Eriny, a lot of your post needs to be corrected.
I'm going to change the topic a little. A number of pages ago, someone asked if you can be atheist and spiritual. I would say yes, certainly, though I don't think that I'm spiritual as such.
Incoherent statement, I have no idea what you mean when you say the word 'spiritual'.
I think enwiabe's points about uncertainty are very good, but you also have to keep in mind that many atheists are certain about how the world works. It started with the big bang, it's comprised of atoms and energy and such. When you die there is nothing.
Flat out incorrect. By definition, an atheist is merely one who is not persuaded by the claims of theism, nowhere does this view assert certainty, nowhere does it make claims about the big bang, atoms or the possibility of an afterlife. The postulation that 'it all started with the big bang, it's all comprised of atoms, etc" has nothing to do with atheism. nothing.
While I disagree with the way religion gives certainty to the universe, I also disagree that we can speculate what happens after we die. And further, while I definitely believes in the findings of science, I don't think it gives us a full illustration of the world.
Although I don't identify myself as a spiritual person, I am interested in the intangible. In ideas, in metaphysics, I'm interested in things that aren't directly observable.
Terribly weak minded thoughts here, you clearly don't understand the nature of science discovery, things don't need to be directly observable or 'tangible', and ideas are not equivalent to 'metaphysics', ideas may be falsifiable, while metaphysical postulations are by definition unfalsifiable.
God could be one of those things, but I personally believe that the idea of God is much more important then his or her literal existence.
White noise statement, typical of a muddled mind.
What character, (in one form or another or many) boasts quite so much influence over human civilisation? We can see God everywhere in churches and synagogues and mosques,
yes..the interaction between the neuroscience of our infantile desert cult ancestors and their environment produced this (and still does), this is not a mystery, the validity of an immaterial deity is not strengthen by this observation.
but God gets to the heart of our laws, our beliefs, our idea of what's right and wrong. God is in the Declaration of Human Rights as much as he is in the church. Even those who don't believe in God are so deeply influenced by the idea of God, because this idea has so much to do with out culture. Putting on my anthropologist hat here, many of our ideas, particularly pertaining to morality, are based on Judeo-Christian sentiment. God is very real (maybe not literally though).
rather vile babble, 'Judeo-Christian' 'values' where largely plagiarized from ancient, even more arcane peasant religions, they are not the basis of our society or culture or moral system. Humans brains are evolved organs and it follows that our morals are evolved mechanisms, we nee-dent appeal to immaterial or 'spiritual' systems to construct a moral framework.
But anyway, I think that my interest in the humanities, in philosophy, in art, etc. means that I don't see the world in a reductionist kind of way. There's more to the world than its physical/biological/chemical nature.
Pardon? this demarcation between 'humanities' and 'hard sciences' is entirely the product of your own confused little mind, the obvious fact that we are made of material, i.e. the materialist viewpoint, does not necessitate that we cannot appreciate art or literature.
The irony of course is the science you dismiss as 'insuffienct' can explain exactly why you believe that 'there's something more to life than its chemical nature'.
There's beauty and power and emotions and lots of over abstract stuff. For me, this abstract level of intellectual inquiry replaces spirituality for me. That's why I actually identify myself as a Secular Humanist before I see myself as an atheist. I think that there is more to the world than what we can observe, but I don't think that necessarily means that there is a literal God out there who created us and watches over us.
Please don't confuse abstract inquiry with incoherent wishful thinking. Of course there's more to the universe that humans can observe, by our very nature we are imperfectly evolved animals, we are made of, and governed by, atoms, there is no mystery if you do not make one.
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