Aesthetic atheism
Another phenomenon in spirituality today is the intellectual orientation. I usually call this aesthetic atheism.
With the term aesthetic atheism, I refer to the spirituality that seems to hold an atheistic, and often Darwinian stance but in a more aesthetically pleasing way.
This approach may, for example, be used to explain karma as cause and effect. A law without value and without justice, like other laws of nature. At most one can deduce to be kind in the long run, to the fact that something good usually comes out of it in the end (although I am very doubtful if this conclusion is true).
It can speak of good and evil as human values, impossible to apply to nature. And about divine laws as laws of nature. This usually leads to a position where everything is seen as perfect as it is, and that it is our values that prevent us from seeing this.
Grace or perceived help in our lives is usually attributed to chance in this attitude. It can happen to anyone and for no special reason.
The question becomes. What do we have to gain from a more beautiful description of natural laws? Can this estetization of futility and chance make us feel compelled to love even what hurts or worse, quietly watch as injustice and violence are practised?
What I described here is not the same as the philosophical idea that the world and the spirit is one, as described in the last post. This idea means that the world is more than we think, and also contains what we call spirit. This is called by the teacher and mystic Uma Inder; “Supernature”. Here the spirit is not different from the world but one with it.
The difference between this view and the one described above is that the previously described is inclusive while this described can be described as reductionist.
