What is the purpose of life? It is to find meaning. [Viktor Frank]
The title is not a misprint. Everyone, including atheists, should be spiritual. It doesn’t matter if we agree or not because we are all spiritual to a certain extent. The alternative to spirituality is hedonism. In reality, we seek both. But the proportion matters.
The way that I mean spirituality has nothing to do with New Age spirituality, mysticism, religion, spirits, ghosts, God, or souls!
Spiritual means when we use our imagination to transcend the here and now and worldly (materialism, praise, etc.) things.
To be sure, this post is about the study of happiness. Happiness is about getting what we want. Although happiness and experiencing meaningful things are different things, meaning-making contributes to our happiness in the long run. We do many meaningful things, such as believing that atheism is accurate, having relationships with others, and pursuing our long-term goals in life. These all contribute to happiness. That said, the kind of happiness that fulfills our immediate needs and wants, such as food or getting praise from others, is fleeting. This is where spirituality comes into the picture. Spirituality is about obtaining meaning out of life in a certain kind of way—in a way that transcends our immediate needs and wants. An example of a spiritual activity is realizing our deep connection to nature or that we all originated from the plains of Africa so we derive meaning and satisfaction from this.
Above, when I say the alternative to spirituality is hedonism, this means that if we are not spiritual—deriving meaning from things that transcend our immediate needs and wants—then we are only making ourselves happy by gratification. I would argue that this is a shallow life indeed. Atheists, however, do not have the luxury of having religion. They must seek their own meaning out of life.
At Its Core, Spirituality Isn’t About God
Spiritual is used often without most taking the time to ask what it means. I have heard many in an attempt to not appear one-dimensional claim that they are spiritual but not religious. Presumably, this means they ponder the deeper questions but don’t follow strict rules. If we are materialists and do not believe in the soul or the spirit, we are free to throw out any references to the immaterial. Religion has a restricted view of spirituality because it must include belief in God. Here is a Catholic’s view:
Spirituality is living the mystery of Christ, becoming like him, being filled with grace and the Holy Spirit. It applies the Gospel to Christian Life. A spiritual person will attempt to make every action and interior thought align with the Gospel.
This definition is problematic if we are materialists and do not believe in the divinity of Christ. Astute observers, however, have noted that there is something common in all forms of spirituality, which exists within every culture. Spirituality is anything that transcends the ordinary and brings meaning to our lives. This is more inclusive. Atheists, like everyone else, have a yearning for things beyond themselves. This is important because happiness in itself is not enough to live a satisfying life. Although we can conclude this for ourselves, we need some evidence. We can turn to researchers who shed new light on old concepts.
Meaning Can Help with Happiness
Transcendence is the highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to others in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos. [Abraham Maslow]
The definition of spirituality has two parts to it: transcendent and meaning. When we say something is transcendent, we mean that it goes beyond worldly things like status attainment, materialism, and self. When we transcend normal awareness, we are not in a judgmental or adversarial state of mind but rather see others for what we have in common with them. Transcendence means that we recognize that we are a smaller part of a greater whole, say part of a community or the human race. It gives us that sense of awe and oneness when contemplating our relationship to nature or recognizing that we all ultimately came from, say stardust.
Whatever we do to be spiritual, it must be meaningful to us. Meaning is derived from doing, thinking, or belonging to things greater than ourselves and often reflects our identity and values (i). Values are about how we should behave. If we think about it, values mostly serve our own interests. In order for meaning to transcend the self, then we need virtues. Virtues are values that serve humanity. The virtues that are found in all cultures include gratitude, humility, forgiveness, hope, wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance. If we follow these virtues, we experience meaningful life events by connecting with and helping others.
Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided. [Roy Baumeister]
Notice how the ego is absent from virtue. The ego wants to advance, satisfy its needs and wants, and seek praise. Happiness can fuel the ego because it is about getting what we want. When researchers study happiness, it is broken down into the presence of positive feelings, a lack of negative feelings, and life satisfaction. Short-term happiness is often in conflict with meaning-making. For example, suffering hinders happiness, but we reflect afterward and make meaning out of it. We learn from suffering, can assist others with our experience, and it becomes part of “our story”. In the long run, meaning can bring us happiness and satisfaction.
Acquiring Truth Is a Spiritual Pursuit
According to Maslow, self-transcendence brings the individual what he termed “peak experiences” in which they transcend their own personal concerns and see from a higher perspective. These experiences often bring strong positive emotions like joy, peace, and a well-developed sense of awareness (Messerly, 2017).
Hopefully, we are thinking about what we do that goes beyond our careers and satisfying our needs and wants. I am satisfied with doing what I enjoy for its own sake, which is pursuing truth and knowledge. This may seem like a selfish activity, but it is not entirely. Thinking and feeling, which is what we do when we acquire, share, and reflect upon truth, are verbs. Although our society believes that we have to produce to be of any use, there is much benefit to oneself and others when we acquire truth and knowledge (ii).
If we read about the human condition, for example, then we will gain knowledge that can serve a purpose. When we learn how human nature works, then we will develop realistic expectations towards others and ourselves. We can show acceptance and understanding instead of fear and judgment. Part of engaging in meaningful activities is to connect with others, which is only possible if we show empathy. We further connect with others when we share our knowledge, which can inspire and enlighten us.
But does the pursuit of truth and knowledge qualify as being spiritual? I certainly transcend the here and now and become deeply satisfied, even moved, when I gain insight. Whenever I obtain insight, I make sure it integrates nicely with my background knowledge. If it does not, then it is ad hoc. I may have to alter my framework to get a fit, but when it fits, eureka! I recall time periods when radical insights caused shifts in how I view myself, others, and the cosmos. Through time I have refined those ideas, always vigilant for a more accurate model to make sense out of the world. For me, these insights often occurred after misfortune.
For many, suffering can entail failure, rejection, or depression. I have obtained satisfactory answers for why these things have happened to me and why they happen to us in general. When we understand how things work, this allows us to more easily accept suffering or to mitigate it. When we suffer, we create meaning from it. We do this by understanding how it ensues, making it purposeful, and then weaving a narrative out of it. For example, depression is the body retreating from a failure to get what we want. It occurs when attempts made to advance or to be sufficiently valued are thwarted; our endeavors become a “failed struggle”. The body withdraws until we get on a more fruitful path. This explanation is meaningful, and it gives purpose to our suffering.
Are We Missing Something Without God?
Yes, I think we are. I think God, amongst other things, helps us to cope when we are powerless and to face death. I, however, explained earlier that truth and knowledge are virtuous to me. As far as I can tell, a personal God is a human creation, who acts as a sort of father-like attachment figure. Until there is evidence or good reasoning for his existence, I cannot compromise my virtues (iii). I cannot get myself to believe in something that is likely untrue. As Bertrand Russell said, “Either something is true or it isn’t. If we cannot tell if something is true, then we should suspend judgment. If it is true, then we should believe it.” Psychologists have known for decades that we function best when we approach life realistically. For some, God is still needed to help them cope.
My Grandfather became an atheist when he asked why would a benevolent God allow his daughter to suffer from a terminal disease. But in his last days, he became religious, especially after my grandmother died. If we can imagine aging to the point where people who we love and miss disappear, where we would do anything to hear their voices one last time, knowing that they exist in heaven must be comforting. I do not know how I will cope when loved ones perish, or when I find myself alone in assisted living with strangers. In these events, I don’t fault people for seeking support from God who supposedly has their best interests.
There is no place, however, for the atheist to go, no refuge for when life is nearing the end. When we belong to a religion, we share values, which bind us in a significant way. We can admire religion for creating a sense of belonging while catering to the sick and paying tributes to the dead. On the other hand, religion claims to provide the why while science provides the how (v). It touts to provide meaning and answers to why we are here and what happens after death. Their answers turn out to be unsatisfying and wrong. There is no evidence for an afterlife and the why question is poorly construed. We have no ultimate cosmic purpose.
Thus, it is our responsibility to create meaning out of life. If we are going to make meaning, then why not find meaningful pursuits that society holds in high regard. This will not only increase our happiness, but if we act virtuous, we can focus on maximizing the flourishing of everyone. We need only ask ourselves how we want to be remembered, smug and self-centered or altruistic and purposeful. Since atheists do not have an extensive network of non-believers—no central “church”—it is dire for them to be spiritual.
Addendum & Notes
Here’s an example of creating meaning out of death. If we reflect on the fact that we, the people that we love, and the meaning we’ve created will cease to exist one day, this can bring suffering. Tyson has made meaning out of this by giving death a purpose. Its purpose is to make us have gratitude for life, to create a sense of urgency for moral behavior, and to live a satisfying life.
It is the knowledge that I’m going to die that creates the focus that I bring to being alive; the urgency of accomplishment; the need to express love; now, not later. If we live forever, why ever even get out of bed in the morning? Cause you always have tomorrow. That’s not the kind of life I want to lead. [Neil deGrasse Tyson]
i). Researchers view meaning as two separate parts—a motivational part or purposeful and a cognitive part which allows us to make sense of what we do and integrate it into the past, present, and future.
Years of research on the psychology of well-being have demonstrated that often human beings are happiest when they are engaged in meaningful pursuits and virtuous activities.” Indeed, when we are deeply engaged in an activity that is in accordance with our best self, we often report the highest levels of life satisfaction. [Todd Kashdan]
Meaningful pursuits are done for a purpose say to pursue our long-term goals. These goals are best chosen to be what society chooses as noble to assist it in becoming a source of pride. We can still gain meaning from activities that have value to us, which often occur when we do them for their own sake and not for the outcome. But it can also be about derived meaning in which we make something purposeful. I gave an example of how we by understanding how things work, say experiencing depression, give it a purpose and no longer make it feel like we suffered for no reason at all. Tyson derived meaning as well from above.
ii). Be warned though since when we acquire knowledge, there is a risk of us becoming smug, as in we know something that others don’t. We must approach gaining knowledge with humility because the job is never done.
iii) My bookshelf and Kindle are filled with dozens upon dozens of theist and atheist arguments for or against God. If we view the evidence neutrally and suspend our own biases, it is difficult to come to any conclusion other than non-existence. Over seventy percent of philosophers are atheists. I am inclined to think that they know the stock arguments all too well. Seventy percent is a huge number considering the population purports atheism to be around 10%. A proportion of seventy percent of a sub-population of people who devote themselves to truth and knowledge all reaching the conclusion that God doesn’t exist is quite telling.
iv) I have other personal reasons for not liking the idea of a God. For example, bringing God into the universe as an explanation seems to make a mockery out of truth and knowledge. Belief in God also trivializes, as well as makes it inexplicable, why there is unnecessary suffering amongst many people (even animals) across the globe. I am not talking about suffering from failure, rejection, or depression. If these issues are not pervasive and grave, then they are tolerable, and we grow from them. On the other hand, there are many people that get inflicted with diseases that cut their lives short and they never get to recover and weave meaning out of their experiences.
v) Theology and science have traditionally been thought of as different spheres of knowledge, each answering their own questions. They have their own epistemology—how we know what we know—and constitute different metaphysics—what is the ultimate nature of the cosmos. The problem is that they overlap and the claims that theology makes can be tested through the scientific method. Prayer, for example, is about God changing the course of affairs in the universe. This represents a valid domain for science. Repeatedly, however, prayer has yielded statistically insignificant results, which means that any observed effect in the prayer group compared to the control group was due to chance and did not represent a real effect.
No. That is silly.
Chigau, seek first to understand and then be understood.
You are misunderstanding what I am saying. Spirituality is loaded with connotations, and you probably have something in mind that I don’t. In the realm of the study of happiness, we can contribute to happiness by either getting what we want, which is hedonism, or we can create meaning by experiencing life in a purposeful way. There are no other things that contribute to happiness. Spirituality is meaning-making plus refining meaning-making to be of things that go beyond worldly things like materialism and achievement, which fuel the ego. It has absolutely nothing to do with our worldviews. In short, the statement “the alternative to spirituality is hedonism” is restricted to mean alternatives within the domain of the study of happiness. There is absolutely nothing silly about it. It is an insight that all atheists should pay attention to.
But that’s exactly the problem: “spirituality” is a vague, mushy, woo-woo word, meaning everything and nothing.
Agree. Hence an attempt to carve out a definition within the post. What does that have to do with the point of the post?
As a guess, atheists don’t like the word spiritual since it connotes irrationality and religiosity. At least I never did, until I realized that there was nothing to fear.
The point of the post was that atheists more than other groups of people need to make meaning out of life since it can greatly increase their happiness. This meaning should go beyond things that instantly gratify us or serve the ego. In fact, if we align our purposes to virtues, we can increase our flourishing as well as others.
I just can’t settle for what I used to be, which is what I see all too often amongst atheists. They exist to exert their superiority in the domains of rationality and science, poking fun of any belief that appears irrational.
That your choice of word obscures it.
See my comment to cubist.
“Spirituality” is a word with quite a number of baked-in connotations. Am not at all sure that any use of that word even can avoid dragging those connotations with it. Perhaps the word “matter”, as in “human lives matter”, may be a less-problematic term for what you’re trying to get at?
The resistance towards this word is to be expected coming from atheists who believe that when humans are rational they are at their best. The endeavors of science and rationality, however, require the imagination and to separate self in order to see possibilities and to reduce bias. So, here, try to use your imagination and be open minded, which means don’t let your likes or dislikes (biases) affect you from embracing a word. In fact, being rational and being spiritual is not that much of a leap since both often require the imagination and to remove self.
The word spiritual is completely apt to what I’m trying to get across. The world spiritual denotes going beyond worldly things such as materialism and praise from others. It is therefore appropriate to use. Why reject a word just because it is used often by religious people?
When Einstein, for example, contemplates his relationship to the cosmos, he is going beyond “self”. He is transcending, in his imagination, the here and now in order to feel something greater than himself. Feeling that we are a part of something greater than ourselves brings meaning and connects us to humanity. When we feel connected to humanity, then we see the similarities in others instead of the differences. This results in pro-social behavior and cooperation, especially when we act virtuous, which is with humility, empathy, gratitude, and forgiveness.
Furthermore, it is completely rational to be spiritual. Why? Because to be rational means to use knowledge to achieve our ends. Being spiritual means making meaning out of things that have significance to us. When we make meaning, then it has been shown to contribute to a sense of satisfaction and happiness in our lives. I suspect that happiness is one of anyone’s goals.
If you still don’t like the word, then drop it. At the very least, make the realization that meaning-making contributes to happiness and a purposeful life. Life is not just about getting our needs and wants met as doing, belonging, and thinking about meaningful things also makes us happy. My other point was that atheists have to create their own meaning out of life because they don’t buy into what their local church has to say.
Me, not allow mybiases to get in the way of approving of that word? Hm. How about you not allow your biases to get in the way of your perceiving any nontrivial problems with that word?
Or is it your position that the only reason anyone might disapprove of the word “spirituality” is their baked-in biases, while your position is as free from bias as the driven snow?
You are right. I shouldn’t guess what is the cause for others’ resistance to the word. That would be annoying for someone to tell me what my thoughts and feelings were. I’m not a mindreader. On the other hand, I do and should have biases toward liking the word because it serves the purpose I am trying to accomplish which is to convey when something goes beyond worldly things.
I was only trying to guess why it’s difficult to embrace. I certainly loathed the word as an atheist years ago. My intentions were only to broaden the horizon for others because I believe that we can benefit from this stuff. It is your choice, of course, whether or not you accept or reject it.
Given that the only reactions you have had to the word here are negatibve, perhaps you need to reconsider your claim that: “it serves the purpose I am trying to accomplish”. Certainly, you don’t get to unilaterally decide the word can be detached from the connotations it has for others.
I agree. I thought I could enlighten and people could get past the word. Looks like I failed.
In my experience, there is nothing that is not ‘ordinary’. Meaning comes from understanding the ordinary things, how they fit together, how they function in our lives, how our lives interact with other lives. All very ordinary things.
I missed this the first time around, and have only read this after your subsequent post. Even before writing this comment, I expect it will be one of my patent-pending wall-o-text. The reason I think this will be so is because you covered a lot of ground in your post, a good deal of it only tangentially related to your underlying idea. And of course, in doing so, the idea you were presenting was obscured rather than illuminated. I’m not suggesting you are a poor writer, but that some editing may have made your post shorter, clearer, and more persuasive.
But let’s start with the complaints in the comments, because we can clear them away pretty quickly. With all due respect to chigau, cubist, and KG, you do have the ability to take a common word and clarify it to suit your meaning in an essay. Not everyone will agree with me, or approve if you do so, but a lot of authors have done so, some are even successful in re-defining the word entirely. I recently clarified to one of my co-workers that the word “camera” predates photography, and of course probably the most famous transposition of meaning of a word was when Darwin took the world “evolution” from stellar astronomy because he couldn’t find a better existing word for his great idea. In these cases, and in scores of other cases, the commonly accepted meaning of the word is the more recent meaning and not the older. I don’t think you are aiming as high as Darwin, but even so, you are in good shoes.
So, let’s next talk about why you didn’t get many comments. You probably have asked yourself that question already. After all, the topic interests lots of people, and can be polarizing. Part of the reason is that it is a long post, covering a good many different topics, which not only discourages people from reading it, but if someone reads part of it and skims the rest they are unlikely to comment about anything they found interesting in the part they did read because their idea/opinion/reaction may have been addressed in the part of the article they skimmed. The other reason is that by writing a long article it also shows that you have given a lot of thought to the topic and any challenges may be ignored. That is, by writing strong, opinionated, prose, you don’t leave much room for anyone else to make a comment to contribute or contradict. I have a similar problem. I express myself with confidence and as clearly as possible, and I often get no responses to my comments because I clearly cannot be reasoned with. Conversely, it is possible that what I write is so rational and clear that I immediately sway everyone to my opinion. But I doubt that is true. You will get more comments by writing short pieces and leaving room for others to add their own experiences/opinions. Creating a solid case for your opinion also means there is little room for argument, which means few comments. You won’t get “me too” or “I agree” comments unless you get famous and have lots of fans. Of course these are just my opinions, your mileage may vary.
Now, on to your topic. I don’t think you are barking up the wrong tree. But you touch on a number of different topics, and seem to conflate a few. Transcendent is not the same as happiness, although they may occur at the same time for some people. Finding meaning in life isn’t happiness or transcendent, in fact many philosophies recommending abandoning meaning in order to find transcendence. You write that finding meaning can be spiritual, but also that transcendence can be spiritual. I wouldn’t say these terms are mutually exclusive, but they don’t have a great deal of overlap. So when you say that both lead to spirituality, I suspect you confuse your audience.
What you are calling spirituality I think does closely correspond with transcendence. What you appear to be describing is that feeling that reality extends beyond our comprehension but at the same time we are part of it. That we are only capable of understanding, or even perceiving, a fraction of the phenomena surrounding us, but that doesn’t matter because we are part of it all. This experience has been described by people for millennia, and religions and philosophies have been founded upon it. A lot of people experience it only a couple times in their lives, and some spend the rest of their lives trying to recapture it. Many people never experience it, some even deny it happens, but there is so much evidence from disparate times, locations and cultures over human history that this cannot be a mass illusion. Humans really do occasionally experience this feeling.
So what is it, what triggers it, and why does it happen? I don’t think anyone really knows. There has to be a rational explanation, one involving brain functions. Your comment about learning how things work, is, I think, related, in as much as people who have spent a lot of time studying and thinking how things work report this feeling of the comprehensive fullness of reality more often than those who don’t study. But that may be a sampling error, because those people who spend a lot of time studying and thinking about how things work are the same people who write down what they have figured out. So it’s probably inevitable that those people will write about their transcendent experiences while those who are not so literate fail to record them.
For examples, we can start with a lot of the religious mystics, like the enlightenment of Siddhartha. But we can possibly include Pythagoras and I would include Spinoza among philosophers who have experienced, and written about this phenomenon. The best description I’ve read of a deliberate spiritual journey to capture this feeling is the anonymous text by a 14th century English monk called, “The Cloud of Unknowing” which posits that God cannot be comprehended by mortal minds, and all the depictions of God are false, as are all descriptions of his works. That the only way to approach an understanding of God is to abandon all attempts of knowledge, abandon all understanding of self, abandon the concept of the inner person and outer world, and live without acknowledgement of the past, or concerns for the future, live in the present in the bosom of God. That God cannot be bounded. That God is an energy field created by all life in the universe and binds the universe together… no wait, that’s The Force from Star Wars.
However, I suspect you get the idea.
But I don’t think this feeling, this experience, is limited to savants. I have heard of, and had personal conversations with people who have described experiencing this feeling themselves. The common part of the feeling, stripping out any religious overtones, appears to me to be one of a loss of the sense of the boundary between our inner selves and the outside world. I’ve talked with a cabinetmaker who described that at times he stopped consciously thinking about a piece of carving he was working on. He let his body take over, stopped thinking about, and when he finishes the work he feels refreshed, at peace, and that there was no sense of self, only a feeling of one-ness with the universe.
I think what is happening is that when humans enter this state much of the conscious mind shuts down. My personal theory of mind, which I have little evidence of actually being true, is that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon caused by hundreds of mental processes operating at roughly the same time. These processes are performing different functions, and the sum of these functions is actually greater than the totality of each of the individual functions. But at some level there is a function which identifies the boundary between then ends of our nervous system and the rest of the world. What I think occurs is that in certain mental states that function weakens or completely shuts down. The individual experience may vary. That is, some people will experience the universe pervading and taking over their body, others will experience their perceptions apparently expanding beyond the limits of their body. Neither is actually taking place, of course. But that is what human’s feel. And many of them get all mystical about it. That is, to me, the definition of transcendence.
One final note, before I head into a meeting. I think that this particular mental loop, which keeps reminding ourselves that there is a boundary between ourselves and the rest of humanity, is also integral to our imagination. That is, by exercising our imagination we are deliberately weakening, usually temporarily, that mental function. And this also can help explain why human beings are so enamored of books, movies, or other media. An immersive video game is immersive because we weaken our mental comprehension of the difference between ourselves and the rest of the universe.
Of course, my thoughts and opinions may not be accurate.
Cheers!