Reply #9: Interesting link. I consider myself a "spiritual atheist" [View All]

[Odin2005]

I'm an avowed Materialist, I do not believe in an afterlife, I do not believe in a supernatural realm or a deity. I consider the Cosmos itself as sacred. The forests and the prairie under the night sky are my cathedrals We are all part of a greater connected whole, intimately connected to the rest of the universe. Our brains operate by natural laws, there is no soul, no "unmoved mover" that operates outside of causality. The notion of "self" is an evolutionarily convenient illusion; as Heraclitus said, you never step into the same river twice because it is not the same river and you are not the same man.

Why invent a superman in the sky when the actual Cosmos is so much more wonderful and awe-inspiring? IMO it merely debases spirituality, putting a unhelpful, constricting label on the ineffable, trying to force it into our human social reality, trying to personify the cosmos the same way somebody cursing a malfunctioning device accuses it of having sinister motivations, personifying the object.