@philosophyminis: Religion is a great comfort to a great many people. In fact, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, and Skinner all argue that it's a defining characteristic of religion. It's a defence mechanism. It's a balm to soothe our pains. It's a crutch to keep us from falling. But in the 1980s, the Buddhist teacher John Welwood coined the expression 'spiritual bypassing' to argue how damaging this can sometimes be. For Welwood, spiritual bypassing is ‘using spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep personal, emotional, unfinished business.’ In other words, it's when the religious believer uses their beliefs to sidestep the need to address their real issues and their real symptoms. Consider these two examples. Harriet is depressed, and so she turns to her friend Jane for advice, and Jane says that she should pray to God because God will help. And this is what Harriet does. And so, every night, she prays that God will take away her self-loathing and her lethargy. She prays that she will feel better. She prays to feel anything at all. Now imagine Philip's dad has died, and Philip loved his dad deeply, and so feels the ache of his death is tearing him apart. And so, he turns to the Buddhist practice of non-attachment. He meditates for days at a time, and he reads Buddhist literature at night, and he comes to believe that his yearning for his dead dad is wrong. It's born of desire. For Welwood, both Harriet and Philip are spiritually bypassing their need for help. Welwood is a Buddhist, and his argument is not an argument against religion per se, but he is saying that religion is not a cure-all. It is not a surrogate. It is not a replacement for therapy and for genuine help, especially when that religion is not helping in the first place.

Jonny Thomson

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Region: GB

Tuesday 22 September 2026 13:15:00 GMT