Are Spirituality and Science Compatible?

Why I never wanted to be a "spiritual person"

Even though I’ve been slowly re-adjusting my worldview over the past few years, just hearing the word “spiritual” still makes me want to gag. It’s a visceral reaction, a closing-up, a get-that-thing-away-from-me kind of feeling. 

Why does that word evoke so much internal resistance? I do often feel a sense of connection to something bigger than myself, which is pretty much the definition of spirituality, yet I’ve never wanted to identify as a spiritual person. So I decided to really dig in and figure out where this aversion was coming from.

Photo of snowy mountain peaks under a starry sky by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash

1. I want to be respected.

A driving force of the first forty years of my life was to avoid social rejection at all costs. And what’s the quickest way to make oneself the target of disrespect and mockery? In the circles I wanted to find acceptance in (liberal, highly-educated upper-class city-dwellers), it’s to talk about any of the following: God, church or other places of worship, angels, astrology, religious customs or holidays… anything that has even a vague spiritual whiff.

Sure, maybe there’s a surface-level acceptance of religion (especially non-dominant ones) and, occasionally, a fascination with their “exotic” customs. Underneath, though, there tends to be a patronizing undertone, an assumption that the religious person is gullible and misguided.

This observation is based on what I’ve noticed during social interactions—but also what went on in my own mind. I was not immune to that way of thinking, and participated in reinforcing those attitudes. (For the record, I’m not proud of it. But I don’t want to give the impression that this was just a problem with other people. It was very much a “me” problem, too.)

It wasn’t only that I wanted to avoid ridicule, though. I wanted to attract respect. There was an (incorrect) assumption in my mind that intellectual knowledge comes only from rationality, deductive reasoning, empiricism—therefore, if you believed in things that couldn’t be measured or proved, you couldn’t also be smart. From an early age, I recognized that people saw me as smart, and though I never felt that was true, it seemed to be the main thing others valued in me. So, to be respected, I needed to board the Smart People Train and hang on for dear life.  

I rode that train for a long, long time. The turning point came when I realized that I craved social acceptance so deeply because I did not accept myself. I wanted others to provide something that only I could give me. It took me years to really let that truth in and figure out how to practice it on a regular basis. Now that I have, though, I don’t care as much about the approval of others. (Most of the time! Occasionally, rejection still gets to me, but it doesn’t hurt the way it once did.) This has opened the door for me to think beyond my stereotypes of religious people, and to be more accepting of my own spiritual side.

2. I don’t want to be a cliché.

Let’s face it, a white lady in her early 40s undergoing a spiritual awakening is… kind of a trope. And I don’t want to be a cliché.

Well, I hate to break it to me, but I already am! I don’t have to think hard at all to identify multiple cliché aspects of my personality. To take but one example, I resisted the “depressed writer” label for a long time, but that didn’t make it any less true. 

Besides, clichés exist for a reason. They help us identify patterns and make sense of common experiences. And the midlife existential/spiritual crisis is definitely common—in fact, my therapist looks at this as a necessary developmental stage. Initially it felt weird to see it that way, because I’d always thought that once we reach our mid-twenties our brains stopped developing, so we’d remain pretty much the same throughout adulthood. But of course that isn’t true! Our minds, bodies, choices, and habits all change so much throughout our entire lives. 

Now that I’m more or less okay with myself, it’s easier to say, “Yeah, I’m a cliché, but that’s not all I am.” No single descriptor will ever capture the fullness of me. Also? It’s okay if I am the same things that others are. We’re still all unique, even if we can be described with similar labels.

3. I’m not sure that science and spirituality are compatible.

I always wanted to believe that there was room in the world for both science and spirituality. But countless experiences led me to believe this could not be true.

It wasn’t until recently that I started realizing what the real issue was: I was confusing science, which is a method of asking questions about the world, with scientism, which is quite different.

Scientism is “the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.” By definition, this view is at odds with other belief systems. Science is seen as infallible, and there is no room for other ways of knowing. (Side note, it often feels to me that atheism and scientism have become very much intertwined, but that’s a whole other topic!) 

Though I recognize that science plays a very important role, especially in a “post-truth” society like ours, I’ve been growing disillusioned with it of late. I work in nutrition research, and over the years it has become obvious to me that putting too much stock into things we can measure can drastically distort the big picture. Plus, scientists are not perfectly objective, unbiased automatons. SCIENTISTS ARE PEOPLE. People who are constantly struggling to secure funding for their projects so they can further their careers and support themselves, their teams, and their loved ones. This impacts the topics that get studied, and pretty much guarantees that the status quo is consistently reinforced. 

In short, I’ve been grappling with the realities of how science operates as an institution within a capitalist society, as well as its dark history of racial exploitation and eugenics. It is not, and has never been, pure and faultless. 

But that’s why the distinction between science and scientism matters. We can still love and appreciate science as one of many methods of understanding the world, while recognizing its limitations and rejecting it as a belief system.

4. I’m afraid of spirituality’s shadow side.

So science has a shadow side, yes—but spirituality does, too. And this has been another major sticking point for me. I guess I’ve always had this fear that exploring spirituality would entail some sort of personality transplant? That it was a slippery slope leading to a total abandonment of common sense. Who knows, I might get entangled with an abusive guru or unwittingly join a cult! Potential dangers abounded.

Not just external ones, either. The particular flavor of spirituality most tantalizing to me is of the witchy variety. As I dipped into those waters and started seeking out resources online, the sheer amount and variety of information was overwhelming. Some of it felt affirming and resonant, but there was also a lot of consumerist, appropriative, and questionable advice. As Eryn Johnson Sunnolia writes, 

On Instagram, in spiritual spaces, and from practitioners and coaches sharing Law of Attraction-style manifestation like what you’d find in The Secret, I learned that everything is a spell, that my thoughts create my reality, that thinking or speaking something aloud can make it come true.

Maybe that feels enticing if your thoughts are generally rosy, but my mind tends to run in Dark Mode. I’ve always been prone to perfectionism, obsession, magical thinking, and the occasional anxious daydream (day-mare?) where I imagine myself or loved ones dying in horrible ways. So I knew that, while this view contains kernels of truth, I needed to be careful not to take it too far. It would just add a layer of suffering—and lots of pressure to do it “right” all the time—that frankly didn’t need to be there. 

Thankfully, my therapist—along with several other wise witches—showed me that it absolutely is possible to practice magic without magical thinking, that I can tap into my inner power without believing I’m all-powerful, that I can use discernment to protect myself, that I can stay grounded, prioritize pleasure and play, and keep a sense of humor about it all.  

Over time, I’ve concluded that the problematic sides of both scientism and spirituality come from the way they are interpreted and practiced among people who are immersed in white supremacy culture. Scientism is intertwined with white cultural hallmarks like perfectionism, “one right way,” objectivity, and worship of the written word; modern New Agey spirituality is rife with individualism. These are such a part of the air we breathe (here in the US, at least) that it’s easy to accept them without thinking, not recognizing them as the traps they are. 

This helped me realize that, to build a healthy spiritual practice, what I needed to do is the same thing I’ve been aiming for in all other aspects of my life: to reject the tenets of white supremacy culture. This, of course, is not easy to do. I’ll probably be exploring this in the future, since it’s a huge topic that I find endlessly intriguing.

Although we tend to pay a lot of attention to the pitfalls of spirituality and religion, we don’t often give them credit for the positive, and essential, roles they play. In deepening connections with others. In giving us spaces where we can celebrate, mourn, sing, share meals, and build relationships. These are the things that revitalize our souls, serving as potent antidotes to existential despair.

So here I am now, having written some version of the word “spirituality” no less than twenty times in this post alone. I think that means I’m ready to embrace it more publicly? At the very least, I can now say the word without gagging, so I’ll consider that progress!