I enjoyed reading DarkSyde's post - as always, witty even if the metaphor is over-pressed. I felt it was worth a response in diary form, since I've given a lot of thought to this very subject. It's my contention that atheism, like religiosity or agnosticism, are rungs on a ladder that tend toward illuminated spirituality. They're each a step, both in the life of an individual and in the evolution of cultures, toward a more profound understanding of our relationship to the sacred.
Even atheists and agnostics have some relationship to the divine; indeed, to even declare yourself one or the other suggests that this relationship, or the felt lack of it, is a central concern. The hierarchy of spiritual growth has at its lowest level religious fundamentalism. From there, it evolves into atheism, then to agnosticism, then toward spirituality.
It may take a long while to get from A to D, and most people don't make it. If you can move up a step or two in a single lifetime, I think you're ahead of the game. Further, the stages of growth correspond roughly to the body, the mind, the heart and finally, when those three harmonize, the spirit.
Organized religion is, to me, an abdication of one's intellect and spirit. To follow a system of ritual that may stand in opposition to freedom or happiness, or that conflicts with logical thinking and compassionate behavior (as some do), is counterintuitive. Certainly if a religion lays single claim to ultimate truth, it must be regarded with suspicion. Unquestioned adherence to religious practice, in absence of the spirituality that may have originally informed the practice, is spiritual slavery. It is, rather unfortunately, the inevitable conclusion of any successful organized religion. I have no doubt the Christ was an illuminated being, but the institution and practices of the various churches that have proliferated in his wake often do not preserve or practice the wisdom he set forth. Rather, they have devolved into a baroque parody of spiritual practice, with people circulating through empty ritual without the divine spark. Indeed, in Catholicism, a piece of bread and wine stands as symbol and representation of that spark, but I doubt whether many people have actually experienced communion as a result of taking communion. My own religion, Judaism, is little different in this sense. It's now a system of rules and codes, some of which make sense in today's world, but much of which is simply an ossified holdover kept alive out of cultural necessity. These codes have function, of course, and help Jews to preserve their identity, but there's very little mystical or oceanic union achieved through them. They are, like any practice that goes on too long, empty but for the meanings we personally ascribe to them. And they can become means by which humans can control other humans. Religions are supposed to be maps to God; but the maps are woefully outdated and following one often enriches only the mapmaker.
In practice, the body, not the spirit, is the object of concern for organized religion. Because organized religion has lost contact with its primum mobile, its inspiration, it focuses on what it can address: our behaviors, such as our sexuality, the food we eat, the way our time is managed, how we spend our money, which candidate we vote for. It involves itself in gross materiality to the point where nearly every aspect of our material lives is in some way adjudicated by religious teaching. This too becomes baroque, as evidenced by the orgy of consumption that accompanies many important holidays. The realms of politics, economics, work, reproduction, land-use, resource allocation etc., are the province of organized religions. As far as encounters with the divine, as experienced by individuals, religion is really quite suspicious of such things, since it doesn't really have the power to mediate or explain them, especially when they differ from received accounts in sacred texts (as they often do).
Once you wake up to the fact that organized religions are bloated zeppelins filled more with human efflatus than divine wind, you might become an atheist. Atheism is an intellectual rejection of the institution of religion, and thus represents a step up in the hierarchy of spiritual growth. It rejects empty ritual, dogma, literalism...whatever the existing religious hegemony might be. Many atheists in my experience aren't really rejecting the notion of a divine presence. They're rejecting the human filters through which God is mediated. And that rejection is, understandably, strong. It's frustrating as hell to find yourself in a world, like DarkSyde, where everyone seems crazy. True believers can seem misty-eyed and mesmeric because to some extent they are. That anger and frustration manifests itself as a rejection of God and everything related to it. And it's not so much a rejection of God as it is the received concept of God. Atheists tend to become empirical and positivistic in their thinking, which demands sensible proof before any concept can be accepted as valid. They see the universe as essentially mechanistic, without intent, without consciousness, and without morality. It neither loves us nor seeks to destroy us. Atheists tend to see randomness where others see design, coincidence where others see synchronicity. Atheists tend to rely on their senses as vehicles of what's real, and reject notions of reality that don't interface with our hardware. I know atheists very well because I used to be one myself.
Atheism, then, is a function of the intellect. Its primary tool - reasoning - tells us that religions as they exist are far off the mark. Any belief system that demands we abandon our faculty of reasoning probably isn't functioning properly. Because the mind is basically phenomenological, requiring empirical data to reach conclusions, notions of the supernatural make its gears stick. The strong reliance of the senses and on tangible proof can debar the atheist from moving up the hierarchy to agnosticism, and a lot of people get trapped at this level. Atheism is an easy myth to believe because it is so believable. The atheist may never evolve to the next stage because they are usually quite certain of their convictions, and so don't pursue any different knowledge; rather the atheist rejects with equal intensity what the religious embrace. But atheism, as many have said, is really just a more informed type of faith. To say that there is no God is of course as much a leap of logic to say that there is one. The available evidence really gives us no clear answer on the subject (or we wouldn't be having this discussion).
But when atheism fails to satisfy, as eventually it may because the universe it posits is so painfully reductive and...soulless...agnosticism takes its place. Rather than being wimpy, as some have suggested, agnosticism is a more evolved position because it more completely acknowledges that our senses are fallible. We can't be sure whether the reality we sense is in any way objectively true. More and more it seems that quite the opposite is the case: "reality" is a relatively arbitrary collage of whatever information our brains deem important. To hold out the possibility that the real isn't, well, real, is to take a major step toward spiritual understanding. Agnosticism is a difficult belief system because it is uncertain, and the agnostic must learn to become comfortable with the mystery. Ultimately, agnosticism is an epistemological position: we can't know one way or the other whether the divine exists, so to assert one or the other position is equally erroneous. The agnostic leaves open the door for a spiritual experience, and holds out as a possibility that events are not random, that the universe has consciousness beyond the individual human, and that there may be a design. Agnostics may also accept science and empiricism, trying to find ways in which it intersects with and confirms spiritual assertions. But at bottom, the agnostic, more than the religious person or the atheist, is on some level a seeker, whose greatest assets are open-mindedness, flexibility, and resistance to social, cultural or religious programming. Importantly, the agnostic's position is not, like the atheists, one of rejection. It is a withholding of judgment and a willingness to learn more.
Because spiritual uncertainty is difficult, and because the possibility of the divine exists for the agnostic, they are motivated to seek enlightenment. The path they take can be very personal, and often mixes different spiritual traditions together, taking whatever parts from each that seem useful, or they reject all of them and try to draw their own maps. Agnostics may gravitate toward traditions that are more spiritual than religious or that have a mystical element; they may investigate Sufism over Islam, for example, or Buddhism, which is not so much a theology as a system of practices by which any individual can achieve insight. They may be attracted to shamanism or the spirituality of indigenous people, which are typically not rigid, co-opted or highly codified. Or they may seek intimations of the divine through direct experience of wild places.
Agnosticism is connected to the heart, or the feeling areas of the self. It's primarily an emotional position, with hope and skepticism in equal measure. The agnostic may have been an atheist who became frustrated at the emptiness of a random universe. It's cold and unfeeling, morally ambiguous. The notion of death with no afterlife or reincarnation is disheartening and makes life feel ultimately pointless. Often the agnostic senses that there is something more than meets the eye, though they may not be able to clearly identify or explain what it is. It's an intuitive sense, and intuitions are heart-oriented. And indeed, the path to spiritual understanding comes largely through the heart rather than the mind, since its primary, if not sole teaching is love.
And then, if the agnostic is ready, a spiritual illumination may occur. If you've read this far, and you'd like me to continue, I will happily do so. But I don't wish to task more patience. If there's interest, I'll post the part 2, which includes my own encounter with divinity.