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Friday, November 10, 2006

Would you identify yourself as an atheist?

Yesterday, Southern Writer commented on Wednesday's post:
He's [Sam Harris's] an atheist? It doesn't sound like it to me. I might just have to read the book [The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason].
And I replied:
I think that he would say, yes, he's an atheist. He presumably agreed to be featured, along with fellow "atheists" Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, in the cover article of this month's Wired Magazine: "The New Atheism." (And a couple or three weeks ago, Newsweek profiled him under the title, "Belief Watch: The Atheist.")
Well, I have since learned that The Sun Magazine published an interview with Sam Harris in its September issue:
Saltman: Would you identify yourself as an atheist?

Harris: Well, I'm not eager to do that. For one thing, atheists have a massive public-relations problem in the United States. Second, atheists as a group are generally not interested in the contemplative life and disavow anything profound that might be realized by meditation or some other deliberative act of introspection. Third, I just think it's an unnecessary term. We don't have names for someone who doesn't believe in astrology or alchemy. I don't think not believing in God should brand someone with a new identity. I think we need to speak only about reason and common sense and compassion.
And maybe neither should I be eager to decide whether to call myself an atheist or not an atheist. I've long felt that God (if God exists) doesn't care one way or the other, but might care whether I am reasonable and compassionate.

6 comments:

  1. I don't agree with him about the existence of God, but at least, he sounds like a deep and intelligent man who has given it profound thought, and come up with some right answers. I also think he believes more than he thinks he does.

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  2. Dear Southern, please say more about why you doubt Harris is really an atheist. You seem to have a special understanding of "belief in God." Thanks.

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  3. I doubt very much that I have any special insight into God, but I have had similar thoughts and feelings, as I'm sure most people who listen to their inner selves have had. So many questions and doubts can be settled by simple contemplation of the term a priori. Some things we are born knowing, without understanding how, but not knowing the how of them doesn't make them less true.

    Unfortunately, I can't spend much time with you today as I have issues of my own going on, so I don't have time to research this guy to see what else he has to say. On the surface, based only on what you've presented here, he seems open and honest in his search for Truth, and that alone implies he thinks the question could go either way - and that implies the possibility he thought there could be a Source. He seems to have decided there is not when he failed to see "hard evidence." I think what he doesn't realize is that his first sentence, "Man is manifestly not the measure of all things," is fairly hard evidence. He sees the the universe is "shot through with mystery," and that "no myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance."

    On one hand, I think the best place to hide anything is in plain sight, and on the other, I think the evidence is so permeated into the existence of all things that we fail to see the forest for the trees. In other words, I think The Source is hidden in plain sight.

    There are many things in our lives that we're aware exist, but can't see, prove or measure (dreams, for example). It doesn't make them less real.

    In my humble opinion, this "Athiest" is only a step away from picking up the watch and realizing that in order for it to exist, there had to have been a watchmaker. Maybe someday he will be seeded with a profound experience, as you and I have been, and at that point, will make the leap of "faith," which is simply an acknowledgment of a priori knowledge.

    There's my two cents.

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  4. And a most eloquent two cents! Worth far more than two cents, too.

    I didn't suggest that you might have special insight into "God," but into "faith in God." And I think that you actually do. At any rate, I am powerfully affected by your brief essay.

    Thank you, dear Southern Writer, for posting it. I am honored to have it here.

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  5. My pleasure, Moristotle. I think once a person has experiences like those we have had, it really opens your eyes, and there's no going back.

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  6. I do find myself reluctant to sign up for "I'm an atheist," no doubt about it. Anyway, when it comes to purely "rational" terms, there's the problem adduced in a letter to the Newsweek editor this week (written by Michael Lurski of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania):

    "Atheist author Sam Harris makes a strong case when he criticizes established religions for the harm they have caused and for the dangers they now present ('Beliefwatch: The Atheist,' PERISCOPE, Oct. 30). And he is correct that belief in God is irrational and cannot be proved by reason or current evidence. However, it is just as irrational for Harris to advocate atheism, a certainty that no God exists. An atheist can no more prove there is no God than a believer can prove God's existence. The only alternative based on reason is agnosticism, the belief that it is impossible to know whether there is a God without sufficient evidence. It does not deny the possibility; it is uncertain."

    [I believe, though, that Harris addresses this objection in The End of Faith, but I no longer have a copy of the book to consult. I seem to recall that it went sort of like this: There are any number of things that might exist, whose non-existence we cannot prove: purple people-eaters, and the like. Shall we say that we're agnostic as to their existence as well?]

    I don't know what your experience was, Southern Writer, but I am not willing to say for sure that mine was a "message from God" or something like that. My waking dream, my "mystical experience" could very well have been a generation of my own longing brain (that "neurological basis" Harris is studying).

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