What are we?

by writerdd

I am a spirit, I have a soul, and I live in a body.

That's what I was taught in Sunday school when I was a child. In a way, I no longer believe that today. I've come to see that the body is what I am. ("You are what you eat" has become more than a catch phrase to me.) Without a body, a soul or spirit cannot exist. There is no non-corporeal being that inhabits my body like a house, or a temple, giving it life. I'd figured this out on my own quite some time ago, a short while after I stopped going to church in the 1990s. When I read Francis Crick's book, The Amazing Hypothesis, I dind't find it amazing at all to consider that there is no spirit of life, breathed into my by a god, animating my mortal flesh.

But that's not to say that I'm a soulless being or a spiritual zombie like a vampire. We humans certainly do have souls, something that makes us different than other animals, something unique and amazing and wonderful. This soul may not be a literal force, and it may not be something that can carry on after the death of our bodies, but it is very real. We all feel it. We all experience it. We all know that we are more than just a hunk of meat.

So what is this thing we call a soul, or a spirit? I believe it is consciousness, the very thing that gives us the ability to feel and experience at all. It is nothing supernatural, metaphysical, or paranormal. But it is still quite mysterious. No one can even quite define what consciousness is, just as no one can quite define what a soul is. I don't think that's a coincidence. In the future, I imagine, that scientists will be able to give us much better explanations for how our minds work, but I don't think I'll get to find out in my lifetime. I can live with not knowing. I don't have to make up explanations about ghosts in the machine. 

Religious people may use the terms soul and spirit in a way that I don't like. But the word breath was once used in the same way. It was beleived that our breath was, quite literally, our spirit, and that it was the very breath of the gods put into our earthly flesh to give us life. After all, when we stop breathing, we die. Today we know that is, at best, a metaphor. I hope to be able to use the modern words soul and spirt in the same way: as metaphors that capture the essence of what it feels like to be alive and human. At least until someone figures out a better way to explain what we all experience with words that are easy for everyone to understand.

Descartes and my Sunday school teachers may have been wrong, and we may now know that there is no separate, ethereal being dwelling inside our flesh, but in a way I still do believe.

I am a spirit, I do have a soul, and I live in a body.

(Oh, and I changed my hair.) Read more!

Spiritual?

I've been ruminating on a recent post on The Atheist's Way that repeatedly referred, in what seemed to be a generic, non-denominational way, to things "spiritual." I've decided I don't know what that means.

I've always disliked articles that start by referring to a dictionary definition, but in this case such a procedure seemed apropos. Of the seven brief definitions of "spiritual" on merriam-webster.com, six refer to things that are definitely religious or supernatural. Things like "incorporeal" and "of or relating to sacred matters." None of these has any meaning to me.

The seventh meaning relates to things like "team spirit" or "in a spirit of fairness." This is a nicely secular usage of the word, but seems not to relate to what people mean when they talk about spiritual experiences.

People who are "spiritual, but not religious" sometimes talk about the "spiritual" experience of looking at a beautiful sunset, or walking in a forest, or sitting at the edge of the ocean. Searching for a term that I might use to describe these experiences that isn't tainted by reference to the supernatural, I decided they're restorative.

We all need restorative experiences. I should seek them out a lot more often! The nice thing about this term is that it can be explained in physiological terms, though we needn't get reductive about it if we don't want to.

If we meet someone and are tempted to say "she's a very spiritual person," the term "restorative" won't quite substitute. Perhaps "well grounded," "present," "very aware," or "calm and accepting" would serve.

For myself, I can see no reason to use the term "spiritual." It has too many negative connotations, and seems to convey nothing that can't be more accurately described using some other term. Read more!