DNA and Music (General)

by dhw, Sunday, July 25, 2010, 22:15 (5046 days ago) @ George Jelliss

GEORGE: I agree of course that one can have a sense of wonder or awe at aspects of Nature, but object to this being called "spiritual", even if it is meant "in a non-religious sense", because frankly it doesn't have a non-religious sense.-You have suggested that such things are a matter of "aesthetic appreciation", though perhaps there is a better word for it.-In my mind I was including a far wider range of things to wonder at, such as love and empathy (crucial also to humanism), imagination, reason, and so "aesthetic" really won't do. As far as I am concerned, this seemingly immaterial dimension of human nature constitutes a major obstacle to atheism. I understand your objection, and that was why I added the non-religious tag, but perhaps someone else can come up with a better word.-I have a similar problem with the term "life force" (see under Categories, but we may as well combine the posts). I wrote that "most religions may have a central core of truth in them, since there is certainly some kind of life force responsible for our existence." You object to the term "life force" because of its religious associations. I've looked it up, and you are right. I remembered the expression from the distant time when I acted in a production (amateur) of Shaw's Man and Superman, but I hadn't realized Shaw had borrowed it from Bergson, and both of them used it in the manner you've suggested. I suppose "chi" also has unwanted associations. One comes back to "Nature", and in the post you objected to, I wrote that I didn't see much difference between "venerating Jehovah, Allah, the Earth Diver or Mother Nature". Perhaps, then, we could say that the core of truth shared by most religions is the unknown source of our existence. How we define that unknown source then becomes a matter of subjective belief. Theists will call it God, Allah etc., and atheists will say it is an unconscious, impersonal Nature. Is that acceptable?-.