Hi guys,
I've been an Atheist my entire life, with my father being an open atheist.
I have however dabbled in religious rituals and the occult, I strongly relate to the concerns Sam Harris makes in his new book "waking up". I've also taken part in many large Buddhist rituals.
Learning about eastern philosophy opened me up to a something more important than whether or not a god exists, that being the concept of dualism, which although I was an atheist I realized I had been indoctrinated into the concept of duelist thinking.
Dualism, is the idea that the individual self exists separately, the concept of a soul or spirit, although some people maintain dualist thinking and attitudes although they are atheists.
Non-Dualism implies that people who commit crimes (for example) do so as a result of a physiological problem, even if that problem was brought about through environmental causes as opposed to biological ones, and I think non-dualism gives us a reason to be compassionate to murderers and other sorts of ill people, because we understand their actions are the result of environmental or biological causes and that the decisions of the self are illusions.
Many atheists I have found take an "everything is bullshit" attitude to spirituality, especially people who recently came out as atheists.
For me I see Atheism as the beginning of spirituality and not the end, after all, only atheists (and perhaps pantheists) really have the stomach to harbor the ability to discriminate between fairy tale non-sense and spiritual concepts worth investigating.
I've been trying to write about this subject for a while and every-time I do I feel like I get mental blocks obstructing my ability to articulate this subject, so I'd love to hear about other people and if non-dualism was a kind of second great realization for them after atheism.
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Atheism doesn't mean non-spiritualism. Atheists can still be spiritual in their own ways to connect with their own selves and become more mindful.
Yes said very important things they don't believe in God but they still have their own ways to get support which other people feel when they follow the gods.
Dualism is more of a philosophical concept than a scientific one, it is an outgrowth of the hard problem of consciousness, which is more an appeal to consequences than an actual problem. Even so, in every way we are able to test dualism, it has failed.
I agree. I'd go further to suggest that dualism is just geocentrism re-branded. A desperate grasp to make human beings (and therefore yourself) special.
A little worse than that, actually. It doesn't simply attempt to make human beings the center of the universe, but the individuals themselves, it seems even more solipsistic than geocentric in that regard. It is a philosophy that looks at all the physical realities associated with consciousness as if it wasn't complex or amazing, gazes at it with the attitude that if it can be broken down to impulses and chemical reactions then it is meaningless, and then attempts to pretend that such incredulity is an actual argument. Even when we bring in the scientific evidence, like changes in impulses and chemicals effecting consciousness immensely, they have the audacity to claim that it isn't REALLY consciousness that is affected, it just appears that way. They dearly wish to place their unreasonable assertion that consciousness is external of the physical reality we inhabit, right next to the logical conclusion that consciousness is part of and dependent to the only reality we know, as if they were equal.
Dualism is not any different from intelligent design in that regard, wanting equal weight without providing equal evidence, and whining and bawling when actual scientists deny their right to do an end-run around peer review.
The word "spirituality" itself has a lot of baggage with superstition and mumbo jumbo.
In Sam Harris book "Waking up - A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion", he spends a lot of energy of defining the word so it won't be misunderstood in the book.
He talks about it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxzAQRYYqlk
Yes Sam Harris is the best author to check about spirituality since he had done a lot of research on this subject, even tried meditation which does have some merit to.
The problem here is that theists abuses spirituality for their own agenda, this term became to mean many things with time like you (pragmatic) are pointing out.
History teaches us that spirituality came before theism, it actually originates from paganism and Gnosis which BTW the Christians killed and destroyed throughout history.
It is ironic and hypocritical that nowadays apologists abuse mostly those same concepts to support their belief.
Interesting comments here.
I really started to understand the concept of non-dualism through eastern philosophy, such as Buddhism and Hinduism.
Has anyone else had any (for lack of a better term) spiritual revelations brought on with regards to Eastern philosophy?
Even as atheists it can be pretty hard to sort through to get to the core of reality, for a while I remember thinking that I was "one" with the universe when I reduce the amount of mental banter going on in my head, from a subjective point of view this is true, but ultimately, from a deterministic perspective, I am always one with the universe, no more and no less, and no more one with the universe by reducing mental clatter than if I where to take my clothes off and run through the forest, my clothes and my thoughts are also one with the universe.
Buddhism and Hinduism have gone a wrong way. Their first teachers only taught mindfulness but the followers identified them as deity and created a religion.