re accepting jeesus in your heart in article apr geneva rutgers edu johnsd rpi edu writes in article geneva rutgers edu seanna bnr ca seanna s m watson writes deletia recovery programs etc i do need you to show me that there is such a thing as a spiritual need to do that it may be necessary to show me that spirits souls whatnot exist god is not important to that as far as i can tell i get the feeling that we are debating at cross purposes that we do not see the same fundamental assumptions and this perhaps makes my answers orthogonal to your questions i will try again perhaps you believe that nothing exists aside from objectively observable and provable things in that case i cannot show you that there is such thing as a spirit or a spiritual need these things do not exist in the realm of the objective but in the realm of the subjective otoh if you wish you can simply but explicitly please assume spirits exist and then show me that they would have needs and that a a handles these needs in some way you can assume god exists too if that will help i ll play along by a a i assume you mean alcoholics anonymous and not alt atheism i would not say that aa handles spiritual needs rather i would say that aa and other step programs help people come to terms with their needs ie that aa is facilitating the recovery and that as part of the recovery they recognize their spiritual needs and begin to rely on a higher power step s term to fill them instead of whatever substance abuse they had been accustomed to sorry there is no objective proof here either no way to take identical alcoholics and try to have one recover by fulfilling spiritual needs and one without and externally compare the difference we are talking about the virtually infinite complexity of people here but i should say if god is a necessary component of your spiritual needs then i truely do not understand at all it sounds to me like spirits have needs that should be fulfilled by god but can be masked in other ways drugs etc if this is the case then you can leave out god just describe the problem not the solution spiritual needs could be defined as things that people need in addition to physical requirements like air food sleep etc these are things like the need for love and acceptance and the need for meaning in life if one denies the existence of spiritual things one would presumably call these emotional needs the reason christians call them spiritual needs is that they have aspects that are not fulfillable except by spiritual means ie a person could be loved and accepted by many people and do many meaningful things but still have a need for love which can only be satisfied by the love of god now the problem is that there are people who accept the existence of these needs and people who reject them since i believe in absolute truth some of these people are right and the others are wrong so here are the possibilities if christians are right then we all have spiritual needs ie we all need god those who do not realize that they need god are deluded they just haven t recognized it yet if christians are wrong spiritual needs are an artefact of our brain chemicals well adjusted and properly integrated personalities do not have such things christians are simply using the concept of god and spiritual needs to mask their own inadequacies i hate to belabour the point but the existence of spirits and spiritual needs cannot be objectively demonstrated or proven just like the existence of god cannot and yes this means that there is a risk that all my subjective evidence is manufactured by my brain chemicals but on the other hand i could venture into solipsism and say that there is a risk that everything that i appear to objectively know is really manufactured by my brain chemicals i suspect this is an unsatisfactory answer to a request for evidence and demonstration of the existence of spirits and spiritual needs but my assertion is that such things are not objectively demonstrable as i have said before i myself am on the christian side of agnosticism having been pushed off the fence by subjective evidence and no i was not raised a christian so it is not a case of simply accepting what i was indoctrinated with seanna watson bell northern research pray that at the end of living seanna bnr ca ottawa ontario canada of philosophies and creeds god will find his people busy opinion what opinions oh these opinions planting trees and sowing seeds no they re not bnr s they re mine i knew i d left them somewhere fred kaan
