Turning around the guns of religious skepticism

It's so easy to fire skeptical bullets at deluded religious believers. Because they aren't me. It's a lot tougher to turn my big guns around and point them at myself.

Yet that's what we all need to do – especially those who call themselves "churchless."

The way I see it, we often fail to recognize that while we've demolished the most obvious walls of blind faith that kept us confined within dogmatic bounds, often we've just retreated to a smaller and less obvious belief structure.

We've shrunk our religiosity from a grand cathedral to something much more humble. However, it's still a church. And there's more demolishing to do before we're closer to the bare rubble of reality.

As noted in "Is there anything to do but be?" I enjoy the comment conversations on this blog. Visitors have different styles, because everybody is different.

Some come off sounding pretty darn confident that they know what the cosmos is all about. Others express their best guess in a personal fashion and leave it at that. You could call this "I'm right" versus "I like."

I fly both ways, though I make an effort to stay within "I like" as much as possible. At least when it comes to mysticism, metaphysics, philosophy, and similar sorts of subjective speculations.

With science, claims of "I'm right" can rest on a much solider foundation. Why? Because the scientific method demands skepticism.

And a competent scientist will direct his most intense skepticism at himself. A hypothesis about the nature of reality has to be falsifiable. If there's no way you can be wrong, you can't be right.

Increasingly, the Western monotheistic religions are being rejected because the notion of a personal anthropomorphic God who intervenes in human affairs is too unbelievable.

But as Meera Nanda, a philosopher of science, observes in "Spirited Away," those who are deeply skeptical about traditional religious claims often are shallowly accepting of New Age, Eastern, and holistic ways of looking at the world.

But as secularists have begun to take on religion there is a danger that in calling for a rigorous evidence-based examination of one area they leave other areas untouched. In banishing religion from the front door some of these secularists are happily letting other forms of supernatural thinking in through the back.

… Attacks by feminists, environmentalists and others on the sins of 'reductionist western science' have created a positive aura around 'holistic science' which, it is claimed, overcomes the gap between the subject and the object. It is easy to debunk faith. Faith is by definition a relationship of trust regardless of evidence.

Spiritualism has learned to dress up its metaphysical abstractions in the clothes of empiricism, neuro-physiology and quantum physics. In contrast to the obvious irrationality of believing in an all-powerful, all-knowing invisible being, belief in 'spiritual energies' which can be 'directly experienced' by anyone simply by altering the state of their consciousness can appear so much more rational, even 'scientific'.

However, they're not. Nanda takes Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith," to task for not being as critical of his own spiritual beliefs as he is of Islamic, Christian, and other fundamentalists.

But this bilious attack on faith, the aspect of the book which has received all the attention, only sets the stage for what seems to be his real goal: a defense, nay, a celebration of Harris' own Dzogchen Buddhist and Advaita Vedantic Hindu spirituality. Spirituality is the answer to Islam's and Christianity's superstitions and wars, he tells us. Spiritualism is not just good for your soul, it is good for your mind as well: it can make you "happy, peaceful and even wise". Results of spiritual practices are "genuinely desirable [for they are] not just emotional but cognitive and conceptual".

She makes some good points. It's easy to forget that while "God," "Allah," and "Jehovah" are abstractions, not directly observable or demonstrable, so are "Being," "Nonduality," and "Pure Awareness."

In science (Thomas Kuhn notwithstanding) anyone with functioning senses, adequate training and right apparatus can see the same star, the same DNA molecule, the same electron. But not everyone with adequate training in meditation techniques, and the right atmosphere, sees the same mystical reality: some see God, some see nothing at all and some, without any meditation at all, see what the mystics see. The mystical beliefs which Harris so approves of are every bit as unscientific, untestable and unverifiable as the religious belief he so aggressively attacks.

Comments

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear "tucson" (= "Tucson Bob"?),

Unlike those of you who do not give your real names, I have consistently given my birth name in all of my notes to this blog. I am not the one who has failed to provide a name in the note you complain of. Your suspicion against me is a false one -like various other complaints/slanders against me in this forum. (Nevertheless, I do much appreciate the sentiments that were expressed in that note without a name.)

Robert Paul Howard

[tAo]

Robert,

I can't speak for everyone but I don't think anyone really gives a shit whether or not you have "consistently given my (your) birth name in all of my notes to this blog" just as long as you attache some consistent name to your comments.

I could care less what your real (or fictitious) name is. And no one knows whether or not it is actually your real name anyway. You can use any name you like, and no one would be the wiser. I could even call myself Jim Dandy or Howard Paul Robert for that matter, but to what end? How would anyone ever know if that name, or your name, or anyone else's name is actually a real name? The fact of the matter is that ANY name will do, just as long as it's consistent over time so that other readers are able to identify which comments belong to who.

You SAY that you are "not the one who has failed to provide a name in the note you complain of" and that "suspicion against me is a false one". I suppose that Tucson had reason to wonder about that because actually your comments are very similar (and almost identical) to the 'anonymous' commenter's comments, and vice versa. But you say that you are not the same person. OK... but this is exactly the problem that is caused by other people who cowardly refuse to identify themselves by leaving the name box blank.

So I have a serious suggestion as to how to resolve this problem: I suggest that Brian consider automaticaly deleting any and all comments that do not have an identifying name attached to them. That way, if someone really wishes their comments to be read and heard and remain posted, then they will have to and must attach some name to their comments. Otherwise, their comments will be deleted. That will solve this problem at least as far as blank un-named commenters goes. So I would ike to ask Brian if he would consider doing that for awhile.

Robert said: "...like various other complaints/slanders against me in this forum."

-- But how about the "complaits/slanders" that you have made against me in this forum? You are concerned about yourself, but what about others ike me whom you have slandered? I understand how you feel, but then you should practice what you preach.

Robert said: "Nevertheless, I do much appreciate the sentiments that were expressed in that note without a name."

-- But then this is exactly why folks like Tucson tend to think that you yourself are really the anonymous poster. You say no, so I will accept your word for now... but then perhaps could you elucidate more upon just exactly why it is that you "appreciate the sentiments that were expressed in that note without a name"?

[Brian]

tAo, a belated reply to your suggestion. I'm not big on rules, especially with blogging.

I don't see much, if any, difference between someone making up a "posted by" name (which could change with every post) and not leaving any name at all.

I'd prefer it if people would use either their real name, or a consistent made-up name. But sadly, the world often doesn't heed my preferences.

Brian,
The problem with annoymous comments like this one is that when you click on the annonymous comment it takes you to your original post in the thread and not the annonymous comment. You have to scroll down to the comment, or in the case of some very long threads, go through several pages of comments. This can be annoying for those who wish to read the comment AND for the annonymous commenter who would like their comment, that may never be found, read.

So, even if someone wants to use a different name every time, it seems to me a good idea to require a name for the sake of convenience and efficiency. Yes?

[Brian]

OK, good point. I missed that -- that comments with no name lead only to the post, not to the comment, since there's no name to click on.

Your comment above has a direct link in the "March 17..." identifer. It's just that TypePad doesn't include that link in the sidebar list of comments unless a name is attached.

I'll point this out to TypePad as something they should address.

There aren't many no-name comments, so for now I'll add a name to them (aside from the preceding). That way the name can be clicked and the comment will appear, not just the post.