I think it’s best if we try to keep things concise and to the point. (Remember the old saying, brevity is the soul of wit?)
The best synopsis of our discussion is: passion always precedes intellect in the formation of belief, including in the formation of your own belief from post #86 that “spirituality is simply emotion writ large.”
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4205025/posts?page=86#86
“The best synopsis of our discussion is: passion always precedes intellect in the formation of belief...”
No; you are introducing an absolute: ALWAYS. Sometimes it is the reverse: Intellect precedes passion.
“...including in the formation of your own belief from post #86 that ‘spirituality is simply emotion writ large.’”
And I stand by that, because spirituality is quite distinct from intellectualism; and is — at its very core — emotional; indeed, it can’t be otherwise.
The psychologist William James defined spirituality as “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”