Mrzzy, I think we all tend to instinctively battle against whatever we were oppressed by in our youth.....and we instinctively battle for whatever we were convinced of in our youth. One or the other. And both.

I don't know what you were oppressed by or convinced of in your youth. In mine I was oppressed by my parents' materialism, their social-climbing pretensions, their greed, their blind egotism, and their deep insecurity...but never by religion (because I grew up as an atheist). And I was convinced of science, reason, and literature and art...all things which are quite wordly and obvious.

I continue to believe firmly in science, reason, literature, and art. I continue to battle against the utter loneliness and ultimate despair that results from materialism, social pretensions, greed, blind egotism, and deep insecurity.

And the thing that has most effectively enabled me to battle against those is my sense of spirituality (not necessarily tied to any specific religion...but finding helpful echoes in all of them).

Since I have received nothing negative from spirituality in this life, but found only positive things in it, I cannot relate to your hostility to the very notion of it. (And I suspect you cannot relate to my view of it either.)

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Blandiver - Yes, quite so. There are things we KNOW. Plenty of them. And we know them by direct experience. There are other things we consider probable, very probable, not very probable, highly improbable, etc.....but in no case can we say we KNOW for certain about those things, because we don't. We merely have a view based on our assessment of the probabilities.

I don't view spirituality as based upon any kind of empirical knowledge, because it's not a matter of phenomena. It's not objective, it's subjective. It's not exoteric (outer), it's esoteric. It's not measurable, but is experiential. (I could say all these things of Love too.) It's a matter of how one applies one's consciousness to one's own life and the lives of others and how one unites it with action.

Can one do all this without belonging to a religion? Of course! But if a religion seems to help one to do it, then the religion is in no way an impediment, and belonging to a religion by no means requires that one must literally believe every single word attributed to that religion in some specific book or books.

To give another example of this: although I am a Canadian, and quite happy to be so, I do not necessarily agree with everything Canadian, I do not necessarily agree with everything my government and country have ever said or done, and I don't think Canada is perfect, and I don't have to agree with everything Canada does! I reserve the right to disagree with Canada on various points while yet remaining Canadian. ;-D

The same goes for belonging to a religion. Spirituality must be accompanied by freedom of thought and freedom of choice or it is not real spirituality.