The Spiritual Lives Of Atheist Scientists

By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service

(RNS) More than 20 percent of atheist scientists consider themselves to be "spiritual," according to a Rice University study.

The findings, to be published in the June issue of the journal Sociology of Religion, are based on in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists from 21 of the nation's top research universities.

Elaine Howard Ecklund, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of sociology at the Houston university, said the research shows that spirituality is not solely a pursuit of religious people.

"Spirituality pervades both the religious and atheist thought," she said. "It's not an either/or. This challenges the idea that scientists, and other groups we typically deem as secular, are devoid of those big 'Why am I here?' questions. They too have these basic human questions and a desire to find meaning."

Ecklund and other researchers found that these "spiritual atheists" viewed not believing in God "as an act of strength, which for them makes spirituality more congruent with science than religion."

These scientists view both spirituality and science as "meaning-making without faith," the study authors said. They viewed spirituality as congruent with science but not with religion because a religious commitment requires acceptance of an absolute "absence of empirical evidence."

Comments

[galanos1]

02:48 PM on 07/01/2011

Unbelievers believe humans do not have a Soul, and that after death (or sleep as I would like to call it) each individual human being’s knowledge and energy retained in Life, will ultimately achieve everlasting grace on its own. Unbelievers only rely in their own strength; they only chose a one sited mentality that everyone apart from them is a slave to “them” That this is all, a human body as a machine, a machine that exists without a Soul, and can exist without the Holy Spirit. That after death, the energy and knowledge retained in life will ultimately somehow reach a Spiritual and Everlasting Existence all by it self. Do you really believe this nonsense? Do you really believe this chemical combinination of carbon and water we call a human body has the potential to reach any kind of Grace all by it self? Can we not see that “NOW” we being alive! When we sleep, and our Mind dreams, we cannot even control our dreams! How, and what makes the unbelievers think and believe that after death, knowledge and energy (they don’t believe in a Soul) will reach an ultimate reality? Due to their unbelief and corrupt earthly desires, they turn there face away from Gods Grace and Salvation, in the process they mislead everyone ells around them to believe in there corrupt and one sited explanation of there so called natural Evolution theory, and take for granted the Grace of God.

[gcomeau]

02:40 AM on 06/29/2011

"Spirituality pervades both the religious and atheist thought,"

20% is "pervading"? Stretch a little more. Sheesh.

[GhostOfFDR]

03:12 AM on 05/13/2011

My experience is that the spiritual atheist is the one who can't believe they will die and cease to exist. So they hold open the possibility of an underlying :reality" that will allow continued existence, and they may even give that underlying "reality" a name. But it's just as non-existent as gods are.

I understand the difficulty. We're not equipped to imagine non-existence only to fear it.

[thunk]

02:47 PM on 05/13/2011

Strange. I have never had any doubt that when I die I will be dead and only live on in the memories of my friends and family. I have been everything from a believer to an agnostic to an atheist, and that conviction has never changed. I see no connection between "spirituality" in general and belief in an afterlife in particular. It seems inconceivable to me that it could be any other way, for when my embodied brain dies and stops creating the experience of me being me there will be no me.

[thunk]

06:55 AM on 05/10/2011

Highball:
"But I cannot possibly find a way to believe in something for which there is absolutely no evidence, not even theoretica­l concepts which make sense, supporting it."

Yet it exists in our experience, and if someone uses the word "God" you must have some sense of what they "mean" by it. It's basically the sense that there is some agency out there beyond my own experience of my own self. But what is agency? There is nothing scientific supporting the view that any agency, in the sense of some sapient being that is an un-caused cause, exists. The evidence supports the view that our actions are determined by our brain following the known laws of science and not by some agent acting outside of those laws (whether the rationalists in the crowd want to consider that evidence or not). What exists is the willfulness and intentionality of the life form surviving, but without any agent. Will exists but no willful protagonist exists. Agency is a creation of the brain in our experience; a way for the brain to represent life intentionality in our consciousness as a part of the mechanism of it's own survival. Like all agency, God does not really exist, but the will of God does. Even the life intentionality of my own organism exists beyond the experience of the self that the brain creates. And like everything between my ears, the pattern represents something that exists but is not exactly the thing that exists.

[OneFish]

03:37 PM on 05/10/2011

Some people have trouble distinguishing between an artifact of culture and reality.

[nephewofjesus]

01:58 AM on 05/11/2011

Highball,

For me yours is a curious reply to this article. Can you imagine in the very beginning that there was a void. And, in this void a strange type of vacuum existed which can be described as a nothingness. And, this nothingness contained no space, no time, no matter, and no light. However, in this nothingness the Laws of Nature were present.

Scientist will tell you, if they are honest, that they don't know anything about the universe prior to a billion of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. It is somewhere before that billion of a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang that is up for grabs within the Scientific community.

And, they don't know how the Laws of nature were already in place, remaining presently constant throughout an empty void, for the Big Bang to function in a prescribed manner.

Scientist still can't explain "how" the Cambrian Explosion took place, all of a sudden, some 545 million years ago where all known extant phylum in the universe came into being. And, they can't explain how at some point prior to that the single celled organism decided, or willed, that they needed to reproduce themselves. Especially, when billions of years had passed with no activity on their part, (i.e., no fossil records indicating an evolution of the single cell organism).

Makes you wonder if something is transcendent outside of our realm of just simply "willing" it.

[nephewofjesus]

02:29 AM on 05/11/2011

Oh, for the linguistically minded I know "empty void" is redundant. But, I just liked the sound of it. Most people, myself included, have a hard time grasping the word "void". It is better for the imagination.

[thunk]

09:40 AM on 05/11/2011

I was actually replying to a post by Highball as noted by the quotation marks, and not to the article itself. He basically questioned whether there is any evidence at all for God. My point is that if you really take the science seriously, there is no agency at all in physical reality. Whether it's the "I" experienced in your head or the God out there, there is no protagonist. But there is the willfulness, the life intentionality, that is attributed to the protagonist by our brain.

There is no consciousness without the experience of the self. It is so integral to our experience that we can't be in our experience without being our self. It is only by the scientific deconstruction of reality from the other side, the side that excludes our experience, that we learn that our actions are determined by our brain and not by the experience of the self.

My only question is, if God's will exists then what does it look like and what can it do? I tend to believe that the will to create the universe is a power trip on the part of religionists, and cannot be a real aspect of a really existing God's will. To me all meaning comes from the intentionality of life, and not from the cosmological questions. The mystery for us is not the big bang, but why the life form exists at all. Scientists can't explain that, let alone the Cambrian explosion.

[StephenJK]

03:44 AM on 05/10/2011

I don't know why I've ever seen JK mentioned in these threads. This is spirituality in words, in consciousness. Spreading provocation of deep thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMubK0y18Lo&feature=related

That is one of 8 parts...if you have the time take it to listen to all 8 parts.

[nephewofjesus]

01:50 AM on 05/10/2011

A little insight to those who might find these thoughts interesting. At some point, a beginning, the universe came into being. You can call it the "Big Bang" theory if you like that terminology. At first light beams condensed into hydrogen and helium...and, the results later on became the heavier metals.

We and all living things are basically stardust which was light beams at first. Now, quantum mechanics has proven out that "atoms" are more of a "mind" thing than something which physically exists.

So, it is a "mind" which is the matrix of the universe not the physical. Naturally, being composed or made-up of stardust we feel a connection to the physical. However, our connection to the matrix is greater than our connection to the physical. Self recognition points to the fact that we are a "mind" thing.

Some might call that connection "spirituality".

[rjmiller]

08:45 AM on 05/10/2011

"Now, quantum mechanics has proven out that "atoms" are more of a "mind" thing than something which physically exists."

No, it hasn't. "What the *** do we know?" is not a scholarly work on quantum physics, no matter how much its fans wish it were.

[nephewofjesus]

11:43 PM on 05/10/2011

rj,

I am not the least bit familiar with whatever it is you have in quotation marks. So, I am certainly not a fan of it. What is it? Plus, I will take your word on it not being scholarly.

[KrautMan]

05:54 AM on 05/16/2011

You can believe in all kinds of stuff, but you can not claim that science supports your nonsense. Because it doesn't.

[nephewofjesus]

02:10 AM on 05/17/2011

Krautman, what do you know of science...really know? Sometimes, there is a great chasm between people who adhere to science because they feel it supports their lack of belief and what science is really all about or supports.

Einstein said that Science without Religion is lame and Religion without Science is blind. Just maybe, he had a better handle on it than those who make claims without little knowledge.

[phredralf]

01:14 AM on 05/10/2011

"I don't believe in god, but I am spiritual" As an atheist, I hear that all the time and I still don't understand what it means. I get feeling connected, feeling there's something bigger, that we're a tiny part of a giant orchestration of physics, that we're not alone, that we're bound together. I call that binding, molecular, and that feeling of being connected, physics.
Then when I ask if that spiritual 'energy' or whatever is cognitive, conscious, aware, the reply is almost always no.
I think people who consider themselves spiritual are simply a little more connected (at least they think they are), taking the time to smell the cosmic coffee.
At the end of this life, we will all face the same fate regardless of our beliefs; the nothingness principle isn't biased.

[thankgodimanatheist8]

09:18 PM on 05/10/2011

As an spiritual atheist my own beliefs developed this way:
Born - like all other new borns --> non-theist
Around four five --> very liberal Muslim (from my mother)
Fifteen --> forced to go to church in England --> became an atheist in half an hour. I had nothing to think about before. My mother's Islam was so liberal and loving that if I was forced to have god I'd go for that even today.
By twenty one - evangelical atheist.
At the same time around 18 first started to study quantum mechanics.
Twenty two started doing neurochemistry research --> research into the biochemistry of the brain. Had to think about consciousness.
The only way that consciousness and quantum mechanics made sense to me was to become a radical monist: only the "One" is real. As soon as you divide the one you get to illusion.

From science I started reading about mysticism of all wisdom traditions. I think kindness, compassion, and love are compatible with logic and knowledge.

That's one person's scientific/spiritual journey. Basically I think I don't exist and who thinks that?
It's a Zen Koan. If you have the answer let me know. But then who is...

Cantor and Russel would love that as would C.G. Jung and the Ouroboros...

[thunk]

02:15 PM on 05/11/2011

"I think I don't exist"

Agreed but I think there's a little more to it than that. You don't exist but your conscious will, inextricably bound to the protagonist self, is the same will as the life intentionality of the biological organism that creates the experience of you being you. Your body's will exists and you are free to survive and replicate and seek homeostasis, the state of contented aliveness. That's what the will wants.

Kindness, compassion, and love are a partial list of the labels we place on the mechanisms that serve our survival. They are only logical from outside of the mechanism. From inside they are what you feel like doing.
.

[ThinkCreeps]

11:22 PM on 05/09/2011

Templeton could probably get me to believe in his old tosh for $1m.

[Turtles All The Way Down]

08:58 PM on 05/09/2011

Hmmm. Anyone care to define 'spiritual'?
Is it merely a sense of awe, or is there necessarily a sense of the numinous?

[Dan Jighter]

10:23 PM on 05/09/2011

Well, what do you mean by the "numinous" exactly? In any case, I don't really care about the answer to your question for the following reason. Hitchens often describes that we should separate the numinous from the supernatural. Having done that, who cares if one experiences awe or the numinous. Almost sounds like the same thing. I think most atheists have separated the numinous from the supernatural and such an experience of the numinous is what spiritual scientists experience. The real question is whether they any of these spiritual scientists experience the numinous with the supernatural or with some practice such as meditation. Of course, by numinous you might mean the supernatural namely God.

[CodyGirl]

02:36 PM on 05/10/2011

Please specify which "Hitchens" you are referring to. Christopher Hitchens, the atheist or his brother Peter Hitchens, who is an ex-atheist Christian.

[Saijanai]

08:04 AM on 05/10/2011

This study defines spiritual in physiological terms: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.01007.x/full

[Stuart Begdly]

02:54 PM on 05/09/2011

This makes total sense to me. Educated people do (and should) ask these questions about spirituality. The key is that they are intelligent enough to understand that one can be spiritual and not suscribe to the brainwashing, self-promoting mantras of "faith" as put forth by the aggressive, regressive, monotheistic religions of today.

[bokhattak]

02:44 PM on 05/09/2011

Can one be an atheist and a spiritualist? Of course. Maintaining growth of ones spirit - or the sum of emotional and experiential knowledge of an individual - can certainly happen without a belief in a divine, super-natural being.

Can one be a theist and a scientist? Of course. Having faith-based convictions and maintaining an empirical outlook on the universe as a whole and perhaps on faith or spirituality is entirely reasonable.

I disagree with the final statement of the article that "religious commitment requires acceptance of an absolute 'absence of empirical evidence.'", however. One of the most lamented figures of the Bible is the disciple Thomas, also known as "Doubting Thomas". He asked for proof that Christ had been resurrected. The story doesn't involve Thomas being rebuked by Jesus as a non-believer or one doomed for the transgression. Instead, Christ challenged Thomas to inspect the wounds from the crucifixion, helping Thomas put some empiricism in use.

I am a Muslim and a scientist. I have faith in Allah and will empirically examine the universe that was brought about by His Will through forces of nature. And yes, those forces - according to the overwhelming amount of data - include natural selection.

[Dan Jighter]

03:58 PM on 05/09/2011

Well I undergo personal growth, I'm an atheist, and I don't call myself spiritual.

"Having faith-base­d conviction­s and maintainin­g an empirical outlook on the universe as a whole and perhaps on faith or spirituali­ty is entirely reasonable­."

Yes, but when it comes to questions such as the existence of Allah or other similar questions of your religion, do you hold a faith-based outlook or an empirical outlook. You can't hold both simultaneously. Either you believe things on faith without evidence or you don't.

[bokhattak]

04:16 PM on 05/09/2011

Why can one not maintain a faith-based belief as well as one that is empirical? Not every phenomenon must be examined by the same set of criteria.

For me, however, I examine things pragmatically and empirically in virtually all cases.

[CodyGirl]

01:57 PM on 05/10/2011

DJ,

You have created a false dichotomy. Faith is not devoid of evidence. Listen to what bokhattak is saying.

[Highball]

08:09 PM on 05/09/2011

Faith and empirical evidence are inherently opposites. If I have empirical evidence of something, I don't need faith. If I have faith, I don't need empirical evidence.

I have faith in nothing. There are things which I believe to be true, but for which I have no proof -- yet (I am fairly sure that bin Laden is dead, for example; but I can't prove it). But that isn't faith. That is judgement. I trust the people who have told me these things, based on past experience.

Gravity, otoh, I can not only (non-scientifically) show to be true, by dropping a book, for example; but there is generally accepted science which I may or may not understand in full, that demonstrates its existence.

Conversely, there is absolutely nothing (beyond the faith of believers) that demonstrates the existence of some supreme being, or the like. And while those believers may be very nice people in some cases, their faith is not at all convincing.

But I cannot possibly find a way to believe in something for which there is absolutely no evidence, not even theoretical concepts which make sense, supporting it.

[Dan Jighter]

10:28 PM on 05/09/2011

You could prove Bin Laden is dead. Go to the ocean and find the body. I think you mean to say you currently could prove Bin Laden is dead and have no interest in proving it. Evidence really should be required for important and extraordinary claims, not mundane claims that some person died. And if Bin Laden lives, as long as people think he's dead that's really all that matters.

[Dan Jighter]

10:29 PM on 05/09/2011

By the way, I like the Green Lantern icon. :-)

[celtic]

02:31 PM on 05/09/2011

Maybe this 20% have recognized the real deficiency that atheist materialism has in addressing the question of how our conscious experience arises. By any scientific criteria our conscious experience doesn't even exist - it is not subject to third person observation or measurement. However it is, in fact, the one and only thing that we can be 100% sure does exist. What we know about the physical world is all via perceptions filtered through our consciousness - e.g. we could be in the Matrix - but what's beyond doubt is that there is an awareness perceiving something (whatever that something is). As an engineer, I can fully appreciate science as great at what it does, but when its tools do not have the ability to even detect the existence of the only thing we can be sure that does exist, it may explain why people pursue spiritual paths.

[stuoverit]

04:14 PM on 05/09/2011

Well I think anyone who has delved into this understands that our own experience can't actually be verified. There is really no point in having any kind of ideological or theological debates if we lived by the theory that nothing is actually observable.

As far as why people pursue spiritual paths, I think its pretty clearly recognizable as a means of addressing inevitable mortality.

I hope that didn't come across as condescending, I agree with everything your saying for sure. But I also don't want to engage in debates or discussion by opening every statement saying "If this isn't all fake and in my own head...".

[thunk]

04:43 PM on 05/09/2011

I take exception to a couple of points although I agree with the gist of your post. To our lives our experience is primary and necessary to our survival. But what we know about the physical world does not depend on our experience. It depends on the assumption that there is a physical world out there independent of our experience and that is is rational and caused. What it actually is becomes a process of inductive reasoning.

For instance we know that the tree is not green but merely absorbs certain wavelengths of light and the brain converts that reflected light into the experience of a green tree. The physical reality is not the perception at all. The perception is what it is because color differentiation helps us survive, not because the green tree actually exists out there as the thing we experience.

I would say that agency is a similar phenomenon. What scientifically exists is life intentionality; the "will" of the life form to maintain aliveness and replicate (so far unexplained). It is a "will" without a "will-er". What we experience is the agency, the willful protagonist, the "will-er". The reality is not the perception at all. The perception is what it is because agency helps us survive, not because the agent actually exist out there as an uncaused cause in the way we experience it. Agency is the brain's theory of life intentionality, as color is the brain's theory of light differentiation. God is an agent.

[Cole 33]

01:22 PM on 05/09/2011

wait,.. So the study found that 80% of Atheists consider themselves non-spiritual? I hope there wasn't a grant given for this study

[Dan Jighter]

01:57 PM on 05/09/2011

"I hope there wasn't a grant given for this study"

There was. Templeton.

[thunk]

12:38 PM on 05/09/2011

nephewofjesus:
"The atheist is not really angry at Christians They are angry with God for Him not giving them the empirical evidence which they require to believe."

I think that, in part, belief in God is a way to reconcile ourselves to the nature of our experience. The "I deciding" in our mind is certainly not running the show and most people get this. Their brain attributes that greater life intentionality to the willful protagonist called God. There are some atheists (rationalists) who are rejectors of the God response coming from the position that the "I deciding" is what is really happening. I think it is correct to recognize the inherent tension (anger?) in this position. But atheist does not technically mean rationalist, and there are other possible non-theistic responses to the nature of our existence; Buddhism for example.

While I agree that the rationalist tension around God is real, I take exception to your conclusion. Christianity does represent a community of the faithful and one that, as a social phenomenon, marginalizes the other. Those others have the normal response to being marginalized.

[Saijanai]

12:57 PM on 05/09/2011

So the privileged few are those that can suspend their God-given intellect and believe in-spite of what their minds (and hearts if you feel compassion towards people who are truly awful) tell them?

The Christian Hades is the most repugnant place I can imagine. People go on and on about "how could God allow this [disaster] if He is omnibenevolent?" but the true proof of the moral decadence of mainstream Christianity is that most Christians buy into the eternal punishment thing. How could you accept a God who does that? How could you accept a place in heaven when your OWN beloved son might be burning elsewhere?

Does God allow switch-hitting for us mortals? Can I volunteer to take my son or daughter's place (assuming that I am a believer and they are not)?

And how could any person who claims to love humanity accept such a fate for the rest of the world? Who could, in all consciousness, take a place in heaven while Hitler or bin Laden burn elsewhere forever?

[Saijanai]

03:04 PM on 05/09/2011

should have said "all good conscious,"... too much consciousness on the brain...

[clancyben]

03:16 PM on 05/09/2011

Hitler was a professed Christian... just saying. Sort of the thief on the cross? But the rest of your post was great. Fanned.

[playsindirt]

12:35 PM on 05/09/2011

Spirituality really doesn't have a whole lot to do with religion. Some of the most spirituality bankrupt individuals I know sit in church every week.