" Free your mind and your ass will follow- the kingdom of heaven is within" George Clinton Funkadelic 1970 No truer words have ever been written

I am an atheist pagan, and do not believe in gods or goddesses. I think they are archetypes to make sense of the world when the ancient people had no other explanation. I honor the earth and nature. I believe in a life force, but I don't worship it or anything.

Spear-Ritual nonsense. All hocus pocus is nothing more than the solipsistic nature of monkeys in pants in a futile attempt to deny their mortality. Spirit and soul are made up words from the infancy of a hominid species previous to any comprehension of scientific reality. Spirituality is merely delusion in another set of clothes.

Your idea of herding the religious flocks into halfway houses called spiritual treatment centers is laudable but unrealistic. The people who monetize religion will fight you till the end of time.

A step forward. I have seen people at the Grand Canyon say this is a spiritual moment and for the lack of something else to say I agreed

Being spiritual is just another copout. It can mean anything that you want it to mean. It can be applied any way that you want to apply it. Today you are "spiritual" because of trees, mountains, and birds. Tomorrow you have discovered that the great Wotan has created them and wants you to burn virgins and cut off part of your penis. Failure to do so will banish you to the outhouse forever.

I've never been spiritual.

Perhaps. I perceive it more as a first step in a twelve step program toward social, secular sobriety. Whether it will work that way remains to be seen. We can but hope.

Maybe it does and I guess its a step in the right direction. it's still a pile of shit to me.

Dualism is an concept with long standing, that the mind is sperate from the body, God is sperate from his creation. It was however, an induction, not a dedection and was inferred without evidence. It's pretty clear our minds are part of our bodies now, but people still believe in the Easter Bunny. Some ideas are harder to be fir of than others. I can't say that any belief in an imagininary being or state is positive, it's only something that happens to some people, like toe fungus.