Spirit on the brain
This is incomplete, obviously.
ON THE NATURE OF GOD
Earl Dunovant
Copyright © 2003
There has never been a human culture that lacked a spiritual element. Even Neanderthals, not human in the strict sense, left evidence of spiritual concerns. What the reason for this is, I don't know; it may not even be profitable to speculate on it. But the universality of the spiritual impulse makes it seem to me as absolute a part of human nature as standing erect and speech.
This is not to say there are no individuals lacking the spiritual impulse, nor to say that these people are less than human. Saying that would make no more sense than saying a mute person isn't human. And just as one can lose the ability to walk by various means, one can lose the ability…or maybe just the interest…to express the spirit by various means. These exceptional people do not make the spirit any less fundamental to the nature of humanity, no more than people permanently injured in an accident makes walking less fundamental to our physical nature.
I see people as constantly questing after the spirit. Even atheists tend to constantly seek to dispute the issue, a gesture that strikes me like a paraplegic trying to convince people that no one can walk. I've often wondered if they would prefer to be proven wrong.
Generally the quest, and the disputes, center on the nature of God (which for now I will only define as "that which the spiritual impulse makes us seek and question"). That there is something we are seeking and questioning is beyond dispute. The interesting questions to me were, since we're all human, why aren't we seeking the same thing? Since we're all human and all living on the same planet under the same laws, why don't we see this universal thing the same way? Simply put, why don't we agree on the nature of God?
