I suspect you'd be better off looking at why people feel a spiritual void in the US these days - especially the wealthy middle class.
This comment from the Intelligent Design thread made me step back for a moment, because "spiritual void" is a concept I see thrown around a fair bit without much consideration as to whether such a thing actually exists.
The way I see it, this notion presupposes that human beings should inherently be spiritual; in this context I take this to mean that either (a) they must rely upon faith for some part of their understanding of the world, or (b) that the expression of such faith is somehow a necessary part of human interaction.
(a) seems to me to be universally true, simply because at a bare minimum one must have faith in the principle of causation even if you ignore the whole gods and demons bit. As such, I don't see how it's really possible to have a "spiritual void" related to (a), unless there's a social presupposition that there are certain specific things that humans should believe in.
If the "spiritual void" is related to (b), as seems more reasonable, it must exist because of a disruption of the socially conditioned status quo. Given this, the idea that such a void exists and/or that it should be filled seems inherently anti-progressive. |
