On Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:14:15 -0400 Matthias Wasser
<matthias.wasser at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>
> Harris believes in reincarnation. I'll never stop finding that
> funny.
> ___________________________________
Yes, that is funny. Here's what I wrote concerning Harris and personal immortality in my article, "New Atheism (and New Humanism)": -----------------------------------------
In a chapter on “Experiments in Consciousness” (and not least in some of the footnotes) he takes note of the fact that certain modes of Eastern spirituality are compatible with atheism. That in of itself is not particularly controversial; a few schools of Hindu philosophy and much of Buddhism are avowedly atheist. Nor is Harris’s endorsement of meditation likely to upset very many atheists or humanists. Few of them would challenge his call for more scientific research on the psychological and physiological effects of various spiritual practices. But many atheists do take exception to his argument that certain varieties of Eastern mysticism are not only “rational” but also “scientific” and can reveal truths about the nature of reality outside the organism. Harris explicitly challenges the view that consciousness is necessarily a product of the brain. While most contemporary neuroscientists and philosophers of mind seem to subscribe to one variety or another of physicalism, Harris—himself a student of neuroscience—sees no scientific basis for claiming that consciousness is entirely dependent on the workings of the central nervous system. He says, “[T]he truth is that we simply do not know what happens after death.” I would concede that it is logically possible for an atheist to believe in immortality or, for that matter, in contra-causal free will. (The British idealist philosopher, J. M. E. McTaggart, was an atheist who believed in immortality,15 and Jean-Paul Sartre rejected belief in God and in immortality while accepting the concept of contra-causal free will.) But most Western atheists are philosophical naturalists and as such would sense an inconsistency between denying the existence of God and holding out hope for survival after death. The concern that good scientific explanations be ontologically parsimonious leads many naturalists to be skeptical not only about explanations in terms of divine entities but also about the notion of consciousness floating around somewhere other than in a brain; yet if consciousness cannot exist apart from the brain, then when the one dies, so does the other. Hume remarked (ca.1755):
"The weakness of the body and that of the mind in infancy are exactly proportioned; their vigor in manhood, their sympathetic disorder in sickness, their common gradual decay in old age. The step further seems unavoidable; their common dissolution in death."
Harris’s The End of Faith has been nearly as controversial among atheists and secular humanists—or at least among those who have published
reviews of it—as among religionists. He concedes that his use of terms like “spirituality” and “mysticism” (and especially “scientific mysticism” and “rational mysticism”) is problematic but argues that there
is a lack of good alternative terms. I would not oppose that argument vigorously even though other recent authors, such as Thomas W. Clark,18 have written effecttively on “naturalistic spirituality”; and I would agree that the cultivation of certain types of spiritual practices can be beneficial; but I would part company with Harris’s apparent willingness to concede points wholesale to Eastern mysticism.
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Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant ____________________________________________________________ Nutrition Improve your career health. Click now to study nutrition! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=VJn_eLlQTT9GKxY9ggwLOAAAJ1DoEMrytxsVXKlEh0tvqeWlAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASQwAAAAA=