There's an interesting article on Dennett, Harris, and the Bright movement in an October edition of Wired:

http://www.wired.com/news/wiredmag/0,71985-0.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

The article is long but worth reading, in my opinion.  It is coming from a different place than Wilber's "everyone is right."  Many people, according to Dennett and Harris and others, are very wrong, and should be stopped from spreading their destructive (stage appropriate?) beliefs.

There have been other discussions of Dennett, and I agree with others that he makes some valid arguments worthy of consideration, but here I'm interested in looking at this emergent strain of intolerance and absolutism within the New Atheism....

Best wishes,

Balder

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

Dawkins: "My answer is that the big war is not between evolution and creationism, but between naturalism and supernaturalism. The sensible" -- and here he pauses to indicate that sensible should be in quotes -- "the 'sensible' religious people are really on the side of the fundamentalists, because they believe in supernaturalism. That puts me on the other side."

A book came out a few years ago called, When Religion Becomes Evil.  Its premise was not that religion is evil, but that there are certain moves a religious tradition might make that tend to foster and lead in the direction of destructive behavior.  This is a step back from Dawkins' position, which is that religion itself is evil -- that it inevitably leads to hatred and destructive activity.  What do you think of this?  Is this claim reasonable, or is this a form of "extremist thinking" on par with the very object of its criticism?  Doesn't it seem likely that such a strongly intolerant, evangelical movement that is opposed to religion in all forms will also lead to social evil?

"As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers."

How might a proponent of Integral Spirituality respond to this?  He has a point here.  Is there a reason to respect religion other than the one he named here?

"People used to think," Harris says, "that slavery was morally acceptable. The most intelligent, sophisticated people used to accept that you could kidnap whole families, force them to work for you, and sell their children. That looks ridiculous to us today. We're going to look back and be amazed that we approached this asymptote of destructive capacity while allowing ourselves to be balkanized by fantasy. What seems quixotic is quixotic -- on this side of a radical change. From the other side, you can't believe it didn't happen earlier. At some point, there is going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be too embarrassing to believe in God."

Wilber quotes Kant's statement, I believe, that "modernism means you will be embarrassed if you are discovered praying to God" [paraphrase].  Harris, in his interview with Stuart Davis, says that the modern imperative is, in fact, to make sure that people are embarrassed to believe in God -- to subject the idea of God to such public ridicule that people will be as ashamed to be traditionally religious as people are now ashamed to be associated with the KKK.

Shame can certainly be used to get people to reject certain beliefs, but it seems to me that this sort of tactic is not likely to induce upwards growth in cognitive capacity -- only to enforce a horizontal translation to a new form of dogmatism, such as communist forms of secular humanism.

What do you think?  How should Integral engage the New Atheists?

Best wishes,

Balder

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

balder:

"As long as we accept the principle that religious faith must be respected simply because it is religious faith, it is hard to withhold respect from the faith of Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers."

How might a proponent of Integral Spirituality respond to this?  He has a point here.  Is there a reason to respect religion other than the one he named here? ...

...How should Integral engage the New Atheists?

 

This "new atheism" is a kind of fundamentalism, and I'm not sure how Integral could engage them ... other than through arguments that rely on reason.

I haven't had time to read everything at the link you provided in your first post here, but just looking at this quote about respecting religious faith simply because it is religious faith, I would say: of course that's a ridiculous rationale for respecting religious faith. We can make distinctions between healthy and unhealthy forms of religion -- and both religious and non-religious people do this all the time. And here's what that quote is implying: we must reject religious faith simply because it is religious faith. Thus, we must withhold respect from the faith of Martin Luther King and his gospel-inspired civil rights movement also ...

As Episcopal priest Brian Taylor writes: "The Aztec practice of ripping the hearts out of prisoners-of-war as they secreamed on the altar of Huitzilopochtli is clearly not the same as loving one's enemy. Chanting 'God is Great' as one drives a car-bomb into a crowd is not the same as seeking 'Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.... Some religious beliefs and practices are harmful and others are helpful...."

The failure to make these distinctions looks like reactionary willful ignorance to me.

I suppose that an atheist fundamentalist might then argue that some religious practices are beneficial but they are practiced for "the wrong reasons" -- an adherence to "supernaturalism."

Anyway, I'll come back later after I've read a bit more ...

Mary

P.S. --

Wilber quotes Kant's statement, I believe, that "modernism means you will be embarrassed if you are discovered praying to God" [paraphrase].  Harris, in his interview with Stuart Davis, says that the modern imperative is, in fact, to make sure that people are embarrassed to believe in God -- to subject the idea of God to such public ridicule that people will be as ashamed to be traditionally religious as people are now ashamed to be associated with the KKK.

Just wanted to point out that this "moderm imperative" really does have its effects. When I started being drawn to religion again, after a long time away from it, I was embarrassed ... deeply, deeply ashamed ... and had to go through this kind of  "coming out" process involving my husband and most of my friends, who were initially worried that I was slipping backwards into some kind of irrational comfort. Even during my first secret, tentative, solitary attempts at prayer, the rational part of me was incredibly embarrassed to even be considering spirituality, and the only way I could reassure myself was to tell myself that if I was becoming a fool, at least I was going to be a fool for love ...

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Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~Rumi

Here's an integral rant on the subject by Stuart Davis:

Open Letter To Rational Pundits

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I am seeking meaningful work.

bio: http://aqalicious.gaia.com/

I spend most of my "forum time" these days on The Integral Pod: http://pods.gaia.com/ii/

"You've never seen everything." - Bruce Cockburn

So that's how integral engages New Atheism. We send Stuart.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an interesting little book from my brother, titled Intelligent Thought -- Science versus the Intelligent Design Movement (that's the title of the book, not my brother's). It's one of those books that Stuart is so sick of, and it's entertaining to read because it contains many examples of Orange scientists attacking Blue, so it shows that that part of developmental stage theories is correct. Proponents of the ID movement don't have a say, of course.  Contributors include Dennett, Dawkins and Pinker.

It's funny how they never mention Buddhism when talking about religion, or at least I've never see them do that.

Also very interesting is a contribution by Nicholas Humphry, who wrote a Chapter which he named Consciousness: the Achilles Heel of Darwinism? Thank God, not quite. He very kindly points out one of the weak spots in neo-Darwinistic thinking, and then messes up by arguing that consciousness is not real, but an illusion created by the mind! No, not the brain, the mind. Sure, Nicholas. He then finishes with the following lines:

So, here's the irony. Belief in special creation will very likely encourage believers to lead biologically fitter lives. Thus one of the particular ways in which consciousness could have won out in evolution by natural selection could have been precisely by encouraging us to believe that we have not evolved by natural selection.

I like to stress that he is trying to defend Darwinism here.... how flat can you get?

Stuart Kauffman also contributed to the book, with a more honest description of the situation. I think he's not completely right, but he at least acknowledges that science can not explain all about evolution yet.

People like Richard Dawkins are not going to be persuaded, just like people at mythic stages are not going to persuaded.  Dawkins is not going to adopt anything that might give people any reason to think that there might be a God after all.  I've heard it mentioned (or I made it up myself, I honestly don't remember) that Dawkins denies God so fanatically because, and this I know for sure, his own father was absent when Richard was young. If Dawkins didn't have a father, then nobody's going to have a Father (capital F). I don't know if it holds, or even if it's fair to bring it up, but maybe it's worth giving some consideration?

Peter

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"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

I really dig Stuart's rant, too -- although the sentiments that Gary Wolf, the (agnostic) writer of that Wired article, expressed in his last paragraph serve as a more gentle counterargument ( ....i.e., Wood may call New Atheists absurd but not "flatland fuck-faces" .... And that's okay. Stuart should still keep on rantin.' It takes all kinds).

Even those of us who sympathize intellectually have good reasons to wish that the New Atheists continue to seem absurd. If we reject their polemics, if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn't necessarily mean we've lost our convictions or our sanity. It simply reflects our deepest, democratic values. Or, you might say, our bedrock faith: the faith that no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there's always a chance we could turn out to be wrong.

(emphasis mine).

This is a rational statement, as well as a humble acknowledgment that even reason might make "mistakes."

On the other hand, are the New Atheists even being rational in their absolute rejection of religion? Might there be some pre-rational red fueling their fire?

Mary

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Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~Rumi

kessels:

People like Richard Dawkins are not going to be persuaded, just like people at mythic stages are not going to persuaded.  Dawkins is not going to adopt anything that might give people any reason to think that there might be a God after all.  I've heard it mentioned (or I made it up myself, I honestly don't remember) that Dawkins denies God so fanatically because, and this I know for sure, his own father was absent when Richard was young. If Dawkins didn't have a father, then nobody's going to have a Father (capital F). I don't know if it holds, or even if it's fair to bring it up, but maybe it's worth giving some consideration?

Peter

Interesting.  A long time ago I read a science fiction novel in which an alien species who had previously contacted many other intelligent species made first contact with humans.  A huge controversy was ignited when, on a talk show, one of the aliens answered a question about belief in god thus, "We don't believe in god.  In our studies, belief in god is an effect of mammalian reproductive systems. "  His species hatched from eggs on a beach, and as a result had an existential/atheistic perspective (implied to be the more accurate one, with humans as poor deluded mammals).  hehehe 

It would be very useful to get perspectives from a variety of alien species...perhaps one day.

arthur

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I am seeking meaningful work.

bio: http://aqalicious.gaia.com/

I spend most of my "forum time" these days on The Integral Pod: http://pods.gaia.com/ii/

"You've never seen everything." - Bruce Cockburn

maryw:

I really dig Stuart's rant, too -- although the sentiments that Gary Wood, the (agnostic) writer of that Wired article, expressed in his last paragraph serve as a more gentle counterargument ( ....i.e., Wood may call New Atheists absurd but not "flatland fuck-faces" .... And that's okay. Stuart should still keep on rantin.' It takes all kinds).

It would be cool to see an integral article called "The Crusade Against Flatland Fuck-Faces."  Would make a good thread title, come to think of it...

I loved Stu's rant.  It's nice to have someone going all-out in expressing our frustration with such limited rational perspectives. 

I also find it kind of interesting to see the rational worldview doing the whole fight-to-the-death, "we are the final truth" scene.  But it's not very helpful, it probably just makes the mythic folks fight harder and become more entrenched.

On the other hand, are the New Atheists even being rational in their absolute rejection of religion? Might there be some pre-rational red fueling their fire?

Mary

Good point.  I certainly get that impression.  I think they may also be scared to some degree - because to the rational ego, transrational perceptions can seem very threatening indeed.  Better to call it all prerational and circle the wagons.

I have a friend who is still very much in that kind of rational/atheistic camp; these days he's not very interested in debating (more focused on raising family) but in the past we used to argue about this kind of stuff on occasion.  He found it interesting to talk to me about such things - even though I was wrong, lol - because, as he put it, "you can tell the rational from the rats," whereas other people he talked to about such things were by implication superstitious idiots.  I sent him the Stuart Davis rant as an experiment, just to see what he would think about it.  No response yet, but a while back when I sent him some developmental stuff (Spiral Dynamics) he found it a plausible hypothesis but not completely convincing.

arthur

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I am seeking meaningful work.

bio: http://aqalicious.gaia.com/

I spend most of my "forum time" these days on The Integral Pod: http://pods.gaia.com/ii/

"You've never seen everything." - Bruce Cockburn

Thanks, Arthur.  I enjoyed Stuart's rant as well.  (I hadn't seen it or been to his blog before, but cruising around there, I saw his paintings, which got me to start my "Conscious Language Evolution" thread.  Glad to see he's a language geek too.  Some of us have developed geek-factor to a high degree in a number of different lines.....)

I find the almost absolutistic nature of the position of the New Atheists to be somewhat ironic.  It's as if they see and object to specific content on certain levels but don't see the process -- don't recognize that they're engaged in a similar process which is just as likely to generate social evil.  (Many religious thinkers don't promote physical violence, but they do provide a rationale for intolerance and even open hostility towards others -- members in a particular out-group -- that lays the groundwork for those who have less qualms about acting on these feelings...)

There's a lot involved, and it probably involves more than memetic issues and psychological baggage, but I wouldn't be surprised if both of these things at least play a part here....

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S.  David Bohm had some good things to say about absolutism as a fragmentary process of thought and a problematic social phenomenon.  I expect that his language would be more likely to make an impact on these thinkers than being called a flatland fuck-face, but who knows?  (I did get a giggle out of imagining grandfatherly, Santa Clausish Dennett reading Stu's rant...)

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

Have a look at this presentation by Alan Wallace; I think that that is a fine way for integral to counteract scientific materialism. Thanks to RandomTurtle for pointing out this video in another thread.

If you're watching it, and keep wondering what all of that has to do with religion: just keep watching.

Peter

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"All nations should be like Amsterdam" -- Ken Wilber

I think if the New Athiests didn't try so hard to attack religion, they would.... develop.  Yep, the closer they get to the fence, the louder they have to yell to shut out the voices... of postmodernism... of trans-rationality.

On another note, I don't get the impression that people will be more ashamed to admit they are religious at all.  I feel that what is happening at ISC (the integration and sharing of ideas between religions) is spontaneously happening everywhere, including the secular spiritual corner.  I have seen a number of online success gurus who sound at least partially buddhist, or espouse a universal consciousness or spirit in one form or another.  I think a convergence is occurring and is ready to burst.  When ISC developes the "operating system" language of spirituality, it will be the dawn of a new age.

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myspace.com/zentaimusic

I've started a daughter thread: Explaining Transrational to Open-Minded Rational People.

arthur

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I am seeking meaningful work.

bio: http://aqalicious.gaia.com/

I spend most of my "forum time" these days on The Integral Pod: http://pods.gaia.com/ii/

"You've never seen everything." - Bruce Cockburn

Hello noble integral friends,

So that's how integral engages New Atheism. We send Stuart.

I hope not. I totally agree with the substance of what he said, but with all due respect to Stuart Davis, there's a bunch of things that make this approach ineffective:

1. Red and calling people flatland fuck faces is a great way to blow off some steam, but a poor way to convince people of anything.

2. From this rant and also his dialog with Sam Harris, I notice that Stuart has the habit of spouting developmentalist jargon ("Archaic, Magic, Mythic, Rational, Pluralistic, Integral") to rationalist types as if its common knowledge, without ever referring to where these terms come from or the research behind them. This is a definition problem -- Stuart extends the term religion to mean Archair religion, Magic religion, Mythic religion, Rational religion and so on; Harris, Dennett and Dawkins use the same term in the way the vast majority of people use it -- religion means Mythic religion. Its unfair to call someone a flatlander merely for using a term in the commonly accepted way. As soon as we understand what they are referring to, we have to agree with them. We've seen a resurgence of Amber Religion (Christian, Muslim) and a desire to return to the Middle Ages. The antidote to that is a healthy dose of Orange.

Here's an observation that I think is important: No-one here believes in God. Now I know some of you are going to say, "Wait, yes I do!" but ask yourself what would happen if you walked into an ordinary church and had a conversation with the pastor about this God you believe in. He would almost certainly say that you are not a believer in God, you are not a Christian and you've been misled by Satan. If you explained your views to Dawkins or Harris, they would also say that you do not believe in God. The reason for that is that when you say the word God, you aren't talking about the Amber God, but a completely different God that bears little or no resemblance to what most people think of when they say the word. Here's a quote from Dawkins:

If, by 'God', you mean love, nature, goodness, the universe, the laws of physics, the spirit of humanity, or Planck's constant, none of the above applies. An American student asked her professor whether he had a view about me. 'Sure,' he replied. 'He's positive science is incompatible with religion, but he waxes ecstatic about nature and the universe. To me, that is religion!' Well, if that's what you choose to mean by religion, fine, that makes me a religious man. But if your God is a being who designs universes, listens to prayers, forgives sins, wreaks miracles, reads your thoughts, cares about your welfare and raises you from the dead, you are unlikely to be satisfied. As the distinguished American physicist Steven Weinberg said, "If you want to say that 'God is energy,' then you can find God in a lump of coal." But don't expect congregations to flock to your church.

God in a lump of coal is indeed (part of) what we mean by God. And love, and nature, and goodness, and the universe, and the laws of physics, and the spirit of humanity and Planck's constant. So according to the new atheists, their thinking does not apply in the slightest to integral thinkers. We need not feel threatened by them because they aren't even talking to us.

3. The final problem is related to the following quote:

Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things
We murder to dissect

--Wordsworth

This point of view is deeply engrained in the Green mindset, at least in the US -- a very unhealthy, unintegral relationship with Orange rationality. If I didn't know who Stuart Davis was and that he was associated with Ken Wilber, I would immediately start thinking that he was Green, because American Green is very reflexively anti-Orange, anti-science and anti-rationality. I give Stuart the benefit of the doubt on this one, but there are a number of times where I see individuals on this forum appear to slip into the "Science is the enemy" mindset, which is of great concern to me. I think Orange is the hardest to integrate for people transitioning from Green into Turquoise, so I think that makes it the most important perspective to include. Its very easy for us to include Ayuhuasca as part of a spiritual practice, but can we include Rationality? It seems like its a major hurdle, and a major test of our ability to think integrally. Personally, I think that exclusive use of the "meddling intellect" is bad, but with other perspectives, it is greatly enriching. I do not believe most people on this forum are familiar with the rationalist approach to God, and it would be helpful if that were corrected. I will say more in the "Help, my friend is a rationalist!" thread.

Yours respectfully,

Mr. Teacup

Touche, Mr. Teacup!

....Except for one thing --

Mr. Teacup:

God in a lump of coal is indeed (part of) what we mean by God. And love, and nature, and goodness, and the universe, and the laws of physics, and the spirit of humanity and Planck's constant. So according to the new atheists, their thinking does not apply in the slightest to integral thinkers. We need not feel threatened by them because they aren't even talking to us.

In some sense it seems the new atheists are talking to "us" -- or at least to those who are at green and beyond. Look again at this other quote of Dawkins':

The "sensible" religious people are really on the side of the fundamentalists, because they believe in supernaturalism.

By "sensible" religious people I think he means non-fundamentalists, religious liberals / progressives -- people who have developed beyond the conventional level in terms of spirituality (unless I am misinterpreting his meaning here). In other words, says Dawkins, unless your "God" is the rationalist God -- "the spirit of humanity" or "the laws of physics," you might as well side with the fundamentalists even if you claim that you disagree with fundamentalism.

So, with this kind of thinking, people like Rabbi Zalman, Father Thomas Keating, Sally Kempton, et al, would likely end up lumped together with fundamentalists and mythic-level believers.

Mary

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Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~Rumi

Hi, Mr. Teacup,

I enjoyed reading your thoughts.  I'll give some of my reactions to your three points...

1) I agree with you.  Stuart's rant is a good way to blow off steam, and amusing to those who already agree with him, but probably not very effective at reaching those he is criticizing.

2) I also agree that most mainstream Christians would not recognize the "God" of Integral.  I've had conversations of followers of a mythic form of Christianity -- who nevertheless are capable of thinking rationally, at an Orange or higher level -- and these individuals have stated as much:  the God that Wilber and "Integral Christians" describe appears alien to them.  They do not consider it to be the God of the Bible or the God of Christ.

3) You wrote, " I do not believe most people on this forum are familiar with the rationalist approach to God, and it would be helpful if that were corrected."  This surprised me.  Perhaps you are right, but this is not the impression I've gotten here.  I suppose I haven't really talked to "most people" here about this, but I have not picked up on an anti-science, anti-rational bias among many of those with whom I have spoken.  I do recall, however, a post on the old Integral Naked where someone was calling for the creation of an Orange-level Christianity, and this let me know, at least, that some people here (or on the old IN) weren't aware that Orange and Green versions of Christianity already exist.

Best wishes,

Balder

P.S.  I think Mary has a good point.  I also got the impression that at least some of the New Atheists would lump Integralists into the "them" camp, simply because Integralists accept mythical religion as stage appropriate and are not dedicated to stamping it out.

 

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.