People often believe that atheists have no spirituality and that all we care about is making religious people feel stupid. People believe that feeling connected or at one with the universe is strictly a perk of those that believe in some sort of higher power.
As an atheist, I have experienced the stigma that comes with letting people know you don’t believe in any sort of deity.
Atheists are often seen as immoral or bad people without any values. These perceptions of atheism are wrong. Some of the nicest people I have met are atheist and hold themselves to a high moral standard, without religion guiding their actions. Atheists can be just as spiritual as religious people.
Science is never thought of as spiritual, and it is the oil to religion’s water. They just don’t mix. While studying biology, however, I found that science can give you that sense of being connected to something grander than yourself. All species on earth were at one time connected, and we all share common characteristics passed on through our DNA.
It has been proven that humans share DNA with dragonflies and grapefruit. Every living thing evolved from one single microbe.
Anthropology taught me that as little as 150,000 years ago humans roamed the earth with several other human-like species.
To know evolution is to know the story of life on earth, and to know the scientific story of life is to feel connected to the world as you never have before.
Not only does biology give me a spiritual feeling, astronomy comes into play as well. Take a trip into the mountains and once night falls look up at the sky and you’ll be amazed by the beautiful glimmering stars painted on the sky. There are literally more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth. That is a mind-blowing number of stars.
The size and depth of the universe are immeasurable and it is really an unexplored frontier even though humans have spent years of their lives trying to understand it.
We are all made up of atoms, and the only place hot enough for atoms to merge and combine to form new elements is on a star. All the elements that make up your body came from a supernova, which means you and everyone you love and everything you see is connected not only with each other, but with the entire universe as well.
Death is a scary concept and most religious people believe in some sort of afterlife. But, as an atheist you believe that there is only one life to live and once you die it ends there.
When you die, your body decomposes back into several elements which are consumed and used and put back into the earth. So even though we might not believe in an afterlife, our bodies grant Mother Nature more life.
Rebecca Ruiz is a senior business major and a contributing writer for the Daily 49er.
