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Old 04-30-2012, 03:10 AM   #282
driveway
A Fiddler Crab
 
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Chicago
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Originally Posted by T@T View Post
I agree with everything you said but the part where you say your "still spiritual" kind of baffles me as you didn't explain it.

I truly admit to being an atheist in a religious sense therefore I can't be "spiritual" as somehow that has a religious tone to it.
I consider (and refer to) myself as a spiritual atheist. I am also a gnostic atheist: I am certain there is no such thing as a conscious entity worthy of worship who exists in, or interacts with the universe.

However, I do believe in the existence of what can be called 'the soul' in that it is an aspect of individual consciousness which is capable of continued existence in some form or other past organic death. I also believe in the possibility of such souls experiencing multiple organic lives. I understand this may not be a completely rational worldview, however I have had subjective experiences for which I need to come to some kind of objective conclusion.

I do not accept the notion that a conscious creator entity is necessary for the existence of a thing like a soul. I see no reason why it cannot be a fundamental part of the universe just like Gravity or Entropy or Quantum Mechanics, merely one which we do not have technology to measure at present. I find this to be particularly plausible in a universe which remains almost entirely invisible to us. It stands to reason that, whatever Dark Matter and Energy are, we are interacting with them on some level. It seems plausible to me that one of the ways in which we may be interacting with them would include a phenomenon such as a soul.

I believe until such time as hard, empirical, observational science can be brought to bear on this, the arts are the best way to study this aspect of existence and either eventually confirm or disprove its existence.
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