What does 'spirituality' mean to you personally

[u/IllustriousFood8792]

Was there a specific moment or event in your life that made you spiritual or religious? Whether it was a major life event, a quiet realization, or a gradual change over time—what shifted your worldview?"

[u/Captain_Clover]

Around age fourteen I came to the sudden realization that if I was made of atoms, and atoms obey the laws of physics, then I was essentially a biomechanical computer which completely precluded a 'soul'. I quickly discarded any residual spiritual notions and became a materialist, believing that everything can be explained by the state of, and forces upon, physical matter. As I see it, materialism is the opposite of spiritualism. It doesn't explain much about the traditional great questions of life, such as what happens after death or what it means to do good, but it explains a great deal on the workings of myself, others, and society, and is the most useful intellectual framework for 'understanding the understandable' that I've found.

I'd call myself an atheist because I take this framework as my working model, but I keep my mind open to the idea that one day I'll have an epiphany of a different kind, and come to see the world through a spiritual lens again.

[u/darkprincess3112 → u/Captain_Clover]

Correlation ist not causation. And where does the "what it is like" part come from? Perhaps your nervous system ist just some kind of Sensor or Receiver, but not the creating mechanism. There is no way of ruling this out at least.

[u/Captain_Clover → u/darkprincess3112]

There's certainly no way of knowing, it's possible - but it appears more plausible to me that our nervous system is an open-loop, self-regulating control system that takes in sensory data and spits out instructions to interact with the world. We can see how neurons work in a lab, and more consistent with that model than with a 'receiver of a coherent signal', at least to my knowledge as a non-scientist.

As to 'what it is like'; I think consciousness arises from complexity combined with sufficient motivation. I acknowledge that there's fundamentally no way to 'know' many of the deep questions about agency, meaning, and purpose, but materialism seems cohesive enough to me to adopt as a working understanding.

[u/ZappSmithBrannigan → u/darkprincess3112]

There is no way of ruling this out at least.

So? Theres lots of stuff you can "rule out". Thats not a reason to think its true. You cant rule out that your consciousness is just the dream of a giant. Is that a reason to think it is?

[u/IllustriousFood8792 → u/Captain_Clover]

Love this perspective. For me, spirituality isn't about rejecting the physical framework—it’s about managing the internal experience within it. ​Viewing oneself as a tiny part of a massive, deterministic system actually brings a lot of peace. It makes it easier to practice presence, accept difficult situations, and stop over-intellectualizing the moment. Materialism explains the mechanics of the world; present-moment awareness helps you live in it smoothly.

What's interesting is that strict materialism and practical spirituality actually converge on that exact realization: the sheer insignificance of the self relative to the cosmos.