In reality there is no such thing as an atheist or an agnostic. There are only two camps of people: the spiritualists and the religious. The spiritualists are those who do not necessarily subscribe to the dogma and doctrine of a particular religion, although sometimes they do. They believe part of the dogma of a particular faith, but find the rest of that faith to be bunk. There are many spiritualists who call themselves Christians who would never enforce their particular belief system on anyone else. Those people are spiritualists at heart, not religious. Atheists, who purport not to believe in "god", also seem to have some spiritual grounding. A belief in something that they may not be able to even articulate, but that belief is there. Thus, they too are spiritualists, but of that most rational of bents.There is so much wrong with his argument that it's hardly worth getting worked about it. Nevertheless, here's my quick rejoinder:
First, Atheists are not closet spiritualists. That divine spark that he's so excited about is something that atheists share in the form of secular humanism. This is the notion that ethical behavior between human beings can and should be based on our shared existence on this planet and our common hopes and fears. What he's calling spiritualism, is really just a form of irrational aestheticism - the placement of emotion above reason. I don't have a problem with emotion, but I do think it says more about our internal life as conscious beings that it does about the workings of the universe.*
Kumm also tries to use quantum weirdness to debunk the rationality of science, but this is really just a misuse and misunderstanding of quantum theory. I also don't think you can explain quantum weirdness by assigning emotional motivations to sub-atomic particles, however poetic that might be.
Secondly, Spiritualism refers to the 19th century religious belief that mediums could speak with the dead, so he really needs a new term. Talk about red flags. Unless seances, ghosts and ectoplasm really are part of his enlightened aesthetic world view.
More importantly, spiritualism as he describe it is essentially devoid of any content. It's fine for people to carry on in this fuzzy way about the power of faith and having a sense of a higher power, but what is it exactly? What is it they have faith in? Virgin births? Transmigration of souls? What exactly are they claiming? And if there are supernatural things that make up you belief system how is that different from the dogmatism of religion?
Finally, Atheists do not believe you can reference God, gods, or anything supernatural to explain natural phenomenon and that's pretty much the end of the story. They will acknowledge that scientific knowledge is always incomplete and highly improbable things are still possible, but that doesn't leave the door open for plainly impossible (and factually irrelevant) things like supernatural beings. Highly intelligent super-aliens? Maybe. Lovecraftian elder gods? They were aliens too after all. But not magic-man.
I understand the desire on Kumm's part to bring the rational and the emotional into balance, but it's important to remember that these are strictly human qualities and it would be a fallacy to try to project them onto the natural world. God did not create us in his image, and we should return the favor.
---------------------------
* One of our basic human qualities is our ability to understand that other people have minds, emotions, and motivations. This helps us to socialize and interact in productive ways (there may be an evolutionary psychology argument to be made here but I won't go that far). I think this attribute has also allowed us to interpret mindfulness in the world around us even if there is none: in a rock, in a tree, in a mountain top, in an eagle, in a thunderstorm. God is our sense of mindfulness projected onto the entire universe. Religion is our attempt to socialize and interact with this greater mind in productive ways. But it's really just our psychology doing the work.
