A New Kinder, Gentler Atheism

[rug]

Searching for the meaning and consolation offered by religion—but without bringing God into it.

By David Skeel
Oct. 23, 2014 7:04 p.m. ET

In his new book “Waking Up,” neuroscientist and popular atheist Sam Harris recounts that “a feeling of peace came over me” as he followed in Jesus’ footsteps on a hill by the Sea of Galilee, and it “soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self—an ‘I’ or a ‘me’—vanished.”

Mr. Harris doesn’t use religious terms, but his musings about meditating on a mountaintop has left some fans wondering what happened to the pugilistic author of “The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation,” which declared that “faith is nothing more than the license religious people give to one another to keep believing when reasons fail.”

Mr. Harris isn’t the only one who has changed his tone. The atheist Richard Dawkins recently devoted an entire book, “The Magic of Reality,” to showing how scientific inquiry has made sense of the seemingly miraculous—from rainbows to the origins of the universe. The discoveries of science, Mr. Dawkins writes, offer as much wonder and life satisfaction as religious belief. The evolutionary biologist and atheist Olivia Judson calls “the knowledge that we evolved a source of solace and hope.”

Since when are these well-known atheists so concerned with consolation and connection, with solace and hope? Mr. Dawkins and his fellow atheists were famous for their zingers dismissing religion. The title of the late journalist and outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens’ 2007 book sums it up: “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

http://online.wsj.com/articles/david-skeel-a-new-kinder-gentler-atheism-1414105461

[rogerashton]

1. Not a change in tone

Harris held, in an earlier book, that mysticism is a rational activity, close attention to one's subjective states of mind. While I don't call myself an atheist, like Harris I reject "faith." Like him, I have nevertheless had mystical experience. A discussion with a friend resulted in a falling-out. My friend -- a neopagan -- insisted that I accept his neopagan interpretation of my experience, and was angry with me when I did not. I understand that mystics raised in certain theistic traditions interpret their subjective experience in terms of their own traditions (just as the insane become insane in ways that reflect their traditions.) But those of us who strive for a rational world-view may refuse the theistic interpretation. In a way it is unfortunate that Harris' experience took place in Galilee -- Christians will assert that it is a manifestation of the Holy Ghost and will attack Harris for not affirming that.

[rug]

2. By rational, I take it you mean things can be understood through reason.

Do you think there are things that cannot?

[rogerashton]

3. yes. no.

I would say that if we understand anything, including our subjective experience both of internal states and of the apparent external world, we understand through reason; if not, there may be belief, but not understanding.

Not to say that this is easy. Reason may provide connections between our contrasting experiences, on the condition that we make some assumptions about things that derive neither from experience nor from reason. The coherence these assumptions provide leads us to adopt them and to base our reasoning on them. One such assumption is that there is a powerful, immaterial being who interferes in individual and historical events. Materialism provides an alternative assumption, one that provides more coherence for some whose experience is rich in scientific observation (my wife, for one.) Personally, I do not find either assumption satisfactory.

[Fumesucker]

4. Wingnuts n/t

[rug]

5. Lol!

[Jim__]

6. I can't read the review without a subscription.

Can you give us a summary?

[rug]

7. Put "David Skeel" in Google. The articfle should pop up as a link.

Here's some more of it:

In the past, atheists tended to dismiss the intangible sources of meaning in our lives, as when the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson famously defined ethics as “an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.” Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker suggested in his 1997 book “How the Mind Works” that our sense of beauty in nature is simply “the mechanism that drove our ancestors into suitable habitats.” The new popular atheism is taking these mysteries of consciousness much more seriously.

If a system of beliefs is true, or at least plausibly true, it should help its adherents to better navigate our world. This is why testimonials are so central to nearly every religion or system of thought. The Meditations of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius extolled the benefits of the ancient Stoics’ approach to living. Christians read Augustine ’s Confessions or the Biblical account of St. Paul’s defense of his faith before a Roman judge, and testify to one another about how their own conversion has transformed their lives. At a Jewish Passover, the youngest child prompts a collective testimonial by asking “What makes this night different than any other?”

Messrs. Harris and Dawkins and other atheists seem to have recognized the essential role of testimonials. Their recent books reflect this, as does a wave of other recent essays extolling the consolation and connection possible for an atheist. “You have to trust that your individual life is linked to something bigger,” as Kristin Dombek, a columnist for the trendy literary journal n+1, recently put it: “that you belong, body and soul, to a larger story for which you are responsible.”

So far the testimonials seem to be limited to a handful of atheist intellectuals in the West, but they could spread. Perhaps stories will soon pop up about how a reader in China pulled her life out of a ditch after reading “Waking Up,” or how a man in Africa was once blind but now sees thanks to the power of the atheist explanation of our existence. "

I'd say the bold part is his thesis.

[Jim__]

8. That worked - thanks.

Maybe Dawkins and Harris can debate Alex Rosenberg about the larger story for which we are responsible. Based on the reviews I've read about his The Atheist's Guide to Reality, he would disagree with that claim.

For example, an excerpt from one review of his book:

Although the award is almost certainly misplaced, what inspired it is readily understood. The book expands the campaign of militant modern atheism, the offensive launched against religion by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Rosenberg’s broadsides attack a wider horizon. Since atheism is thought to be territory already secured, the targets now in view are the Big Questions, questions about morality, purpose and consciousness that puzzle softheaded people who muddle over them. Science brings good news. The answers are now all in. This conviction that science can resolve all questions is known as “scientism” — a label typically used pejoratively (as by Wieseltier), but one Rosenberg seizes as a badge of honor.

The evangelical scientism of “The Atheist’s Guide” rests on three principal ideas. The facts of microphysics determine everything under the sun (beyond it, too); Darwinian natural selection explains human behavior; and brilliant work in the still-young brain sciences shows us as we really are. Physics, in other words, is “the whole truth about reality”; we should achieve “a thoroughly Darwinian understanding of humans”; and neuroscience makes the abandonment of illusions “inescapable.” Morality, purpose and the quaint conceit of an enduring self all have to go.

[rug]

9. That would be an interesting debate.

Part of the problem I see is 1) atheism need not be based on science; it can be based equally well on philosophy and 2) atheism is being stretched far beyond its self-limitation, the nonbelief is god(s), with the result that more and more claims are being made in the name of atheism, rather than materialism, as only one example.

[Prophet 451]

10. Hopefully, such an attitude will spread

I, for one, am sick of teh sneering, self-superior contempt of a certain faction of atheists.