Brethren the Huffington Post published a very interesting post, entitled Has Atheism Become a Religion?, which I think you ought to read. My comments were too long for the comments’ box, so I chose to share my thoughts and my experience as a blog post. I toyed with "spiritual" atheism a couple of times during my adult life - including Theravada Buddhism and "Buddhism without beliefs" - a quest that took me to reexamine the roots of Western Civilization and the fusion of science, philosophy, and values that in Rome was made of Jerusalem and Athens. At all times I kept a "phenomenological" observation of my own internal stream of consciousness, and of my rational, and moral reasoning processes-in other words, of my conscience.
I reached the conclusion that atheism is ultimately irrational and that it does in fact bases itself on the perception of the "ultimate irrationality" of the universe, a perception reached by self-styled, ultimate "rational minds" that are the very product of that irrationality. This cognitive dissonance allows otherwise genial minds like that of Stephen Hawking to assert with a straight face that God has been removed as an explanation for the existence of the universe. The same dissonance, along with a healthy dose of hubris, empowers the evangelists of the new atheism like Dawkins and Harris, whose in-your-face hatred make for great bookselling and sound bites, but for little else. Then, on the fringes, we find people like Paul Myers, a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota at Morris, famous for his circus-acts of desecrating allegedly consecrated hosts. The rabble he attracts is considerable, the same kind of rabble attracted by the spectacles of “circus freaks,” attracted by what is bent, deformed, and grotesque, and of the same level of decency as the professor, or lack thereof.
Myers' egregious behavior and clear abuse of academic freedom leads me to observe that the fringes of the new atheist movement are disturbingly close to, and separated by a tenuous line from, the worst excesses brought about by Islamic fascism. But I digress.
That atheists have "spiritual needs" comes as no surprise to me. "Spirit" exists, despite the condescending denial often heard from neo-atheists. The best proof is the need for spiritual fulfillment atheists express and their demands to have their needs met. In my own experience, that deepest spiritual need comes from an intuition that the universe is indeed ultimately rational, that it has a beginning, a meaning, and a purpose, and that the human awareness of that need for rational meaning is no mere delusion, but a constitutive part of our humanity. Our spiritual hunger is as real and objective as our physical hunger. To deny human spiritual hunger is as foolish as denying physical hunger, as also denying the fact that, if unsatisfied, both hungers lead to death, albeit of a spiritual kind. One kills our bodies, the other our humanity.
St. Augustine said it best: "Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." True that, true that.