Are Atheist Necessarily Spiritual or Religious? Try Neither...

It's common to wonder if atheists can be spiritual or religious, and the answer is "it depends." Atheists can be "religious" if you are talking about religions like Buddhism or Religious Humanism. Atheists can be spiritual if by "spiritual" you mean some vague notion involving strong emotional reactions to life or the universe. Atheists aren't necessarily spiritual or religious, however, and a great many — at least among secular atheists in the West — are neither. Sometimes, though, this failure to conform to common expectations can get a person all twisted into intellectual knots as they try to deny the obvious.

Brandon Kumm, in a rambling essay in which he repeats numerous myths and misconceptions about atheism (despite describing himself as a "fairly analytical person"), inadvertently lets the cat out of the bag by revealing that the "problem" with atheism is that people get upset when their religious beliefs are challenged or questioned:

First of all, the word image that is portrayed by the word atheist waves a red flag in the face of every person of faith. It pours gasoline on the fire of faith by sticking in their face the fact that someone, somewhere not only has not converted to their particular brand of lunacy, but denies the very existence of the basis of that lunacy. So, atheism doesn't make any sense. They should call themselves something else, like the anti-religious or areligious, because it is the tyranny of religion that they are fighting, not spiritualism and certainly not reason. ...

So, for atheism to seem to be against all forms of spiritualism (although they would argue that they are not) smacks of hubris of the worst kind. In fact, it echoes the hubris of the religious person that shouts out that something is so because "God wills it". Either point is equally ridiculous to my mind.

So, according to Brandon Kumm, "atheism doesn’t make sense" in part because the label itself signals the existence of people who don't accept theistic religion and, moreover, may even deny it completely. Wait, what? Since when does a label "not make sense" simply because it accurately communicates the fact that not everyone agrees with everyone else?

Apparently, atheists should hide what they think and pander to religious theists by not upsetting them with the terrible, heart-wrenching fact that there are non-religious non-theists in the world. Maybe it's just me, but treating religious theists in such a patronizing, condescending manner seems far more arrogant and insulting than any criticisms offered by atheists towards religious theism.

It might help, of course, if Brandon Kumm had some idea of what atheism is — if he discussed real atheism, instead of something he made up out of his own imagination, he might have something useful to offer. As it is, the suggestion that atheists call themselves anti-religious is ridiculous because not all atheists are anti-religious. Some are themselves religious (Raelians, Religious Humanists, Buddhists) and some don't care.

It would also help if Brandon Kumm worked from accurate definitions of religion and spiritualism. Because he doesn't, he thinks that atheists couldn't possibly be critical of spirituality when that's not the case. When spirituality is simply a positive emotional reaction to the universe, then of course atheists can be spiritual; much of the time, though, the label denotes belief in the supernatural which most atheists — especially naturalistic, secular atheists in the West — reject as much as they reject gods.

Using idiosyncratic definitions to re-categorize all of humanity according to one's own personal ideology is a popular tactic, though. Rather than going through the work of defining what one believes and making a positive case for it in order to convince others to agree, it's easier to just redefine everyone and declare victory — but only after attacking everyone else for being too blind and biased to immediately accept their new categorization.

Brandon Kumm does this by putting everything bad in the "religious" category (including many things atheists don't and can't do, but they are somehow still religious) while everything good ends up in the "spiritual" category. He even claims that the "vast majority" of religious Christians, Jews, and Muslims aren't really "religious" at all — they are spiritual and they just don't know it yet because they haven't talked to him. This is much the same that we find with Christians — whom Kumm would probably criticize — when they insist that liberals aren't "real" Christians.

Brandon Kumm is correct that the fight is between "the rational and the irrational" — I think it's the only accurate statement in the entire piece — but he's wrong to imply that everyone "spiritual" is rational while everyone "religious" is irrational. He avoids any attempt to defend the rationality of what he calls "spiritual" or what "spiritualists" believe. Leaving the term vague makes it easier to avoid hard questions and challenges — and remember, the reason why atheism "doesn't make any sense" is because atheists upset people by challenging, questioning, and ultimately rejecting people's comforting beliefs.