Quote Originally Posted by mastersgem View Post
I am not a religious person nor really consider myself very spiritual - I'm grounded in the reality of life and don't have the luxury of fantasizing about a 'higher' power will save me one day and all that. I suppose it would be an issue in a relationship if someone expected me to believe what they did in order to keep the relationship, that I just couldn't see happening.
Wouldn't you be weirded out by a life partner who believes their invisible friends are real, no matter how much he might make an effort not to push his faith onto you? That's at least what I think is the most freaky about Christians/Jews/Muslims.

On the spirituality issue. The fact that you have at all have spent time reasoning about issues of the sort I think makes you a spiritual person. The human machine is like any machine, more than the sum of its parts. If you'd pick a human apart, molecule by molecule and drop in in a pile, you'd have a pile of very fine, but inanimate dust. It would be indistinguishable from any other mammalian pile. The spirit is the stuff that doesn't end up in the pile. The bit that is greater than the sum of the molecular parts. You don't need to be religious to believe that a house gives more warmth and protection than a pile of bricks consisting of the same material.

People who aren't spiritual are people who don't care in the least. My sisters husband is a great example. He just couldn't care less. He was threatened by a taxi driver in Pakistan with a huge knife if he didn't produce his own religious theory, because nothing was worse than being atheist. But he wasn't even atheist. He was nothing. He was/is just a happy guy who only worries about sports.

Ps! I don't believe in souls either.
Pps! We do have a "religion and philosophy" forum. Maybe this will fit there?