{"id":7469,"date":"2012-07-01T17:50:01","date_gmt":"2012-07-01T17:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=7469"},"modified":"2012-07-01T17:50:01","modified_gmt":"2012-07-01T17:50:01","slug":"not-necessarily-woo-woo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/not-necessarily-woo-woo\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Necessarily Woo-Woo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sam Harris goes on a spiritquest<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In writing my next book, I will have to confront the animosity that many people feel for the term \u201cspiritual.\u201d Whenever I use the word\u2014as in referring to meditation as a \u201cspiritual practice\u201d\u2014I inevitably hear from fellow skeptics and atheists who think that I have committed a grievous error.<\/p>\n

The word \u201cspirit\u201d comes from the Latin spiritus, which in turn descends from the Greek pneuma, meaning \u201cbreath.\u201d Around the 13th century, the term became bound up with notions of immaterial souls, supernatural beings, ghosts, etc. It acquired other connotations as well\u2014we speak of the spirit of a thing as its most essential principle, or of certain volatile substances and liquors as spirits. Nevertheless, many atheists now consider \u201cspiritual\u201d thoroughly poisoned by its association with medieval superstition.<\/p>\n

I strive for precision in my use of language, but I do not share these semantic concerns\u2026<\/p>\n

We must reclaim good words and put them to good use\u2014and this is what I intend to do with \u201cspiritual.\u201d I have no quarrel with Hitch\u2019s general use of it to mean something like \u201cbeauty or significance that provokes awe,\u201d but I believe that we can also use it in a narrower and, indeed, more transcendent sense.<\/p>\n

Of course, \u201cspiritual\u201d and its cognates have some unfortunate associations unrelated to their etymology\u2014and I will do my best to cut those ties as well. But there seems to be no other term (apart from the even more problematic \u201cmystical\u201d or the more restrictive \u201ccontemplative\u201d) with which to discuss the deliberate efforts some people make to overcome their feeling of separateness\u2014through meditation, psychedelics, or other means of inducing non-ordinary states of consciousness. And I find neologisms pretentious and annoying. Hence, I appear to have no choice: \u201cSpiritual\u201d it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dear me, he\u2019ll be writing about searching for meaning <\/em>next. <\/p>\n

But, whatever floats his boat\u2026<\/p>\n

H\/t: Andrew Sullivan<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Harris goes on a spiritquest: In writing my next book, I will have to confront the animosity that many people feel for the term \u201cspiritual.\u201d Whenever I use the word\u2014as in referring to meditation as a \u201cspiritual practice\u201d\u2014I inevitably … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[194,334],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7471,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7469\/revisions\/7471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}