I have been an atheist for most of my adult life, yet I cannot deny that people need an inner spiritual life. The word spiritual can sound misplaced when one rejects the supernatural, but it names a truth about the human condition. We are not satisfied with mere existence. We want coherence, moral purpose, and some sense that our lives are part of a larger order, even if that order is human rather than divine. This desire is not a weakness of reason. It may instead be one of reason’s highest expressions. Logic alone cannot fill the space of meaning.

The earliest philosophers wrestled with this same hunger. Socrates treated philosophy as an act of care for the soul, not a collection of arguments but a way of living. Plato gave this pursuit its metaphysical shape, describing the ascent of the soul from the cave of illusion toward the Form of the Good. Aristotle then grounded the search for meaning in human virtue rather than divine command. His concept of eudaimonia, the flourishing life, rests on the harmony of intellect, habit, and community. To be virtuous was to live in accordance with reason and to imitate the divine through contemplation. These thinkers showed that the longing for transcendence and the exercise of reason were not enemies but parts of the same conversation about how to live well.

When Christianity rose within the classical world, it did not replace that conversation but transformed it. Augustine’s restless heart is both an heir to Plato’s ascent and a prelude to modern introspection. He understood faith as an interior journey rather than a set of commands. Aquinas later built an immense synthesis between theology and philosophy, seeing reason as a reflection of divine order. Even for those of us who stand outside belief, their work matters. It reminds us that the intellectual pursuit of the good once included the whole person: mind, heart, and moral will. The separation of philosophy from spirituality is a modern experiment and not always a successful one.

That separation began when modern thinkers turned inward to find certainty. Descartes, in his search for indubitable truth, replaced the cosmos of meaning with the thinking self. Kant followed by grounding morality in reason itself. His categorical imperative preserved moral seriousness, but at a cost. The moral law now stood within the isolated individual, no longer tied to a shared vision of the good. The Romantics answered this with a turn toward imagination and nature, seeking in art what theology had once promised. Wordsworth and Coleridge found revelation in the landscape. Beethoven and Turner sought it in form and color. All of them reveal the same transition, the movement of the sacred from heaven to the human mind.

By the nineteenth century, Nietzsche named the result. God was dead, and the moral universe built upon Him was collapsing. His declaration was not triumph but diagnosis. The frameworks that had once given coherence to Western life—virtue, faith, teleology—had eroded, leaving humanity to create meaning through will and creativity. Existentialism emerged from that crisis. Sartre insisted that existence precedes essence, that meaning is forged through freedom and action. Camus went further, claiming that even in a silent universe, we must continue to live, to create, and to act. Their vision is heroic but fragile. It asks us to build an inner life on shifting ground and to find dignity in defiance rather than revelation.

Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, describes this modern condition as one of fragmentation. We still use the moral language of Aristotle and Aquinas, but we no longer share their metaphysical foundation. Our words about virtue, justice, and good intention survive as moral fossils, detached from the worldview that once gave them life. For the atheist who seeks a spiritual path, this raises a profound question: can there be virtue without teleology, or goodness without an ultimate good? John Hick, in Evil and the God of Love, confronted this from the opposite direction. He tried to reconcile divine goodness with human suffering, but his problem remains ours even without his theology. If the universe offers no redemption, then the responsibility for moral repair belongs entirely to us.

I have wrestled with these questions in my own life. Years ago, I explored paganism and modern druidry. It offered a sense of continuity with the land and the rhythms of the natural world, something that philosophy alone seemed too austere to provide. Over time, I began to see that what drew me in was not belief in unseen powers but the longing for rootedness and reverence. Philosophy, approached rightly, can satisfy that same need. To reflect deeply, to examine one’s actions, and to cultivate virtue are acts of devotion to truth itself. The contemplative life may serve as the spiritual life of the unbeliever.

In recent years, I have found myself drawn toward the Presbyterian tradition. It seems to be one of the few Christian denominations that still holds a moral center without surrendering to cruelty or ignorance. Its emphasis on education, community, and steady moral reflection reminds me of what faith can be when it remains humble before reason. I think often of Fred Rogers, a Presbyterian minister who lived his beliefs through gentleness and compassion rather than dogma. He embodied a form of Christianity that even an atheist could respect, a religion of kindness grounded in moral practice rather than punishment. Perhaps that is where philosophy and faith meet most meaningfully, in the effort to live thoughtfully and decently in a world that often rewards neither.

As I grow older, I find this question harder to separate from the times in which I live. The political and cultural landscape of America has become increasingly hostile to intellectual life, consumed by movements that confuse nationalism for virtue and ideology for faith. Thought itself is treated as suspicion. The very tradition that once nurtured reason and conscience now bends toward authoritarian certainty. To live philosophically in such an age is to resist not through anger but through clarity and compassion. It means holding fast to the belief that truth and moral seriousness still matter. Perhaps that is the last form of faith left to those of us who do not believe in gods but still believe in the worth of thinking.