It wouldn't really matter when it comes to atheists since the reality is that spiritual isn't just something anyone can escape from when it comes to things having meaning beyond the natural.
We still see in existence on our world
Spiritual Atheists as they are people who do not believe in a literal "God" (thus the term "Atheist"),
but still consider themselves to be (often deeply) "Spiritual" people.
We're already seeing the rise of others having faith in what science offers when it comes to meaning for our lives - even though they may not be religious. There was an excellent review on the issue in light of the series by Neil deGrasse Tyson - as seen in
Cosmos, Episode One: A Religious Approach to Science and an Unscientific Approach to History | Theological Graffiti - Digital Etchings on Life and Faith from
Theological Graffiti - Digital Etchings on Life and Faith. As it is, not all atheist have ever been of the mindset that being atheist somehow means not being spiritual and many who give EXTREME value to the universe have noted where atheism is highly spiritual (As discussed
before here ). We have a
theists already reflecting religious systems that do not believe in gods/goddesses or a Deity (
Buddhism, Taoism, Pantheism, Unitarian Universalism, etc.) -with it being the case that Richard Dawkins described Pantheism as "sexed up" atheism since Pantheists use the word God to describe nature and the universe in non-supernatural terms (more shared in
http://www.pantheism.net/atheism.htm ) and Richard Dawkins writes "
Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a nonsupernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings" - and
secular humanism, which is overwhelmingly atheistic in practice, is deemed a religion. ...
As a basic example on the spirituality inherent in differing forms of atheism, Pantheism believes that the universe and nature are worthy of the deepest religious reverence - that understanding them, appreciating their beauty, and preserving nature, should be the central focus of our lives. Nearly everyone feels religious feelings when looking at nature or the night sky - and most people explain those feelings in terms of the religion they were taught as children....and pantheism believes that those feelings are older and more basic than any traditional religion, for it sees that they are a natural part of our existence as natural material beings, a recognition of our participation and belonging as members of nature and the universe.
For more, one can go to
Pantheism as "Sexed-up Atheism" | World Pantheism - as it concerns Pantheistic Atheism..
Also, others such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson has also spoken on the matter when he noted rather directly "I wanted to become an astrophysicist not because I chose it
in a way the universe chose me. [...] I was called by the universe. I had no choice in the matter.":
The stances of atheists - who place mankind/whatever he feels to have meaning at the center of determining value and morality - is a reflection of pantheism.
As it concerns those who are atheists and spirituality, the reality of being unable to escape a spiritual background can again be seen in the realm of the metaphysical.
As an example, Two biologists can come from differing backgrounds----one a Deist and the other an Agnostic--and yet they can have common ground in their desire to understand how the botanical world can operate. They can examine the same kinds of plants and come to the same conclusions when rationally studying the makeup of the plant, how it was designed, how long it lives and how important it is to the environment. Both can walk away from their study on how an organism operates naturally and not necessarily have to have a religious view dictate how they study or what they see organically developing. However, when it comes to the reasons behind why the plant exists and what meaning/purpose it has life, in that area is where the subject of spirituality occurs alongside the realm of the supernatural. For seeing the way something operates does not mean one understands the artistic beauty in it or the back-drop of what significance that plant has in the meaning of life. Essentially, what I'm trying to convey is the entire issue of how there is only explaining the material universe from some particular human perspective, with its own embedded metaphysics.....that if consistent, methodological naturalism leads to a metaphysical (spiritual) level.
There can be no escaping that you in the lab (or in nature) always begin your investigation with a whole conceptual system...and this connects to what can be found in the Kantian concept of the transcendental. That is, there are certain things which are preconditions for our being able to know, or do any empirical investigation at all, but which are themselves not capable of being the objects of our knowledge, or empirically verified. For the entire structure of our thought, which occurs in language, is transcendental.
Methodological naturalism starts with an entire bucket bag of concepts, such as "causation", the "natural", the "observable", and so forth, all of which are in fact metaphysical concepts, and have metaphysics built into them. As soon as one looks at something and says "that is an X", he or she has brought their conceptual system into play...and the investigation is no longer purely empirical. For the individual is filtering the world through an already existing conceptual system. This was the case even with Newton, who did not make any of his laws on gravity without first having a filter that was well-established in Theism. Without a metaphysical framework, we would not be able to entertain notions of what is possible and what is not. For the notion of possibility is fundamentally metaphysical. ...and that is spiritual. We can, of course, understand other people's views, but there is always a degree of misunderstanding involved, because it will be our understanding of their views, framed without our conceptual framework, and this will involve some distortion. Science, even methodological naturalism, is teleological to an extent. For when it comes to asking what purpose or specific character does the universe have, it has been shown how it is knowable, constant, intelligible, predictable, stable, etc. These are all presuppositions of science as well as methodological naturalism. Atheists are often associated with methodological naturalism - but with Methodological Naturalism, what it seems others often forget is that the problem with saying things like the natural is what is observable is that what is observable is purely theory-dependent. ...conceptual in nature.
Additionally, there are scientists who study paranormal phenomenon (i.e. angels, ghosts, etc) and choose not to assume that what they are studying is not so much supernatural as much as it is a part of nature that is currently unknown. They assume that how they are generally conceptualized doesn't matter since in their minds, if they exist, and they impact the material universe (whether they are part of it or not), they can be studied using science at least to that extent. However, "existence" is a concept, and "material universe" is a concept, and what these mean have to be panned out relative to an overall metaphysical system. For concepts are holistic, existing in relation to an entire network of meaning.
And as it concerns the spiritual, other atheists are aware of how even religious motivations have often played a key role in development of theory/science. In example, Niels Bohr, who layed some of the foundations for quantum physics, was influenced by various mystical ideas and the Chinese yin/yang doctrine (which formed the real basis of his doctrine of complementarity). Additionally, Karl Jung, who developed universally acknowledged psychological categories of introvert and extravert, amongst many other things, was very much basing his work on esotericism. As one who is a Human Services professional/in the field, Jung is very central for the theories/science utilized in dealing with human interactions....and it was never seen as not being "science." With both Jung and Bohr, these scientists felt it necessary to reformulate their doctrines in ways that were passably naturalistic. But their basic explanatory categories were religious, and then were then transformed into naturalistic ones. In both cases, that reflected an underlying belief in the religious metaphysics. Furthermore, even if the original ideas were transformed into naturalistic ones, there is still a teleological connection between them, which in fact raises doubts about whether it is right to interpret them as truly naturalistic anyway. Granted, methodological naturalism does not exclude one being merely inspired in a loose sense by ideas of a religious nature....but in the cases cited, it seems to go beyond a level of "loose." For Bohr believed in complementarity because of his religious metaphysical views, just as Jung did
Discussions on subjects such as naturalism/atheism do the exact same things as those in theism when it comes to spiritual questions defining life.
Questions like:
- "What is the origin of life?"
- "What does the future hold for the inhabitants of our world?
"
For all of the questions brought up, they are central behind the way we live our lives...especially as it concerns the reasons behind why we do science to begin with...for even if trying to be objective on finding out one aspect of science, one cannot escape having to deal with the natural consequence of what a scientific fact entails. Its being seen all the time in the consequences discoveries of science have created. When studying the science of physics in an area such as creating safer automobiles, one has to understand that they reason for making something safer/better understanding physics is because they value life. But if they don't even understand the basis behind why life is to be valued, what's the point? Why be concerned with using science for the betterment of mankind?