questions . . . that keep me awake till 6am

questions do atheists believe in a spirit? or am i just a mass of cells, just like the other mass of cells next to me, my plant, and next to that my dog?
if there is a spirit, a soul, something 'other' should not spiritual life, be of utmost importance? because it's the spirit, soul, consciousness that governs this body, and its too easy to give examples of what happens to the human body when the spirit gives up, or is deeply troubled.
food for thought:
~In one astonishing, short period the ninth century BCE the peoples of four distinct regions of the civilized world created the religious and philosophical traditions that have continued to nourish humanity into the present day: Confucianism and Daoism in China; Hinduism and Buddhism in India; monotheism in Israel(gave rise to judaism, christianity,islam); and philosophical rationalism in Greece
Despite having no contact with one another, these faiths shared an extensive number of characteristics: Each formulated its own version of the Golden Rule ("don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you"). revealing a fundamental truth about human nature: It's not what you believe, but how you behave.
If the Buddha or Confucius had been asked whether he believed in God, he would probably have winced slightly and explained with great courtesy, that this was not an appropriate question. Right practice, not belief, leads to transcendence. Second, none of the major faiths has ever been about violence, nor does any hold a monopoly on justice now. Some people have concluded either that religion itself is inescapably violent or that violence and intolerance are endemic to a particular tradition. But the story of the Axial Age shows that in fact the opposite in the case. Every single one of these faiths began in principled and visceral recoil from the unprecedented violence of their time.
~
To illustrate
In ancient China, a man named Zhuangzi (370-311 BCE) withdrew from public life and became a hermit. Entering a game park one day, he took aim at a magpie. The magpie, being wholly preoccupied with eyeing a cicada, did not notice Zhuangzi. Neither the cicada nor a nearby preying mantis noticed the magpie. The magpie swept down on its prey in high excitement and gobbled them both up. A feeling of compassion welled up in Zhuangzi: he realized the creatures he had observed were fated to a sequence of mutual destruction, however unwilled. Here was the essence of life. Lost in reflection, Zhuangzi himself did not notice that his trespassing in the park was unwelcome, and he was chased away by a gamekeeper.

Following these events, Zhuangzi was depressed for months. Nothing in his life so far had prepared him for the new thoughts entering his mind. Life is about endless transformation; death should not be feared. Giving himself up to the natural rhythm of the cosmos, Zhuangzi began to experience an exhilarating freedom. When his wife died, a visitor who came to pay his condolences was alarmed to discover Zhuangzi sitting cross-legged, singing rowdily, and bashing a battered old tub, flagrantly violating the dignified ceremonies of the mourning period. Zhuangzi explained that he had cast his mind back to the time before [his wife] was born, when she had simply been part of the endlessly churning qi, the raw material of the universe. One day there had been a wonderful change: the qi had mingled together in a new way, and suddenly, there was his dear wife! Now she was dead and had simply gone through another alteration... If he wept and complained, he would be completely at odds with the Way things really were.
from Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation

its weird reading about this now cause i remember ages ago at catholic, reading siddhartha and thinking, isnt this what jesus was really on about before a bunch of men came along and decided to add in all these rules and regulations, creating divisions and hierarchies?
read this blog about god, whether he exists, all that. then this article that went on and on about how we'd being seeing the world in a top down fashion, ie god/king at the top, when in reality it was bottom up, the many simple loops, lines of code, etc that go into me being able to type this out, and you read it (perhaps understand), anyways guy came up with an 'artificial god'
but for me, so ok the little invisible subatomic particles come together just so for the atoms and then the atoms have to be arranged (again in a very specific way) to form silicon and then a computer chip, and how is there not something divine, in the simplicity, the beauty of that? the way each snowflake is unique and geometrically perfect.
i agree with alot of what he says but its like its missing the point or something. what good is all this knowledge, understanding, if it doesnt help us evolve, get somewhere better?
when it comes to religion, im backtracking now to the karen armstrong stuff and i think what transcendance, true compassion is about, is losing this concept of self to take it scientifically the barrier between my skin and the air, which my inaccurate eyes see as huge, is miniscule, nanometers, and once you stop seeing the barriers/lines/divisions, whatever, well then i dont know, cause i havent gotten there,
and im lost again
possibly because of the hour.