An Atheistic Examination of the Culture of Death
Interview With Sam Harris (Part 1) - Wed, Nov 10, 2004
Sam Harris is no friend of religion. In The End of Faith, he openly mocks god-belief as primitive superstition and condemns it as a threat to human survival. Harris argues that the great modern religions belong on "the scrap heap of mythology," and his zero-tolerance policy applies to religious fundamentalists and moderates alike.
Some reviewers were surprised, therefore, to discover that Harris -- who received a philosophy degree from Stanford University and is a doctoral candidate in the field of neuroscience -- embraces Eastern philosophy and Buddhism. Particularly baffling to some was the declaration, on the concluding page of his book, that "[m]ysticism is a rational enterprise." After a reader lamented this apparent contradiction in a comment at this blog, Harris offered to engage me in a written dialogue to clarify his stance on the scientific validity of studying spiritual experience.
I, in turn, invited three other atheist bloggers to join me in the grilling: (1) Strange Doctrines, a lawyer/musician who writes frequently about religion and politics; (2) Brian Flemming of Brian Flemming's Weblog, a playwright and filmmaker and (3) Under No Circumstances, a graduate student in the Biomedical Sciences Department of George Washington University (tentatively planning on pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience). Starting today and continuing on successive Wednesdays, this interview will be "simulcast" in installments on all five sites. Each installment will conclude with the question which will open the next week's continuation of the interview; readers are invited to supply their own answers, or predict Harris' response, in the comments section.
RAVING ATHEIST: Many hardcore atheists like myself are wary of meditation, viewing it as religious or spiritual practice akin to prayer. How is what you're proposing different?
HARRIS: Well, the first thing to realize is that "meditation" is a word like "learning" -- it can mean many things in different contexts. It is certainly possible to practice a kind of "meditation" that is indistinguishable from prayer, in that it rests on very dubious assumptions about divine agency, the supernatural, etc. Needless to say, this is not the sort of meditation I endorse in my book.
There are, however, many forms of meditation that merely require that a person pay extraordinarily close attention to the flow of his experience. There is nothing irrational about doing this. In fact, it constitutes the only rational basis upon which to make detailed claims about the nature of one's own experience.
RAVING ATHEIST: When I've tried that sort of introspection I've found my mind gets stuck in a loop, obsessed with the thought that "here I am thinking about my thinking process" and not progressing anywhere beyond that. What am I doing wrong?
HARRIS: Meditation is definitely not a matter of thinking about experience in a new way; it is a matter of witnessing the flow of experience (including the flow of thought) from the perspective of consciousness itself. For most people, this is not easy to do. Serious training is usually in order.
A case in point: one of the easiest forms of meditation to learn entails nothing more than mere attention to the process of breathing. A person sits comfortably, closes his eyes, and simply attends to the sensations of the breath as it comes and goes at the tip of the nose. The moment a person attempts to do this, however, he begins to notice that he easily gets distracted by his thoughts. In the beginning, he will be a very poor judge of how distractible he is, in fact. While attempting to meditate on the breath, he will think thoughts like, "So I'm feeling the breath at the tip of the nose... so what? What's the big deal about the breath?", and he won't notice that each of these thoughts diverts his attention from the breath itself. He will, in other words, spend most of his time thinking without knowing that he is thinking.
Of course, this is precisely how most of us spend every waking moment of our lives. If a person really wants to get to the bottom things, he might go on a silent retreat and engage a practice like this, to the exclusion of all else, for 12 to 18 hours a day. In the beginning of such a retreat, many people feel that they can pay attention to the breath for several minutes at a time, before getting distracted. They are inevitably wrong about this. The truth is, they are so distracted by torrents of thought that they can't even begin to notice how distracted they are. After some days, or even weeks, they begin to report that they can only stay with the breath for a few seconds at a time before thoughts intervene. Eventually, however, there does come a point when a person gains extraordinary powers of concentration, and then he can actually see some things of real interest about the nature of his mind.
This is simply to say that the fact that you don't see anything of immediate interest when you look inside should not be taken as a sign that there is nothing of interest to see. Before a person learns how to read a CT-scan, all he sees is a gray mess. After a little training, anatomical details begin to emerge. The details were there all along, of course, they were just difficult to see. This is by no means a perfect analogy, but it works up to a point.
RAVING ATHEIST: Christians are fond of telling me that if I pray hard enough, Jesus will come into my heart. Many of them swear that during prayer they experience some real communication or conversation with God, and that if I don't, I'm either doing it wrong haven't done it long enough. But I'd never sit in a church for 12 to 18 hours a day to test their hypothesis, any more than I'd try sleeping for two weeks straight on someone's mere say-so. What empirical data do you have, different from theirs, that could induce me to go on that retreat? Stated another way, what exactly are these things of "real interest" about my mind that I'd discover, and what is the evidence that others have discovered them derived extraordinary benefit?
HARRIS: Needless to say, the difficulty of mastering a skill (or any domain of knowledge) doesn't make it intellectually suspect. If you came to me and said, "I want to understand the brain in great detail from the perspective of neuroscience," I would say, "okay, go get your Ph.D. in neuroscience." This would take years. Likewise with anything else. There's an old saw from psychology that expertise in any domain usually takes about 10,000 hours to acquire. This seems true enough, whether you are talking about chess, physics, or meditation.
Still, you have raised a reasonable concern. Some projects are bogus. There is, in fact, a big difference between the above invitation to prayer and the claim I am making about meditation. There is a difference in what one must assume about the world to get these two projects off the ground. And there is a difference in the theory by which one will subsequently interpret the data of experience. I have
no doubt that interesting experiences await the man or woman who prays to Jesus for 12 to 18 hours a day. In fact, I have no doubt that some of those experiences would be normative (that is, desirable and worth seeking out). I just dispute the logic by which such experiences are sought and interpreted. Whatever happens to you while you are praying to Jesus, it is unlikely to confirm the claim that he was born of a virgin, rose bodily after death, etc. If it makes you a more loving person, however, the effort was not totally wasted.
The only claim I making with respect to meditation is that there are methods of training our powers of attention, such that we can come to observe the flow of our experience with astonishing clarity. And this can result in a range of insights that, for millennia, people have found both intellectually credible and personally transforming (mostly in the East). The primary insight being that the feeling we call "I"-- the sense that we are the thinker of our thoughts, the experiencer of our experiencer -- really disappears when looked for in a rigorous way. This is as empirically confirmable at looking for one's optic blind spot. Most people never notice their blind spot (caused by the optic nerve's transit through the retina), but it can be pointed out with a little effort. Loss of the feeling of "self" can be pointed out and discussed in a very similar way. It's just a little harder to get someone to notice it, because most people can't stop thinking for more than instant.
RAVING ATHEIST: You've written that during this state of selflessness, the subject/object distinction vanishes but "consciousness remains vividly aware of the continuum of experience." I have to say this sounds incoherent to me, in a way that the notion of a God secretly and simultaneously tapping into all our brains and knowing all our thoughts does not. It seems to me that someone has to be vividly aware, someone has to be sensing that the sense of individuality has disappeared - in the same way that Descartes' "I" still remains after the evil demon has deceived it about all reality (if only to notice that it is perceiving the deception). Are you saying that the thoughts that exist during mediation are (1) nobody's thoughts, (2) everybody's thoughts flowing together (or at least all those who are then mediating) or (3) something else?
HARRIS: When I say that "consciousness remains vividly aware of the continuum of experience" after the feeling of "self" vanishes, I simply mean that nothing necessarily changes at the level of perception. If the birds are chirping, you will still be able to hear them. The difference is that rather than feeling like "you" are hearing "them" (subject and object), there will simply be the pure experience of hearing (without hearer and thing heard).
Another way to think about this is that the feeling of being a separate self has a kind of qualitative feel to it. As such, it is an appearance in consciousness. It stands to reason, therefore, that consciousness might be able to recognize this feeling from a position that stands outside it. This is, in fact, the case. It is possible to recognize that just as consciousness is not itself itchy when cognizing an itch, it is not a self when feeling the feeling we call "I." Granted, this can all sound a little spooky until you've had this experience, but it really does capture the flavor of it.
Neurologically speaking, this possibility should sound quite plausible to you. Whatever stream of processing is doing the job of representing the organism as standing apart from the world of its experience, it is not surprising that this processing could be inhibited, or cease to occur. It is not a logical requirement of sensory perception that a system represent itself in the world in order to represent the world. And there is certainly no requirement that it represent itself as a subject that is somehow interior to its own body (rather than merely existing as its body), which is more or less how we tend to define ourselves as conscious agents. After all, most of us feel that we are riding around inside our bodies, inside our heads especially, thinking thoughts. Meditation reveals that this feeling is itself a product of thought. More precisely, it is what if feels like to be identified with the process of thinking (that is, to not recognize consciousness itself as the prior context of every thought that arises).
As far as Descartes is concerned, he seems to have been entirely identified with his thoughts and, for that reason, mistook thinking for subjective bedrock. What the Demon really cannot deceive us about is not the sense of self, but the fact of consciousness. Even if this is all a dream, consciousness is no less a fact: because even if nothing is as it seems, the fact that anything seems any way at all is itself the fact of consciousness.
Comments
The first step in tackling the God-problem is arriving at a definition of the deity that is to be proven or debunked. Can this requirement be imposed where the thing that is at issue is the existence of a particular state of mind? As far as I can tell, what is involved here is something best defined as "selflessness," which in turn appears to involve the dissolution of the individual consciousness. Assuming that the concept is coherent, I'm pretty sure that I've never achieved the state, or anything close to it, myself. So I feel that I am somewhat in the position of a blind person trying to imagine the experience of blue.
This doesn't mean, of course, that blue experiences don't exist. But the presumption here is that the sought-after state is something qualitatively different from blueness, something extraordinary, something "spiritual" or "mystical." Others, I am told, have reached it through a process of extreme concentration and introspection.
Having toiled at an atheist blog for two years without achieving any particularly surprising state of consciousness, I am naturally skeptical that that 12-18 hours of thinking about virtually nothing would change my luck. That being said, I can see how the effort involved in sitting still for such a protracted period might alter one's state of mind. Similarly, I can see how there might be something extraordinary about a person who could withstand such an ordeal. So I don't discount entirely the notion that some heightened state of consciousness might result from such a practice. But I suspect this conclusion rests largely upon an appeal to authority, i.e., my estimation of Harris as being a man so sensible in every other respect that it seems unlikely he would be seduced by, or promote, something inherently worthless.
[Interview continued here]
(Top) —Posted by: The Raving Atheist in The Daily Rave · Permalink · 38 Comments
·•◊•·
The Raving Atheist » Comments on: Interview With Sam Harris (Part 1)
Having toiled at an atheist blog for two years without achieving any particularly surprising state of consciousness, I am naturally skeptical that that 12-18 hours of thinking about virtually nothing would change my luck.
I think surprising states of consciousness are not that hard to find nowadays, especially with the help of pharmaceuticals.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
The more I think about it, the more I believe a missing definition is really the problem here.
Is a relaxation exercise done for benefits for one's health a religion?
Runners can be pretty nutso about the benefits of running. Doesn't make track a religion, though.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
I think he is too focused on this experiencing conscousness thing. If he just said it was a method of relaxation it would not pass as something mystical. There has been research done on meditation to show taht it does relax people a great deal. Of all religions, I respect Buddhism the most.
Anyway, TRA should ask if tehre is anything mystical or supernatural in his view of meditation. That might settle the matter.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
Agreed Tomek. i know Atheists that meditate, just for relaxation and peace, but i also know prodestants that do the same thing to "get closer to god". like Tomek said, you should ask him if he views meditaion as a mystical experience, or relaxation. Even exploration of the self seems to be a reasonable answer.
In a figure drawing class for example, you spend many hours drawing people. there are small things you notice, small things you bet better at representing, that soon you start to see more often on yourself ("wow, i guess there is a dip there.") and in others. this does not mean you're delving into a mystical experience, but that you're being more observant, and noticing things about how the brain just skips over some things, and in a sense how it does not always represent reality truthfuly.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
I think he is right in saying conscious experience comes in (at least) 2 levels. A higher level of reflective self-consciousness and a lower, more basic level of experience which is prior to self-consciousness and seems to be something we share with the rest of the natural world. This latter type of experience can be achieved through meditation.
This has nothing to do with theism, per se. A theist or an atheist will tend to bring his or her preconceptions to bear when interpreting the phenomenon.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
Awesome! You should have interviews with Sam Harris for the next 52 weeks!
[Edit] November 10, 2004
Excellent job RA! I'm quick to criticize your posts when I disagree, and I should praise you when praise is due. I'm going to be looking forward eagerly to the next installments of this interview. Anyway, I agree with the previous commenters. If Harris is making no supernatural claims about meditation, then I don't see that there's any argument. People can disagree about what is the most effective way to experience the world. Physicists might say that those who do not have a rigorous education in Newton's Laws and general relativity and quantum mechanics are missing out on all of the wonders of the universe, neuroligists might argue that the brain is the new frontier of mankind, evolutionary biologists could argue that they are studying the great question of life - how and why do we exist. But these are not arguments that can be answered using science or logic, they're just arguments of worldview, and as such have no right or wrong answers, just lots of subjective interpretations. It seems to me that Harris is just trying to make an argument for his particular worldview.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
Oh dear, we atheists really have become so infused by the unbearable crap of religion that we can't talk about spirituality, mysteries, esoterics, meditation, etc. any more, without feeling suspect, furtively looking over our shoulder. Whatever name you give it, spirituality becomes irrational only when it becomes - well - irrational, i.e. not supported by empirical evidence.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
This link (http://my.webmd.com/content/article/31/1728_77081) represents some of the research that has been done upon those who pray and meditate, and has found that there is often little difference between the two, at least in biological terms. The loss of the 'I' that Mr. Harris mentions is commonly reported by those who devote time to either pursuit, and apparently is related to a drop in activity in the part of the brain that give us a feeling of orientation in space. In light of this, it is not very surprising that people report feelings of continuity with reality/god, and a loss of the sense of self.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
"Some reviewers were surprised, therefore, to discover that Harris -- who received a philosophy degree from Stanford University and is a doctoral candidate in the field of neuroscience -- embraces Eastern philosophy and Buddhism."
I am an atheist but have found Buddhism, umm, fun. :)
What gives more credibility to Buddhism in my books is the apparent good image they have as people that won't push themselves or their ideas forcibly on others. Those who are attracted to it seem to be driven there by their own volition. Buddishm at its best seems like a framework that gives everybody something if they so have the desire to search for such things. One may question someone's will to go through almost torture like teaching but one can not suggest simply changing their mind forcibly, to leave a monastery, and go live their own lives. With a compelling desire and no understanding a human being can be a dangerous thing. If one needs to explore, let's provide. The thing is, ssh, can't tell. Buddhism seems to be more resistant than other religions to ideas where one single truth exists and must be spread to everyone. The whole idea seems more like nobody knows and everybody is careful. Those who understand can't tell, know it, and the knowledge gives them freedom to do what is neccessary. Anyway, they're good guys since they won't push, and push, and push. Through years they may have gotten some good revelations but they still don't push. Good food sells itself.
Meditation. I practiced meditation for several years using various approaches. I cannot vouch for any method specifically. I can say that after a time you can let the talk to self fade to background and you can begin to simply follow what is going on visually, physically, auditorily and otherwise. You could say meditation has also entertaining value for the discovery of just how far a mind can take you with concentration. I can report controllably losing the feeling of my whole body by letting the feel of an extremely strong electric current-like surge flow through, after which everything disappears into a cold wind. Strange. :) Then things are simpler and concentration becomes a lot stronger. One simply sees and hears without need for words. It doesn't have to be anything supernatural. Just a signal from camera to tv set projecting on screen without anyone skipping the channels because of content.
To me meditation took a long time to battle through millions of conceptual battles that probably still go on every now and then. After a while, you just don't want to follow them all. Then, do what you like. Still isn't that easy.
The worth in meditation to me comes in realisations that in their nature remind me of things such as:
- How when sitting on a long drive in a car, you stare the road. The car stops, and for a while you notice how neurons have adapted to the movement of the road. The road is still moving, morphing.
- Keep your eyes fixed to a point in a room and have a friend watch your pupils. The room must have dark areas and very bright areas, lamps in sight. Concentrate on the lamp. Concentrate on the dark. Switch and switch while saying out loud which is which. The pupils change size even though the amount of light to the eyes doesn't. Uuuu... :)
Meditation gives some insight to the processes that go inside one's head. In buddhism Nagarjuna's writings about different parts of mind reminds me more of cognitive approach to AI than anything else. Though it is hard to report the experience a lot has been written already that you can relate to.
After meditating on the subject considerably I consider language an insufficient tool to describe consciousness. To me the problems with language is in how the concepts rising from experience must always be split into a narrative form, and a graph flattened to a tree, that can then be relayed through a channel to the other end (individual), where it is then reconstructed on the evidence imprinted and implicated by the message and previous experience. Buddhists seem to me already having found this by the way they say how opening one's mouth is already a mistake. At times I enjoy describing to christians how already in the Genesis and in the parable of paradise this, too, was understood: When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge they already had been told that the fruits from it are delicious but deceptive. Despite the general population smart men have always been around and I think it was already understood that words are useful as tools but conviction rising from them alone is pure madness. The banishment of Man from paradise to me is the step in evolution where the cool head of an animal is replaced by a neurotic rational computer that can not accommodate the difference between the new discrete language to the continuous experience of the real. What a pain. To give more points to Buddhists I remind you about the puzzle: "Who is the divine being that makes the grass green?" Yourself. To me this seems to signify their understanding of how common language connects to individual experience and how such structures are not real while still remaining handy.
To me definitions of consciousness will lack in the part that provides the basis of an experience. No data is copied and nothing is transferred but rather all things move in respect to each other. A narrative from one individual to other or between two parts of the brain is always like a handshake where hands meet, shake, and end. Even a single brain interprets the messages from other parts in its own internal language. It doesn't matter what the architecture is, and between individuals that can vary greatly, as long as their function with others combined is equivalent. The languages used are always bound to their own narrative closures and cannot interpret or reach beyond it. The definition of consciousness must resort to mere intuition through experiment and a proof of that intuition in working hardware.
Ok last something fun. I'll scratch the christian body of literature a little bit and re-interpret the stories again. In the Genesis, God created man to his own image. Does it now truly mean that an omnipotent being created man to stand as his own spitting image, or could it possibly relate more to the Buddhist way of seeing things: Man is like a mirror in which the surrounding universe is reflected in a smaller version in his mind. That seems more like a photograph to me.
Another part. Three wise men from the east. 2000 years ago. Buddhism was already quite well settled in the east. I dream of some monks traveling to west and having been quite good friends and neighbour to the family of Jesus. The boy grows up learning rather eccentric eastern philosophy and by the age of 30 he is sticking out in the local culture with his spiky toung and koan way of speech. He even manages to gather a good following, some who clain to be his pupils. An interesting experiment of a new philosophy in a whole different culture. After inciting a movement the local authorities can't understand or control he is executed. Too bad the pupils never got around the enlightenment part. Master was so cryptic. So they go round and round and everybody who was there writes down what they recall. I mean if you already have the truth why repeat the same things over and over in the book? Can't you agree? I bet Jesus was really disappointed earlier when he demonstrated the gullibility of people by ordering his pupils to go and fish a whole congregation. No master, don't follow anybody! Hmm, I wonder if the experiment and a potentially educating ploy got out of hand? No wonder he was cursing his pupils. He didn't quite handle them and they had no clue what he was talking about. Also you got to give to that local fiery temperament. They don't take a joke graciously. After his death the new born congregation got around inventing all kinds of nice new rules. Of course they would figure things out. Some one would. One day. Great thing that it was all written down.
After 2000 years of misunderstanding some bad writing of hearsay it might seem a rather hard thing to turn all things around. Anyone ever seen the movie "Wicker Man"? Auch.
- vince
* Vincent - A short movie about a childs imagination by Tim Burton, IMDB link
* Conscious Machines - Pentti O. A. Haikonen, Amazon link
[Edit] November 10, 2004
I've read these posts and have become enlightened. And I've read RA’s daily rave, again as usual daily, and am enlightened. Now I thought of writing this sentence and am now executing the thought and am even more enlightened. If I stop writing at the end of this period, I will cease to be in a state of farther enlightenment. However, for that split second of stopping I had this thought of writing this sentence, hence more enlightenment after a split second of unenlightenment. And now I am even more enlightenment as I have decided to create this sentence also. Every thought that comes to my mind, or yours, is enlightenment. They are increasing my knowledge despite their insignificance. I am enlightened. Why need I learn Buddhism to be enlightened? Isn’t Buddhism merely an existentialistic weltanschauung? Relaxation comes in many different forms, so show me any difference in them other then that they entail different tools, environments, etc, and also that they may achieve different engrossment. The important thing, I believe is to do something that is rewarding and enjoyable. You will get the same result.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
vince, those feelings you report to have while "meditating" seem similar to the feelings that religionists have while praying or while thinking about they perceive their god to want them to....it all stems from a mental experience that in your case is not "religiously" originated, because you reject theism (fortunately). ahh, the power of the mind! maybe that is why theists sometimes report that god lives in their hearts, and that they can feel him. literally.
i really can't seem to distinguish from good old-fashioned introspection and learning, and (to me, at least) wishy-washy spirituality, meditation, heightened sense of self, consciousness (hey, pinch yourself...it hurts? that's consciousness), enlightenment and all that that budhism is about.
if my appreciation of a beautiful sunset is "spiritualism", then we need to redefine the word. i'm just phobic of the term and the way it is used.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
Of course! The whole point of atheism is that mankind must seek happiness on earth. If a statue of Buddha, some burning candles, and Mozart's Oratorio make your day, go for it. If it helps to meditate about ultimate reality, do so. Nobody is watching you, nobody is writing down your thoughts, nobody will punish you for eternity!
I can even imagine a Church of Atheism, with magnificent organ music and choirs singing glorious songs to celebrate the day we found atheism, with poetry giving thanks for an end to spiritual enslavement, with true fellowship sharing the company of people who are truly human.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
Meditation, prayer, out of body experiences, extreme singing/dancing, speaking in tongues, alien abductions(no kidding), NDE's(near death experiences) and religious conversion due to high levels of stress reaching a breaking point are all related activities that originate from the "emotion center" or amygdala in the frontal lobe of our brains. I'm not an expert in neurobiology, but I have read several good books on the subject including "The God part of the Brain" which I would highly recommend for a laymen. Also, Dr. Michael Persinger has done fascinating studies on thousands of people ranging from the ultra religious to monks to atheists and has found that when our frontal lobes are excited by controlled shots of electricity, we all experience similar results. Almost all subjects report sensations like "feeling at one with nature or the universe", "feeling the presence of God", "extreme relaxation", "a feeling of bliss", and yes "alien abductions". There is definately a physiological connection between many of the things we would consider to be in the spiritual domain and many of the things we know to be biological in nature.
[Edit] November 10, 2004
Meditation, spirituality, mysticism, these can be taken as good or bad. Meditation is a state of mind, spirituality and mysticism are whatever we choose to make of them.
The case for meditation exists within the realm of science; TRA's focus was a bit off, it is certainly about how this meditative state is interpreted, rather than whether it exists or not.
Spirituality is some sort of feeling of connection. It can be between people, between humans and other animals, between humans and nature in general, or, sadly, between people and deities. We choose to make what we do of these feelings.
Mysticism is always welcome. Think of it as curiousity, the thrill of the unknown, the mysterious. Yes, there are those that would seek to raise or conjure up their own mysteries (ghosts, gods, UFOs), but there are more than enough natural mysteries to occupy humans forever. Each one of us has 100 billion cells in our bodies, and the capillaries that help nourish them are only separated by two or three cells, at most. We can marvel at the possibility of ethereal beings, or we can marvel at the living fractals that we are. There are 400 billion stars in our galaxy, and 2 million galaxies within our field of view, each one containing millions of stars. We can marvel at the possibility that deities exist, or we can marvel at the sheer size of the fractal universe.
I believe there is a way to reconcile the negative connotations associated with meditation, spirituality, and mysticism. One way is to change the words, but that's always a lot of trouble. Since whatever we experience is entirely up to us, I say we just practice these three things with our own unique cognitive filters, keeping in mind that reality is more than enough to awe and mystify us, without the need to add or embellish it.
[Edit] November 11, 2004
Well put, Mookie. One sad side effect of religion is that it overgrows our spirit so completely that 'spiritual' starts to mean 'divine' or 'religious' exclusively. Well, it does NOT, dammit; the word 'spirit' comes from 'breath' and we need to breathe to live. After you chuck the bad breath of religion out of your life, you also need to revive your spirit. That is why Sam Harris discusses meditation and spiritual practice in his book.
[Edit] November 11, 2004
OK ... I don't get any link between meditation and mysticism. Meditation is great to relax, may help you have a good time but what's special about this ... mediation, alcohol, drugs, hypnotism and combinations of these lead to experiences that are different to our everyday rational one. Even our everyday rational mode often experiences unanticipated emotional peaks and troughs that cause it remporarily to loose some of this purely analytical view. This could be caused by one of more pieces of sensory data ... a poem, a piece of music, a sunset, a photo of a child amputee ... whatever. So we're putting our brain into an apparently different mode, that is perhaps different from our rational one but what is mystical about this?
All the meditation and eastern mysticism does not appear to have delivered one piece of new knowledge or insight. Sam may say expertise in physics or meditation requires 10,000 hours but the physicist can use that expertise to deliver to world the new insights and knowledge ... something that was not known before. What has Sam acheived through his thousands of hours of meditation apart from perhaps improved personal health and a good time?
[Edit] November 11, 2004
I have a question I would enjoy seeing TRA ask Sam Harris; it may to cut to the heart of the controversy.
In his book, Harris states something which seems to go against an uncontroversial neurological explanation of mystical experiences – that changes in how the brain is functioning lead to changes in how “self” and consciousness are experienced (and vice versa) – and which implies a far more transcendent, mystical, spiritual interpretation.
On page 209, he writes:
“Consciousness may be a far more rudimentary phenomenon than are living creatures and their brains. And there appears to be no obvious way of ruling out such a thesis experimentally.”
In those two sentences it appears to me that he abandons a scientific approach to the study of mystical experiences and enters the realm of speculation and faith. It is true that, from the standpoint of logical possibility, consciousness “may” precede or stand outside the existence of brains – but what evidence leads us to this theory?
My understanding is that so far our findings in all branches of science support the theory that mind and consciousness are organizations, activities, and processes in the brains of living creatures. There are many specific disputes within neurology and cognitive studies, of course, but from what I can tell they don’t involve seriously entertaining mind/body substance dualism – which is what he appears to be suggesting.
Physicalism (or some variation of it) is not so much an “article of faith” among the mainstream consensus of scientists, as he says, but a working theory without any significant challenges. And, I might add, a working theory which could easily be ruled out experimentally. All we would need is good, strong, repeatable evidence of disconnected consciousness functioning in the absence of living creatures and their brains. So far, parapsychology has failed to provide it -- certainly not to the rigorous level of significance we require.
Harris' implication seems to be that if we can’t specifically eliminate dualistic theories through experiments, then they therefore stand in epistemic equality with other explanations. Not, I maintain, if the other explanations have support which is consistent across different branches of science, have failed to be falsified, and all fit nicely into the theory of evolution – and the unfalsifiable explanation which “can’t be ruled out” doesn’t. What can’t be technically ruled out may still be pragmatically cut out by Ockam’s razor as unnecessary – and this is how science generally proceeds and progresses.
After all, his argument here seems to echo one of the main tenets of Faith: if we can’t prove there is no God – if the definition of God entails that there is never going to be any obvious way of ruling its existence out – then belief in God is just as reasonable as any other belief, because you are now allowed to assume it is true upfront and then see if you can find anything which can be interpreted as supporting evidence. This method allows one to have faith in God, or anything at all, by building support backwards.
So I would like The Raving Atheist to ask Mr. Harris about the particular sentences I excerpted from his Chapter 7:
What are the scientific findings which lead him to consider that “consciousness may be a far more rudimentary phenomenon than are living creatures and their brains” – and how does he justify giving this theory scientific credibility based on the assertion that “there appears no obvious way of ruling it out experimentally?”
[Edit] November 11, 2004
I have a question I would enjoy seeing TRA ask Sam Harris; it may to cut to the heart of the controversy.
In his book, Harris states something which seems to go against an uncontroversial neurological explanation of mystical experiences – that changes in how the brain is functioning lead to changes in how “self” and consciousness are experienced (and vice versa) – and which implies a far more transcendent, mystical, spiritual interpretation.
On page 209, he writes:
“Consciousness may be a far more rudimentary phenomenon than are living creatures and their brains. And there appears to be no obvious way of ruling out such a thesis experimentally.”
In those two sentences it appears to me that he abandons a scientific approach to the study of mystical experiences and enters the realm of speculation and faith. It is true that, from the standpoint of logical possibility, consciousness “may” precede or stand outside the existence of brains – but what evidence leads us to this theory?
My understanding is that so far our findings in all branches of science support the theory that mind and consciousness are organizations, activities, and processes in the brains of living creatures. There are many specific disputes within neurology and cognitive studies, of course, but from what I can tell they don’t involve seriously entertaining mind/body substance dualism – which is what he appears to be suggesting.
Physicalism (or some variation of it) is not so much an “article of faith” among the mainstream consensus of scientists, as he says, but a working theory without any significant challenges. And, I might add, a working theory which could easily be ruled out experimentally. All we would need is good, strong, repeatable evidence of disconnected consciousness functioning in the absence of living creatures and their brains. So far, parapsychology has failed to provide it -- certainly not to the rigorous level of significance we require.
Harris' implication seems to be that if we can’t specifically eliminate dualistic theories through experiments, then they therefore stand in epistemic equality with other explanations. Not, I maintain, if the other explanations have support which is consistent across different branches of science, have failed to be falsified, and all fit nicely into the theory of evolution – and the unfalsifiable explanation which “can’t be ruled out” doesn’t. What can’t be technically ruled out may still be pragmatically cut out by Ockam’s razor as unnecessary – and this is how science generally proceeds and progresses.
After all, his argument here seems to echo one of the main tenets of Faith: if we can’t prove there is no God – if the definition of God entails that there is never going to be any obvious way of ruling its existence out – then belief in God is just as reasonable as any other belief, because you are now allowed to assume it is true upfront and then see if you can find anything which can be interpreted as supporting evidence. This method allows one to have faith in God, or anything at all, by building support backwards.
So I would like The Raving Atheist to ask Mr. Harris about the particular sentences I excerpted from his Chapter 7:
What are the scientific findings which lead him to consider that “consciousness may be a far more rudimentary phenomenon than are living creatures and their brains” – and how does he justify giving this theory scientific credibility based on the assertion that “there appears no obvious way of ruling it out experimentally?”
[Edit] November 11, 2004
TRA wrote:
TRA, if you had read this interview with Sam Harris somewhere FIRST, then I doubt you would still hold Sam Harris in esteem as a sensible rational person.
Think of it this way. Zen Buddhism is is NOT "rational", by definition. "Losing the self" is in fact losing the stream of consciousness which is rational thought.
TRA, don't you outright reject that kind of "thinking?" How is it different than a theist "selflessly following supernatural direction?"
If a meditating Zen master acts, it will not be possible for him to use words to explain: there is no conscious reason. How is that different if a theist has no rational reason for an act? Should American Law and Politics hold them equally accountable for the consequences of their acts?
I am not trying to dissuade you from exploring this way of using your brain. Thinking without word-concepts is very much faster and can be more powerful than thoughts based on a stream of word-concepts. Hard to describe, but useful for the very hardest solutions we seek in life: it is more like turning off one part of your brain that thinks in a continuous process trying possibilities one at a time, so that the much larger neural network is free to jump and feel the way to a correct solution "intuitively."
At the end you may be able to rationally defend the choice you made irrationally, but usually that defense is unnecessary, or difficult, or impossible.. The more you work this way and experience successes, the easier it is to trust that solutions obtained this way are sound, and the rational thought is not required.
But once you accept that there are benefits to be had from that type of influenced but irrational consciousness, I think you lose the ability to distinguish it from religious devotion.
There are fundamental reasons that rational thought is an insufficient an unreliable basis for choosing to act. First: we cannot observe with 100% accuracy. Second: we cannot observe with 100% coverage. Third: At a fundamental level, interactions of objects in the universe are driven by chaos and divergence, not convergence. Fourth: the models of reality we have in our minds are gross approximations (because we have limited processing power, and the models are only as good as we were able to train them from past learning.)
This is a hard, harsh reality. Even if we had infinite processing power in our brain, incomplete observation is going to predict the wrong trajectory of reality and our response to it will be miscalculated. And Chaos theory (#3 in my 4 points) means that it can be wildly wrong!
So, if I've communicated everything succinctly and clearly enough above, we come to something you find hard to accept:
The act of choosing an externally developed system of thinking about how the world works and should work (aka following a religion) is intellectually defensible and a valid strategy for dealing with the 4 aspects of reality.
Sure, religion should not override rational thought, and there are some pretty kooky religions out there. But if you compare how much effort is required to learn the basic precepts of Christianity with the effort required to observe and learn a model of reality which predicts human behavior so that we can interact with them rationally, then there is no comparison. A decent religion takes far less study, generally gets better results (e.g. more accurately picks actions which are good for self and society, with society taking priority), with far less thinking effort, in far less wall-clock time.
Does it get an irrational and provably bad answer some of the time? Sure does. Your blog is good enough demonstration of that.
I do not see any solutions to the fundamental 4 problems I gave above (some are fundamental laws of physics problems.), so I do not see irradication of religion happening any time soon, nor do I see artificial suppression of religion as a benefit.
This is not an "opiate of the masses" kind of thing. Living your life rationally is REALLY difficult. Most people are incapable and not inclined to do the hard work necessary to develop a good internal model of the world and relationships.
TRA and other atheist seem to advocate abandoning all religious study. If the mass populace is to abandon such solutions according to a religious system, then I think we are in for tough times ahead.
The "Liberal and Conservative elite" who are working to dismantle religious following are not offering suitable alternatives, and to the extent they are offering alternatives, those alternatives are arguably more flawed than what they seek to replace. (Well, at least if you think survival of society is important. Acting out of selfishness really is powerful enough to destroy civilization....)
There is something else very curious about being human here. We cannot "turn off" our ability to make rational choices. There is no permanent state of Zen being in this life. We CHOOSE to attemp to enter that state, and even if we are successful, by nature our brain will return to being the "director." Free will isn't as much a gift as it is a command: We MUST choose our actions and thoughts, even if we choose to "give up" our rational thought process, that is still a choice. (There is a fundamental human characteristic that we want to maximize good choices, which is either seen as a rational thought, or as a supernatural "conscience" depending which side of the fence you are on.)
In the end, I think rational and irrational thought must coexist. Neither will irradicate the other. Each has strengths, each has weaknesses.
This isn't some lame compromise position in a debate with no knock-out punches: it is fundamental result of laws of reality, including the limitations of the brain. (Related note: Some thought processes in the brain can be monitored and controlled (and therefore can communicate to others the "reasons" we chose an act) but the part of the brain doing the monitoring and controlling cannot monitor itself and cannot monitor and control everything. It may not even be able to monitor and control MOST things.)
To borrow and abuse a quote: I would say that a sufficiently advanced religious system is indistinguishable from a planned way of ensuring survival of our species.
I think that a good religion is an intellectually defensible choice to answering the fundamental question "How ought we act?" Now the trick is defining "good". :-) But I think you can see my point that the contribution of religion is not "trivial" by default at least.
Ah well, this post is too long and probably going to be lost in the sea of mediocre postings. Maybe that is where it belongs. TRA, I hope you followed it. I'd be happy to defend it rationally.
Forrest
[Edit] November 11, 2004
I forgot to mention that I like what vince wrote in #10. I'm in tune with vince's descriptions and explanations. I didn't want to repeat any of what vince wrote. Good stuff, not that I agree with his end conclusions about theism.... But that brings another thought.
You know, it is kind of funny. Science is all about making models and theories about how an observable system works. Models and theories are almost always an approximation, but scientists can learn and communicate by studying the models. They try to expand them to cover more cases, or more accurately describe a system so that better predictions can be made. They act based on the models, even if flawed. Atheists find that all just fine.
But if you try to do that same modelling with societal and interpersonal relationships, and approximate three of the reliable base concepts in that model as
1. an ongoing creating and sustaining existence that we are born into the middle of,
2. observable actions of others which sustain our life and society, and
3. individual inspiration/desire to contribute and amplify that goodness
why do atheists accept it only until you put short names on those three concepts as Father, Son, and Spirit?
Is this just a terminology debate after all? With the appropriate definitions of "supernatural" and "worship" do we all end up in the same "church"?
Forrest
[Edit] November 11, 2004
Forrest -
Abandoning religion is not the same as abandoning irrational thought. As humans, we will always be irrational - if we were purely rational, Spockish beings, we wouldn't be human. So while I myself do advocate the abandonment of religion, I am not so ignorant of human nature as to advocate the impossible.
And I do not think that societies need religion, in any sense of the word, to survive. Indeed, I think that any social structure that would collapse without religion should collapse, as it is founded and maintained by fraudulent thought. To think that people can only survive if they continue to behave like cattle is, actually, quite a theistic train of thought - the idea that humans are, on the whole, incapable of living thinking, rational lives (which I freely admit is much harder work than letting someone else do your planning and thinking for you), that we cannot possibly make our own judgement calls, is one of the underlying tenets of most religions. Because people who don't think for themselves (taking the easy way out) are easier to control. And a society filled with people who are easy to control will continue to survive only as long as those who are doing the controlling can keep it from spinning out of control or succumbing to another society.
[Edit] November 11, 2004
Sastra got right to the heart of the issue brilliantly (at least to my humble brain):
"What are the scientific findings which lead him to consider that 'consciousness may be a far more rudimentary phenomenon than are living creatures and their brains' – and how does he justify giving this theory scientific credibility based on the assertion that 'there appears no obvious way of ruling it out experimentally?' ”
I'd love to see the answer.
[Edit] November 11, 2004
ocmpoma wrote, in part:
Can you elaborate on how they are different?
If we accept that there are some in-brain processes beyond our conscious control and monitoring, and further permit (or encourage) those irrational processes to influence some actions (in preference or in lieu of reasoned decisions), then is there any observable distinction between a faithful person and a mystic atheist?
Do many atheists allow irrational thought is an acceptable or desirable human trait?
Is irrational thought acceptable only if it never causes irrational behavior? Or what kinds of irrational behavior are OK?
ocmpoma, if you are going to argue that religion is merely a self-reinforcing meme imposed on the unsuspecting by parents, then how do you explain its persistence in the face of persecution and (even more surprisingly) re-occuring independent development of common memes?
As I wrote so long-windedly above, I think it is more defensible (rational) to explain following a system of beliefs as: an attractive, effective method of making good decisions in finite time in the face of observational and predictive uncertainty and the lack of computational capacity needed to accurately model cause and effect in complex environments and societies.
Sorry for the long phrase, but that's everything necessary to describe why making decisions is hard and "cheating" on making decisions is attractive if it can be done effectively.
Approximate solutions are often as good or better than perfect solutions in science, engineering, and life. Religion isn't attractive to its adherents because it makes people easier to "control" like cattle for the benefit of society. It's attractive and persisting because it gives people a practical (computationally tractable) way to recognize and make good choices in finite time when there are too many variables and too many unknowns.
Now, if someone accepts that basic utility of having a pre-developed and teachable model for decision making (morality+encouragement), then aren't "supernatural" and "irrational" synonyms for all intents and purposes? The thoughtful atheist and the faithful mainstream theist can develop very similar internal models for sufficiently good quick decisions -- not congruent in all ways, but in most important ways that affect observable behavior. (I'm discounting violent religious fanatics here as out of the mainstream, because I believe violent fanatacism arises from other factors, not religion per se. Certainly there are non-violent religious devotees, and the violent ones make up a very small minority.)
How would a rational observer of these two persons conclude that one decision-making process is flawed and undesirable, but the other is not when the end-resulting observable actions are the same? What actions would need to be observed to make such a conclusion and are those actions important or no more than insignificant quirks?
Sure the observer could ask each actor to state their reasons for being benevolent or acting selflessly. I'm sure the atheist and the theist will have wildly different answers. But taking that approach gets into all the sticky questions about how any person rationally explains choices and what words are used to explain thought processes that are often beyond conscious observation (and therefore beyond words.) Have the psychologists gotten a consensus on how to deal with the attribution mismatch problem yet? Probably not, I'd guess.
I'm really interested in your reply ocmpoma, as well as TRA's foray into the Sam Harris interview because it treats these interesting questions.
Forrest (Frustrated that something I find to be a simple intuitive concept took so many words to post and support. Sorry. Thanks for reading.)
[Edit] November 12, 2004
I've read a few scientific studies on meditation and deep prayer (and recently heard of a new one on NPR). They all found that during these experiences the part of the brain that deals with bodily awareness slows and area that perceives the world around you becomes more active. This gives the practitioner the sensation of losing one’s consciousness. I’ve also read that brain scans of Buddhist monks in Nirvana shows an almost complete lack of function in the region that perceives the body.
I have little doubt that one can train the mind to do amazing things. I once saw a group of monks on the Discovery Channel who could raise their body temperature to 105 degrees simply by meditating. However, learning to train one’s mind should not be confused with proof of a higher being or consciousness. Deep meditation and prayer is simply a shift in perception, not a religious or spiritual event. Therefore I believe a rational mind, even an atheist one, can accept these phenomena. It is not the practice or the experience that we must dispute it is the unreasonable answers theists give as to why it occurs.
Here is an overview of the most recent study I heard on NPR others can be found easily using a Google search.
http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma8/monksmed.html
and another one
http://newtimes.rway.com/2003/100803/bodymind.shtml
[Edit] November 12, 2004
The difference: Religion is a type of irrational thought. I follow no religion, yet I still do highly irrational things, because I still have emotions. I freely admit that irrational thought is not only an inseparable part of human nature, but that it can, indeed, be beneficial. Without it, we would not have love, loss, fear, desire, or any other part of the gamut of human life. To abandon it would be to abandon ourselves.
The observable distinction between a faithful (religious) person and a mystic (spiritual) atheist is that a religious person bases there whole world view on something not just irrational, but flawed at its very core. Religion stresses the existence of something ‘higher’ than humanity – and in so doing, belittles humanity. I recently ran a marathon. In order to do so I had to draw upon inner reserves and run through quite a bit of pain. I needed my ‘spirit’, if you will, to complete it. Why did I do it? Just because. Because I wanted to. No rational reason – there can hardly be one for running over 26 miles when survival is not even remotely an issue. I saw several people wearing shirts that said: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (I forget the Bible reference.) Basically, these people were embracing the idea that they themselves were incapable of completing the race – they couldn’t do it themselves. When they crossed the finish line, it wasn’t their accomplishment – it was Christ’s. This is the fatal flaw of religious belief – it renders our own accomplishments nil, while making our failures (sins) fully our own fault.
I cannot speak for other atheists. I can speak for myself – I believe my stance on irrational thought is clear: it is acceptable (to me, at least), just as all ‘thought’ should be – as far as actions, rational or irrational, those that cause harm should not be accepted.
I don’t think that religion is a meme (I haven’t read much about that and so refrain from putting forth an opinion). While most people are inducted into religion when young, it is ‘attractive’ for exactly the reasons you put forth: It takes away the need to think. People don’t follow religions to control others (not the majority, anyway) but it makes them all easier to control nonetheless. Take away someone’s desire to think for themselves, and they… well, they won’t. They don’t. Which is why many theists get very flustered very quickly when confronted by an atheist. The discussion forces them to think, and to think about their very belief system.
Of course, approximate rules and easy to follow guidelines are attractive. But attractiveness is no measure of worth. In fact, the more attractive such a system is, the more it is dangerous to human survival. Take the Cold War, as a non-religious (mostly) example. Americans at that time (the majority) embraced an attractive system which took away their need to think. The Soviet Union was the Evil Empire. The Enemy. And so the entire world was pushed to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. You say that following a system of beliefs is an attractive way to make good decisions. I say that following a system of beliefs means you won’t make any real decisions at all.
No, I would rather that people thought for themselves, without any set ‘models’, no matter how tortuous the process.
[Edit] November 12, 2004
Thank you ocmpoma. I really appreciate that #26 reply. There is a lot of substance there. I want to follow up on just one of your points:
You wrote,
I agree that this is an admirable goal, but I wrote that it does not accomodate making good decisions in the face of uncertainty in finite time.
But setting that practical consideration aside, I want to ask: Do you really attempt to make all your decisions on a case-by-case basis?
For a concrete example, do you reflexively tell the truth or do you evaluate your options and predict consequences every time you answer someone in speech or writing? My guess is that you, like most people, answer truthfully by default, but may lie in those rare circumstances when it is readily perceived that telling the truth has substantially higher penalty than a "white lie." (You can pick any other example from a wide range of ethically challenging situations if you do not like that example.)
If by reflex and not by reason, you've modelled the world in a way that telling the truth is a good behavior. Does that contradict your statement I quoted? Did you really mean to write that you "would rather people thought for themselves and used only ethical systems (models) they developed themselves?"
Forrest
P.S. Christian philosophy teaches that Christians are the body of Christ, not separate. So those "running for Christ" are gaining inspiration not by declaring themselves incapable but by embracing a more powerful idea: our estimations of ourselves and our capabilities are inherently flawed by a self-centric perspective and are underestimations more often than not. By focusing on a purpose and viewpoint outside ourselves we are willing to attempt success and persevere outside our self-perceived limits. That method and potential for enhanced performance occurs if we call that "for Christ" or "visualization" or "transcendental meditation" or by any other name.
In traditional Christian-speak, "for Christ" has to incl