Spirituality, Reduced to a Component

In my previous post entitled “Spiritual Anti-Religionism” I drew a distinction between being religion and spirituality. This was something that until now I had never though of as separate things. This recent realization has sparked a large amount of interest in me to explore the concept of spirituality, as it is no longer what I thought it to be. The main question I have is related to the first reading we did for class, “Why do we Believe.” This article attempts to give a scientific explanation for why religion exists today. The primary arguments were that religion promoted group selection, and was therefore an evolutionarily stable strategy. This makes sense, but when we try to apply the same reason to why humans are spiritual it doesn’t work.
The problem is that spirituality alone does not imply group identity, or promote coherent society. As a person who thinks very scientifically, I think that fact that humans are intrinsically spiritual beings can be explained through natural selection. The following paragraphs are some theories that could explain why we are the way we are.
One possible reason is sort of implied, but not explicitly stated in “Why do we Believe.” This would be that spirituality is an emotional experience. I have discussed in a few previous posts the power of human emotion. Perhaps then spirituality developed to provide the emotional backing that makes religion so effective at being the big umbrella. This is the only real scientific explanation I can come up with.
There is, however, another non-scientific explanation. I have not written much in my blog posts about religious alternatives, but they must be taken in to account to achieve a thorough analysis. The other explanation is that the existence of spirituality in humans is divinely inspired. One cannot disprove the possibility that God exists and that either by instantaneous creation or by inspired evolution humans are intrinsically spiritual.
Overall, spirituality is one of the most important components of religion. Until recently I did not even distinguish the two as being different. I now realize they are different in that spirituality does not accomplish identity or cohesion by itself. Spirituality is merely a component of religion.

Response to Tammi

I just read Tammi's post on abstract art. In this post she expressed a frustration in not being able to find religion in a particular piece of art, continuing on to look at the physical properties of the painting and trying to connect them to religion. Looking for religion in the art itself is very interesting, but in after reading the articles I have approached the abstract art in a totally different way. For me it is not the physical painting where I see religion, but the context in which it was painted. Most of the people who are viewing this work have probably not read up before hand, but In a way the historical context behind the painting is a huge part of the art itself.