I've always wondered what people are talking about when they say "spiritual". Moderately religious people say it all the time, the classic apologist line of "I'm not religious but I am a spiritual person" springs to mind. I've always pigeon-holed people who say this to me as really meaning that they can't be bothered to invest in the ritual and paraphernalia of organised religion but can't let go of the wishful thought that they might have a benevolent father in the sky that looks out for them. It always seems like a cop out to me, trying to benefit from in-group membership without putting the effort in, anyway, I've never had anyone adequately describe what it means or why this feeling isn't entirely natural and human.
When I think about this feeling my conclusion is that "spiritual" simply means a feeling of wonder or awe, quite natural and totally expected when you possess a powerful reasoning simulation engine like a human brain (some more powerful than others of course!) This feeling is usually invoked by observing something surprising or inspiring and seems to be because my reasoning brain calculates the effort involved and the achievement accrued or perhaps the improbability of the event. I suppose if I exclude thinking about non-existent (low probability) entities then most people must experience this at some point, and I suspect depending on their environment and conditioning different things will be agents for spiritual feelings. The photograph above was taken by wildlife photographer Bobby Haas in Mexico and shows the fleeting instant a flock of flamingos formed into the shape of, well, a flamingo! I don't know if Mr Haas is a religious person or not but in his interview he talks about the "holy grail" of wildlife photography and the moment he snapped this picture as a "spiritual" moment, his meaning is not clear but this is obviously a very low probability event.
Brain chemistry is a truly complex thing and in a rather tenuous and weak segue to other chemistry news I noticed on the BBC site today that the IBM laboratory in Zurich has published some more pictures of atoms (see below)
The scale of this picture is mind boggling, what you're looking at are individual carbon atoms and the colours represent higher or lower densities of electrons, the shape of the molecule can clearly be seen. Now I don't know about you but when I contemplate the skill, intellect and resourcefulness (never mind financial investment!) required to produce a picture like this it's about as close to a spiritual thought as I think I'll ever get; my religious brothers and sisters are welcome to their allegories and their wishful thoughts but this stuff is ground breaking, highly inspirational and most importantly for me, real.
No comments:
Post a Comment