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materialist spirituality, part 1
Sep. 10th, 2007 05:02 pmI've always had mixed feelings about the word "spirituality".
On the one hand, I identify a lot with the feeling I pick up off of people who refer to themselves as spiritual. In one sense, I'd consider myself a deeply spiritual person. And it's not something I've idly picked up, it's something that's always been an important part of me. Both growing up and as an adult, I've spent a lot more time contemplating things of abstract truth and beauty than I do focusing on the practical concerns of everyday life (what some people refer to as the "material world" but which I would distinguish in terms of concreteness versus abstractness). I've often been described as someone who has his "head in the clouds". But unlike many people who have their heads in the clouds, I also think it's important to "keep your feet on the ground", no matter how fluffy the clouds look. I enjoy the feeling of enlightenment, but I think if you're not anchored in reality, any enlightenment you've obtained does not represent real knowledge. I'm reminded of a movie trailer I saw yesterday (can't remember the name of the movie) where someone sits down with a bunch of spiritual gurus and the head guru says something like "through meditation, you will realize there are NO LIMITS TO WHAT WE CAN.... imagine." It's funny because of the contrast between accomplishing something and simply imagining something. They're two very different things. And I very much agree with this sentiment.
Religion pisses me off more than anything in this world I've encountered. Again and again, I find myself angry beyond comparison when I confront religious people. And in particular, I'm thinking of organized religion. I don't mind that people think about the sort of ideas that religion talks about; I think they are worthwhile ideas to explore (or at least they were a thousand years ago, or even perhaps as recently as a hundred years ago, before it became apparent they were wrong). But there are several things that I do mind about religion, which I think is the source of my anger. The first thing is that it's based on the methodology of faith. This is a flawed methodology which has been shown, time after time, in society after society, and context after context, to lead to failure. In contrast, there is a successful methodology which has been discovered, known as the scientific method. And this is almost universally rejected by the religious community. Even those who claim not to reject it, still don't seem to understand it or be able to apply it to their lives correctly. They speak out of both sides of their mouth, with one hand saying they are in favor of science, and the other hand stabbing science in the back by trying to undermine it with their prejudices and their false a priori conceptions. While nearly all of the ideas expressed in religion are wrong, their wrongness is not what angers me. It's the dogmatic attitude of religion which angers me, and the fact that it's spread via a propaganda machine, with no regard for truth or validity. Rather than do a single experiment to see if what they're saying has any merit, they would rather continue to repeat tired old lies, especially to children, in the hopes that they will be brainwashed thoroughly enough that they will never see the light of science, and never question faith for long enough to check whether their beliefs are indeed correct.
Some people think this is only a problem with Western religion. But as movies like What the Bleep!? prove, Eastern religions can be just as guilty of blatent propaganda, intentional fraud, and dogmatic attitudes. This movie is filled with so many lies that even the crazy physicists who believe quantum mechanics is related to consciousness, still speak out against it, and regard it as complete trash. Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, in our physics department, who recently published a very naive book that tries to convince people of such a connection (despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a connection, and most physicists would laugh at them for saying so), say that a primary reason for them publishing it is to combat "filth like What the Bleep" so that people can make informed decisions rather than "picking this stuff up in the gutter". I hope this illustrates the magnitude of ignorance that is out there in the religious community. They are so disconnected from the science world, they literally pay no attention to what scientists say any more. Instead, they make up whatever truths they like and try to force them on to the public, without regard for validity. This is what many pseudoscience books like the Tao of Physics, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, or books on ESP or telekinesis are aimed at doing. And it angers me almost as much as the things that Western religions do (such as crashing airplanes into buildings or trying to convince their children that evolution is "only a theory" rather than the foundation of biology).
What upsets me the most about religion, is that it's blasphemous to science. It shows a disrespect for those of us who have dedicated our lives to figuring out the answers to the deepest questions about reality. It shows a disregard for all the progress that's been made in answering these questions, and instead of adopting the humble attitude of a scientist (that there is a lot we don't know, and instead of claiming we do know the answers, we should sit down and do the work, do the experiments, and figure it out) they adopt the most arrogant attitude possible. I've always associated religion with arrogance, and science with humility. And it strikes me as odd that some people accuse scientists of being arrogant. I suspect that this is due to them projecting their own nasty faults onto those who they do not agree with. I'm also amazed when people accuse scientists of being "closed minded" as the truth is, most of us are about as open-minded as you can get. We have to be, otherwise we would never have accepted some of the bizarre things that have been discovered in modern physics. Scientists are particularly careful never to make a statement until they've done their homework and are sure it's correct. They wait until the last possible minute to assert something, keeping a keen awareness of the unlikely event that even the most well-supported statements might turn out to be wrong. (Note that this is the opposite of what religious people do, in trying to assert things from the very beginning and place value on having faith in the very first thing they can think of.) Scientists are specifically selected for their objectivity which means that they are experts at not letting their preconceived biases affect their conclusions and interpretations of what is likely to be true (something that most people could use a lot more practice with). Again and again, I find highly biased sources (usually, crackpots or pseudoscientists with their own naive ideas about how the world works, or politically motivated news sources) who accuse scientists of being "biased" against certain ideas. Another instance of them projecting their own faults onto others.
I could go on for 100's of pages about what I don't like about religon. But I've digressed somewhat, since the purpose of this post is really to explain what aspects of spirituality I do and don't like, and how it might be reconciled with materialism. While there may be some aspects of religion that are salvagable, if they are I would much prefer the term "spirituality" as it seems to imply dogmatism a bit less, and emphasize personal exploration a bit more. Therefore, I generally use the word "religion" if I'm saying something negative, and "spirituality" if I see the potential for something positive. Although they can both be used in both ways.
In my first paragraph, I said I've always had mixed feelings about the word "spirituality". I mentioned some of the ways in which I identify with the feeling of being spiritual. But I didn't mention what it is I don't like about the word. What I don't like is that it starts with "spirit". If by spirit, one is thinking of "teen spirit" or the "human spirit" or spunk, or anything along those lines, then fine. On the other hand, the word spirit also makes me think of spirits as in ghosts and goblins, which are not something I believe in, whether it's the "holy ghost" or "casper the friendly ghost" or "slimer" from ghostbusters (although I do think slimer is cute!) But the most important thing that I think is dangerous about the word spirit, is that it leads people to think of dualism. Dualism is the idea that there is not just one world (the material world) but two, a material world and a separate spirit world. I strongly believe that any picture of the world based on dualism (at least substance dualism) is wrong. So if I'm going to accept spirituality as valid at all, it has to be compatible with materialism (a subset of monism, the idea that everything in the world is made out of the same type of metaphysical substance, not two different substances). Unfortunatley, I've found that the vast majority of people who practice spirituality, are non-materialists (either dualists or idealists, which is wrong for entirely different reasons, but less offensive). While there might not be a huge market for materialist spirituality, I think that coming up with some way to make the insights from spiritual practice that are worthwhile compatible with materialism would be a very worthwhile project. The reason it's not a huge market is that most people do not have enough understanding or information about the world to conclude for sure that materialism is correct. But for those of us who do, we start to feel kind of left out. We'd like to get the same benefits out of things like meditation, tantra, spell casting, prayers, energy circles, spiritual massage, yoga, martial arts, and we'd like to share with others in our reverence and respect for the great beauty that is this universe, and the divine beauty of mathematics, but we cannot do so honestly unless we can get the language into a form that isn't nonsense. This is the basic motivation behind the project I'm proposing. And from talking with others at Burning Man, I get the impression I'm not the only one in this situation. Many of us could benefit from having a way to talk about spiritual things without presuming dualism.
I intended to go into a lot more personal detail about the types of things I've been thinking regarding spirituality lately, but this post is getting long enough that I'll have to save that for another time. There is much more I have to say on this subject. Most of what I want to talk about is regarding useful fictions, truth, happiness, and replacing naive concepts of "belief" with a more sophisticated picture of the mind, where there are multiple layers of psychological belief required to function, possibly sometimes even contradictory layers within the same mind. This fits in with my particular preference for eliminative materialism, which is another post I've been working on writing, hopefully for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
real_philosophy if I ever get it done.
On the one hand, I identify a lot with the feeling I pick up off of people who refer to themselves as spiritual. In one sense, I'd consider myself a deeply spiritual person. And it's not something I've idly picked up, it's something that's always been an important part of me. Both growing up and as an adult, I've spent a lot more time contemplating things of abstract truth and beauty than I do focusing on the practical concerns of everyday life (what some people refer to as the "material world" but which I would distinguish in terms of concreteness versus abstractness). I've often been described as someone who has his "head in the clouds". But unlike many people who have their heads in the clouds, I also think it's important to "keep your feet on the ground", no matter how fluffy the clouds look. I enjoy the feeling of enlightenment, but I think if you're not anchored in reality, any enlightenment you've obtained does not represent real knowledge. I'm reminded of a movie trailer I saw yesterday (can't remember the name of the movie) where someone sits down with a bunch of spiritual gurus and the head guru says something like "through meditation, you will realize there are NO LIMITS TO WHAT WE CAN.... imagine." It's funny because of the contrast between accomplishing something and simply imagining something. They're two very different things. And I very much agree with this sentiment.
Religion pisses me off more than anything in this world I've encountered. Again and again, I find myself angry beyond comparison when I confront religious people. And in particular, I'm thinking of organized religion. I don't mind that people think about the sort of ideas that religion talks about; I think they are worthwhile ideas to explore (or at least they were a thousand years ago, or even perhaps as recently as a hundred years ago, before it became apparent they were wrong). But there are several things that I do mind about religion, which I think is the source of my anger. The first thing is that it's based on the methodology of faith. This is a flawed methodology which has been shown, time after time, in society after society, and context after context, to lead to failure. In contrast, there is a successful methodology which has been discovered, known as the scientific method. And this is almost universally rejected by the religious community. Even those who claim not to reject it, still don't seem to understand it or be able to apply it to their lives correctly. They speak out of both sides of their mouth, with one hand saying they are in favor of science, and the other hand stabbing science in the back by trying to undermine it with their prejudices and their false a priori conceptions. While nearly all of the ideas expressed in religion are wrong, their wrongness is not what angers me. It's the dogmatic attitude of religion which angers me, and the fact that it's spread via a propaganda machine, with no regard for truth or validity. Rather than do a single experiment to see if what they're saying has any merit, they would rather continue to repeat tired old lies, especially to children, in the hopes that they will be brainwashed thoroughly enough that they will never see the light of science, and never question faith for long enough to check whether their beliefs are indeed correct.
Some people think this is only a problem with Western religion. But as movies like What the Bleep!? prove, Eastern religions can be just as guilty of blatent propaganda, intentional fraud, and dogmatic attitudes. This movie is filled with so many lies that even the crazy physicists who believe quantum mechanics is related to consciousness, still speak out against it, and regard it as complete trash. Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, in our physics department, who recently published a very naive book that tries to convince people of such a connection (despite the fact that there is no evidence for such a connection, and most physicists would laugh at them for saying so), say that a primary reason for them publishing it is to combat "filth like What the Bleep" so that people can make informed decisions rather than "picking this stuff up in the gutter". I hope this illustrates the magnitude of ignorance that is out there in the religious community. They are so disconnected from the science world, they literally pay no attention to what scientists say any more. Instead, they make up whatever truths they like and try to force them on to the public, without regard for validity. This is what many pseudoscience books like the Tao of Physics, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, or books on ESP or telekinesis are aimed at doing. And it angers me almost as much as the things that Western religions do (such as crashing airplanes into buildings or trying to convince their children that evolution is "only a theory" rather than the foundation of biology).
What upsets me the most about religion, is that it's blasphemous to science. It shows a disrespect for those of us who have dedicated our lives to figuring out the answers to the deepest questions about reality. It shows a disregard for all the progress that's been made in answering these questions, and instead of adopting the humble attitude of a scientist (that there is a lot we don't know, and instead of claiming we do know the answers, we should sit down and do the work, do the experiments, and figure it out) they adopt the most arrogant attitude possible. I've always associated religion with arrogance, and science with humility. And it strikes me as odd that some people accuse scientists of being arrogant. I suspect that this is due to them projecting their own nasty faults onto those who they do not agree with. I'm also amazed when people accuse scientists of being "closed minded" as the truth is, most of us are about as open-minded as you can get. We have to be, otherwise we would never have accepted some of the bizarre things that have been discovered in modern physics. Scientists are particularly careful never to make a statement until they've done their homework and are sure it's correct. They wait until the last possible minute to assert something, keeping a keen awareness of the unlikely event that even the most well-supported statements might turn out to be wrong. (Note that this is the opposite of what religious people do, in trying to assert things from the very beginning and place value on having faith in the very first thing they can think of.) Scientists are specifically selected for their objectivity which means that they are experts at not letting their preconceived biases affect their conclusions and interpretations of what is likely to be true (something that most people could use a lot more practice with). Again and again, I find highly biased sources (usually, crackpots or pseudoscientists with their own naive ideas about how the world works, or politically motivated news sources) who accuse scientists of being "biased" against certain ideas. Another instance of them projecting their own faults onto others.
I could go on for 100's of pages about what I don't like about religon. But I've digressed somewhat, since the purpose of this post is really to explain what aspects of spirituality I do and don't like, and how it might be reconciled with materialism. While there may be some aspects of religion that are salvagable, if they are I would much prefer the term "spirituality" as it seems to imply dogmatism a bit less, and emphasize personal exploration a bit more. Therefore, I generally use the word "religion" if I'm saying something negative, and "spirituality" if I see the potential for something positive. Although they can both be used in both ways.
In my first paragraph, I said I've always had mixed feelings about the word "spirituality". I mentioned some of the ways in which I identify with the feeling of being spiritual. But I didn't mention what it is I don't like about the word. What I don't like is that it starts with "spirit". If by spirit, one is thinking of "teen spirit" or the "human spirit" or spunk, or anything along those lines, then fine. On the other hand, the word spirit also makes me think of spirits as in ghosts and goblins, which are not something I believe in, whether it's the "holy ghost" or "casper the friendly ghost" or "slimer" from ghostbusters (although I do think slimer is cute!) But the most important thing that I think is dangerous about the word spirit, is that it leads people to think of dualism. Dualism is the idea that there is not just one world (the material world) but two, a material world and a separate spirit world. I strongly believe that any picture of the world based on dualism (at least substance dualism) is wrong. So if I'm going to accept spirituality as valid at all, it has to be compatible with materialism (a subset of monism, the idea that everything in the world is made out of the same type of metaphysical substance, not two different substances). Unfortunatley, I've found that the vast majority of people who practice spirituality, are non-materialists (either dualists or idealists, which is wrong for entirely different reasons, but less offensive). While there might not be a huge market for materialist spirituality, I think that coming up with some way to make the insights from spiritual practice that are worthwhile compatible with materialism would be a very worthwhile project. The reason it's not a huge market is that most people do not have enough understanding or information about the world to conclude for sure that materialism is correct. But for those of us who do, we start to feel kind of left out. We'd like to get the same benefits out of things like meditation, tantra, spell casting, prayers, energy circles, spiritual massage, yoga, martial arts, and we'd like to share with others in our reverence and respect for the great beauty that is this universe, and the divine beauty of mathematics, but we cannot do so honestly unless we can get the language into a form that isn't nonsense. This is the basic motivation behind the project I'm proposing. And from talking with others at Burning Man, I get the impression I'm not the only one in this situation. Many of us could benefit from having a way to talk about spiritual things without presuming dualism.
I intended to go into a lot more personal detail about the types of things I've been thinking regarding spirituality lately, but this post is getting long enough that I'll have to save that for another time. There is much more I have to say on this subject. Most of what I want to talk about is regarding useful fictions, truth, happiness, and replacing naive concepts of "belief" with a more sophisticated picture of the mind, where there are multiple layers of psychological belief required to function, possibly sometimes even contradictory layers within the same mind. This fits in with my particular preference for eliminative materialism, which is another post I've been working on writing, hopefully for
real_philosophy if I ever get it done.
