Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Secular Spirituality and the Logic of Giving Thanks

  • Published:
Sophia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Some atheists are attracted to the idea of a secular spirituality that carries no commitment to the existence of God or anything similar. Is this a coherent possibility? This paper seeks to define what we mean by a ‘spirituality’ by examining Robert C. Solomon’s defence of spirituality for the religious skeptic, and pursues the question of its coherence by reflecting on what is implied by taking thankfulness to be a proper response to our existence.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Under the auspices of the University of Auckland Alumni Association, on his way through Auckland after Writers and Readers Week at the Wellington Arts Festival (Saturday, 13 March, 2010).

  2. http://richarddawkins.net/

  3. The enclosed quotation is from McCabe 2007, p.76. The reference to Dennett is to Dennett 2007.

  4. Richard Swinburne’s definition of God typifies this conception, when he says that God is ‘[a] person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the Universe’ (Swinburne 1993, p. 1).

  5. One might possibly have a spiritual passion, and approve of it, and yet not actually commit in practice to its specific stance on reality. That would count as a failure akin to weakness of will, I suggest, since approving of one’s feeling that (for example) the world is fundamentally benign must surely motivate one to live a life that takes it indeed to be so.

  6. I here include amongst motivations interpretations of a situation, e.g. as one in which I am under threat, or the centre of attention, etc.

  7. This claim, it seems to me, is a good candidate for a belief with respect to which there can be no non-resistant non-belief: we all know in our heart of hearts that that this is true.

  8. This last qualification is intended to set to one side the possibility of post-mortem verification of claims of this kind in some putative realm of existence transcending the spatio-temporal historical order.

  9. It is worth noting that, since there being no more to the real than would be known by an ideally completed natural science is not itself a claim that could be established as a matter of natural scientific fact, scientific naturalism itself amplifies reality-as-grasped-in-completed-natural-science. But it is a minimal amplification – the amplification you have to have in order to avoid amplifications.

  10. This Hall of Residence, founded in 1961, was named in honour of Lord Bruce of Melbourne (Stanley Melbourne Bruce), a notably Anglophile Prime Minister of Australia (from 1923-29), and first Chancellor of the Australian National University.

  11. It is important to recognise that a resolutely naturalist ontology is consistent with a worldview that transcends scientific naturalism: everything that is may have a description that brings it within the domain of science, and yet some ‘emergent’ features of reality may be beyond any possible scientific explanation or understanding.

  12. I have made further remarks about taking the concept of God to be the concept of the ultimate telos in Bishop 2007 and 2009.

  13. Earlier versions of this paper were delivered at the 3rd Annual Conference of the Australasian Philosophy of Religion Association, University of Melbourne, 17-18 July 2010, and at a research seminar at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Waikato, 5 August, 2010. I am grateful to audiences on both occasions for stimulating discussion.

References

  • Aristotle (2004). The Nicomachean ethics. J.A.K. Thomson, trans. London: Penguin.

  • Bishop, J. (2007). How a modest fideism may constrain concepts of God: a Christian alternative to classical theism. Philosophia, 35, 387–402.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bishop, J. (2009). Towards a religiously adequate alternative to omniGod theism. Sophia, 48(4), 419–433.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dennett, D. C. (2007). Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eagleton, T. (2009). Reason, faith, and revolution: Reflections on the God debate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hume, D. (1989). Dialogues concerning natural religion. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, M. (2009). Saving God: Religion after idolatry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McCabe, H. (2007). Faith within reason. London: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Solomon, R. C. (2002). Spirituality for the skeptic: The thoughtful love of life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Swinburne, R. (1993). The coherence of theism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, 1142, New Zealand

    John Bishop

Authors
  1. John Bishop
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John Bishop.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Bishop, J. Secular Spirituality and the Logic of Giving Thanks. SOPHIA 49, 523–534 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0216-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-010-0216-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation