A few weeks ago the highly publicized atheist Christopher Hitchens wrote a letter to an annual convention of atheists justifying his position. Hitchens has based his career on being a gadfly, and he's an articulate, combative one who is widely read and noticed. Along with many others, I wondered how he would respond to the anxiety of his diagnosis of esophageal cancer. He seems to be fighting a losing battle, sadly. Death-bed conversions, which used to be common, aren't anymore, and Hitchens remains defiant in his beliefs.
Here are some expressions from his letter:
"I have found, as the enemy [death] becomes more familiar, that all the special pleading for salvation, redemption and supernatural deliverance appears even more hollow ... than it did before."
"I have found my trust better placed in two things: the skill and principle of advanced medical science and the comradeship of innumerable friends and family, all of them immune to the false consolations of religion."
"It is these forces among others which will speed the day when humanity emancipates itself from the mind-forged manacles of servility and superstition."
By making belief in God their enemy, atheists deprive themselves of what spirituality is really about: a process of inner growth. There are wisdom traditions around the world that do not use the word God (e.g., Buddhism, Vedanta) or advocate religious worship in the conventional sense. Countless people have seen through the faults of organized religion and turned instead to their own spiritual journey. Hitchens and other atheists stand at the door to that journey and slam it shut, assuring all who approach that to seek God, the soul, or higher reality is a fool's errand. How do they know? It's not as if they have inquired deeply into the great saints and sages who have successfully traveled such a journey. Hitchens dismisses every spiritual person out of hand, which means that he dismisses William Blake (the source of his phrase, "mind-forged manacles," which Blake applied to modern industrial life, not religion) in the same breath that he dismisses Bible Belt preachers.
By discounting the whole notion of spiritual awakening, atheists make a claim to false knowledge. They haven't walked the walk, yet somehow they know, with dead certainty, that Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster, Saint Paul, Rumi, Kabir, the Prophet Muhammad, Rabindranath Tagore, and countless others aren't just wrong; they are stupid and blinkered compared to any everyday atheist today. I have my doubts. The atheists I've met went through a period of personal disillusion with religion, and on that basis alone they became atheists. Could anything be more subjective for a crowd that decries subjectivity? Could anything be more idiosyncratic for a group that claims to represent universal reason?
Everyone has a right to their opinions, and the kind of courage that Hitchens has exhibited in the "long argument I am currently having with the specter of death" is existentially honorable and touching. But it is equally honorable to be a spiritual seeker, and ironically, there's a convergence here. Spirituality is existential, too. It asks who we are, why we are here, and what are the highest values by which a person should live. The atheist's mistake is to hog the moral limelight, declaring that only non-believers own the truth. The truth is a process of discovery, and anyone who blocks the process and denies its validity needs to wake up before denouncing anyone else as stupid or blind.
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Dori Hartley: The Soulful Atheist
En passant, I refuse to use the term "atheist". By its very structure, the word allows believers to define the debate. "atheist - bad, theist - good; unbeliever - bad, believer - good; nonworshipper - bad, worshipper - good. I prefer the terms "rationalist - good, irrationalist - bad". Turn about is, after all, ostensibly fair play.
And yes, once we complete that journey we have a tendency to see our personal view as being the right one, whether it is based on logic and reason or deep faith and belief. But our belief that we are correct doesn't make us correct (even if that belief is based with the soundest logic in all of the facts known).
We all need to realize that it is the journey to that point of understanding in an individuals life that is important. We should help those around us on their journeys, but should not be disheartened if they draw a different conclusion than we do.
Evidence please.
Well, to be fair, that is something you can know with certainty. For one, Most of those guys knew less about the world and beyond than a 5th grader. Also, dont you find it interesting that most of these guys also disagree with each other (at times even comdenming the other to firey perdition...)...I mean, they cant all be right, now can they? But they sure can all be wrong.
socrates less than a 5th grader. jesus less than a 5th grader. buddha and rumi and plato also.
the more I learn about materialists and their beliefs the more I see that scientism and intellectualism have become their god of sorts. these comments were an eye opener. thank you.
this might be one of the most unaware comments I have ever read on HP. I wonder if other materialists agree with your take on these people.
the 5th grade mind is much more open than the minds of most religous and materialist adults. much more. your comments are living proof of this.
do we have definative proof that Jeus even existed......?
so now anyone who isn't Christian is refered to as a materialist? PRETTY LAME
Science and the human intellect have nothing to do w/ god, and everything to do with reason...........
the 5th grade reference was used to support the fact that most people were illiterate way back when, and the church kept them that way
That is not what atheists believe. Non-believers simply that believers base their truth on more than just facts.
Is that a bad thing?
this non-believer has seen no evidence that believers are oriented to facts, at all; never mind anchoring their superstitions upon anything that an intelligent, rational person could sensibly consider "more" than fact.
this non-believer finds it impossible to understand what could be meant by a believer's "truth" - given that it is not supported by evidence or fact - other than "unanchored supposition/wishful thinking/irrational delusion".
anytime someone starts telling you what is facts a red flag needs to come big and strong.
but because the materialist atheist has bought into scientism they like the religious think they hold truths. two sides of the same coin religion and scientism and neither one has a clue they are on the same coin called paradigm paralysis. not a clue.
thoreau nailed it with one simple sentence but science sees not or hears not.
I do not subscribe to Hitchen's style, but I glory in the social conditions that allow him to declare that all religious people are wrong---in some places on this beautiful planet, he would be killed for such assertions.
It is also wrong to assume that an atheist has not gone through a "spiritual" journey, most atheists I know don't disregard religion wholly--those with a god-head or those that follow other paths to enlightenment or other form of transcendence. Many went through years of study and exploration in the faith of their childhood, and elsewhere, to come to their decision that there is no god. For many, like me, the existence of god is really a minor part of it. I do not believe that a creator exists--that was the logical part. But I also do not believe in the existence of a "soul" or "spirit" or "essence" or whatever you might call it--or any such concept that endows with such uniqueness that they might be considered eternal\immortal\infinite. A spiritual journey YOU may call it, but since I do not believe in "spirits" I simply call it pondering my existence. For me, that is enough.
And while I believe religious people believe in myth--in that I do not believe in a creator, or an afterlife where we will return to a creator, or in the salvation\damnation paradigm of the judeo-christian tradition, or reincarnation or any other form of supernatural plane--I would never stop them from believing it. It is the right of every person to determine how they would live their life and what they choose to believe. The only point I insist on is not letting personal believes invade public life--keep it away from government, schools, and courtrooms, and you can be as wrong as you want to be.
and we have this quote below from thoreau. :-)
There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion - Thoreau
Materialism, atheism, skepticism are but a path that some must take as they applied their intellectual logic to religious beliefs and found them lacking. Religious beliefs are confusing as they are a mix of great worth and great dogma. When we judge by appearances we become materialists and can live our whole lives in a state of paradigm paralysis; failing to see the underlying reality of appearance. The ego and its prideful intellect is but one phase of this journey of the soul and its evolution of consciousness process to greater awareness:, a must journey contrary to what many religions teach about the evil ego.
Rebirth gives us another opportunity to overcome our egocentric mode of being in the world and move past the dogma of religion and scientism. Or not; then another new birth, as the Infinite is in no hurry, time is but an expression of the dance of life.
"gadfly, defiant, materialist, impatient, rhetoric, no one takes seriously, scientists attend church, not capable of inner growth, the prophets were stupid, they're being subjective too, etc..
"How do they know ? ........ If they haven't made a spiritual journey ....... the truth is a process of discovery.
Well guess what Mr. Religion Bookseller ( that must think atheists are bad for your materialist business) Atheists have done exactly what you're accusing them of not doing and "found" your religons to be the problem not the solution. That process of discovery more often than not included a childhood of religious indoctrination which led to an adolescent rejection ( which is where you would leave all atheists) and then to an adult, informed rational choice to leave mental slavery behind. That freedom allows us to be capable of inner growth and seek truths outside of narrow-minded preistly outcries of heresy against bronze age battle gods.
Wrongo. I have always, from childhood, been an atheist. Religion always has seemed silly and embarassing to me.
"They haven't walked the walk, yet somehow they know, with dead certainty, that Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster, Saint Paul, Rumi, Kabir, the Prophet Muhammad, Rabindranath Tagore, and countless others aren't just wrong"
So, I guess this means that you yourself are open to Muhammad being the real prophet? Since you haven't tried all of these religions yourself? I mean, per your words, any of these you personally have not "tried", you have to assume are kind of right?
I was completely clear at the age of 5, when I first attended parish school in Britain, a country with an official State religion. my parents had made no declarations about gods one way or the other.
during the unfolding of my first schoolday, I found it was punctuated with odd group activities I'd never before experienced, called "prayers".
all stood, closed their eyes, clasped their hands, and then launched into one or another of a small repertoire of sing-song dirges - ritual invocations to an mysterious entity they'd never seen, pleas for intercession of a sort that even at 5 years old I understood were clearly futile.
my reaction was immediate and utterly unambiguous: what a deeply silly (and soon: utterly *tedious*) game!
however, since my continued physical presence in the midst of the group was presumed, and since the adult in the room was [unaccountably] actually leading this nonsensical pastime, I simply remained silent and immobile until each collective spasms of eccentricity had elapsed.
in later years, I was required to take Religious Knowledge classes; it was an interesting opportunity to hear a professional chaplain explicate the supporting "logic" behind the State religion.
of course, the whole thing never got any less silly; in fact, the more the non-reasoning circular word-salad was trotted out, the more ridiculous the whole thing became.
It is interesting that religionists continue to make the same glaring miss-pronouncements that atheism is: a religion, a belief, faith just like Christianity, and so on; but Deepak's comment here strikes close to home, reverse the order and God becomes the enemy of, or more reality based, believers are the enemy of atheism.
Despite the numerous attempts to explain "lack of belief," religionists continue to attempt a positive spin upon lack. There must be something very deeply disturbing to the religious mind about atheism that believers feel compelled equate atheism with religion.
You make it sound like we atheists come to our nonbelief for trivial or, at least in your judgement, insufficient reasons. Did you explore the circumstances of "personal disillusion", and, if you did, were you able to show them how they were wrong and turn them back into believers? Becoming an atheist is also a process, one of shedding superstitions and coming to grips with the fact that we are only going to be here once. It is perhaps a prolonged waystation on, perhaps an end of, a spiritual journey.
"Spirituality is existential, too. It asks who we are, why we are here, and what are the highest values by which a person should live. The atheist's mistake is to hog the moral limelight, declaring that only non-believers own the truth. The truth is a process of discovery, and anyone who blocks the process and denies its validity needs to wake up before denouncing anyone else as stupid or blind."
Atheists simply don't think that the answers to spirituality's questions any longer require appealing to supernatural forces/being(s), especially those that are vengeful, capricious and/or set one human being against another. Religionists have "hog(ged) the moral limelight" for millenia, all too often as cover for their own immoral or unethical acts. Seeking to impose their beliefs on others, they impede the path of human progress.