Atheism = No Spiritual Dimensions To Reality?

[smoothmoniker]

Someone who believes that there is no spiritual dimension to reality is a materialist - everything that exists can be described as purely natural, and nothing that it is outside of the physical world participates in the causal chain.

All materialists are by definition atheists, but not all atheists are materialists.

[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by smoothmoniker

Someone who believes that there is no spiritual dimension to reality is a materialist - everything that exists can be described as purely natural, and nothing that it is outside of the physical world participates in the causal chain.

All materialists are by definition atheists, but not all atheists are materialists.

Now I've got that Madonna song stuck in my head. Living...

[Flint]

Originally Posted by smoothmoniker

Someone who believes that there is no spiritual dimension to reality is a materialist - everything that exists can be described as purely natural, and nothing that it is outside of the physical world participates in the causal chain.

All materialists are by definition atheists, but not all atheists are materialists.

It almost sounds like, according to what you are saying, I am a materialist. I don't even think "supernatural" should be a word--it's impossible.

But I don't consider myself an atheist. At all. Why does God have to be outside of the physical world? I think of the universal intelligence as the all-inclusive organization of the patterns of the physical universe.

And I don't discount the existance of what is percieved as a spiritual realm. It's simply a part of nature we don't understand yet; and probably aren't designed to ever understand. But that doesn't make it not exist.

I struggle with the fact that people percieve a conflict here. I can, quite easily, agree with everything believed within religion, without violating everything believed within science.