Spirituality and atheism are great coping mechanisms in a world that seems paradoxical, convoluted, and hopelessly complex. They are great answers for those who do not prefer the beauty of the unexamined life.
I have a scientist friend who follows a popular guru. The said guru had been popping up in my YouTube feed for quite some time, but always some vague truism (“we have to strive to move towards greater vibrations of energy”) he spouts turns me away from clicking the video. On a gloomy Sunday, I asked my friend about this guru person.
“He is a master”, my friend said.
“Of what?”
“Everything, Jay. He is someone who has attained.”
“Attained what?!”
“The highest. He is full of bliss.”
“What does that even mean?”
“He is enlightened. Like Buddha, like Lao Tse Tung. He is a living –“
“Okay, listen. Can you tell me in simple, or complex, words what he teaches?”
“It’s not that easy. As a scientist, what appeals to me is his logic, not just spirituality. He is mighty logical”
“For example?”
“For example his theory that water has memory. He can gift your well-being in a glass if he chooses.”
“Ah okay. So, like, is it a sin to drink it?”
“No. Water is doing you a service by allowing you to drink it. Think about it”, my friend said, sniffing a plastic flower.
I did.
In recent years, there has been a surge in the popularity of “spiritual but not religious” ways of thinking. From mobile meditation to Instagurus promoting things like manifestation, crystal healing, tarot, and astrological guidance, spirituality has gone mainstream in a big, blissful way. “New spirituality” has been put forward as an alternate way of thinking about the universe – but like most other ways of wishful thinking, I would argue that spirituality (and atheism) is just as problematic.
The core issue with spirituality is that it makes claims about reality and the human experience that simply cannot be backed up by evidence or reason. Crystals don’t have healing powers. There is no such thing as being able to manifest your desires through positive thinking alone. Astrological forces do not control your personality or destiny.
These are old wives’ tales repackaged as modern spirituality.
But I don’t have any quarrel with wishful thinking. Pure reason is as blinding as spirituality, and reality is, indeed, incredibly weird. No, my problem is that spirituality and atheism (more on the latter later) can breed a closed-minded way of thinking that is resistant to change and critical analysis. Spiritual gurus and their devoted followers often react very defensively to any skepticism or questioning of their beliefs, retreating into dogma. They’ll claim things like “it’s not meant to be understood by the mind” or “you have to open your heart, not your brain.” Whatever it means.
This anti-intellectualism is one of the foundations of spirituality. Increase the frequency of this complacent stagnation a bit and you get “energy”, “vibration”, and alien benefactors from the Pleiades.
The modern “post-truth” spirituality also shares superstitious tendencies towards tribalism, Us vs Them thinking, and the perennial yumminess of commercial exploitation. There are endless books, seminars, products, and services sold by spiritual leaders and their burgeoning Spiritual Industrial Complex.
And they are all aggressively mediocre.
Now, one could argue that the appeal of spirituality is that it doesn’t make rigid doctrinal claims or require strict obedience to ancient texts or institutions. And maybe for some, this provides a genuinely positive framework for living an ethical, mindful life in harmony with nature and society. But my concern is that at its core, spirituality still represents a departure from empirical reality. It privileges feelings and intuitions over verifiable facts.
And that’s a dangerous path that can open the door to delusion.
Truth-seeking can be secular. Meditation, for example, doesn’t require any spiritual beliefs – it can simply be a tool for focused awareness and mental training with established psychological benefits. Finding awe and transcendence in nature doesn’t necessitate a belief in forest sprites or earth mother goddesses. The appreciation can come from understanding the breathtaking complexity and timescales involved through the lens of change and deep time.
This Awe-Through-Understanding is more honest than despicable prostration in front of spiritual ideals. The truth is you don’t really need the sword and shield of spirituality and atheism to enjoy (in the broadest meaning of the term) the human experience.
However, as compelling as an atheistic critique of spirituality may seem, we must be cautious about building our mansions of comprehension in the aridity of atheism, too. Atheism itself can become an unfounded dogma if taken to the extreme. A strict materialist worldview that rejects anything beyond the physical and measurable is also making a faith-based assumption – that the material realm is all that exists.
This is ultimately no more provable than spiritual claims about non-physical realms of existence. Spirituality and atheism equally make assumptions about the cosmos. A rationalist’s roar is as misleading as a mystic’s mistakes – and both can be safely abandoned in the pursuit of truth (another assumption).
The atheistic tendency to reduce all of reality to that which current science can currently quantify is troubling in its dismissiveness toward entire domains of human experience and inquiry. While distrusting unfounded supernatural beliefs is wise (bleeding figurines, ghosts, demons, and banshees), there is still profound mystery and ignorance around questions of consciousness, subjective experience, the nature of the self, and the origin of the universe – topics that atheism often hand-waves away.
By rejecting the non-material so completely, atheism risks repeating the same errors of spirituality – adopting a rigid ideology and closing itself off to nuance, open discovery, and the full depth of our philosophical uncertainties.
It claims a certainty and arrogance of knowledge that may be unearned.
Furthermore, while not requiring belief in the supernatural, even secular atheism can take on quasi-religious characteristics of moralism, cult-like fervency for its views, and accusations of heresy toward those who stray from its commandments. It shapes meaning and ethics around its naturalistic tenets in ways that can seem ungrounded and potentially spiritually unfulfilling.
There is nothing as dry, or as confounding, as an atheist trying to explain morality.
Perhaps a more fruitful approach is to avoid both the myths and reductivism of spirituality and atheism. We can appreciate the universe’s unspeakable grandeur through an evidence-based view while retaining humility about all we don’t yet understand.
We can live ethical lives based on philosophy and common human values, not dogma. We can be awed by the radiance of consciousness and qualia without needing supernatural explanations.
We can strive for truth while embracing ambiguity.
Moderating between spirituality and atheism’s certainties may be the wisest path. For there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in either spirituality’s fantasies or atheism’s models. We must walk the difficult road of keeping our minds open while thinking critically and letting the highest standards of reasoning and lived experience be our guide.
If we have to live honest, kind, active, joyful, and contemplative lives, we must strive to move away from dishonest, crude, delusional hand-me-downs of thought. What we need is a new cure for spirituality and atheism.
But how, and what could it be?
If we want to nurture the human spirit and discover deeper meanings in our existence, I believe we’d be better off turning to philosophy, art, nature, human relationships, intellectual pursuits, the pleasures of senses, and cultivating an appreciation for the wonders that human intelligence has uncovered about our universe. These allow us to celebrate the full depth of human experience and our cosmic journey without deceiving ourselves.
We need a path of personal growth, wisdom, and finding significance in the unique depth of being human. We need to tell stories, create and build legacies, and imbue the world with layers of symbolic resonance and metaphor.
Through embodying these capacities, we need a new perspective that allows one to be uplifted, awed, and to locate meaning – not by escaping this world, and not by reducing everything to brick and mortar, but by more fully inhabiting and savoring the vital poetic realities of our existence.
