Mystical Atheism Explained

I have called myself a "Mystical Atheist" for some time, and lately some folks asked my what can be mystical about atheism?  I'll endeavor to explain.

Atheism is a claim that there is no God.  I do not believe in a hyper intelligent, omnibenevolent and omniscient creator being. There is no rational reason for doing so, such a being is just not necessary to explain the operations of the cosmos. That is not to say that there is not some unknown impelling force that drives creation in a forward direction.

This impelling force is, so far, imperceptible to science. There are quite a few unknown answers in terms of why things happen the way they do.  I think of this as a "divine principle" that humans can occasionally perceive as the numinous. Some may even be able to interact with this force.

Just what this "force" is, is similar to the problem of consciousness. We don't know (yet) and may never figure it out.

I can, myself, perceive the numinous in quite a few aspects of experiencing the beauty of the cosmos. I feel it when viewing a magnificent sunset, when I see an old friend after a long absence, and when contemplating the wonders of the physical rules that guide the universe. I know I am not alone in sensing this feeling of wonder and love. (Traditionally, the word used is "awe", but since is doesn't inspire fear of any kind, I can't agree with that usage.)  This feeling is also at the core of the "mystical" experience treasured by spiritual and religious folk for ages.

As far as mystical experience goes, I have to say that the dichotomy between perennialism and constructionism is a false one.  We humans are a conscious mind embedded in a vehicle of flesh. We don't know how or what consciousness is, but it is embedded in the chemistry of the neural circuits of the brain.  This implies that the mystical experience will have a mechanical manifestation in the flesh that will be practically the same for all humans; but this will have to be expressed in verbal form (if possible) via the circuitry of language trained by the culture in which a person is embedded.

I don't care for the current direction of scientific philosophy that leans more and more to a purely mechanistic (or robotic) explanation of life. For example, it was not until this year (2014) that additional signaling methods were detected in the inner ear (via proton flow) to explain some of the continuous proprioception of spatial orientation. I don't see that a purely mechanistic model will ever be able to explain consciousness or free will. It will be a bad day for humanity if science declares with certainty that we have no choices in life.