The Construction of Atheist Spirituality: A Survey-Based Study

Schnell, Tatjana; Keenan, William

doi:10.14220/9783737000994.101

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…More recent studies suggested that different degrees of atheism and agnosticism can be held and that these are consistently linked to various beliefs and attitudes (Schnell 2015 ). Furthermore, individuals who share the conviction that no god or higher power exists may still hold very different worldviews, as has been shown with regard to meaning in life (Schnell and Keenan 2011 ), spirituality (Schnell and Keenan 2013 ), and several other characteristics (Keller et al 2018 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Worldview Under Stress: Preliminary Findings on Cardiovascular and Cortisol Stress Responses Predicted by Secularity, Religiosity, Spirituality, and Existential Search

2020

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This study reports preliminary findings on the hypothesis that worldview can predict cardiovascular and cortisol responses to social stress. Based on theory and previous findings, we assumed that worldview security would provide a basis for stress resilience. Accordingly, religious and atheist individuals were expected to show higher stress resilience than spiritual and agnostic participants. Likewise, dimensional measures of religiosity and atheism were hypothesized to predict decreased, and existential search-indicating worldview insecurity-was hypothesized to predict increased physiological stress responses. Subjects included 50 university students who completed online questionnaires and took part in a standardized social stress test (Trier Social Stress Test). Systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP/ DBP), heart rate (HR), and salivary cortisol (SC) were assessed at baseline, immediately after stress testing, and during a forty-minute recovery period. Worldview comparisons revealed lower cardiovascular stress responses among religious than among atheist and spiritual participants and particularly high baseline SC among spiritual participants. Across the entire sample, existential search showed substantial positive correlations with SBP, HR, and SC stress parameters. The findings suggest that worldview security might partly explain the health benefits often associated with religion.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Worldview Under Stress: Preliminary Findings on Cardiovascular and Cortisol Stress Responses Predicted by Secularity, Religiosity, Spirituality, and Existential Search

2020

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“…As for the understanding of spirituality, Huss (2014) has distinguished between two approaches: for some scholars it is a universal entity, common to all people regardless of their religiosity or secularity, while the others regard it as a newly constituted cultural category that challenges the modern era's division between religious and secular. From the emic point of view, our two "spiritual atheisms" clearly support the understanding of spirituality as something universally human: in their approach, '"spiritual" attitudes, values and commitments are distanced from religious worldviews and the supernatural, and established in an immanentist context' (Schnell and Keenan 2013;. Blurring the lines between the secular and religious is clearly a question of power relations; thus spirituality becomes a battleground that can be 'hijacked' either for religious or secular purposes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Crossbreeding Atheism with Spirituality: Notes on Soviet and Western Attempts

Remmel

Sillfors

2018

Secularism and Nonreligion

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The recent "nonreligious turn" in studies of secularity has changed the focus from what secularity lacks in comparison to religion to what it offers as an alternative. Various forms of nonreligion have been studied extensively in recent years, yet mostly in the contemporary Western societies. This article shifts the context more to the east and also towards the history by comparing two instances when meaning-making gained a central position within an atheist tradition. For our first example, we examine the appeal to spirituality in the period of late Soviet atheism; the second comes from contemporary Western "atheist spirituality". By studying the publications by relevant authors, the article explores what can be learned about atheism and spirituality from this comparison, how atheism and spirituality are understood and combined, and the reasons for the sudden emphasis on existential questions within an atheist tradition. Remmel and Sillfors: Crossbreeding Atheism with Spirituality Art. 8, page 2 of 13 and North America might actually learn from?" (Alles 2018), we took on the endeavor of comparing contemporary atheist spirituality to the "spiritual turn" in the late Soviet atheism and chose "What can be learned from that comparison?" for our main research question. In particular, we are interested in how "spirituality" and "atheism" are understood, what is their mutual relationship, what caused the sudden emergence of this combination and, finally, what does it tell us about the patterns of development of atheist traditions? Our comparison is based on the analysis of relevant books. The "spiritual turn" in Soviet atheism is addressed according to literature printed in Soviet Estonia, which offers a possibility of narrowing down the material and assessing the atheist propaganda in a particular cultural context. Five books were analyzed: Lutheranism Earlier and Now (1969) and Indifference-Is It Good or Bad (1981) by Kuulo Vimmsaare, and Believers and Communists (1972) by Lembit Raid, both prominent figures of atheism in the Soviet Estonia; and two collections of articles, both translated from Russian: Atheism, Religion, Morality (1976) and Individual Approach in Atheist Explanatory Work (1976). All books belong to a certain version of "scientific atheism", an almost unreadable genre of popularscientific propaganda, meant for both common readers and propagandists. Although there are minor differences, the books represent more or less similar understanding of both atheism and spirituality, and were selected because they were almost the only representatives of the Soviet spiritual atheism in Estonian context. This material is supported by findings from Soviet era archives in Estonia. From the contemporary atheist spirituality, we examine three books written by atheists with a focus on spirituality: The Book of Atheist Spirituality: An Elegant Argument for Spirituality without God 1 (2006) by French philosopher André Comte-Sponville; Going Godless: Rediscovering Spirituality in a Material World (2010) by American compu...

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“…These occur most often when spirituality is linked to a religiosity that contains beliefs such as fear of an angry god or fear of final judgement. As a noteworthy counterpoint to the largely positive literature on spirituality and well-being, there are a few studies (King, 2014;Schnell & Keenan, 2013) which show that spirituality without religiousness has negative effects on well-being. The thesis of the authors is that people with generally worse mental health might be drawn more toward spiritual practices.…”

Section: Teacher Spirituality/religiousness -Caveats and Negative Aspectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teachers’ experiences of spirituality in Swiss secular high schools – an interpretative phenomenological analysis

Wartenweiler

2021

Journal of Beliefs & Values

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The Construction of Atheist Spirituality: A Survey-Based Study

Cited by 16 publications

References 19 publications

Worldview Under Stress: Preliminary Findings on Cardiovascular and Cortisol Stress Responses Predicted by Secularity, Religiosity, Spirituality, and Existential Search

Worldview Under Stress: Preliminary Findings on Cardiovascular and Cortisol Stress Responses Predicted by Secularity, Religiosity, Spirituality, and Existential Search

Crossbreeding Atheism with Spirituality: Notes on Soviet and Western Attempts

Teachers’ experiences of spirituality in Swiss secular high schools – an interpretative phenomenological analysis

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