When science squares off with religion in the public square, it's sometimes a scholarly polite debate and sometimes a mixed martial arts throw down.

Today, writer Chris Mooney, host of the Point of Inquiry podcast, has an essay at USA TODAY's Forum that takes a totally fresh approach.

He examines several of the leading New Atheists -- you know, the happily unholy Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris warriors-against-religion crowd -- and notices what's gone unnoticed before: Their spiritual lives.

Mooney defines spirituality expansively, as writes "any individual's particular quest to discover that which is held sacred." He writes:

... That feeling of awe and wonder, that sense of a deep unity with the universe or cosmos -- such intuitions might lead to a traditional religious outlook on the world, or they might not.

Dawkins, for example, told Al-Jazeera, about his emotional connection -- minus God -- to creation.

...Spirituality can mean something that I'm very sympathetic to, which is, a sort of sense of wonder at the beauty of the universe, the complexity of life, the magnitude of space, the magnitude of geological time. All those things create a sort of frisson in the breast, which you could call spirituality."

Spirituality, says Mooney,

... does not require science and faith to be logically compatible, for instance. Nor does it require that we believe in anything we cannot prove. Spirituality simply doesn't operate on that level. It's about emotions and experiences, not premises or postulates.

This comes just as public radio's Speaking of Faith show shifts it title to Being with Krista Tippett -- opening the gateway to new viewers without locked-down ideas of what can be addressed under a "faith" banner, Tippett says.

Statistics certainly back up Mooney as survey after survey finds a growing number of Americans, particularly younger people, see themselves as "spiritual but not religious."

Are you a spiritual atheist? What do you gain or lose by going spiritually solo -- reveling in wonder at the universe without the challenge -- or support -- of other souls?