What Does Spirituality Look Like Without God?

There are many ways to feel connected to something larger than ourselves. Many of them do NOT involve religion, such as art or nature; brain stimulations or hallucinogenic drugs; community or service; devotion or ritual; knowledge or wisdom; and meditation or prayer.

My posts are more about asking interesting questions than about providing definitive answers. I like to question conventional narratives. I try to leave room for ambiguity, mystery, and paradox. At the extremes, atheists and theists seem to agree on one thing. Namely, you can NOT be “spiritual” if you do not worship a personal God. I disagree, and I get a lot of questions about that.

How I Respond to My Atheist Friends

Atheists will say, “Why do you talk about ‘spirituality?’ Don’t you know that God does NOT exist and that Jesus was NOT a historical figure?!” First of all, I do NOT know anything. Neither do you.

We both think that the God of the Bible does NOT exist. We do NOT think that Jesus was divine, that he was born of a virgin, or that he rose from the dead, but I think he was a historical figure. Here, I agree with Bart Ehrman, an atheist New Testament scholar, who writes dispassionately about such things.

We can NOT know, so there is no sense arguing about it. Further, some people do NOT care. In Buddhism, we might say something like, “Buddha, if he existed…” and we do NOT care either way. The teachings compel us, whether the person existed or not. What if I quit my job and sold my house to follow a non-existent Jesus? So what?! The teachings compelled me. No regrets.

Many atheists see no conflict between atheism and spirituality. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and a prominent atheist, says that he is spiritual in the way that Einstein was spiritual. Einstein was a secular Jew, apparently an atheist. Einstein said that he believed in Spinoza’s God. Spinoza was a monist and a secular Jew before he was excommunicated, apparently an atheist.

Some atheists are deeply spiritual. Sam Harris, one of the “four horsemen of New Atheism,” wrote a book called Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. He has a meditation app.  And Brittney Hartley, an atheist who left Mormonism, wrote a book called No Nonsense Spirituality. She is an atheist spiritual director and Sufi mystic, pursuing a doctoral degree in theology.

How I Respond to My Theist Friends

Theists will say, “Why do you talk about ‘spirituality’? Don’t you know that God is the one true God and that Jesus is his only-begotten Son?” First of all, I do NOT know anything. Neither do you.

I used to think that God was personal and that Jesus was divine, that he was born of a virgin, and that he rose from the dead, but that was before I spent 20 years studying all of those questions. Then I realized that things were NOT so straightforward.  The Bible contains errors. Christian doctrine is largely speculation, NOT fact. And there are 45,000 varieties of this speculation.

Contemporary Christian beliefs are NOT absolute, authentic, original, rational, unchanging, and universal. Christianity borrowed from the mythologies of the Greeks, the Romans, and others. Christianity borrowed from Judaism and other religions. And Christianity was unstructured for its first 300 years. Different theologies are reflected in the Bible and the earliest writings.

Many Christian beliefs changed between the first gospel and the last gospel. Many Christian beliefs developed very recently. To me, other worldviews make as much sense, arguably more sense, than the Christian worldview. Seven of ten people in the world are NOT Christian. And many of them live meaningful, moral lives, arguably more meaningful, more moral lives, than Christians.

Some tenets of Christian theology conflict with reason or science or both. More importantly, for many of us, some tenets of Christian theology conflict with our lived human experiences.

There are Many Ways to Feel Connected to Something Larger than Ourselves

Many people think that God is not a “being.” God might be the “ground of being,” as Christian philosopher Paul Tillich wrote. In The Way, I suggest that God or Ultimate Reality might be the architecture of the Universe, rather than the architect of the universe. Just as some may experience a relationship with a person, others may experience a connection with something larger.

I often say that Ultimate Reality is probably NOT personal, possibly NOT supernatural, and perhaps NOT even intentional. SO how can we feel connected to something larger than ourselves?  Many ways do NOT require religion, such as art or nature; brain stimulations or hallucinogenic drugs; community or service; devotion or ritual; knowledge or wisdom; meditation or prayer.

Someone might say, “I only feel connected to something larger than myself when I am enjoying music.” That means that music is their spirituality, their way of connecting and transcending.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow popularized the hierarchy of needs and self-actualization.  After he died, Maslow’s book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature was released, in which Maslow suggested that self-actualization is not the final step in development. Rather, once we are self-actualized, we can transcend our “narrative selves,” devoting ourselves to something larger.

Maslow also distinguished between “transcenders” and “nontranscending self-actualizers” (whom he calls “merely healthy people”), and he notes that transcenders are typically more holistic, more intimate, more loving, and more natural. Perhaps religion offers transcendence for some. But if we look around, we see that religion does NOT offer transcendence for most people.

There are many ways to feel connected to something larger than ourselves. Many of them do NOT involve religion.