Atheist Spirituality

I think one place the confusion comes from when discussing atheist spirituality is that the word 'spirit' has more than one definition. Many people take the 'spirit' in spirituality to mean the soul or to be related to spirits such as God, Gods, Goddess, Goddesses, angels, or ghosts.

The word 'spirit' is not always about souls but sometimes refers to intent or essence. Even a law can have a spirit. When we speak about following the spirit of the law rather than the word of the law spirit roughly means the intent of the law. The human spirit encompasses many things including emotions, character, beliefs, convictions, and personality.

I believe that any time we begin delving into the intangible aspects of ourselves, the universe, and other human beings we are entering into the realm of spirituality.

Many would say that spiritual experiences are generally accompanied by feelings of connectedness, humility, and awe. For every human being, the stimulus that causes these feelings may be different. But many of the things that cause these feelings are similar or at least comprehensible to other human beings. When we look at a newborn baby, a beautiful sunset, a shining expanse of ocean, or a velvet black sky pricked with starlight almost all of us experience those feelings, religious or not.

Religious people will tend to process those events in terms of their religious beliefs to the extent that the feelings themselves are sometimes attributed to God or other aspects of the religious belief. Atheists have the same type of experiences; they just don't attribute them to any aspect of religion.

People often think atheists have no beliefs but in truth, atheists have just as many beliefs as anyone else - it's just that belief in God isn't one of them.

While atheists have no set of commonly held beliefs, they generally hold beliefs just as the majority of the human race does.

I believe in love, empathy, compassion, the basic goodness of humanity, the availability of joy and pleasure in life, the power of knowledge, and the interconnectedness of all living things. Many other people, both theists and non-theists alike, believe in some or all of these things too. I find these beliefs to be spiritual.

Many people associate a feeling of belonging and connectedness to spirituality, especially when it co-exists with feelings of awe and humility. The thing is - it's perfectly possible for atheists to experience this.

No religious explanation of connectedness is necessary. We are connected to and a part of everything in easily observable ways.

Spatially, we exist in the universe and on the world. We are of the universe and the world and we are parts of it. Environmentally, we are part of the cycle of life, air, and water. The solar system, the earth, the biosphere - all fit us so perfectly not because they were made for us but because we are a part of them. Biologically, we are related to all life on earth - brothers and sisters of all mankind and cousins to all life on earth.

These things are no less amazing if not engineered by a benevolent God. When we contemplate that we are tiny, ephemeral creatures so small in the scheme of the vast universe, it's almost impossible not to feel awe and humility.

*Empathy
*Learning
*Self-exploration
*Nature
*Service to humanity
*Music
*Love

For me, the most spiritual thing is love. Love is an ancient and powerful thing. It kindled in the breasts of warm-blooded beasts millions of years ago and has passed on from generation to generation, growing in depth and diversity and spreading until it has covered the entire planet. To love is to honor love, to feed love itself. The love I have shared in this life will feed into future generations of love and traces its lineage far into the distant past.