Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Is Sam also among the prophets? Sam Harris book on spirituality without religion

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

PR notice whistled past the desk.

New atheist Sam Harris*, one of the four horsemen of the new atheist apocalypse, now thinks there is something to be said for mindfulness.

Sort of.  But, turns out, only if it is a mere cookie stamped out by the Darwin industry’s cookie cutter.

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, Sam’s newest book, is part seeker’s memoir, part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris—a scientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic—could write it.

Further to: A hundred people walked out of Darwin/evo psych indoctrination lecture at Oxford?, at The Minimalists, we learn from Harris:

In evolutionary terms, we’re probably lucky that we’re not more miserable than we are. After all, our genes haven’t been sculpted with our subjective well-being in mind. And the natural world surely wasn’t created for our enjoyment. We’ve evolved to survive and spawn—to just barely equip our progeny to do the same. All the other good things in life appear to be lucky accidents.

In large part, our problems are due to the immense power of language. We live in a world that is almost entirely defined by words—our relationships, fears, interests, cultural institutions, the very objects around us are all the product of concepts that depend upon language. And this is no less true of our inner lives. Thinking is so useful that we are probably wired to do it continuously. Unfortunately, much of what we think about makes us miserable.

To take a very simple example: Most people are very concerned about their social status, a preoccupation we share with our primate cousins. Unlike baboons, however, we can truly brood about our failures, projecting them into a recollected past and an imagined future. What’s more, we can do this in an ever-widening context of social knowledge. If you’re a baboon, at least you can seize the alpha male by the throat and try your luck. But when you’re on the Internet, contemplating the splendor of others—”Oh, Gwenyth Paltrow is spending Christmas on St. Barts, how nice….”—the odds are against your feeling fully satisfied with your place in the world. Millions of years of hominid evolution have not prepared us for Instagram.

Nor has evolution prepared some of us to take any interest in Harris’s forthcoming book, unless a shelf needs steadying.

Follow UD News at Twitter!

*See this for joke in headline.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

Comments
roding:: I’m really not sure what purpose UD is trying to fulfill anymore. I don’t see much constructive conversation here anymore, just endless potshots against atheism. I agree to an extent, but it is not nearly all the principals who are doing this, but the ones who are posting the most. I find the ones who seem to have no STEM credentials are doing it most because their biggest pride in life is bashing materialism, seemingly. Don't get me wrong I find it very entertaining to do the same bashing and watching the unhinged responses. But I'm also involved in a engineering career without wanting to take on another onegroovamos
August 22, 2014
August
08
Aug
22
22
2014
10:36 AM
10
10
36
AM
PST
Sam Harris writes, “In evolutionary terms, we’re probably lucky that we’re not more miserable than we are.” Some of us aren’t miserable at all. “After all, our genes haven’t been sculpted with our subjective well-being in mind.” And your proof of this is…where? “And the natural world surely wasn’t created for our enjoyment.” The Bible indicates otherwise, but please continue. You appear to be on a roll. “We’ve evolved to survive and spawn—to just barely equip our progeny to do the same. All the other good things in life appear to be lucky accidents.” Romans 1:20. “In large part, our problems are due to the immense power of language. We live in a world that is almost entirely defined by words—our relationships, fears, interests, cultural institutions, the very objects around us are all the product of concepts that depend upon language.” And yet, interestingly enough, a book I am reading on body language indicates that only 7% of our communication (the words) is evaluated by the people that we speak with or to; far greater weight (about 55%) is given to our body language while we are speaking. “And this is no less true of our inner lives. Thinking is so useful that we are probably wired to do it continuously. Unfortunately, much of what we think about makes us miserable.” This is true for you and every other pessimist in the world. Some of us don’t spend all day thinking about things that make us miserable (Psalms 37:10,11). “To take a very simple example: Most people are very concerned about their social status, a preoccupation we share with our primate cousins.” Most, but not all. My social status is not that important to me. “Unlike baboons, however, we can truly brood about our failures, projecting them into a recollected past and an imagined future.” Have you read “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Norman Vincent Peale? He discusses the same topic. “What’s more, we can do this in an ever-widening context of social knowledge. If you’re a baboon, at least you can seize the alpha male by the throat and try your luck. But when you’re on the Internet, contemplating the splendor of others—”Oh, Gwenyth Paltrow is spending Christmas on St. Barts, how nice….”—the odds are against your feeling fully satisfied with your place in the world. Millions of years of hominid evolution have not prepared us for Instagram.” Solution: spend less time on the Internet. There, I saved everyone the cost of buying this inane book.Barb
August 22, 2014
August
08
Aug
22
22
2014
07:47 AM
7
07
47
AM
PST
tjguy, Sam Harris seems to have an all together different 'take on' the purposefulness or fortuitousness of life's events, great and small, to that of Malcolm Muggeridge: “Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.” As the Aussies say: 'I'll buy that.'Axel
August 21, 2014
August
08
Aug
21
21
2014
04:46 PM
4
04
46
PM
PST
Thanks, BA. Must check it out. I saw a great one by a US marine recently on Utube. Struggled to keep his composure at times, as they tend to.Axel
August 21, 2014
August
08
Aug
21
21
2014
04:33 PM
4
04
33
PM
PST
Sam says:
All the other good things in life appear to be lucky accidents.
Just like God predicted in Romans 1.
21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools,..."
It's all just a lucky accident! Now that there folks, is a real statement of FAITH! No wonder Sam is writing about spirituality. He is a man of faith at heart! His friends will not call him on this because they possess the same faith. It is the only type of faith that is allowed for holders of their worldview. Faith in luck and blind random chance! I seriously doubt there is any redeeming value in that, but perhaps it is enough to make them think they are responding to the legitimate spiritual needs of their heart. It would do well for all of us to remember though that luck does not last forever!tjguy
August 21, 2014
August
08
Aug
21
21
2014
02:57 PM
2
02
57
PM
PST
Axel, I found that quote amongst several others on, I believe, Kevin Williams' NDE research website.bornagain77
August 21, 2014
August
08
Aug
21
21
2014
10:11 AM
10
10
11
AM
PST
BA, you don't by any chance have a link to that Judeo-Christian Near Death Experience Testimony, do you? I expect not, since you didn't post it.Axel
August 21, 2014
August
08
Aug
21
21
2014
10:09 AM
10
10
09
AM
PST
as to:
In large part, our problems are due to the immense power of language. We live in a world that is almost entirely defined by words—our relationships, fears, interests, cultural institutions, the very objects around us are all the product of concepts that depend upon language. And this is no less true of our inner lives. Thinking is so useful that we are probably wired to do it continuously.
Actually, information and communication are far more foundational to reality that Harris realizes:
Conversations with William Dembski--The Thesis of Being as Communion - video trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAsaU9IvnI
as to:
Unfortunately, much of what we think about makes us miserable.,,
Well, I can see where thinking deeply about his hopeless plight would be very depressing and miserable for the atheist.
"If atheism is true, it is far from being good news. Learning that we’re alone in the universe, that no one hears or answers our prayers, that humanity is entirely the product of random events, that we have no more intrinsic dignity than non-human and even non-animate clumps of matter, that we face certain annihilation in death, that our sufferings are ultimately pointless, that our lives and loves do not at all matter in a larger sense, that those who commit horrific evils and elude human punishment get away with their crimes scot free — all of this (and much more) is utterly tragic." ~Damon Linker - 'Must Atheists Be Nihilists?'
as to:
To take a very simple example: Most people are very concerned about their social status, a preoccupation we share with our primate cousins. Unlike baboons, however, we can truly brood about our failures, projecting them into a recollected past and an imagined future. What’s more, we can do this in an ever-widening context of social knowledge. If you’re a baboon, at least you can seize the alpha male by the throat and try your luck. But when you’re on the Internet, contemplating the splendor of others—”Oh, Gwenyth Paltrow is spending Christmas on St. Barts, how nice….”—the odds are against your feeling fully satisfied with your place in the world. Millions of years of hominid evolution have not prepared us for Instagram.
It is interesting to point out that the materialistic philosophy has an extremely difficult time assigning any proper value to humans in the first place, i.e. Just how do you derive value for a person from a philosophy that maintains transcendent values are illusory?:
How much is my body worth? Excerpt: The U.S. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils invested many a hard-earned tax dollar in calculating the chemical and mineral composition of the human body,,,,Together, all of the above (chemicals and minerals) amounts to less than one dollar! http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/worth.asp
Yet in the Theistic worldview, it is not how others perceive us that gives us a sense of self worth in this world, Matthew 16:26 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? it is because God values and loves each of us 'infinitely' that we derive true value, purpose, and dignity for human life. Verse, Near Death Experience Quote and Music:
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. "The only human emotion I could feel was pure, unrelenting, unconditional love. Take the unconditional love a mother has for a child and amplify it a thousand fold, then multiply exponentially. The result of your equation would be as a grain of sand is to all the beaches in the world. So, too, is the comparison between the love we experience on earth to what I felt during my experience. This love is so strong, that words like "love" make the description seem obscene. It was the most powerful and compelling feeling. But, it was so much more. I felt the presence of angels. I felt the presence of joyous souls, and they described to me a hundred lifetimes worth of knowledge about our divinity. Simultaneous to the deliverance of this knowledge, I knew I was in the presence of God. I never wanted to leave, never." Judeo-Christian Near Death Experience Testimony MercyMe – Beautiful - music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vh7-RSPuAA
bornagain77
August 21, 2014
August
08
Aug
21
21
2014
05:42 AM
5
05
42
AM
PST
as to:
In evolutionary terms, we’re probably lucky that we’re not more miserable than we are.
Yes, and also, we do have those nifty opposable thumbs to take our minds off the fact that our lives have no true meaning and purpose.
Life Got You Down? Just Remember You Got Opposable Thumbs! - music video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s8y9a12saU
Yet, in Theistic terms, we have an eternal hope, even a sure hope promised to us by God, who cannot lie, that transcends this life. An eternal hope that relieves the 'miserableness' inherent to all men in this life to one degree or other:
1 Corinthians 15:19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
as to:
After all, our genes haven’t been sculpted with our subjective well-being in mind. And the natural world surely wasn’t created for our enjoyment.
Actually, contrary to what atheists like Harris hold, our subjective minds are not completely helpless victims of our genes,, the brain appears to be metabolically optimized with the well being of our subjective mind of primary consideration,, and the natural world appears to be created with human beings of primary consideration.
Networks of Genes Respond to Social Experiences - October 13, 2013 Excerpt: It is subjective mind and perception that changes genes, not just external situations. http://jonlieffmd.com/blog/networks-of-genes-respond-to-social-experiences Does Thinking Really Hard Burn More Calories? - By Ferris Jabr - July 2012 Excerpt: Unlike physical exercise, mental workouts probably do not demand significantly more energy than usual. Believing we have drained our brains, however, may be enough to induce weariness,,, Although the average adult human brain weighs about 1.4 kilograms, only 2 percent of total body weight, it demands 20 percent of our resting metabolic rate (RMR)—the total amount of energy our bodies expend in one very lazy day of no activity.,,, —Resting metabolic rate: 1300 kilocalories, or kcal, the kind used in nutrition —1,300 kcal over 24 hours = 54.16 kcal per hour = 15.04 gram calories per second —15.04 gram calories/sec = 62.93 joules/sec = about 63 watts —20 percent of 63 watts = 12.6 watts So a typical adult human brain runs on around 12 watts—a fifth of the power required by a standard 60 watt lightbulb. Compared with most other organs, the brain is greedy; pitted against man-made electronics, it is astoundingly efficient. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=thinking-hard-calories Scaling of Brain Metabolism and Blood Flow in Relation to Capillary and Neural Scaling - 2011 Excerpt: Brain is one of the most energy demanding organs in mammals, and its total metabolic rate scales with brain volume raised to a power of around 5/6. This value is significantly higher than the more common exponent 3/4 (Quarter Power Scaling) relating whole body resting metabolism with body mass and several other physiological variables in animals and plants.,,, Moreover, cerebral metabolic, hemodynamic, and microvascular variables scale with allometric exponents that are simple multiples of 1/6, rather than 1/4, which suggests that brain metabolism is more similar to the metabolism of aerobic than resting body. Relation of these findings to brain functional imaging studies involving the link between cerebral metabolism and blood flow is also discussed.,, General Discussion Excerpt: ,,It should be underlined that both CBF and CMR scale with brain volume with the exponent about 1/4 which is significantly different from the exponent 1/4 relating whole body resting specific metabolism with body volume [1], [2], [3]. Instead, the cerebral exponent 1/6 is closer to an exponent,, characterizing maximal body specific metabolic rate and specific cardiac output in strenuous exercise [43], [44]. In this sense, the brain metabolism and its hemodynamics resemble more the metabolism and circulation of exercised muscles than other resting organs, which is in line with the empirical evidence that brain is an energy expensive organ [10], [17], [18]. This may also suggest that there exists a common plan for the design of microcirculatory system in different parts of the mammalian body that uses the same optimization principles [45].,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3203885/ The preceding experiments are very unexpected to materialists since materialists hold that 'mind' is merely a 'emergent property' of the physical processes of a material brain. But why should 'thought' which is presupposed to be result of, and subservient to, the material processes of the brain constrain the material brain to operate at such a constant and optimal metabolic rate whereas the rest of body fluctuates in its metabolic activity? The most parsimonious explanation for such a optimal constraint on the brain's metabolic activity is that the material brain was designed, first and foremost, to house the mind and give the mind the most favorable metabolic environment possible at all times. Fine-tuning of Chemistry and Constants specifically for life like human life: https://uncommondescent.com/cosmology/apparently-the-disappointment-with-the-multiverse-multiverse-ennui-cant-last-so/#comment-511284
as to:
We’ve evolved to survive and spawn—to just barely equip our progeny to do the same.
Is Harris talking about the same species that sent a man to the moon?,,, the same species that builds/creates almost countless machines for necessity, learning, and enjoyment?
Man on the Moon - picture http://www.universityobserver.ie/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/buzz_aldrin_01.jpeg
As to:
All the other good things in life appear to be lucky accidents.
No, the good stuff, and even the ability to make lemonade out of the lemons of life, are blessings from God:
Jennifer Fulwiler: Scientific Atheism to Christ - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw8uUOPoi2M What caused Jennifer Fulwiler to question her atheism to begin with? It was the birth of her first child. She says that when she looked at her child, the only way her atheist mind could explain the love that she had for him was to assume it was the result of nothing more than chemical reactions in her brain. However, in the video I linked above, she says: "And I looked down at him, and I realized that’s not true." Live - Heaven (official music video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff3NUP-xzqQ
bornagain77
August 21, 2014
August
08
Aug
21
21
2014
05:41 AM
5
05
41
AM
PST
What is it specifically News that you don't like about what Sam Harris wrote? Can you elaborate rather than just dismissing it out of hand? I'm not an atheist, but I thought some of his thoughts were insightful. Or are you just pre-disposed to discard anything an atheist might have to say? It just seems that lately that UD has become nothing but a long diatribe against atheism and very little about ID. I'm not sure why that is and what exactly is going to be achieved by it. The negative tone (and I'm sorry to say increasingly sneering) tone of this site isn't going to win over any atheists. I'm really not sure what purpose UD is trying to fulfill anymore. I don't see much constructive conversation here anymore, just endless potshots against atheism.roding
August 20, 2014
August
08
Aug
20
20
2014
09:31 PM
9
09
31
PM
PST

Leave a Reply