Attribution: Mike Harding
Yesterday, my daughter and I were strolling in Golden Gate park and she pointed out the tree (right) and said “Isn’t that beautiful?” and I replied “Yes, it is.” Then she asked “Can birds hear?” and I replied “What do you think?” She thought about it for a moment and said “I think they can or they would get run over by cars.” And I asked “Do you think that no birds are run over by cars?” She said “I’ve never seen a bird run over, but I guess it could happen, it’s a mystery.” That made me smile. We went on to discuss how we might make a test (experiment) that could help prove or disprove bird hearing and she thought that was pretty cool and finally said “Even though we could find out, I still like it to be a mystery right now.”
I’ve gotten a few questions (unfortunately not comments) about how I view spirituality as a non-believer. That’s a really good question because depending on how it’s defined, I believe there is a role for spirituality in our daily lives. If it’s defined as appreciation of the beauty, kindness, or some other set of attributes in what we observe and the mystery of how it came to be, that’s perfectly rational.
Where I part company on the spirituality front is when the only answer to every mystery is god. We’ve become at least reasonably competent in sorting out some of these mysteries by forming ideas (theories and hypothesis) and testing them (experiments and observations) to determine what might be the cause or path of events to lead to such wondrous mysteries as the cause of illness for example.
That being said, science doesn’t, and probably can’t answer every mystery. It’s a tool set that allows us to take some common view of mysteries though and where we’re pretty sure of the answer, we should step away from the ravings of ignorant sheepherders and go with the facts.
Coming back to the core for a moment, the question has been posed directly: are you spiritual? If that means able to appreciate the beauty and splendor of our world, yes. If it means sometimes pondering the big questions like “why are we here?” or “how did we get here?” or “what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?”, then yes. If it means am I able or willing to attribute those mysteries to some “higher power”, then emphatically no. But I think mostly being spiritual for me is about accepting that some things are mysteries, and being OK with that stance without having to attribute the mystery to anything other than “it is.”
