Spiritual Atheism

In this and the next few posts I am going to describe a brand of spiritualism that is compatible with many concepts of deity - from "no God" to the "unknowable God" to the highly personal God.  This idea is new to me, but I am not perfectly well-read in the philosophical and religious literature.  Chances are good that someone else thought of this hundreds of years ago.

I originally conceived of this idea while thinking about a common objection that people have about religion.  Many people see religious belief as unjustified because there is simply no evidence to support it - there is no quantifiable reason to believe.  For some, religion seems to be outdated, outmoded, unfounded, superstitious, untestable, overly emotional.

To put it another way, religion always seems centered around powerful personal emotion.  This emotion can, in fact, be so powerful that God can seem more real and literal than the words on this page or the chair you are sitting in¹. It is expected that if you are a devoted worshiper, you will begin to "know" that what you are worshiping really exists, irrespective of what that thing happens to be.  The following quote, from the book "How God Changes your Brain," illustrates this point:

"The thalamus [the part of your brain that is mainly responsible for perceiving/interpreting reality] makes no distinction between inner and outer realities, and thus any idea, if contemplated long enough, will take on a semblance of reality.  Your belief becomes neurologically real, and your brain will respond accordingly.  But for someone else, who has meditated on a different set of beliefs or goals, a different reality will seem true."

Don't misunderstand my purpose here - I am not trying to minimize the value of religious belief or invalidate anyone's faith.  Rather, I am pointing out an objection that many atheists and agnostics have about religion - specifically, that human beings will predictably believe in whatever religion they choose to immerse themselves in, whether it be Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, Mormonism, or whatever.  But "believe" isn't strong enough a word, because eventually the belief will feel like certain knowledge.  More certain even than physical reality.  As a method for finding absolute truth, then, religion seems inadequate because the part of our brain that makes us think something is true doesn't actually care whether that thing is true or not.

It is probably an uncomfortable thing for many religious people to read this - please don't let it bother you.  As explained in The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, the existential study of religion has no bearing on religion's value.  Just because we are neurologically wired to believe what we worship does not mean that we shouldn't choose to worship. 

In fact, studies that measure the neurological effect of religion show that worship is almost always incredibly healthy.  In my next post, I will describe how religion positively affects the mind.  Then, I will describe how all the positive neurological benefits of religion can be obtained in a way that avoids the atheistic/agnostic objection I described in this post.

1. This has been shown to be true through anecdotal descriptions by scores of religious individuals, and by a number of neurological studies. The book How God Changes Your Brain by Waldman and Newberg describes many of these studies.