Lack of faith, or extreme skepticism, should not be interpreted as lack of spirituality.
I see myself as an atheist and a materialist, certainly a skeptic, but I see the universe as an extremely complex and intricate process (not a machine, which implies a purpose) and a great mystery. But I still see myself as a very spiritual person. I know there is something going on I do not understand, but the substitution of some divine intelligence as an explanation for it answers no questions and explains nothing. After all, if He is the Answer, then what is the Question? The religious hypothesis does not resolve any of our doubts, it only postpones them.
Still, I cannot escape the nagging suspicion that there is something totally unexpected, and wonderful, going on that I just can't see. I suspect that the greatest wonder and mystery is consciousness itself, and that it holds the key to what we all seek. I am convinced consciousness and mind are a property of the Universe,like entropy. For me, the best way to find this connection has been through science, I suspect it holds the key, although I haven't a clue as to just what it is. It is the greatest failure of my life that I never had the talent or skill or determination to use that science to explore and explain that mystery.
I've presented this quote here before, but here it is again. It is the best expression I've seen yet of how I feel. It is how I define my spirituality.
“Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp. What is the message signaled by the hordes of diatoms, flashing their microscopic lights in the night sea? What truth is expressed by the legions of barnacles, whitening the rocks with their habitations, each small creature within finding the necessities of its existence in the sweep of the surf? And what is the meaning of so tiny a being as the transparent wisp of protoplasm that is a sea lace, existing for some reason inscrutable to us — a reason that demands its presence by the trillion amid the rocks and weeds of the shore? The meaning haunts and ever eludes us, and in its very pursuit we approach the ultimate mystery of Life itself.”
from The Edge of the Sea
- Rachel Carson (1955)