Well, chansen, I read pretty much what I expected.

We are an increasingly secular, atheistic, and agnostic society. The cosmology that captures people's imagination is no longer religious mythology but scientific cosmology.

If we want to kindle any kind of spirituality, it has to be in tune with scientific cosmology. Not traditional religion accepting science, but science and science-based philosophy as religion, initiated by scientists.

Whether they like it or not, scientists are the intellectual and spiritual elite, the High Priests of today. I think they owe it to humanity to assume this role responsibly.

lol Chemguy might be on there.

I don't know about scientists becoming leaders in this sense. There are some good scientists who are good speakers and teachers, but guys like Dawkins and Shermer are the exceptions.

What I think is important, is showing everyone how so many young people actually do think about faith. They have reasons for their disbelief or disinterest. They are not all about X-Boxes and shopping and sex, though those three things do account for 95% of their lives. Seriously, they've almost all thought about it. Especially the bright ones - they're the ones you have an even smaller chance with, and that's borne out by the numbers of religious university grads and post-grads.

We see often how non-believers are accused of not considering faith enough, of not giving it a fair chance. Read what these people are telling you.

Also, in terms of evangelism, who the hell really believes that the reason more people don't go to church is that they haven't heard the good news about Jesus, or they haven't been told an uplifting personal story of faith? You'd have to live under a rock to avoid this stuff. And if you read comments like I linked to, you'll see that many of these non-believers are also pretty well informed. Further, because they've been fending off conversion attacks for so long, they can do it in their sleep, because the evangelism attempts rehash the same straegies over and over again.

Whether scientists are an intellectual elite or not, they are definitely not a spiritual elite. It's not their area of expertise, and from most of my PhD colleagues that I've spoken to, they really haven't given it much thought.  So we shouldn't expect deep thoughts from them on the subject.

Well, spiritbear, if the physical universe is part of God, or God is the unified universe, as in panentheism, pantheism or unitheism, then the study of the natural world is, at least in part, theology. What's more, it is the least speculative and most truthful part of theology.

Too bad that many theologians, and many scientists, don't see it that way, eh?

Not really - theology involves the study of our relationship with the natural world and other humans (part of the natural world) and the source of those relationships - what spiritual people would call God.  That has a larger scope than simply studying the physical world. It's a scope that requires looking at the "big picture", whereas scientists are by their nature specialists - looking at a subset of the whole. It's one of the fundamentals of how to do science - break the question down into the smallest units possible, which makes the system testable. With too many variables, you can ask a question, but the answer is just as easily due to one of the variables that you haven't addressed. 

There is but one experience of life. Each element, each mechanism and every organism, serves a purpose. This purpose is nothing more or less than the survival and flourishing of human being in and through the natural order.

It is to this purpose that we are to devote our freedom, our responsibililty, our creativity and our courage; whether as scientist or sage. This is a purpose that can no longer be put off. We are going to adopt it or perish.

The young intuit this and seek alternatives. Some dispatch the old to the trash heap. Some sort through the available evidence, selecting what seems adequate to the challenge and rejecting all that compromises hope for the way forward.

Here is a short video. It is me as a "participant observer" among the young in the streets of Kamloops. I have been observing and listening to the young in various Canadian cities. Always as a supportive and encouraging presence as they explore the options and alternatives available to them. Never as someone who wants to recruit them to the broken machinery of the United Church. Always as a person animated by faith deeply rooted in a critical reading of historical sources and inspired by the spirit of change "blowing on the wind".

George

Chansen,

Since the religious practice one subscribes to is often the one that one was exposed to or raised in, I think that what you call naval gazing does not have to be a negative thing or an exercise in futility. Unfortunately when one honestly looks at one's naval one has to admit what is found there.

Since it is UCC children, grandchildren, great grandchildren... missing from within UCC churches one would expect the answer is in their own naval. They stood at the bottom of a flight of steps and yelled up, "you are TO going to church! " They have the reasons and thus the answers.

Yet like any time there is family dysfunction people say they are looking and listening when they are in fact avoiding, enabling, distancing...

When every single person in the pew has been told over and over again why, the answers are there. When they have been told and cannot or will not talk about it because of shame or guilt about "letting on", saying what happens at their house the stigma hides the answers. When they cannot say anything to it because they have feelings that they might just be right, they keep that hidden.

In therapy they say you are only as sick as the secrets you keep.

Chansen, I would agree that in the church and among church types people spend lots of time talking with nothing said, deflecting, making excuses, general avoidance, etc. So, we can spend decades on the couch and not learn a darned thing.

SG, if UCCan types had the answers, their kids would still be in church.

I agree that for many the religion chosen or sought is the one they have been brought up.  If a child has been brought up in a home that religion or some kind of faith attendance service has been part of their practice, then there is a greater possibility that they will choose that model, even years later, if they choose to seek it out.

I also think, that when one is looking for a religion or a faith practice that acceptance and experiencing community and belonging makes a lot of difference.

Both my children were raised in the church.  And yes, they were told they had to go - til Grade 12.  But they liked going, so it was never a battle.  My son grew up, left home, and hasn't been to church since.

My daughter, on the hand, receives a lot of "community" from her church family.  I don't think it would matter much which church or faith practice to her . . . but because she was raised in this one, there is belonging and comfort and understanding.  But if it disappeared, she would seek this community in another faith based place.

Perhaps this is where The UCC needs to focus - is how to build community within their churches.  Sometimes it is done by programs, services, and other offered ways.  But if people don't feel accepted, welcomed, and a part of - there will be nothing to draw them there.

Hi spiritbear:

Modern science is rooted in the Arabic culture. At the Golden Age of the Arabic culture (around the time of our Early Middle Ages) there was no separation between the sciences and the arts. Every study, including the study of mathematics and the natural sciences, was regarded as art, and the leading natural scientists and mathematicians often were mystics who derived their breakthrough discoveries in a mystical state.

Al-Balyani, one of those Arabic scientist-mathematician-mystics once said: "When the secret of the atom within the atom is clear, then the secret of all things, both internal and external, is clear, and you see nothing but God."

Today science has discovered the "atom within the atom," and that the smallest particles are also waves, and that wave and particle are opposites, and that there is a power or force that transcends these opposites and makes one into the other. What's more, science has determined that there is an eternal substance (energy) of which everything consists, that this substance can neither be created nor destroyed, and that the substance is a singularity. Eternal energy as a singularity capable of transcendence is a recipe for limitless creativeness—one can't get any more spiritual than that! Although different scientific branches examine only part of the picture, they have to duly regard the wholisticness of the whole picture in order to understand the partial picture.

Chansen, we have the answers. We have been given them time and time again. Parents heard them when they demanded someone get dressed Sunday. They heard it when they heard "bunch of hypocrites" They heard it when someone said "it is ridiculous". They just pretend they don't. They say, "its them, they don't come. "
Just as every single family entering therapy already has the answers. The therapist initiates the conversation, aids it being kept open and honest, helps people listen....
Folks just can't see the answers, but they have them.
You know it's working when you are able to say ,"maybe it is't them, maybe it's me. "
You know it is working when you admit you cannot change anyone else.
You know it's working when you can let go without anger, cajoling, begging, guilting, shaming...
We ain't there yet is all.
But we have the answers. Often they are the very same answers for why we drifted away, why we get upset, What is missing for us. ..
But it is often not to spoken, that which will not be named. It can be comfortable on that river of denial.
In churches, in homes. ... anywhere human relationships are.

Good post Arm. I think that science at this time is on the very precipice of discovering the "larger scope", as Spirit Bear calls it. Science has admittingly reached the end of the line of what can be called physical. We are now reaching, and generally accepting, into believing that is a metaphysical realm of quantum mechanics that precede our physical mechanics. They are not unrelated, say the ancient scripts, one is the cause of the other, hence Genesis 1:27. This quantum world, where electrons can appear anywhere at any time, sits in and behind our physical world. In our lifetime it's about to be one of those waterfall events in history where mankind steps into a new realm of awareness.

Yes, Neo, science is becoming more and more spiritual. The physical is becoming, or merging with, the metaphysical.

"science is becoming more spiritual".  Well .... no. Certainly there are elements of what has been discovered that may suggest the spiritual, but the "spiritual" is to be found in what we do with that knowledge, rather than the knowledge itself. How does it change our relationship with our world and with each other? The knowledge itself only takes us part of the way there, and that will always be the case, no matter how much we know. 

SG says "we have the answers" and in an interesting twist (and probably not caught by those who do not read deeply), I take this to mean that the people with the "answers" need to listen to the answers of others. Certainly the "old guard" in churches haven't been listening to the answers. But what are those answers, exactly? That the words they choose to use are not understood by their children, so perhaps it's time to rephrase? That the practices and exercises that move them and help them find meaning do not do so for their children? Does this mean that their children are not interested in finding meaning? Absolutely not. But each generation must find its own way to do so. Otherwise that generation cannot claim it as its own. And that means that each generation needs to encourage the next to find its way. That hasn't happened. Remember after the resurrection where Christ says "do not hang on to me"? Well, that's what churches have done. They've stuck with what they know (or more specifically, how they've practised it), and have demanded that their children do likewise. They wish to cling to their lives, and as the scripture says, that's how to lose them.

In all this, those old answers may still apply - forgiveness, love, peace-seeking, compassion, sacrifice, transcendence - all those qualities epitomized in Christ , are just as important as they ever were. But with each generation the focus changes. In a war-torn century such as the early 20th, sacrifice was the focus. When secular states demanded the lives of their children to appease the quest of those states for power, land or wealth, the idea of sacrifice was important spiritually - that in their sacrifice, a new, more just society could be built. What is the focus to be now? Perhaps the way in which technology is gradually consuming our humanity, and the "me" is increasing excluding the "we" - or maybe it's something else. But we need to find a way of expressing that liturgically, musically, and above all, communally. Every church needs to ask themselves if they have been doing this, and if not, what they plan to do about it.

Science and religion are, in fact, two different things that can, and do, interact. Secular philosophy may also come into play (making it a triangle) or may take the place of religion for those who are not religious.

Science collects, categorizes, experiments, observes to expand our base of knowledge about the universe.

When you start making statements about the importance of that knowledge or about how it affects our "place in the universe", or how it should be used to improve our lives, then you are moving into religion/philosophy.

Take the search for alien life.

Science looks for signs of life, figures out how to determine if those signs really are coming from life, studies that life (once there is some to study) to determine how it functions.

However, the question "What does the existence of life beyond the Earth mean for our understanding of our place in the universe?" moves us beyond science. While the science may inform that discussion, it is really a philosophical/religious question.

Take the question of whether chimps and bonobos ought to be accorded "human" rights.

Science tells us the genomes of the two species in the genus pan (chimps and bonobos), how it relates to the human genome, when they branched off from the main line of hominids, and so on. It may decide that pan belongs in the hominid line rather than the pongidae (apes), but has not done so.

The questions "Does this make them human?" and "Do they have the same rights as humans?" takes that knowledge and then reflects on it through the light of ethics, philosophy, and, yes, religion. Even if scientists were to reclassify the genus pan as being hominids, the decision on how this affects their legal and social status would still be a philosophical and, for some, religious one.

Science provides knowledge. Religion and philosophy reflect on the meaning of that knowledge for society and advocate for how we should act based on that meaning.

Just some thoughts on the discussion above.

Mendalla

And, on the original topic, some thoughts as well.

What is meant by "religious"?

If it means faithfully adhering to the doctrines and practices of a specific tradition like Christianity (or Islam, or Buddhism, or whatever), then I am likely not religious. UU'ism is rather unique beast in that one can really be UU simply by living in accordance with the principles without necessarily observing any special practices or doctrines. I am honestly not sure that the mainstream of UU'ism is "religious" in this conventional sense.

If it means being concerned with matters of religion; with understanding our place in, and connection, that which is fundamental in existence (whether or not we call that fundamental "God"), and trying to live out the understanding that we come to then I am, indeed, religious. And this is the definition of "religious" that I think better fits UU'ism, at least in my experience.

Mendalla

Yes, of course, it is the experience of cosmic unity rather than the theoretical knowledge that compels us to be compassionate. And spiritual action, of course, is carrying out the compassion we experience in our daily actions. And spiritual action is what ultimately counts.

I think if we don't re-discover contemplation, and through it spiritual experience as the essential element of faith, then we might as well pack it in as a church.

Yes, Mendalla, I agree.

Well said. Again, I agree.