Sunday, August 01, 2010

Introducing The Spiritual Atheist

Please join me in welcoming the newest member of the Atheist Blogroll, The Spiritual Atheist.

My name is Simon Hembra. My blog, The Spiritual Atheist, explores the possibility of finding spirituality everyday without finding God.

Is it possible to believe only in the physical, but still embrace the spiritual? Can an atheist feel connected to nature? Can they be overcome by beauty, or joy, or laughter in a way that transcends physical definition? Can they trust parts of themselves to things that cannot be explained and still live a life of logic and reason?

Are you interested in becoming a member? Visit the Atheist Blogroll resource blog for more information.

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ChucKtheAtheist · 770 weeks ago

I guess not all atheists are strict materialists, and I don't intend to alienate everyone that counts themselves among our ilk simply for advocating terms such as "spiritual." However, I'd like to share a cautionary tale. I was a Christian about 25 years ago, and it took me about 10 yrs after that to be able to wean myself from all woo-woo. Most notably I started practicing Zen Buddhism, because it allowed me to practice something, anything, that wasn't overtly religious, but yet allowed me to project my uncertaintly about spirituality into the cosmic void. The Japanese form of Zen Buddhism per Dogen (13th Cent.) taught by Shunryu Suzuki seemed to provide a very agnostic view of the universe, and allowed me to have some sort of practice (whatever that exactly means). In the end, though, I realized that what I was doing was in fact trying to supplant one type of religion for another. More specifically I saw that I was indeed projecting my last shred of doubt and fear about the truth of atheism.
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ChucKtheAtheist · 770 weeks ago

There is something to the conjecture of anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists that we seem to have evolved to think in religious terms, that we seem to be built to want to have experiences that allow us to take part in forces that we don't understand and assume to be part of ultimate causation. So we now have to ask ourselves whether or not the sort of awe of the universe that some have been advocating (sometimes called Einsteinian, because he seemed to endorse this) or the connectedness even atheists might feel to the grandeur of the cosmos is simply not the same sort of projection that I mentioned earlier. I still feel this awe as The Spiritual Atheist does at the complexity of life and magnificence of the workings of the universe, but is it real? Is there some woo-woo left in me as well?
1 reply · active 768 weeks ago
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SpiritualAtheist 61p · 768 weeks ago

Even if it is such a projection there is no reason that we can not embrace it. Atheism only implies that I do not believe in god, it does not in anyway state how I must feel about the universe around me or how my life should be loved. I'd encourage you to have a look at the blog, especially my definition of spirituality. I'm keen to get other peoples points of view on whether or not my mission is an impossible or foolish one.

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