Bill Evans - Sam Harris - Horizon TV - Carl Sagan - Andy Mulcahy - W B Yeats - J T Walsh - Manhattan 1979 - Martin Luther King - John Muir - Michael Shermer - Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God TV - Jonathan Miller TV - Joe Nicholl - Richard Dawkins - Peter Joseph - Franz Kafka - A W Tozer - Louis Theroux TV -
My creed for art in general is that it should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise ... a part of yourself you never knew existed. Bill Evans
A kernel of truth lurks at the heart of religion, because spiritual experience, ethical behaviour, and strong communities are essential for human happiness. And yet our religious traditions are intellectually defunct and politically ruinous. While spiritual experience is clearly a natural propensity of the human mind, we need not believe anything on insufficient evidence to actualize it. Sam Harris
What I’m asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives. Sam Harris
Many of my fellow atheists consider all talk of ‘spirituality’ or ‘mysticism’ to be synonymous with mental illness, conscious fraud, or self-deception. I have argued elsewhere that this is a problem – because millions of people have had experiences for which ‘spiritual’ and ‘mystical’ seem the only terms available. Sam Harris
Scientists now believe what happens inside the mind of temporal lobe epileptic patients may just be an extreme case of what goes on inside all our brains. For everyone it now appears that temporal lobes are key in experiencing religious and spiritual belief. This explosive research studying how religious faith affects the brain is the inspiration for a completely new field of science: neuro-theology. Horizon: God on the Brain, BBC 2003
Despite the setback with Professor Dawkins, Dr Persinger’s research shone over a thousand human guinea-pigs has gone further than any other to establish a clear link between spiritual or religious experience and the temporal lobes of the human brain. It has put his research at the very cutting-edge of neuro-theology. ibid.
Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of this astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy. Andy Mulcahy
As I thought of these things, I drew aside the curtains and looked out into the darkness, and it seemed to my troubled fancy that all those little points of light filling the sky were the furnaces of innumerable divine alchemists, who labour continually, turning lead into gold, weariness into ecstasy, bodies into souls, the darkness into God; and at their perfect labour my mortality grew heavy, and I cried out, as so many dreamers and men of letters in our age have cried, for the birth of that elaborate spiritual beauty which could alone uplift souls weighted with so many dreams. W B Yeats, Rosa Alchemica
I personally don’t believe in aliens. But I do believe that there is something out there that is accountable for all these mysterious things that are going on: I think it is a spiritual thing not a material thing. J T Walsh
Woody Allen: The steel cube was brilliant? I thought it was very spiritual. Manhattan 1979 starring Woody Allen & Diane Keaton & Michael Murphy & Meryl Streep & Mariel Hemingway & Ann Byrne & Michael O'Donoghue & Wallace Shawn & Karen Ludwig et al, director Woody Allen, Keaton
The great problem facing modern man is that, that the means by which we live have outdistanced the spiritual ends for which we live. So we find ourselves caught in a messed-up world. The problem is with man himself and man’s soul. We haven’t learned how to be just and honest and kind and true and loving. And that is the basis of our problem. The real problem is that through our scientific genius we've made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we've failed to make of it a brotherhood. Martin Luther King, Rediscovering Lost Values
There must be places for human beings to satisfy their souls. Food and drink is not all. There is the spiritual. John Muir
How can we find spiritual meaning in a scientific worldview? Spirituality is a way of being in the world, a sense of one’s place in the cosmos, a relationship to that which extends beyond oneself ... Does scientific explanation of the world diminish its spiritual beauty? I think not. Science and spirituality are complementary, not conflicting; additive, not detractive. Anything that generates a sense of awe may be a source of spirituality. Science does this in spades. Michael Shermer, Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
There’s no such thing as spiritual apprehension. Another 50 Renowned Academics Speaking About God, Professor Massimo Pigliucci
Where do you get your spirituality? Jonathan Miller, The Atheism Tapes, Colin McGinn, BBC 2004
Spirituality is a prized commodity. The media tell us to respect spiritual souls. And their apparently deep insights. Spiritual self-help guides do a roaring trade. In the material world outnumbering science books by three to one. But what does spirituality actually mean? Richard Dawkins, Enemies of Reason: Slaves to Superstition
We are all pure spirituality. Peter Joseph, producer Zeitgeist
There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution. Franz Kafka
Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. A W Tozer
Now I’m not here very long. What about if I went straight for trying to being a guru? Louis Theroux’s Indian Gurus s3e2, BBC 2000
India: Land of spirituality. I was following in the footsteps of the thousands of westerners who come east in search of enlightenment wondering if I too could find the meaning of life. ibid.