Nature May Have A Profound Effect On Our Religiosity
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  Nature May Have A Profound Effect On Our Religiosity
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Author Topic: Nature May Have A Profound Effect On Our Religiosity  (Read 1540 times)
afleitch
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« on: August 21, 2015, 06:41:05 AM »

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/08/20/432911010/nature-may-have-a-profound-effect-on-our-religiosity.

"In U.S. counties with warm winters, temperate summers and beautiful natural resources — like beaches, lakes, hills or mountains — people's rates of affiliation with religious organizations are lower than in other places, according to a new study.

The study's authors, Todd W. Ferguson and Jeffrey A. Tamburello of Baylor University, write in the journal Sociology of Religion: "Natural amenities can be considered as a resource for spirituality that has the power to satisfy some people's need for inspiration, awe and divine connection ... When a person hikes in a forest to connect with the sacred, she or he may not feel the need to affiliate with a religious organization because her or his spiritual demands are met."


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I can relate to this actually, anecdotally. I'm lucky to live in a place where wilderness is 20 minutes away and it's just astounding how much it inspires.
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DavidB.
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« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2015, 10:26:16 AM »

Of course. In so many religions, specific geograhical sites have inspired religion and religiosity for centuries. Natural beauty can be extremely inspiring and it can certainly make me feel closer to G-d.
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Figs
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« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2015, 09:42:53 AM »

Of course. In so many religions, specific geograhical sites have inspired religion and religiosity for centuries. Natural beauty can be extremely inspiring and it can certainly make me feel closer to G-d.

This seems to be the opposite of what the study indicates.
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DavidB.
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« Reply #3 on: August 24, 2015, 12:44:22 PM »

Of course. In so many religions, specific geograhical sites have inspired religion and religiosity for centuries. Natural beauty can be extremely inspiring and it can certainly make me feel closer to G-d.

This seems to be the opposite of what the study indicates.
Oh, I see. I admit I had only read the title of this thread. Interesting.
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Spamage
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« Reply #4 on: August 25, 2015, 02:10:02 PM »

This probably explains part of the general lack of religion in the Pacific Northwest, among other things.
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Blue3
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« Reply #5 on: August 25, 2015, 02:47:51 PM »

Of course. In so many religions, specific geograhical sites have inspired religion and religiosity for centuries. Natural beauty can be extremely inspiring and it can certainly make me feel closer to G-d.

This seems to be the opposite of what the study indicates.
It could also mean people get their religious fulfillment from nature better than going to a church every week.
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Figs
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« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2015, 02:51:53 PM »

Of course. In so many religions, specific geograhical sites have inspired religion and religiosity for centuries. Natural beauty can be extremely inspiring and it can certainly make me feel closer to G-d.

This seems to be the opposite of what the study indicates.
It could also mean people get their religious fulfillment from nature better than going to a church every week.

My reading was that they were trying to draw a pretty distinct line between religion and spirituality.
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Mr. Smith
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« Reply #7 on: August 26, 2015, 01:29:17 PM »

For once, I agree with DavidB.

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RFayette
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« Reply #8 on: August 26, 2015, 10:43:41 PM »

Romans 1:25 strikes again.
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afleitch
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« Reply #9 on: August 27, 2015, 12:08:15 AM »

Are you all just reading what you want to read?
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Sol
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« Reply #10 on: August 28, 2015, 05:53:37 PM »

I suspect that this can be related to other factors.
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bore
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« Reply #11 on: August 29, 2015, 09:59:20 AM »

Leaving aside the obvious correlation and causation issues here, this study also involves two things which  can't really be defined, religion and nature.

For one thing religious affiliation, belief in God, religious practice and spirituality are not even close to the same thing, and even if they were they depends so much on how the questions are asked to make it exceedingly difficult to be useful in this type of survey.

Even more importantly though "nature" doesn't mean anything and can't be defined. We find deserts and forests, rivers and lakes, mountains and fens all beautiful despite the fact they have nothing in common. The scale itself uses "warm winter, winter sun, temperate summer, low summer humidity, topographical variation and water area, each precisely defined" as the qualities, and it's easy to find counter examples for each of these categories. Easy to live in and awe inspiring are not even close to the same thing, and the Alps cold winter temperatures and the Amazons year round heat show this better than anything I can say.
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Filuwaúrdjan
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« Reply #12 on: August 29, 2015, 10:08:10 AM »

We find deserts and forests, rivers and lakes, mountains and fens all beautiful despite the fact they have nothing in common.

And notions of beauty have not stayed constant. Until Romanticism happened and made everyone see sense, a beautiful landscape (at least to a member of the educated classes) was a prosperous agricultural one of the sort turned into weird sub-Classical fetish by Claude Lorrain: most of the landscapes that we particularly value today were routinely dismissed as 'waste'.
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afleitch
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« Reply #13 on: August 29, 2015, 11:20:41 AM »

We find deserts and forests, rivers and lakes, mountains and fens all beautiful despite the fact they have nothing in common.

And notions of beauty have not stayed constant. Until Romanticism happened and made everyone see sense, a beautiful landscape (at least to a member of the educated classes) was a prosperous agricultural one of the sort turned into weird sub-Classical fetish by Claude Lorrain: most of the landscapes that we particularly value today were routinely dismissed as 'waste'.

How beauty is 'assembled' may not stay constant, but notions of beauty certainly in the natural world have remained constant. Flowers have always been beautiful and happen to be found in the earliest, pre Homo Sapiens graves. We have 'evolved' to find them beautiful. Whether one likes wildflowers or a poinsettia, we've always found flowers beautiful.
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Georg Ebner
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« Reply #14 on: August 31, 2015, 05:59:24 AM »

The aesthetical absolutism of Classicism is wrong as well as the aesthetical relativism of Nihilism. Leaves the aesthetical hierarchism of Historism.
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Georg Ebner
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« Reply #15 on: August 31, 2015, 06:05:50 AM »

Religion means to stand aside and watch our own animalic life. Thus nature cannot explain, THAT we are religious, only partly HOW we are.
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