Quote:
Originally Posted by Wormius
I guess I was just answering that question - if you were to make a Venn diagram of Atheism and spirituality there won't be any overlap.
Religion aside, there is no difference between believing in God or believing in some phenomen that you haven't witnessed but would like to think happens (e.g. a person's consciousness floats around without a physical body). So I don't know how somebody could describe themselves as an atheist while having spiritual beliefs.
I won't put words into people's mouths, but if they believe that some part of them continues on, that would suggest some kind of supernatural being pulling the strings on that. Since all conventional forms of energy or matter could be explained, then something unexplainable and unknowable needs to be the driving force for keeping these souls and consciousnesses afloat wherever they are.
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The bolded part above is a bit presumptuous. We have two well-known forms of matter/energy that aren't even remotely understood yet in the cosmological arena --dark matter & dark energy. Furthermore, we have this amazing thing called "consciousness" that we can't even come close to explaining scientifically yet. Am I foolishly optimistic to think that there's something more to my consciousness than simply a mush of brain cells? Probably...but I'm certainly not smart enough to know that for sure. I don't have to believe in a god to be open to the possibility that there's "something" I don't know about death.
Oh, and for some other posters...WRGMG is this:
TENET: any opinion, principle, doctrine, dogma, etc., especially one held as true by members of a profession, group, or movement.
TENANT: a person or group that rents and occupies land, a house, an office, or the like, from another for a period of time; lessee.