Faith Beyond Belief: The Remarkable Relationship Between Spirituality and Religion
Every faith offers its members meaningful beliefs as well as deep spiritual insights. Differences in belief tend to separate people, in part because they are part of one’s social identity. However, despite differences in belief, the spiritual insights described by mystics of different faiths are remarkably similar – a sense of oneness, a feeling of awe at being alive, an altruistic love for others, and a deeply intuitive moral sensibility. People from different faiths often argue over beliefs, but mystics from those same traditions get along quite well. We will talk about the remarkable relationship between spirituality and belief, in part by exploring key findings from the social sciences.
Dr. John Ambrosiano received his Ph.D. in Physics from The College of William and Mary in 1980 and has worked as a computational scientist at both the Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories. In 2005 he began pursuing an interest in Buddhism, which he now teaches at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Los Alamos. He has since retired from LANL but has remained a Laboratory Guest. Dr. Ambrosiano joined the Los Alamos Faith and Science Forum as a board member in 2022 and has presented several talks at the Forum’s summer series. These days he mostly spends his time fishing, writing talks, teaching, painting, and feeding horses.
