Religion, Spirituality, and the New Atheist

I saw a friend post a status:

“Spirituality is following your own narrative, and religion is following someone elses'”

This is the distraction, the waste of space, meme nonsense that people who float get up to. You see, deep inside of every human is this thirst to be different, to stand on some new enlightenment, be part of some profound progressive statement that separates them from everyone else— how fucking original!

Religion: In the 1200 the term religion came into existence and began to become associated with European Christianity. In effect, it was We are this thing (religious) and everyone is something less than. There is a lot more to it, but ultimately that was its function. And how was it used? Those black savages in Africa have no “religion”, like us civilized folks.

Spirituality: Then came the Enlightenment, which distinguished itself against the crude ways of the past. Ironically, they all embraced the most brutal form of human repression— slavery and the inferiority of some men. Out of that, they say the chains of institutionalized religion is something for people of lesser intellects, and then a new movement started to emerge:

• 14th to 15th Century: Originally referred to the immaterial nature of angels, or more commonly, the “clergy” and the property of the Church (contrasted with secular or temporal domains). This occurred only in European intellectualism; Islam never separated the two. No one in Asia or Africa did either.

• 19th and 20th Century to Present: Shifted away from strictly Catholic/ecclesiastical contexts to describe personal, subjective, and inner mental dimensions of life, independent of organized religion, but unknown to the drones that got hold of it community. It is a selfish, hype-Eurocentric movement focused on the self, as opposed to shared rituals and communal responsibility. Very vain and inward-looking. But beyond all of that, the same motive exists: We are not them! They are fewer than us; they do not get it. I swore they were escaping the pitfalls of “organized religions”? (2)

The New Atheism arrived in the 2000s and is just yet another rebellion, but behaves like everything that came before: “US and Not THEM”! Again, what we see is the same modus operandi to “the other”, the same intolerance and hostility they blame religious folks for having. The same proselytizing or evangelizing zeal is evident in all the above.

So, in practice, how are they different? Which one of the above deals with creating a new human being whose primary concern is living in harmony with nature and each other? Which one has respect for diversity?

• float: means unanchored people who have no fixed ideology to nest them into any form of accountability. Today they are this, tomorrow they are that. They can be walking contradictions and so distracted by their own noise that they fail to see they are the thing they hate.

• Organized religion is a tricky phrase, as one would have to assume that some “religions” are unorganized. So using the term for any purpose means to believe that some religions have structure while others (often those found among the black tribes) do not. Do you see where accepting the term leaves us? I would avoid the silly construction altogether.