To think that some people conflate being “intellectual” with rejecting anything spiritual?

[BothAndNotEitherOr]

I’ve noticed a pattern, especially in online spaces like this one, where people seem to tie their sense of intellect or rationality to a total disbelief in anything spiritual. It’s like the idea of fate, intuition, synchronicity or even a loose belief in “something more” gets lumped in with being irrational or uneducated. I’m not talking about organised religion necessarily, more the subtle stuff people feel or notice but can’t always explain.

And to be honest, a lot of the responses I’ve seen on here reinforce that vibe. If you say anything even slightly beyond logic or science, there’s an instant eye-roll or a wall of statistics.

AIBU to think that some people over-identify with being hyper-logical and that rejecting anything spiritual has become a kind of intellectual performance?

But you said

It’s only on MN that this happens, in real life people aren’t so black and white.

So do the people you know who don't believe, suddenly start pretending that they do when they talk to you?

Or do they pretend they believe a bit so you think it's not so black and white?

It's not very clear.

That came up in the course of yesterday’s thread about aliens having built the Pyramids.

The point about the effects of ‘the death of God’ is that the combination of the Enlightenment and the spread of education throughout Western society is that superstition really ought not to have retained any influence, given the rejection of religious faith on intellectual grounds.
Yet this wasn’t borne out by experience at all.
The rise of newly-hatched Neo-Paganism, parts of the Celtic Revival, theosophy, Madame Blavatsky, Crowley, the adoption of Eastern religions, experimenting with hallucinogens and other ways to alter our consciousness, and innumerable other replacements for faith in (a) god erupted, and have not quit even though we live mostly in secular, well-educated and broadly informed societies now.

Not that one day a nineteenth-century atheist decided that this was the day he’d fossick about for something new in which to believe.
No, it’s been our apparently unconscious need to have connection with the numinous, however it may present itself or be inferred.
(Not a universal thing, and many have no such interest let alone a need, of course)

I cited the case of a bloke I’ve recently been reading about, a (literally!) rocket scientist who, though usually uncredited, was in a way second only to W von B in getting men to the Moon.
Yet at the same time as he was toiling away on great intellectual work based on rigour and reason ( and daring too), he was in full flight as a devotee and ardent acolyte of two monstrous myth-makers whose power depended on followers’ credulity and an appetite to be given something supposedly out of this world to embrace.

(Yikes, you didn't ask for ‘War and Peace’ there, and a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would probably have sufficed!)

Same. Im married to a medic and we tend to socialise with other medics, lots of them have a faith.

Loads of people with mega-brains believe in some kind of greater interconnectedness beyond the physical world. It would be unscientific to write it off entirely.

Not sure exactly what a "medic" is (not a doctor, presumably), but the fact a doctor believes in something is irrelevant. Doctors aren't intellectuals, are they?

I am not very smart these days, nor am I intellectual.

I used to be a squeek above average I would say, but hey, age gets us all I suppose :-) But when I was smarter I used to be religious. Now not at all, and I am very anti woo.

I disagree with your premise, Here is why.

The Pope, or take any other example, is really really smart, without a doubt. But I can predict with near 100 % certainty that even he could not explain to me how Christianity is true. Now given that he is massively smarter than me, and that he believes in it, the only conclusion I can see is that I am just not smart enough to understand.

So my view is a reversal of your premise.

And the thing is, I will never be as smart as the Pope.

Woo next, crystal energy etc. Same again. I am a vertical thinker, energy measured and described in Si units. If something can't be explained to me in terms of Si units, then I just can't understand it. My brain is just not clever enough to process a woo thing to the point of understanding. So same conclusion as with the Pope really.

Doctors are often referred to as medics, I'm suprised you've never heard that term. And yeah of course Doctors are as thick as mince and incapable of intellectual thought, silly me I forgot!

Spiritually enlightened beings don't mind what people think. There is a knowing!

This is another "argument of authority." The fact that a mega-brain believes in something doesn't make it true.

And the fact that you can't entirely write something off (i.e. prove a negative) doesn't make it true, either.

If we are really interested in what's true, we should be interrogating the belief, not who believes it. We should be asking what are the reasons people believe in a thing. What is their evidence. What is the justification of their belief.

I think people misunderstand what spirituality is to be honest. It can be something as simple as feeling a sense of connection to something "bigger than yourself" when you stand at the top of a mountain or stare at the night sky.

It can be finding meaning in your life by fulfilling your purpose or helping others.

Giving birth can be a spiritual experience because it's as old as time. Think of all the women before you who you share the same experience with.

Think of an old tree that's been on the earth for thousands of years and has witnessed centuries of historical events. It enables you to connect with something bigger than your individual life.

I don't think you have to be irrational or in denial of science to have the spiritual experiences mentioned above.

I agree with @Millytante that post Enlightenment people seem to be open to believing all kinds of things, which suggests a human need for some kind of supernatural belief.

Personally I think if there’s a ‘God gene’ I’ve got it - although I don’t believe in life after death - and see religions as ways human beings explain and cope with life. I read the famous Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens books and was astonished by their shallowness. To me they didn’t seem to understand God, religion (Christianity), faith, belief or the human need for connectedness and ritual at all. So in that sense I agree with the OP.

Ghosts are fascinating because of their cultural specifics and I really do enjoy reading tales of strange happenings, but I wouldn’t say I actually believe in them. However, I think they tell us a lot about the human condition and our relationship with the unknown.

When I read about people going to psychics etc I do think it’s silly, but again perhaps it tells us something about the post-religious world (in this country anyway) and the need, maybe especially for women, to feel that there is some intelligence/structure/plan/way of knowing that we don’t all have access to.

I'm surprised you think "doctors are not intellectuals" means the same as "doctors are incapable of intellectual thought".

We all bow down to your superior intellect! Thank you for all your corrections, where would I be without them 😂

A human need for some kind of supernatural belief is clearly not a universal need, and one I don't share.

Even it it were universal, it doesn't hold that supernatural beliefs are true.

It's quite clear that many people get great comfort from the idea of life after death but we have no good evidence that the idea of life after death is true. They are two completely different things.

There are intellectual atheists.

There are intellectual priests in all the great religions.

Maybe there are even intellectuals who believe in ghosts (though I doubt there are many).

I think you’re confusing ‘intellectual’ with ‘sceptical’.

That might explain why so many of them don't try to explain stuff to us. They know we are not capable of understanding.

Unless we offer to pay them a lot of money to teach us of course.

You seem great fun and are clearly full of laughter. It's lovely to see.

I think intelligence and arrogance usually go hand in hand.

I consider myself quite clever and I don't really believe in any woo stuff, I'd call myself a sceptic. But I also am not arrogant enough to say that anything absolutely doesn't exist because I don't think anyone has the intellectual authority to make such statements with apodictic certainty.

The most intelligent people I know are also the ones who are happy to say "I've got no fucking idea" when faced with cosmic questions.

Yes @MasterBeth some people don’t need it. But a lot, possibly the majority, do.

Doesn’t make it true of course, but we do need ways to understand the world and human experience.

Yes, and it's a perfectly legitimate and interesting field of study to understand why people believe what they believe.

But not as interesting as finding out what is actually true...

Totally fair question... I quite like how my dad describes it, that in the synagogue service there is a sense of 'imminence', the collective sense of something bigger than yourself. But this imminence is not exclusive to being in a religious or spiritual setting, he feels (and I agree) there is the same feeling when people sit down to watch a concert of classical music, and I'd say it can be there at a rave, and, although I'm not a sports fan, I expect it's there at a big match too. That 'something bigger than yourself' might be God, it might be the best part of that exists in all of us, it might be some energy that connects everyone and everything, it might be the joy or music, or togetherness, or your team winning, but it's all related.

I think the error with some 'religious' people is that they credit this feeling only to spirituality/God and as something that can only be experienced through religion when in fact it's in many places and experiences. I suppose I feel 'spirituality' is just one way of describing a response to a shared (or I suppose it can be individual - say, looking at a beautiful landscape), meaningful experience. I don't privilege religion above all other ways of experiencing this though many probably do.

There are many, many well-known physicists, biologists, doctors and engineers (among many others) who are also professing Christians (and other faiths too). Some state that science and faith are not in conflict at all but instead describe different aspects of truth. Geneticist Francis Collins said (roughly paraphrased), ‘Science explains how the natural world works; faith answers why we exist and what gives life meaning.’

There are many, many others who say the same so I’d take the views/culture of MN with a pinch of salt.

Agree. And this whole endorphins thing of being in happy groups is definitely going to be an evolutionary advantage for social animals such as us.

There are many, many others who say the same so I’d take the views/culture of MN with a pinch of salt.

There is no view of Mumsnet. Mumsnet is a discussion forum which allows competing views to be aired.

What's "the view" of this thread? There isn't one. There is an exchange of ideas

Thank you, @Echobelly.

I recognise those feelings, but I don't ascribe them to anything categorically different to other emotional experiences.