spiritual but not religious

[Angrboda]

Greetings! 

I grew up Christian and was turned off by the dogma in my fundamentalist church, however I was left wanting to believe in some form of divine being because this was a major part of my upbringing and shaped my early experience with the world. Later I became interested in Buddhism because of its ties to spirituality without directly affirming an existence of god. 

When I was younger I wanted to be an astronaut. That didn't pan out. I guess the lesson here is not to assume the wisdom of our childish inclinations as that wisdom more often than not turns out to be folly.

Is it possible to be spiritual but not religious, and if so could someone still be considered an atheist?

I suppose it's possible, but the type of thing that is spiritual but not religious is not the thing that people who say they are spiritual but not religious are engaged in. One of the best attempts to describe religion was done by a professor named Ninian Smart, who identified seven "dimensions" of religion, such as having origin myths, or other explanatory lore, and so on. Those who are spiritual but not religious may not be engaging in all the descriptive categories that Smart identifies, or necessarily doing so in the same way, but it's clear that the practice of spirituality by people who are spiritual but not religious overlaps any description of religion along similar behavioral dimensions. The spiritual but not religious haven't pulled novel ideas from out of thin air, but rather taken elements of existing religion and adapted it to their own needs. In that, they haven't changed the essential behavior. A religion doesn't cease being a religion because it changes one or a handful of things in its doctrines, stories, or beliefs. Likewise, simply changing specifics about a religion and its beliefs while keeping the majority of the edifice of thoughts and behaviors intact doesn't set you apart from religion. There are something like a billion Catholics in the world, no two of which likely has identical beliefs and practices, yet we see the identity of Catholicism as shared among them because of the commonalities, not the differences. Likewise I would argue that the spiritual but religious share the identity of being religious because of the shared commonalities with paradigm cases of religion. Spiritual but not religious, I think, in the final analysis, ends up being an identity movement that is inauthentic in its core. There are so many "spiritual but not religious" that being spiritual but not religious is essentially a new religion, with its own dogma about its independence from religion, and its own set of shared beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors. Generally and more informally speaking, what the spiritual but not religious are doing is cherry picking what they like about religion and calling those beliefs and behaviors "not religious." The fact that you are borrowing them from religion makes that cherry picked set religious to its core.

Welcome to the forum!