Aquarius

Hi everyone! I am new here, but I have been looking around the site, and enjoying it quite a bit. I have a question for everyone.

I am sure you all know these people who believe in a hodge-podge of New Age/Pagan beliefs. They will worship several of the Hindu Gods (while not following the Hindu religion, mind you), follow astrology, chant, meditate, etc., while never affiliating themselves with any one religion.

Well, several people in my family are like this. My sister has recently gone to join what I would call a Neo-Hindu cult/commune. My mother is less so, but she still meditates, goes to chants, and believes in various Hindu Gods, and she occasionally goes out to the commune/cult for a vacation/retreat.

We were talking a while back, and I was telling her how uncomfortable I was with where my sister is and what she is doing. When she asked why, I told her, "I guess I am just uncomfortable with religion in general." She was very unhappy that I considered them "religious", and went on to tell me that this is not a religion... She is trying to tell me that she and my sister are not involved in a religion, even though they are holding fire ceremonies, chants, prayers, and offerings to Ganesh, etc. with this group.

Huh? I didn't want to argue with her, so I didn't press the issue... but she and my sister belong to a group of people bound together by a common belief in God, and faith in a "life force." Is this not religion? I think she is just afraid of the term... she launched into how there is scientific proof that reiki heals people, and that praying for someone helps them, and bladdy blah de blah... I would like to see this "scientific" evidence, but she has yet to present me with it.

Do you all consider these New Age/Pagan folks religious? I don't think there is anything wrong with them being religious, though it seems foreign to me, as they have both always been agnostics or atheists up until now. I just wish they wouldn't get so annoyed by the term.

Thanks,
Aqua

0

This thread is better suited for the Non-Abrahamic Religion forum.

You'll get better responses there.

Tangie

Heathen Dawn

New Age is not the same as paganism. A crucial difference is New Agers think they are gods, while pagans (properly...) maintain a distinction between Gods and humans.

As for the “spiritual but not religious” line, I’ve said enough about it. I’ll only repeat it here that it annoys the hell out of me. The conviction that the spiritual person is superior to the religious person, and that there is a necessary contradiction between spirituality and religiosity. Insufferable.

And yes, it’s religion, no matter how much they deny it. To quote Richard Dawkins:

(emphasis added)

sbaii

Great quote, HD.

As for the sister and mother and their rituals. Your mother must get some kind of comfort from this place she goes to for retreat. She probably can't explain it as it is an emotional experience which is often hard to put into words. Also she may not want to try to put it into words or to analyze it for fear that the feeling will go away. It would be nice if she would try to explain why that setting was more comforting to her than a trip to the beach or the woods. On second thought, most beaches are too noisy. Personally, I appreciate any place that is outside and quiet. All you can do is try to communicate your own thoughts about life and the world without sounding anti-religious. Personally, I don't care what people believe as long as they don't affect my life. I do try to understand why people believe in the supernatural and usually it boils down to emotional experiences. Let's face it, atheism says "Grow up! Stop believing in a heaven, in divine providence, in human immortality. Believe instead in the human mind's ability to understand the world we are in." For some that is not comforting enough.

" A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms -- it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. And individual who survive his physical death is alos beyond my comrehension, nor do I wish it otherwise;such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls."

Albert Einstein, "The World As I See It"

Heathen Dawn

More back-patting? Haven’t we had quite enough?

sbaii

I'm giving what I see as a realistic view of atheism which explains why there aren't more of us.

Cubeless Academian

It annoys the hell out of me, too, but it's certainly all the rage these days. I've even had born-agains try to tell me that Christianity is not a religion! I guess the R-word has so many negative connotations these days, a lot of people are more comfortable "being spiritual" or "having a relationship with Christ" than admitting that they belong to a fucking religion.

Another reason New Agers are unwilling to call New Age a religion, is that many of them already identify with some other religion, usually Christianity. New Age books, like Scientology books, often make a point of saying that you can believe all this shit no matter what your religion is. Here's a fairly typical passage, taken from Whitley Strieber's book The Path:

This is complete bullshit, of course. The book goes on to talk about reincarnation and the fact that we are God and all sorts of other things that fly in the face of certain religions. But it's a lot easier to get people to follow you if you don't tell them they have to change their religion, so, for business reasons, religion and pseudoscience are proclaimed non-overlapping magisteria.

Anitra

That's great, sbaii, and thanks for sharing it. Speaking of things that annoy the hell out of us it annoys the hell out of me when orthodox/fundamentalist Christians claim Einstein as "a theist" -- because they mean a theist like them, and he was oh-so-obviously not. They claim Spinoza, too. aaaaaarrrrrghhhh!

There is a valid distinction, I think, between a doctrinaire approach to religion and an individualist approach -- "authoritarian" creeds versus "democratization of religion" -- and church-as-a-political-institution versus religion-as-a-part-of-personal-life. Some of the people I know use the "spiritual not religious" terminology to make that distinction. "Spirituality" is something that is personally felt; "religion" is something that is institutionalized ritual. "Spirituality" is commitment to values, living by values; "religion" is intellectual dogma, creeds, academic theology. "Spirituality" is an individual doing what they believe in; "religion" is a power-group using ideology to maintain power.

It was like liberals giving up the name "liberal" because it had fallen into disrepute, and starting to call themselves "progressives" (or just about anything else) instead. Eventually a lot of liberals started turning around and saying, "Goddamn it, we're liberals! We're taking the word back! Let the Wimps Who Substitute Guilt For Action, Political Correctness As Substitute For Thought, and Corporate Sellouts Who Want To Keep Their Progressive Image bunch find their own word!" Eventually, a lot of spiritual people started turning around and saying, "We're religious! We're taking the word back! Let the rote, lip-service, dogmatic, institutionalized, and power-politics folks find their own word!"

But all ideology is subjective, and it's always easier to see other's blind spots than to see your own -- the definition of a blind spot is that you don't see it! A very large number of people repeat group memes and honestly, sincerely, passionately believe they just thought them up themselves. Nobody sees their own hidden assumptions or recognizes what they know that ain't so unless they voluntarily make a real effort to see from another persons' viewpoint -- to "represent another's representation." Critiquing anything seriously is hard work -- critiquing yourself is the Olympics. A whole bunch of people think they are "independent spiritual seekers" and just happen to independently end up with the exact same orthodoxy their great-great-grandparents held.

Another whole bunch collect a smorgasboard of ideas, a pretty one here and a pretty one there, and are very proud of their "original" religious plumage -- and lack any coherent theoretical framework for the whole mish-mash. Many of the ideas in the set contradict others, the implications of their own ideas are ideas they passionately oppose. One thing that long-standing traditions have going for them is that they have at least weeded out some of their more glaring internal conflicts and developed some theoretical structure. Eclectic, individualist, "New Age" religions usually have not.

Religion is a natural human activity. Not every human engages in it, any more than every human makes music, but there will always be humans doing religion just as there will always be humans doing music. If a human wants to do religion and can't find a satisfactory religion to do, he will do the equivalent of banging on coffee-tins and cooking-pans, or humming and whistling to himself. To get passed on from human to human and become widespread and established, however, a music, or a religion, has to have something more to it than random noise-making.

Deacon Doubtmonger

Dear Aquarius:

Would you happen to know the name of the cult/commune in question, or the names of any of its "priests/gurus"? With that I can check four excellent skeptical sites and post the linkies.

DD

Dave_the_heretic

I'm very aware of this spiritual movement, since it controls my former profession of Massage Therapy.

THe problem is, they are making the argument that Spirituality is not only superior to the "mere beliefs of religion" but this has become a powerful political movement that claims that spirituality can be sanctioned and enforced by law, unlike Religion.

And they have a legal precedent for this, one that not only the New Age is aware of, but the Born Again Christians and far Republican Right as well.

It's crazy, but it's exploding. It is widely believed the Bush Administration is now backing this test, since it backs their belief that separation of Church and State is a "myth."

It's damned scary.