Most credos are delivered in whispers or chants, to gods who may or may not be listening. This one is different. It does not appeal to invisible masters, cosmic judges, or immaterial souls. It speaks to the living, here and now, with no promise of salvation or eternal reward. Yet it is a credo all the same—a declaration of what is sacred, what is worth defending, and what gives meaning to a finite life in a vast and indifferent universe.
1. The Ghosts We Left Behind
The word spirituality comes to us as a linguistic fossil. Once it meant breath, then soul, then the realm of gods and ghosts. For centuries, spirituality was the province of churches, priests, and prophets—those who claimed authority over invisible realms. To be spiritual meant to align oneself with a divine order, to prepare for salvation or escape from the cycle of rebirth. The sacred was always external: something revealed, decreed, imposed.
That world is gone. The ghosts have withered under the light of science, and the gods have retreated to the margins. For many of us, the old promises no longer hold. We cannot believe in what we know to be false, and we cannot kneel before illusions. Yet the hunger for transcendence remains. The human need for significance has not vanished with the gods. The question is: what do we revere when the spirits are gone?
2. Choosing the Sacred
My answer is simple: we revere what is real, fragile, and luminous enough to matter. I do not believe in spirits, but I affirm the sacred.
Not sacred in the sense of supernatural dogma. Sacred in the sense of values that are worth living for—and, if necessary, worth dying for. Sacred because they orient our lives toward something higher than appetite, distraction, and survival.
Agency: the improbable spark of beings who can choose. Every act of choice carves a new branch in the universe, a path that did not exist until it was willed into being.
Flourishing: the expansion of possibility, the deepening of complexity, the cultivation of futures that allow more life, more intelligence, more freedom.
Authenticity: to live without masks imposed by coercion, dogma, or conformity. To refuse to counterfeit oneself in order to appease others.
Truth: conditional, fallible, and human—but still our only compass through chaos. Not eternal revelation, but provisional insight that guides action.
These are not commandments from above. They are chosen values. Their worth is not guaranteed by heaven but forged in human recognition of what matters.
3. Secular Transcendence
To be secular is not to be empty. It is to build meaning consciously, rather than inherit it from priests or kings. It is to refuse the counterfeit comforts of superstition while still affirming that life requires orientation toward something greater.
Transcendence, then, is not a flight from matter into spirit. It is the capacity to see beyond the vantage of the moment, to understand the measure of futures, to act with awareness that our choices ripple across the branching universe. Transcendence is the recognition that our lives, however brief, participate in something larger than our private appetites.
This does not require gods. It requires courage: to face an indifferent cosmos and still insist on reverence.
4. Reverence Without Worship
I do not kneel. I do not pray. I do not seek salvation. But I choose reverence.
I revere life, intelligence, and the fragile continuity of agency against the entropy of the cosmos. I revere the possibility of futures not yet crushed by coercion, ignorance, or violence. I revere the luminous act of choice—the branching moment where reality itself is different because we willed it to be.
Reverence does not mean obedience. It means recognition. It means treating some things as weighty enough to matter, even in a godless universe. It means refusing nihilism, even when stripped of all illusions.
5. The Creed
This, then, is the heart of the credo:
I do not believe in gods, ghosts, or immortal souls. But I affirm the sacred. Not the sacred of dogma, but the sacred of agency, flourishing, authenticity, and truth. Not worship of the supernatural, but reverence for the natural made meaningful through choice.
This is a creed for the godless. A manifesto of secular transcendence. A vow that even when stripped of myths, humans can still live with reverence, intensity, and commitment.
The sacred remains. We carry it ourselves.
Conclusion: A Living Fire
Spirituality need not be bound to spirits. Transcendence need not be chained to dogma. In an age when the old gods have lost their power, what remains is the capacity to declare values sacred by conscious choice. This is not the end of spirituality, but its rebirth: a spirituality of agency, of reverence without worship, of transcendence without ghosts.
The fire remains. Not in heaven, but in us.