Rejection of All that is Holy

[Thumpalumpacus]

As it relates specifically to atheism, I believe that in Western culture it is impossible to disentangle the lack of belief in god(s) from the realization of that idea as the rejection of the spiritual experiences of the divine in oneself and others.

Your belief is incorrect. I do not need a deity to have spiritual experiences on my own. You can believe or disbelieve me, but you cannot speak with any authority about what happens inside of me.

Simply because you cannot conceive of the sublime outside of your own frame of reference, that does not mean that it doesn't exist there; it only means that you cannot conceive of the sublime that doesn't comport with your own outlook.

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atheism will always be a positive act of rejection of spiritual experiences as divine.

I regard spiritual "experiences" as delusional.

That depends on what they are, doesn't it?

I have what I regard as spiritual moments -- moments of connectedness colored with the awe of being aware of it in the moment -- when I look at the nighttime sky, and ponder the immense depths of time the light reaching my retinæ has crossed -- and what it implies about my place in the Universe (specifically, how fucking small I am against it). I have those moments when I consider that the very atoms of my body were manufactured in stars, equally as far away and yet now long dead; that we are literally the ashes of the stars. Or, as Dyson put it, we are the Universe, pondering itself.

It doesn't mean that I ascribe those phenomena to anything other than brute physical processes.

What is the delusion I'm buying into, then?