Spirituality without God and Living "as if God Existed".

Abstract

There is no one-dimensional man. The desire inscribed into the nature of human being is stronger than broadcasted ideologies or reductive anthropological concepts. Even those who methodically try to exclude God from the sphere of human quest are aware of this. An example of this is A. Comte-Sponville's proposal to create spirituality without God. He is trying to show that concepts such as faith or spiritual bond could be replaced with their counterparts - faithfulness or vision of bond as sharing without dividing.

In the present article the author tries to show the inconsequence of such an approach and to present the concept of living "as if God existed" as a thesis worth reflecting on. Spirituality, as understood by the author of the article, is the "life of living", a driving force that gives ultimate sense and purposefulness to human existence. Such an understanding of spirituality requires faith in the personal aspect - man needs such a point of adhesion to which he can refer entirely: with reason and will. A counterbalance to the proposal of spirituality without God is living "as if God existed". Such an approach is not about imitating the life of faith but about reminding oneself that excluding God from the horizon of quest is just man's arbitrary decision, and therefore has little to do with the rationality of being. The consequence of accepting this proposal is the necessity of re- defining concepts such as faith, freedom, or communication, and restoring a proper relation between faith and reason. A further consequence is the conviction that the only way to "disenchant" the world is to "enchant" it again with the hope coming from faith.