Sam Harris: a Criticism of Atheism

Don’t let the over-medicated woman at the top of this video dissuade you; Sam is the relevant one.

I always delight in hearing what Mr. Harris has to say. He’s a thoughtful, highly intelligent man, and for that I’m glad he’s sharing his thoughts and I’m glad he’s writing books. However the most interesting aspect of the above speech is the criticism of atheisms’ immediate denunciation of experiential spiritual truths. He says that because atheists dismiss such wisdoms from an outsiders perspective, it makes them less credible. And he’s right.

Mr. Harris goes on to lay out a succinct explanation for why one might desire an extra-sensorial or metaphysical acclimation of pleasure, which basically goes that reliance on the sensorial, emotional and intellectual tools, which are inherently subjective and thus only illuminate perspective and not objective reality itself, necessarily limits us to a constant feedback mechanism which questions the validity of those very tools. Such a mechanism—the fear of the unknown—is the basis of suffering.

It is interesting to hear an atheist suggest that something beyond the temporal might exist, or at least that an immediate rejection of such an existence is premature, and that atheism suffers illegitimacy as a result.

The audience applauds but I doubt they really understood what he was saying. Part of the flaw of the atheist movement is its overzealous, dogmatic majority population which seems more interested in blithely insulting any and all religious or spiritual truths because they lack the appropriate amount of secular evidence or humanistic morality. What Mr. Harris is asking, essentially, is for atheists to stop being so superficially self-referential, to stop clinging to a social identity for the sake of status, and actually try to experience a supposed truth for oneself—as the most metaphysical truths are existential in nature. And if they haven’t done that they are relying as much on blind faith and dogmatic Draconianism as the terrible religious groups they oppose.

In other words: “Atheists! Wake the fuck up and stop being hypocrites!”

Shayne