The following is an attempt at an answer to Aubrey Flegg's wonderful article "An Atheist with a Love of God" in the November issue of Oscailt. My own spirituality resonated with his to a great extent. But one small point. His belief that death is the end and the concept of "scientific atheism".
As a postgraduate philosophy student I tackled the question of the relationship between the mind and the body, between mind and matter. The mainstream of western philosophical thought favours explanations of the mind that are "materialistic", that is, that there is a brain but no mind. I argued in my thesis that this model involves a 19th century physics model of what constitutes "material" reality. The present day understanding of the nature of "material" reality is much more complex than the 19th century Newtonian model. Arguing from the two mainstream interpretations of quantum mechanics and also from physical theories of a more mundane nature I concluded that anything other than a mind that is distinct from the brain is either physically impossible or, at least, that the existence of a mind that is distinct from the brain is much more likely than a strictly Newtonian understanding of physical reality might suggest. However this mind, or indeed soul, is strictly a "this world" phenomenon.
While researching for my thesis I came across the ideas of the philosopher Colin McGinn. He suggests that we are cognitively closed to the nature of the link between the body and the mind/soul. It is not uncommon for an owner of a pet, especially a mammalian pet, to be struck by the level of intelligence such creatures exhibit. But such intelligence has, of course, obvious limits. The concept of cognitive closure entails the idea that humans have, of course, similar limitations to their ability to comprehend the nature of the reality around them.
19th century physicists were under the impression that the discipline of physics was very near completion, that is, close to being able to accurately describe all of physical reality with complete accuracy. A few loose ends that would soon be tidied up. Today physicists would recognise that a completed physics is either a very distant possibility or, in fact, impossible. I would assert that a completed physics might be possible but that we humans are cognitively closed to its complexities. Perhaps its complexities might be understood by an hypothetical Christian "God the Father" or, at the very least, by a creature with a mind much more complex than a human mind.
My sister has an MPhil in theology. Her best stab at what the statement "God exists" actually means (in the above sense of the word "God") is that we survive death. Recently I have been re-examining ideas from other religious traditions that I had previously regarded as somewhat absurd. Muslims believe in a physical Heaven involving an extreme level of material luxury. An important doctrine of the Catholic Church is the Assumption of the body of "Our Lady" into Heaven. Some time ago a Catholic friend of mine explained that what I had regarded as an apparently absurd doctrine involved an attempt to describe the nature of the afterlife.
Socrates remarked that he "knew that he knew nothing". Well, perhaps I realise that I know very little, at least for sure. But I do believe some things. I would define belief as informed conjecture. I believe something on the basis that I extrapolate, rationally, from certain knowledge to beliefs with fairly well defined levels of relative certainty and uncertainty. The educated guess let us say.
The attempt to solve the mind-body problem contained in my MA thesis is well within the mainstream of the physics of today. Matter is much more complex than as traditionally understood. It consists of a number of distinct layers each behaving in very different ways, these behaviours being described by different laws. Mind is just another such layer which could be just as easily be described as a "material" layer of a different sort than as a "spiritual" layer. The difference is only the label, the terminology.
So much for what is near certain. I will now explore that which may be possible, the realm of beliefs that may be tenable. I assert that a completed physics must describe a Universe vastly more complex than we imagine, or, more accurately, than we can imagine. In a reductionist sense the laws of this physics might describe how "mind" is conserved in the same way that the Law of Conservation of Mass-Energy describes how mass-energy is neither created nor destroyed. And this opens the way to the possibility that there are "places" (of a loosely defined nature but within the Universe) where we go after death that are describable by this physical science. The world we live in now, as physics actually describes it, is nothing like the way we experience it in a direct way with our senses. Could it be that after death we will experience a reality that is not unlike reality as we experience it now? The aim of Pure Land Buddhists is to be bodily reincarnated in a "place" where the attainment of enlightenment is very easy. This would be a "place" very like this "place" but the mental states of the inhabitants would be considerably more blissful than at this level of existence where only a very few attain such levels of happiness.
The possibility of a physical description of such layers of existence, even if the understanding of such descriptions would be outside the grasp of a human mind, is not the only reason that I tend to believe in an afterlife. Direct experiences of an uncanny nature, bizarre co-incidences suggesting a higher order reality, etc. are not uncommon human experiences. But it is common that people find it difficult to articulate such experiences, especially the actual significance of these experiences to their own lives. The possible physics suggested above might provide a context for understanding and rationally integrating such experiences. The supernatural comes down to "earth".
Scientific atheism is of course a possible accurate description of the actual state of affairs as it exists. I suggest the possibility of a scientific theism. In which case Aubrey would continue to love the same God he loves now after death in a very similar way to the way he does now but with a much greater intensity.

Brendan Burke MA(Phil). November 2005. Cork.