Spiritual Atheism

[DWill]

Responding to Chris' request for new threads: I ran across the term "spiritual atheism" several days ago and rather liked it. I believe the writer used it to refer to atheists, including Richard Dawkins, who stress that their lack of belief in a supernatural God or god doesn't at all mean that reverence, awe, wonder--the reputed products of religious belief--die along with belief in God. Believers may think that spiritual atheism is simply a means to have it both ways, but I would say to that, so what if it is. What do others think?

[seespotrun2008]

It may be a term that some people would be really drawn too and some would be repelled by. It makes me wonder what Richard Dawkins would think about the term. I just finished The God Delusion and I know that there is that aspect for him, as you say "reverence, wonder, awe." Is spiritual in general a negative term? The term seems to assume a spirit of some sort. It is interesting to contemplate.

[johnson1010]

awe and wonder do not evacuate along with belief in dieties.

I am amazed and humbled every time i look in the sky.

[j guevara]

oxymoron

[bleachededen]

oxymoron

No, it isn't. Atheism is the lack of belief in God, not of anything/everything spiritual. Spirituality is not exclusive to the idea of "God," so it is very feasible to be spiritual but still be an atheist.

[tat tvam asi]

oxymoron

No, it isn't. Atheism is the lack of belief in God, not of anything/everything spiritual. Spirituality is not exclusive to the idea of "God," so it is very feasible to be spiritual but still be an atheist.

Yes indeed. It's called Pantheism and I started a thread about it here in the atheist forum a while back: http://www.booktalk.org/sexed-up-atheism-t7880.html

Lacking a belief in a personified supreme being deity doesn't exclude a naturalistic spirituality. Here's Paul Harrison's blog on it:

Pantheism - sexed up atheism? Or far more than that?
Jun 6th, 2009 by Paul

On our Facebook pantheism page I posted a video of Richard Dawkins reading from “The God Delusion,” the section where he talks about how atheism, pantheism, deism, and theism relate to each other. I commented that what he said there was fairly accurate.

Of course he oversimplified. Of course his line “pantheism is sexed-up atheism” is just a quick attention-grabbing slogan that says very little. However, what it does imply (which he may not have intended) is that Pantheism is more appealing than straight atheism. Coming from the world’s best known atheist, that is a useful endorsement among a large and growing segment of the population - many of whom may be looking for something beyond your basic stripped down atheism.

For me the difference is like this:
Atheism describes what I do NOT believe.
Pantheism describes what I DO believe.

Atheism covers a limited area of one’s beliefs - all it means is that you do not believe in a Creator God, and most especially not in a mental entity that’s watching every one of us and will judge us all when we die.

There are some extra things that nearly always go together with atheism which are more significant that just that one basic disbelief.
Usually atheism indicates that you are an independent-minded thinker who refuses to accept claims of special authority without carefully investigating them.
It usually implies that you don’t believe in supernatural forces, realms, beings or afterlives.
It probably also implies that you place a high value on empirical evidence and logic.
It probably implies that you believe that humans choose their own ethics, and/or have certain social ethics built into their evolved genotype.
All of the above things are important. They are not at all trivial matters.

However, beyond these, atheism leaves you on your own.
On your own in finding answers to many of life’s most important questions.
On your own in the face of an immense Cosmos that - without some extra framework - can seem meaningless, absurd or hostile.

Atheism gives you no guide framework at all on ethics.
You can be Hitler or Stalin, or you can be Warren Buffet or Bill Gates with their immense philanthropy.
You can think humans are the greatest animals on the planet - or the worst.
You can be a nurturing carer, or a homicidal egopath.

It gives you no framework about what to value in life.
You can love life, or hate it.
You can love getting out in the wilds, or you can live all your life in bars or playing computer games with your curtains drawn.
You can revere the Cosmos as a creative force - or regard it as a destructive presence that could easily wipe the Earth and everything on it.

Pantheism offers a positive framework, probably the most positive of any spiritual path.
The naturalistic version of World Pantheism shares with atheism the disbelief in a Creator or judging God, in supernatural forces, realms, beings or afterlives. It shares the rejection of scriptural authority, the respect for empirical evidence and logic, and the belief that human choose their own ethics.

But it goes far beyond that:
It loves and cares for Nature and reveres the Cosmos as a creative dance.
It respects and promotes the rights of humans and other living things.
It encourages people to love their life, in their physical bodies, and to strive to be active and fit.
It considers this life as the only heaven and Earth as the only paradise.
It values life but accepts death as natural.
It stresses memories, deeds, creations, genes and the recycling of elements as the only forms of afterlife we have.

[j guevara]

semantic nonsense.

[bleachededen]

Yes indeed. It's called Pantheism

Tat, I don't agree. Being a spiritual atheist does not automatically make you a pantheist. Pantheism is a belief that all of nature and the Earth and cosmos are the same thing as God, and that's not necessarily what someone may mean when they say they are spiritual but don't believe in God. There are many in betweens that don't necessarily even have names, and it's not fair to just automatically label someone one thing when they may not even feel that way. They may have similar spiritual ideas as pantheists, but they may not necessarily be pantheists.

My main question is and always has been, why must we be so quick to label ourselves? Why does what we believe in have to have a name? Why can't we just believe it and let that be enough? Humans have this very bizarre need to categorize and classify every single thing in their world, and I don't think it's always necessary, and in some cases only causes more confusion than clarity. I don't call myself anything. I don't need to put my beliefs into a neat little name, and it doesn't cause me that much heartache, in the long run. You are who you are. You don't need a title to go with it, unless you wish to align yourself with one church or another, but then we're no longer talking about atheism but organized religion, which is one thing we can all agree on that has nothing to do with atheism.

[bleachededen]

semantic nonsense.

Would you care to elaborate on any of your snide remarks or do you not know enough to even back up your retort?

[j guevara]

@bleachededen Spot on. Atheism has even been labeled as another form of religion. If I have to answer 'Atheist' I usually quality it with 'for lack of a better word'.
However, I prefer to use Indifferent. Too bad there's no such word as Indifferntism

j