Can you be an Atheist and open minded?

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Mark Miranda's picture
Can you be an Atheist and open minded?

Like spiritual, without a God.

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ThePragmatic's picture
Sure you can, since Atheism

Sure you can, since Atheism means to lack belief in a god/gods.

The question is: What do you mean by 'spiritual'?

Some might associate 'spriritualism' to ghosts, spirits, reincarnation, occult, astrology, magic, etc.

Speaking for myself, I don't believe in immaterial souls, supernatural beings, ghosts, magic, etc. But the word 'spiritual' could just as well refer to a form of mental state (e.g. 'inner peace'), and could refer to for example meditation.

Mark Miranda's picture
Yeah I meant to say

Yeah I meant to say meditation.

ThePragmatic's picture
In that case...

In that case...
I'm sure that you can find several books and web pages about it. I googled "atheist meditation" and "secular meditation" and got a lot of results that didn't seem like complete hogwash.
Sam Harris has written a book especially on the topic of meditation: Waking Up.

Jeff Vella Leone's picture
You should re-phrase it as :

You should re-phrase it as :

Can you be a theist and be open minded.

Of course not.
To be a theist means that you refuse to use any critical thinking when it comes to your religion.
You are embracing you close mindedness and even give it a name "Faith".

Austin Hodge's picture
I'm Atheist *because* I'm

I'm Atheist *because* I'm open minded. I've been open minded all of my life. So: yes, you can be Atheist and Open Minded.. It's almost a requirement of being Atheist to be honest.

XyberEX's picture
THAT and while it doesn't

THAT and while it doesn't involve automatically accepting anything as true it also means not automatically accepting anything as false either.

Nyarlathotep's picture
There is a very fine line

There is a very fine line between an 'open mind' and credulity.

C.G._Cruttenden's picture
Sam harris has some wonderful

Sam harris has some wonderful books on this very topic. I suggest you read the title 'waking up: A guide to spirituality without religion'

EDIT: apparently somebody already said that my bad :p

Nordic Fox's picture
Yes.

Yes.

In short, I see spirituality as "believing in something larger than yourself", and to me that doesn't mean I must believe in the paranormal. I respect nature, for example... And view nature with a spiritualistic sort of respect.

Plants are amazing, growing and thriving in places that are impossible for other living things, weather is both life-giving, supportive and destructive to severe extremes. And space is so large, even if we achieved light-speed travel in my lifetime we would not, could not see even a fraction of 1% of the entire observable universe.

To me, that's worth thought and a kind of spiritualistic reflection.

As far as open mind, absolutely! As an Atheist, I define my lack of believe based on observation, knowledge and reliable test-ability.

I do not believe in any culture's version of god(s), I do not believe that there was a man named Jesus who did the things mentioned in books written by people thousands of years ago.... However if I was ever presented with undeniable, absolute, repeatable evidence that I was mistaken.... I would amend what I say/think.

However.... I am 99.9999% convinced that the evidence in question will never be brought forth. So open-minded as I remain, I am entirely doubtful that religion has anything correct. And there I stand.

I will, however add that many stories do tend to have historical backgrounds that do turn out to be true.... However are often exaggerated for emphasis. Gomorrah and the lady turning to salt, for example likely came from the odd phenomena of salt pillars found around the Dead Sea area. Ancient people discovering these person-sized salt pillars would likely reach what they would believe is a reasonable conclusion.... People must have been turned to salt! Not true, but one could see where they may have got the idea.

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