A Theory of Spirituality: "Science" is Not the Issue, Empiricism Is.

Daniel Liechty 5 days ago A scientific theory of religion and/or spirituality is only right to the extent that it acts as a workable guide to interpreting large chunks of the phenomena it is seeking to interpret. Such a theory 'fails' to the extent that it yields only slivers of insight reflected in narrow, special cases. My sense is that Geertz's theory still does a very good job of encompassing large chunks, especially when understood as incorporating the Durkheimian sociology in pts #3, 4 and 5. In contrast, I suspect that your theory would very quickly bog down into narrow, sectarian infighting on what we mean when we talk of 'Spirit,' not to mention 'Community.' My problem with Geertz and academic religious studies in general is that they have accepted psychology as a disciplinary lens through with to view their subject, but just the opposite, that they are generally skeptical of psychological data. To use an analogy, they tell us a lot of details about how the automobile operates, once you assume the ongoing power of a turning crankshaft. But what gets and keeps the crankshaft turning in the first place? In my view, it is the ongoing human confrontation of an expansive mind/imagination with finitude and mortality. IOW, the Durkheimian/Weberian/ Geertzian view needs to be supplemented with themes from Peter Berger and Ernest Becker to become more fully satisfying as a well-rounded theory. Green Peacemst < 1 min ago Daniel Liechty, Thank you for your comment. I´ve found as an independent scholar that the definition of "science" alone needs clarity to establish clarity for what I´m calling "spiritual-religious phenomena, practice, experience, and knowledge," first of all. Spirit, thinking off hand will reflect an identifiable unit like mind and consciousness, or personality. Buddha talks about perception, and I love Buddhism. He also had the "gall" to refer to perception and the sense-perceived world as spiritual, and what? "part" of the Spirit that dominates existence as the Law that changes crude nature into mind and guides all sentient human beings to enlightenment, or the like. Simply a wonderful assertion to work with. You mention Weber tangentially, and I´ve been intrigued to identify his role in helping distinguish the nature of "science" versus "social science" which I prefer to call psychosocial studies with empiricism at this point. Science is actually scientific philosophy, using a form of empiricism in the physical realm. Weber et al´s antipositivism and interpretivism is simply brilliant in identifying the key issues of human symbolic mind and consciousness for their/our norms and values. I´ve been impressed that my undergraduate degree seems to be propelling me passed all kinds of scholars who have been detoured. I had found, rather coincidentally in a spiritually inspired kind of way, ED Chapple´s work by total "accident." His advanced book somehow intrigued me, and it was burned in my brain when I investigated and turned up his foundational work based on Pavlov´s symbolic conditioning. Unbelievable. GH Mead used it, I recall. E D´Aquili et al, too later on. It illuminates A Korzybski´s work, for that matter. And let me cite JB Watson´s Little Albert experiment, and Mary C Jones´ desentization work. In terms of symbolic conditioning, just a treasure. And there it is. As we savor the human use of symbolic cognition and communication to understand the meaning of human mind and consciousness, I also suggest Freud´s basic crossover event. This isn´t English class when we talk about "symbolism." This is empirical psychology, and more. Like chimps learning to sign, etc. A fun example of the "elementary particle" nature of words as symbols are words like "ketchup." Originally a chinese fish sauce, they added tomato sauce to it in Boston, something. Tomatoes, no less, come from South America, for more fun with all the word-symbol stuff. And so, I like to focus on spiritual-religious healing as phenomena that helps define the transcendental and the relational process in spiritual-religious phenomena. I can also cite the Holographic Paradigm to begin to hint at more of the component ideas, and empirical material, that can be brought to bear on this. The U of Virginia´s Dept of Perception has gone from its start by I Stevenson MD and reincarnation to B Grayson on NDEs in medical contexts. So, those objections attempting to nullify the subject equating it with nonsensical and incapable of being standardized for empirical purposes is rather an abuse of intention. It seems to project fear. You mentioned Peter Berger, and I`m grateful for the reminder. I was introduced to my own path by Huston Smith´s work, and only recently learned about R Bellah and N Smart. Like