Do we as humans have spiritual needs?

[OnceConvinced]

I have heard people say that religion fills spiritual needs. I've even heard people who are not religious say they are spiritual people.

But exactly what are spiritual needs?

Do we really have them?

[OnceConvinced]

[Replying to post 9 by Divine Insight]

I wonder exactly how does a spiritual needs differ to other needs. "Spirit" seems to be to be something very similar to a "soul" ie it seems to be like a religious term - something that can't be proven to exist. When we talk about someone's spirit aren't we actually talking about their emotions or state of being? Their personality. The way they deal with things? All that sort of thing?

It would seem to me that anything involving feelings or emotions comes from the brain, but people normally see the spirit as being something different again.

Isn't it a little like saying "I feel in my Heart". A heart is really just a blood pumping organ and no feelings are going on there. What we're really talking about it part of the brain. Isn't the spirit just another part of our brain?

Imagination, deep thought... that all seems to be intellectual to me, thus we would surely be thinking about intellectual needs there?

[Divine Insight]

Imagination, deep thought... that all seems to be intellectual to me, thus we would surely be thinking about intellectual needs there?

I totally agree. It's totally intellectual for certain. There can be no doubt about it. Without intellect the only needs we could possibly have would be the needs of the moment for sustenance and/or environmental physical comfort. And that would be it.

Anything beyond that is necessarily an abstract intellectual concept.

I agree.

If we "yearn" for something imagined, then clearly what we are yearning for is for our imagination to come true. So spiritual desires can be nothing more than a lust for imagination to become reality.

[Mr.Badham]

I have heard people say that religion fills spiritual needs. I've even heard people who are not religious say they are spiritual people.

But exactly what are spiritual needs?

Do we really have them?

I've come to the conclusion that if someone believes it is their "spirit/soul" that is ultimately judged when they die, than it must be the part of them that makes the decisions on how to act/behave. There would be no point in punishing something that wasn't responsible for what it is being punished for.

Therefore "spiritual needs" is another way of saying "clear conscience". They're saying, "I don't want to feel shame or guilt". That's where God steps in.

They convince themselves, or allow themselves to be convinced, that they are acting in accordance with something that can relieve them of their shame.

Oddly enough, it's the very belief in god that causes most of the guilt and shame to begin with. It's like any addiction really, you wouldn't need it if you weren't addicted to it.

You wouldn't have spiritual needs if you didn't believe there were spiritual needs to be had.

[jerryxplu]

[Replying to post 10 by OnceConvinced]

I guess it could be an emotional need. Such as oh man my life sucks and I worry about the future so religious spiritual would be like "Everything will be fine since god is watching over me"

I met other people who are somewhat spiritual in the sense they made their peace with life and accepted life for what it is and therefore becomes fearless and takes life head on. In a sense that is also spiritual.

We don't know if today or tomorrow you will just die from random accident or found out you have some terminal illness (same for your love one). We don't live in a world of absolute certainty and not knowing what will happen can be a great source of fear and stress.

In the end for me right now spiritual is just a mentality you have on life itself in order to find inner peace as you live in a ever changing world that you have very little control of.

[jerrygg38]

Spiritual needs are addressed in the argument from desire. Philosopher Peter Kreeft puts it this way:

Premise 1: Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.

Premise 2: But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.

Conclusion: Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.

This something is what people call "God" and "life with God forever."

Kreeft makes a distinction between innate/natural desires and artificial desires. .

This appears to be a very good analysis of the existence of a spiritual dimension which people reach for. It is my opinion that we reach for our souls within the spiritual dimension. these exist within the mind of God. as seen throughout the history of man, great effort has been made to climb a mountain, go into a cave, deny ourselves food and water, take drugs in order to reach something. It is self evident to me that something beyond our ordinary dimensions exists since many many people have reached this. the fact that they come back with different answers only attest to the conclusion that we reach for our own souls which produces very subjective answers. If we reached a higher level of the mind of the collective mind of the Earth the answers would be more common.
in any event the religions of man are produced by those spiritual people who reach out to the spiritual dimension and bring back their impression of god.