Thudfactor

I followed an amazing chain of links to get to this lecture by I-don’t-want-to-call-him-atheist Sam Harris. I’m linking to it here primarily as a bookmark for later review, because there’s a lot going on. But he seems to have latched on to much of what I’ve been writing about the problems of atheism and where atheist thought falls short. He understands the peril of defining oneself in the negative; he’s aware of the problems caused by treating all religions the same, and he’s cognizant of the harm atheism does by antagonizing natural allies on specific issues simply by being pig-headed.

And then, much further down, he seems to have come to a real understanding of purpose of religious activity and acceptance of the fact of transcendental experience:

[A]s atheists, our neglect of this area of human experience puts us at a rhetorical disadvantage. Because millions of people have had these experiences, and many millions more have had glimmers of them, and we, as atheists, ignore such phenomena, almost in principle, because of their religious associations—and yet these experiences often constitute the most important and transformative moments in a person’s life. Not recognizing that such experiences are possible or important can make us appear less wise even than our craziest religious opponents.

My concern is that atheism can easily become the position of not being interested in certain possibilities in principle. I don’t know if our universe is, as JBS Haldane said, “not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.” But I am sure that it is stranger than we, as “atheists,” tend to represent while advocating atheism. As “atheists” we give others, and even ourselves, the sense that we are well on our way toward purging the universe of mystery. As advocates of reason, we know that mystery is going to be with us for a very long time. Indeed, there are good reasons to believe that mystery is ineradicable from our circumstance, because however much we know, it seems like there will always be brute facts that we cannot account for but which we must rely upon to explain everything else. This may be a problem for epistemology but it is not a problem for human life and for human solidarity. It does not rob our lives of meaning. And it is not a barrier to human happiness. [ The Problem with Atheism ]

It is possible to have a skeptical mind and an inquisitive one at the same time; it is possible to be skeptical but also be open-minded; to not believe or dis-believe but be interested. Until this moment Robert Anton Wilson was the only other person I ever heard come to this kind of conclusion. I’m glad to see he has some company.