Abstract
Abstract
This chapter argues that individuals with ambiguous evidence for God can cultivate the virtue of spiritual excellence by engaging in contemplative practices that make use of minimal theism. Spiritual excellence involves a tendency to make skillful use of worldviews for which one has ambiguous evidence or better in order to experience morally transformative feelings of connectedness. The chapter presents an original empirical study with theists and agnostics who undertook a simple, contemplative faith practice that involved looking at awe-inspiring pictures with theistic or neutral prompts. Analysis of the data suggests that theists experience greater increases in connectedness when using the theistic prompts and that agnostics also experience such increases if they have a highly faithful orientation toward God and are comfortable and engaged with the exercise.
Publisher
Oxford University PressOxford
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