There are many people who would label themselves as spiritually apathetic. They don't care one whit about the mysteries of the Universe, if God exists, or what will happen to them after they die.
My husband and I were both in this group. Friends, family, work, play, finances, what was for dinner, all meant much more than such intangible and unanswerable questions.
I suppose some people just aren't deep thinkers and will never care, which is perfectly fine. For people like my husband and I, we lost our apathy and became atheist activists after 9-11 when the government got really heavy-handed and it was obvious that even if we didn't care about religion, many did, and those people voted according to their morals first and foremost, and made it clear they wanted to shove their theocratic lifestyle onto the rest of us.
Back to the article, I wanted to bring up some things from it:
The Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., [said] "We live in a society today where it is acceptable now to say that they have no spiritual curiosity. At almost any other time in history, that would have been unacceptable."What I find fascinating, as a skeptical atheist, is that people can actually get anything useful out of faith, which gives you nothing substantial, honest or real. I'm like Carl Sagan, I'd rather have the hard truth rather than the comforting lie.
She finds this "very sad because the whole purpose of faith is to be a source of guidance, strength and perspective in difficult times. To be human is to have a sense of purpose, an awareness that our life is an utterly unique expression of creation and we want to live it with meaning, grace and beauty."
Also, yes, as humans we create our own purpose. To just read a book from 2,000 years ago and take the purpose from that is very sad indeed. We are not created by a flawed god who had to keep trying to fix all of his mistakes through barbaric means.
We are amazing, though, products of 4 billion years of evolution, and over 14 billion years of our atoms bouncing around the Universe.
Again, as Carl Sagan says, we are how the Universe can know itself, because we are conscious. To bow and scrape to an imaginary father figure who spent his early years thirstily demanding murder and blind obedience seems to me such a waste.
