS" and "THIS" will never change is to have blind unquestioning faith, which I don't regard as true faith. Life is about learning, and people's beliefs can change at time. At the very least, questioning why one believes something can strengthen it's conviction, and not leave one stagnant.

To say that one is wired for spirtuality is ultimately to deny one the choice. People whose lives need it will find it, and those who don't may or may not choose to find it. In the end it comes down to how one was raised, their experiences, how necessary it is for them to understand why things have happened, or at least know there are some things 'meant' for them to not understand.

Answer 6

a lot of religions have a problem with controlling and people can lose a lot of faith if not all faith and it is very understanding. People also can connect with God's Spirit with or without religion. and maybe that is the way you dad feels..He may know God in his heart, he may have excepted God into his heart, and is serving Him the best way he knows how too...Having a religion is fine for some and for others they do better without, religion is not what gets a person in heaven your obedience to God is, so who knows your dad may be on the right track after all only God and himself knows, God See's the heart remember that...

Answer 7

I seem to be one of those people who is "hardwired" for spirituality. I'm Christian, but have many atheist friends. I've learned a lot from them. But it's very difficult for me to understand how some people can so easily cut themselves off from spirituality, when it's something that has dominated my life since earliest childhood. There is not a day of my life that goes by in which I'm not actively thinking about religion. However, my non-theist friends are not concerned with such things in any way. That's their right, of course, but I'm not 100% sure that I understand how it's even possible to not constantly think about God and/or religion. Then again, I was raised in a devoutly religious home, and was taken to church since infancy. I loved going to church as a kid, and never could understand people who claimed that it was boring or pointless.

Answer 8

The statement needs to be put into personal subjective context to be understood Rama ? Great Question. Best Wishes. Mars Mission Soon In A Galaxy Near Yours.. Source(s): Studies..

Answer 9

At least the guy who wrote "the god gene" says that spirituality seems to depends on some gene.
The link will tell you a couple of things to look at/start research.

Answer 10

Most spiritual people require neither religion or ritual practices as a way to experience connectedness to Spirit. People are not "hardwired" for spiritual life. We are all spiritual, its a matter of "awakening" that leads us to denounce both religion and secularism as we seek "true freedom". Being spiritual is not the same as being religious while atheism leads one to the ridicule of both.

Answer 11

Absolutely I think there are certain genetic pre-dispositions that affect one's character so that they maybe need the comfort of religion. It probably has a lot to do with your upbringing also. I feel the same way as your father, I don't really need religion to be happy. Maybe that has something to do with my genetic code?