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Secular spirituality emphasizes humanistic qualities such as love, compassion, patience, forgiveness, responsibility, harmony, and a concern for others. [7] Du Toit argues aspects of life and human experience which go beyond a purely materialistic view of the world are spiritual; spirituality does not require belief in a supernatural reality or divine being.
A sacred power, being or will enters the body or mind of an individual and possesses it. A person capable of being possessed is sometimes called a medium. The deity, spirit or power uses such a person to communicate to the immanent world. Lewis argues that ecstasy and possession are basically one and the same experience, ecstasy being merely ...
[note 1] On the contrary, a sacred thing can be "a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred." [ 81 ] Religious beliefs, myths, dogmas and legends are the representations that express the nature of these sacred things, and the virtues and powers which are attributed to them.
State supremacy is a secular principle that supports obedience to the rule of law over religious diktat or canon law, while internal constraint is a secular principle that opposes governmental control over one's personal life. Under political secularism, the government can enforce how people act but not what they believe.
A diagram of the church-sect typology continuum including church, denomination, sect, cult, new religious movement, and institutionalized sect The church-sect typology has its origins in the work of Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch , and from about the 1930s to the late 1960s it inspired numerous studies and theoretical models especially in ...
The challenge for the psychology of religion is essentially threefold: to provide a thoroughgoing description of the objects of investigation, whether they be shared religious content (e.g., a tradition's ritual observances) or individual experiences, attitudes, or conduct;
The term secular religion is often applied today to communal belief systems—as for example with the view of love as the postmodern secular religion. [11] Paul Vitz applied the term to modern psychology in as much as it fosters a cult of the self, explicitly calling "the self-theory ethic ... this secular religion". [12]
Deity: (or a god) A postulated preternatural being, usually, but not always, of significant power, worshipped, thought holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, or respected by human beings. They assume a variety of forms, but are frequently depicted as having human or animal form.