RE: Spirituality as an atheist?
December 16, 2015 at 12:51 pm
(This post was last modified: December 16, 2015 at 12:53 pm by Reflex.)
(December 16, 2015 at 2:59 am)drfuzzy Wrote: ok. I may as well add my two cents worth.
Spirituality. Well. If you're really talking about appreciation for life, for exploration, for amazement at the unfathomable scope of the known universe, well, we can hope that all of us are capable of taking a few moments to feel that awe - that awareness that we are small and insignificant and should be grateful to be alive. I'm not sure that has anything to do with the supernatural. That type of appreciation is, hopefully, a part of just being human.
But if you're talking about entities that have abilities that we can't prove or describe, about entities that just MIGHT be out there somewhere - eh, that's just another way to claim that god exists. It's a very, very weak claim.
My experience of "spirituality" is that of former theists that want to believe in god or gods . . . but want to break away from mainstream religion. So they reach for whatever version of "woo" that seems viable.
It's a misappropriation of a word to call the mere "appreciation for life, for exploration, for amazement at the unfathomable scope of the known universe" spiritual if it is attributed to a natural human response to observed phenomena, and it is an immature understanding of the word that leads one to think it refers to "entities that just MIGHT be out there somewhere."
In short, Little Ric is right.
