An Integral Atheist?
Posted on Feb 3rd, 2008
by 
Jim
Jim
"I’m a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views."
Who said that?
a) Daniel Dennett
b) Sam Harris
c) Christopher Hitchens
d) Richard Dawkins
e) A founding member of Integral Institute who Ken Wilber cites in Integral Spirituality as someone who is "absolutely brilliantly" fighting attempts to "reduce 1st-person consciousness/mind (Upper Left) to 3rd-person brain/body (Upper Right)."
As you no doubt already guessed, the answer is e.
David Chalmers is a member of Integral Institute and a philosopher who specializes in philosophy of mind and metaphysics who Ken Wilber has cited a number of times as someone whose views on consciousness are in line with his own.
Chalmers coined the term "the hard problem of consciousness." Wilber often uses that term when discussing consciousness.
In a discussion with Michael Zimmerman, Wilber mentions spending four hours in conversation with Chalmers at Wilber's Boulder home.
In his discussion of neurophenomenology which begins on p.171 in the first edition of Integral Spirituality, Wilber says (on p.172):
Another of our favorite authors in this regard is David Chalmers, a member of Integral Institute, who is admirably (and absolutely brilliantly) fighting the widespread attempts to reduce 1st-person consciousness/mind (Upper Left) to 3rd-person brain/body (Upper Right).
David Chalmers is a "property dualist" regarding the mind-body problem. Property dualism is the view that the mental is a property of the natural world which cannot be reduced to the physical. Property dualism should not be confused with "substance dualism," which is the view that the mental has the property of being an ontologically distinct substance than the physical.
Substance dualists can easily believe that minds can exist without brains, and many philosophers who believe in the supernatural are substance dualists. Property dualism does not entail belief in disembodied minds or the supernatural, and Chalmers is quite clear that his ideas on the hard problem of consciousness are thoroughly naturalistic (e.g., see his book The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory). (The way Chalmers conceives of consciousness enables him to suggest that we might consider thermostats to be in some sense conscious. See The Conscious Mind.)
Ken Wilber says that interiors "go all the way down," but he is careful to qualify this by saying,
I do not push experience (or feelings or souls or any specific type of interior) all the way down. . . (CW4, p. 710, italics in orig.).
Discussing his views on consciousness with Natasha Mitchell in 2003, Chalmers says:
There’s some convergence with religious and spiritual views. It’s true that people who have those views often find some aspects of what I have to say congenial. Now I have to say I’m a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it’s a natural fact of life.
What's my point in posting this? Other than to simply be informative, I would like to encourage us to distinguish between atheism and specific atheists.
As someone once said:
Atheism is no more a religion than not collecting stamps is a hobby.
To be sure, some atheists are self-righteous, arrogant, and obnoxious. So are some integralists, as well as some Democrats, some Republicans, some Buddhists, some Hindus, etc. The capacity for being self-righteous, arrogant, and obnoxious seems to have more to do with being human than with any particular ideology, worldview, philosophy, or philosophical position.
Some atheists are so zealous that it makes sense to suggest that for them, atheism is their religion. But the fact that a given atheist may relate to atheism as if it's a religion does not make atheism a religion.
The mass media, which is notorious for reducing complex issues to sound bites, has given us sound bites about "the New Atheists" and "the Four Horseman" (a reference to Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens). This enables people who find something about the four individuals in question unpalatable to dismiss them by using sound bites. "There's nothing new about the message of the New Atheists!" Well, that's true, but no one but the mass media has suggested otherwise. Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens haven't suggested that they are saying anything new about atheism.
There is certainly much to criticize about broad anti-religious sentiment that does not distinguish between healthy and unhealthy aspects of religion, or that does not even recognize that there are healthy aspects, and there is certainly much to criticize about atheists who present their views in ways that are arguably arrogant and condescending. Hitler was a vegetarian (who is said by historian William Shirer to have shared his food with mice when living in a Vienna flophouse), but the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian is hardly an indictment of vegetarianism. If someone finds any of the so-called "New Atheists" insufferable, this is hardly an indictment of atheism.
The most balanced living atheist I've come across is the young British philosopher Julian Baggini, and the most balanced dead contemporary atheist I've come across is John Mackie. By "balanced," I mean in the sense described and quoted in the Wikipedia entry on Mackie:
Who said that?
a) Daniel Dennett
b) Sam Harris
c) Christopher Hitchens
d) Richard Dawkins
e) A founding member of Integral Institute who Ken Wilber cites in Integral Spirituality as someone who is "absolutely brilliantly" fighting attempts to "reduce 1st-person consciousness/mind (Upper Left) to 3rd-person brain/body (Upper Right)."
As you no doubt already guessed, the answer is e.
David Chalmers is a member of Integral Institute and a philosopher who specializes in philosophy of mind and metaphysics who Ken Wilber has cited a number of times as someone whose views on consciousness are in line with his own.
Chalmers coined the term "the hard problem of consciousness." Wilber often uses that term when discussing consciousness.
In a discussion with Michael Zimmerman, Wilber mentions spending four hours in conversation with Chalmers at Wilber's Boulder home.
In his discussion of neurophenomenology which begins on p.171 in the first edition of Integral Spirituality, Wilber says (on p.172):
Another of our favorite authors in this regard is David Chalmers, a member of Integral Institute, who is admirably (and absolutely brilliantly) fighting the widespread attempts to reduce 1st-person consciousness/mind (Upper Left) to 3rd-person brain/body (Upper Right).
David Chalmers is a "property dualist" regarding the mind-body problem. Property dualism is the view that the mental is a property of the natural world which cannot be reduced to the physical. Property dualism should not be confused with "substance dualism," which is the view that the mental has the property of being an ontologically distinct substance than the physical.
Substance dualists can easily believe that minds can exist without brains, and many philosophers who believe in the supernatural are substance dualists. Property dualism does not entail belief in disembodied minds or the supernatural, and Chalmers is quite clear that his ideas on the hard problem of consciousness are thoroughly naturalistic (e.g., see his book The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory). (The way Chalmers conceives of consciousness enables him to suggest that we might consider thermostats to be in some sense conscious. See The Conscious Mind.)
Ken Wilber says that interiors "go all the way down," but he is careful to qualify this by saying,
I do not push experience (or feelings or souls or any specific type of interior) all the way down. . . (CW4, p. 710, italics in orig.).
Discussing his views on consciousness with Natasha Mitchell in 2003, Chalmers says:
There’s some convergence with religious and spiritual views. It’s true that people who have those views often find some aspects of what I have to say congenial. Now I have to say I’m a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it’s a natural fact of life.
What's my point in posting this? Other than to simply be informative, I would like to encourage us to distinguish between atheism and specific atheists.
As someone once said:
Atheism is no more a religion than not collecting stamps is a hobby.
To be sure, some atheists are self-righteous, arrogant, and obnoxious. So are some integralists, as well as some Democrats, some Republicans, some Buddhists, some Hindus, etc. The capacity for being self-righteous, arrogant, and obnoxious seems to have more to do with being human than with any particular ideology, worldview, philosophy, or philosophical position.
Some atheists are so zealous that it makes sense to suggest that for them, atheism is their religion. But the fact that a given atheist may relate to atheism as if it's a religion does not make atheism a religion.
The mass media, which is notorious for reducing complex issues to sound bites, has given us sound bites about "the New Atheists" and "the Four Horseman" (a reference to Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens). This enables people who find something about the four individuals in question unpalatable to dismiss them by using sound bites. "There's nothing new about the message of the New Atheists!" Well, that's true, but no one but the mass media has suggested otherwise. Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens haven't suggested that they are saying anything new about atheism.
There is certainly much to criticize about broad anti-religious sentiment that does not distinguish between healthy and unhealthy aspects of religion, or that does not even recognize that there are healthy aspects, and there is certainly much to criticize about atheists who present their views in ways that are arguably arrogant and condescending. Hitler was a vegetarian (who is said by historian William Shirer to have shared his food with mice when living in a Vienna flophouse), but the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian is hardly an indictment of vegetarianism. If someone finds any of the so-called "New Atheists" insufferable, this is hardly an indictment of atheism.
The most balanced living atheist I've come across is the young British philosopher Julian Baggini, and the most balanced dead contemporary atheist I've come across is John Mackie. By "balanced," I mean in the sense described and quoted in the Wikipedia entry on Mackie:
Mackie is said to have been capable of expressing total disagreement in such a genial way that the person being addressed might mistake the comment for a compliment. This personal style is exemplified by the following words from the preface to Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977, p. 3):
| “ | ...I am nowhere mainly concerned to refute any individual writer. I believe that all those to whom I have referred, even those with whom I disagree most strongly, have contributed significantly to our understanding of ethics: where I have quoted their actual words, it is because they have presented views or arguments more clearly or more forcefully than I could put them myself. |
Access: PublicTagged with: atheism, atheist, chalmers, wilber, integral, integral institute, philosophy, four horsemen, dennett, dawkins, sam harris, hitchens, baggini, mackie, god, god delusion, consciousness, interiors
atheism
June 2008
Hi, Jim,
Thanks for starting a blog on this subject. As I'd mentioned on my Integral Postmetaphysics blog, I have been intending to start an entry on a similar subject. If I do, I'll link it to this one.
I am interested in what you are saying here, not really because of the atheist angle – I don't have any problem with or objection to the notion of fully integral atheists – but simply because I think this is an important subject, and I have been a fan of Chalmers' work for some time now. When I discovered him, I had no idea he was connected to Integral Institute. And who knows? He may not have been at the time.
The qualification you highlighted is an important one: that, while we might find it defensible to say that “subjectivity” or interiority goes all the way down (and I do), we have to be careful about singling out any type of interiority as the thing that goes all the way down. I've seen a number of different ways to approach this. Wilber chooses the general term, interiority, as a relatively neutral way to refer to this broad continuum of meaning(fullness) that cannot be reduced to wholly objective forms or processes. He also sometimes describes his perspective as “pan-semiotics.” Piet Hut, an astrophysicist (and, incidentally, a student of my own practice tradition, TSK), prefers to use an even more non-committal, provisional term, X - arguing, also from a naturalistic perspective, that, to account for consciousness in the material world, we must presuppose not only time and space, but time, space, and X, for a relatively complete and coherent cosmological view (where X refers to sense or meaning in some form). You can read his proposal here. David Bohm - often maligned by Wilber - has a proposal which, to my knowledge, has not been debated or even reviewed in Integral circles: soma-significance. Here, he suggests that the dual aspects of soma (form) and significance (meaning) “go all the way down,” with form and meaning understood inseparable aspects of flowing wholeness (as opposed to distinct “substances”). And of course there are other models as well, a recent one (of some interest, perhaps, to Integral students) being de Quincey's version of panpsychism.
I hate to cut this short, but I'm out of time now. I've got some errands I have to run. I'll post this for now and may add more when I return.
Best wishes,
Balder
Hi Jim,
I must say, I'm a little confused about all the kafuffle concerning atheism. Aren't Buddhists atheists? And yet we find no where near the degree of animosity directed toward them.
Is a transpersonal atheism possible? Of course, it's called Buddhism. ;-)
kela
Hi Kela. Here is my transcription of part of a conversation that Ken Wilber had with Nathaniel Branden at Integral Naked, where Branden asks Wilber the same question you pose: Aren't Buddhists atheists?
Branden: Let me plug into your vast erudition. As you speak of God, as you know, the early Buddhists were critiqued for being in effect atheists.
Wilber: Yeah.
Branden: Do you have any particular historical or any other information for why the issue of God never showed up in the early Buddhism? Or even as recently as the Dalai Lama…I read this in an article, they asked him why doesn't he talk about God. And he said, “Because in my experience talking about God is no more spiritually useful than material acquisitions.”
Wilber: Heh, heh, hee hee. So it was probably…
Branden: Your comment is invited.
Wilber: Heh heh. Heh heh heh. Hee hee hee hee. Heh heh heh heh!
Branden: It's great to be pals with somebody who knows everything.
Wilber: Hee hee hee, heh, heh, heh. Heh heh heh!
The, one of the things you find in both the East and the West is, that there's at the very least two very different approaches to this thing called God. And you find it certainly in all the neoplatonic tradition, which is to say the entire mystical tradition of the West, and of course you find it in Hinduism and Buddhism as well. But, and the two different conceptions are roughly, that, in the West they call them cataphatic and apophatic, and what it really means is, you can say what God is like, and you can say what God isn't, but you can't say what God is. And, what all of that basically means is that if God is anything, if there is any sort of Absolute, that it can't be known by ordinary knowledge, because ordinary knowledge is conceptual and every concept has meaning only in terms of its opposite.
So if I say something's rational, it has meaning because there are some things that are not rational. And I, if I say something is all good, there are things that are bad, et cetera. And, the mystics are pretty much agreed that if God is all-inclusive then you can't use that kind of knowing, of knowledge, because it's all dualistic. They're also agreed that there is a kind of direct knowing, that isn't dualistic. But that kind of knowing gives us a knowledge of Spirit, of identifying with Spirit, which is often called Supreme Identity. And then the other kind of knowledge of God, is of God as an object or other, or a figure or an image, or a deity or a person, and so on.
The mystics are not very fond of that God. Many of them don't even believe that God exists. Or if it does, it's a plaything for humanity in its childhood. And so they often call it, the one “God” and the other “Godhead.” And in Hinduism and also Buddhism, but particularly Hinduism, they're given names, and one of the names is called nirguna Brahman which means God without any qualities at all that you can describe. You can know it, but you can't talk about it or say anything about it, but, because that's gonna be dualistic. And the other is called saguna Brahman, which means God with properties, like God is all powerful, or God is all knowing, or God is light, or God is love, and so on. And the mystics are really very very certain, really, that Godhead is what they're talking about.
And so, that's what Gotama Buddha, he was talking about nir-vana, and the same n-i-r in nirvana you find in nirguna, n-i-r-g-u-n-a, without qualities. And he was going for a state of consciousness that in the West we call the cloud of unknowing. And in that vast openness is where the Supreme Identity and experience, the direct experience of the Supreme Identity is said to occur by those who've had that experience.
So Gotama Buddha would, would of course, well, he would actually make a claim that you can't say it's theistic or nontheistic, or dualistic. If that makes sense. So they're often accused of atheism, because it's true, the Buddhists are atheists, but you can't call them theists or atheists, because they would deny both of those as being merely dualistic concepts. And all they're really doing, is saying, if you wanna know if it's raining outside, go look! And there's a type of meditation that can get you into this nondual state, and then we have that experience and you look at it and say, well I think that experience is real, therefore I think Buddha, or God, or Godhead exists.
In the same conversation, Branden asks Wilber to explain what he means by the term “nondual.” Wilber speaks about nonduality for a couple of minutes, likening “nondual awareness” to being in a state of “flow” (e.g., as Csikszentmihalyi writes about “flow”).
Branden then says:
Would it be acceptable to you or would it make sense if I summarized one understanding of what you're saying, and that is that nondual is more a psychological concept than a metaphysical one?
Wilber says:Yes, in the way you mean it, but let me qualify it to be sure. In these nondual flow states…if there is something called Spirit with a capital 'S,' if there is an Original Face that you had before your parents were born, then in some sense Spirit has a timeless component to it. There's something about it that has to transcend the mere manifest world, or it's hardly Spirit worth its name, is it? So, the idea is that whatever that experience is that you have, in that intense present flow state, when you feel that oneness coursing through your veins and coursing through the universe simultaneously, that oneness carries a sense, and people who have had the experience are pretty agreed on this, that it in some sense exists timelessly. That doesn't mean everlastingly, that just means a moment without time. And therefore, in that sense it would be metaphysical, in other words it's not just something dependent on your psychological state. That it's claimed to be the actual fabric of reality, is that timeless oneness. And if Godhead has a meaning or if Spirit has a meaning, or if there's anything before the Big Bang, or any of those things, this is the best claimant to that title, in my opinion, and I think the nondual mystics would agree with that one.
There is something going on here that I'm not going to attempt to figure out, that suggests to me that Wilber wants to, as the saying goes, have his cake and eat it. He wants a post-metaphysical God or Spirit that is identical with Prasangika emptiness but is also identical with some kind of ontological substrate (which is what I glean from his comment “if there's anything before the Big Bang”), which is to say that he wants a metaphysical God or Spirit that (Wilber flipping from “conventional truth” discourse to “ultimate truth” discourse) “you can't say anything about, because anything you say is dualistic.”
Hi Jim,
Wow. (Deep breath with rolly eye emoticon).
Technically, the postion of early Buddhism (represented by the signifiers “according to Gotama…”) is indeed “neither theistic nor non-theistic,” insofar as the question of a creator god is one of the unanswered (avyakta) questions. But I seriously doubt if “Gotama” rejected them on the grounds that the answer imples some sort of “dualism.” Pairs of answers are simply lined up with pairs of questions in the texts and the pairs are then rejected. This makes it look like they are rejecting “duality” as such.
But, there is also a little matter not dealt with here: an intellectual history made up of hundreds of years of debates with Hindu schools over the matter of whether or not there is an intelligent creator of the cosmos, Ishvara.
On the other hand, there is kind of functional equivalent of “theology” in Mahayana Buddhism, dealt with in books by scholars like Makransky and Eccles (To See the Buddha).
I can return to this later.
kela
Hi Jim et al,
I've been following the conversation at Julian's blog on phil of mind. It's been some time since I dug into that stuff.
The term “emergent” seems to be used alot these days. I'm assuming it's more or less what they used to mean by “epiphenomenal.”
Can a theory be both emergentist and panpsychist? Interestingly, the Samkhya tradition holds to a kind of “emergent” theory. They say that “consciousness” does not truly appear until all the other constituent parts appear, including the senses and sense objects. What they mean by “consciousness” here is more or less buddhi in fully functioning mode.
But in the Samkhya system, there is also spirit, or purusha, which pre-exists buddhi, and spirit is also sometimes translated as “consciousness.” In the Samkhya system, buddhi is a mere insentient hull until it is “illumined” by spirit, by purusha. Here, purusha can be said to fulfill some kind of panpsychist role.
In a similar way, Advaita Vedanta maintains that “consciousness” (cit) is always present, even if it is in some “unmanifest” mode. The “proof” they give of this is deep dreamless sleep, which they say is a kind of “consciousness” but without an object. The great scholar of Vedanta, Paul Deussen, called this is doctrine, that consciounsess somehow “exists” in deep dreamless sleep, a “monstrosity.” :-) The Advaita theory strikes me as an ad hoc attempt to save the ubiquity and eternality of consciousness. It is a form of a priori theorizing; it is not as if someone had some experience and then developed a theory about consciousness.
HI Kela. There is more than one use of the term “epiphenomenal,” but the most common use in contemporary philosophy seems to be as is explained in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online entry for epiphenomenalism, which is: “Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events.”
Our friend Neo asked me more than once at the old Ken Wilber forum if I thought that consicousness was an epiphenomenon or existed “beyond the brain” (e.g., as Stanislav Grof, who often uses the term “beyond the brain,” believes). And I never did get why Neo set up this false dichotomy, and I suspected that he was using the term “epiphenomenon” in a different sense than the sense in which I understand it, which is the sense in which it is most commonly used by contemporary analytical philosophers when discussing philosophy of mind. I don't believe that consciousness is epiphenomenal (in the sense defined above), nor do I think that consciousness exists beyond the brain.
The Stanford site also has an entry on emergence.
What you say about Samkhya and Advaita is interesting. The Advaita theory also strikes me as an ad hoc attempt and a form of a priori theorizing.
Hi Bruce, I'm not ignoring your comment in this thread, but haven't responded here because we've been discussing stuff related to the subject at Julian's blog (mostly in this thread).
- Jim
Hi Jim, nice post. I agree that we shouldn't confuse a given atheist with “all atheists” or “atheism in general” (in a similar sense that “Christian” means many different things, from Thomas Merton to Rudolf Steinert Jimmy Swaggart).
One question. You wrote:
Ken Wilber says that interiors “go all the way down,” but he is careful to qualify this by saying,
“I do not push experience (or feelings or souls or any specific type of interior) all the way down…” (CW4, p. 710, italics in orig.).
I'm not sure I see the difference here. Is he saying that while interiority of some kind “goes all the way down,” sentience or any specific kind of interiority doesn't?
hi jonny,
as i understand atheists, they are even more different from each other than people within a given religion… though i agree there is a lot more variety among, say, Christians, than people often allow.
jim, i really appreciate that dialogue with KW. I am learning a lot from you guys (when i can follow the conversation)
have either of you read Joe Perez' book Rising up, that we are discussing in the I-I pod?
Just one more point. Theism seems to me to be virtually inspeparable from the notion that there is an intelligent person who acts as the creator of the universe. Traditionally, in India, this idea was rejected by not only the Buddhists but the Jains and the Samkhya as well. The Brahma Sutras appear to have been written expressly to refute the Samkhya on this point, that is, on whether or not there is an intelligent creator of the universe.
In any case, from this it seems apparent that one can be religious or “spiritual” without believing in God, but also, if we consider the Samkhya as one of the great wisdom traditions, that it's silly to say that if you don't believe in God you are somehow lower down in the “color scheme” system than someone who does.
it's got to be too simplistic for sure, kelamuni. i mean, wouldn't it be akin to the pre/trans fallacy?
holy sanyasin-poop is that kela from the old world of ken wilber forum?!
certainly sounds like you with all that learned hindu-bhuddist text referencing….
yea its me of the tutti frutti psychology school… ahahahahahahahahaha (as they say)
jim excellent blog - i am so gald you are geting up and running over here on zaadz!
yes i think you are pointing out a very slipppery piece of the wilberian kosmology, glad its being discussed..
Hi Julian,
Yes it is the one and the same kela from lightmind, but new and improved – without as many “preservatives” added. ;-)
I'm enjoying the conversations here… and the civility; a certain pesky “insect” is notably absent here ;-)
cheers,
kela
Hey Kela, a question. Does theism have to equate with belief in a divine intelligent person, or can it simply equate with divine intelligence?
More to the point, aren't there grades between and beyond theist belief and atheistic disbelief in some Divine Dude? What about panentheism, for example?
Hi Jonny.
One question. You wrote:
Ken Wilber says that interiors “go all the way down,” but he is careful to qualify this by saying,
“I do not push experience (or feelings or souls or any specific type of interior) all the way down…” (CW4, p. 710, italics in orig.).
I'm not sure I see the difference here. Is he saying that while interiority of some kind “goes all the way down,” sentience or any specific kind of interiority doesn't?
Yep, that's what he's saying. In the same section of CW4 (which is the section where the book Integral Psychology was first published before it was published as a standalone book), he also says:
Dennett, incidentally, sees a type of sentience emerging with amoebas. I am willing to settle for that…
- Jim
Hi johnny,
I think that when most if not all theologians speak of an “divine intelligence” they mean a divine person. What they are referring to is an “intelligent cause of the universe,” and by this they mean a unified, intentionally directed consciousness – a person, who in technical terms is the instrumental cause of the universe. In India, it's the guy who directs one's fate in accordance with one's karma.
“Pantheism” and “panentheism” strike me as more or less terms invented by philosophers, terms that make use of the term “theism” so as to refer to abstract conceptions of the divine or the “numinous.”
Technically you're probably right. I guess I'm just trying to focus on the historically pertinent issue. In terms of the broad spectrum of spirituality, Dawkins' focus is on a pretty narrow band. But in terms of sheer numbers, I think he is more or less on the mark when he refers to “religion.” My sense is that when Dawkins attacks “religion” he means theism, and specifically the explanatory power of the idea of an intelligent instrumental cause of the universe.
Jim, thanks for the clarification. I suppose it is largely semantic, for I see “sentience” equating with “interiority of some kind” and Wilber's point seems moot: that interiority matches exteriority (e.g. we won't run into self-conscious rocks, unless they have a correspondingly complex physiology).
Kela, my problem with folks like Dawkins et al is that they tend to attack the lowest common denominator of theism, while seemingly ignoring all of the subtle–and more sophisticated–perspectives that exist. For example, what does Dawkins think of Teilhard de Chardin? Valentin Tomberg? Rudolf Steiner, for that matter? Is it really theism vs. atheism or rather dogmatism of any kind vs. more open-ended approaches?
To put it another way, I find dogmatic theists and atheists just about equally irritating ;-). If I had to choose an island to live on with either one or the other group, I'd probably choose the atheists, but let's hope it doesnt' come to that!
jonny, i agree i'd pick dogmatic atheists to be stranded with but i shudder at the thought lol
Hi johnny,
Precisely for the reasons you mention I don’t feel threatened by Dawkins, ie., his target is exactly what you say it is. In fact, I kinda like either the knee-jerk reaction he provokes among fundamentalists or the “righteous indignation” he evokes among those who think they know better than he. And they probably do know better; he’s a scientist and scientific theorist, not a professor of religious studies. But I get a kick out of it when the “know betters” feel the need to “put him in his place” because of it. I understand his target as being very specific, and that is why I said that historically speaking, when we talk of “theism” we are, generally, referring to the idea of a creator God, a transcendent Person who acts as the instrumental cause of the universe.
Jim,
I think your post details the obvious about “Atheists” and that they are not all concrete as a group. I've met some “Positive” Atheists and “Negative” Atheists and then there's the in betweens. I mean there's also existential atheists, etc.
I think that these groups of Atheists have something to say in how they relate to groups of people that are Theists, especially given such a cultural and historical background.
I think their voices are just as important even if they are saying “nothing new” or adding something to the Atheist polemic.
As with any other groups, yes there's a quite bit of arrogance, etc. But like you have clearly stated that is part of the nature of being human.
My reading of Wilber has been that his ontological discussions regarding the “primordial face ” and of “God” is very confusing as illustrated by your posting of the Braden conversation. I never did quite understand his statements about either theism or atheism.
At the same time, I think that he avoids it.
To your point, just because someone disagrees about Atheism doesn't necessarily mean that they don't agree with some of the mundane arguments. WIth any polemic of push and pull, there's always something that is added to the discussion. And not that it's all relativistic statements here, but it makes one's statment more clear if there is an opponent.