“Man is manifestly not the measure of al things. This universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us itself central to this mystery and ground for any experience we may wish to call "spiritual.” No myth needs to be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need to be worshipped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need to be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather to much, on how soon we realize.“ Sam Harris

“Whatever is true spiritually and ethically about our circumstances… there is no doubt there are spiritual truths… there are spiritual experiences human beings can have…and there are ethical truths. Whatever is true about that has to transcend culture; it has to transcend our cultural differences. 

Consequently, it makes no sense at all to have one’s spiritual life pegged to rumors of ancient miracles. What we need is a discourse about ethics and spiritual experience that is as unconstrained by ancient ignorance as the discourse of science already is. Science really does transcend the vagaries of culture.

There’s a reason why we don’t talk about Christian physics and Muslim mathematics. It’s because an experiment run here and in Baghdad actually works in both places if it’s teasing out something fundamental about the nature of the universe. That is true ethically; that is true spiritually." Sam Harris

“Spirit” comes from the Latin word “to breathe.” What we breathe is air, which is certainly matter, however thin. Despite usage to the contrary, there is no necessary implication in the word “spiritual” that we are talking of anything other than matter (including the matter of which the brain is made), or anything outside the realm of science. On occasion, I will feel free to use the word. Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or of acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.“

"In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind." Carl Sagan