Spiritual but not Religious

This idea is an evolution that came through my generation. There were always people who thought this way but it became a demographic of the West Coast first and now it is very common throughout the U.S.

The idea came from the following problem: "If you are not Christian enough we are going to have to kill you" which was an idea that Christians tended to live by up until around the 1950s even here in the U.S. So, freedom of religion was true as long as you didn't make waves here in the U.S.

So, our generation looked at Global Nuclear Annihilation and came up with the idea that: "God is where you find him", God is where you find her, Buddha is where you find him or her, and "may the force be with you" from Star Wars.

And from this attitude we found a way not to have the whole planet blow up. As these ideas spread around the world on our music Sung by the Beatles and others we embraced, "Make Love Not War" which came from Freud originally. We also saw all nations and all peoples as our brothers and sisters and we didn't need to kill them.

One of the sayings of our generation that is cynical was: "Join the army, visit exotic peoples, And kill them".

So, the point was embrace the world as fellow human beings don't kill them.

So, this is how "Spiritual but not religious" became a philosophy that millions and millions of us live by now.

It is a way of embracing all peoples and all religions that you find useful. It is a way to take from all religions ideas that you personally find useful for yourself or mankind or both.

So, it is a way of preventing Global nuclear holocaust. Working against fundamentalism of all kinds: religious, political, atheism, scientific or whatever.

Whatever philosophy or religion says, "If you don't believe like I do I'm going to kill you" isn't useful to survival of humankind here on earth.

However, the exception has to be sort of like the way we have to treat black widow spiders or animals who try to kill people. You cannot allow this to happen. So, Spiritual but not religious doesn't mean you are stupid.

To the contrary it means you embrace all life in the universe as brothers and sisters. We are all the life force of the universe. We have life in common.

So, this philosophy recognizes that often religions kill each other. So, spiritual but not religious acknowledges the value of all religions but people like this are not willing to kill other people except in self defense.