Archives

Advice to atheists, from a Buddhist Muslim

Posted in Irshaddering Thoughts on May 22, 2008

My good friend Shahid is a Bu-Mu: a Buddhist Muslim. He views the teachings of the Quran through the lens of humility emphasized by the Buddha.

Recently, my Bu-Mu bro wrote to me about how missionary atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris mangle spirituality through their own fundamentalist hubris. But rather than merely complain, Shahid offers them constructive guidance:

Religion doesn’t poison everything. Self-righteousness does. Self-righteousness is something that Hitchens and his boys have a heap of in their anti-God books.

It might be more productive for hardcore atheists to put aside questions of God’s existence and explore the question of what exactly is this self that’s getting all righteous. And to do so with the same spirit of scientific inquiry that generates their very reasonable skepticism in the concept of a supreme authority.

If one believes that there is a self, then self-righteousness seems a natural, even productive emotional state. I would argue that this unexamined assumption about the self, more than religion, is the greatest metaphysical problem for us as a species. That’s because self-obsession leads to dogma in all its forms.

Science, as a discipline, isn’t the answer. The illusion of self is an emotional fallacy which science has no vested interest, stated aim, or, most importantly, practical means of undoing.

But the scientific approach of experimenting can be valuable here, and atheists should practice the scientific method as much as they preach it. So I suggest that all my atheist friends go sit a 10-day Vipassana meditation course. Vipassana means to see reality as it is. (Hitch, however, might have to smoke a pack of cigarettes in the parking lot before he starts several days of exploring reality at its subtlest levels.)

My prediction? The atheists will soon discover it ain’t so easy to give up the ole’ self-concept, and just as they are attached to their ideas, so are the religious.

Demanding that religious people favor the atheist flavor of reality isn’t a very compelling offer in the face of the pain of attachment; nor do the non-believers offer a compelling navigation of reality for those of us who don’t consider ourselves loony tunes, yet feel there’s more to this world beyond what can be strictly measured.

The desire to wish away religion and its adherents may be less helpful to our species than a desire to effectively speak up for those aspects of shared humanity that all religions worth their name mention. Let intelligent consideration and practical compassion guide.

Sorry boys, I started off in your camp, but was moved by the simple and fair logic of experimenting for myself. That’s neither an endorsement nor a denial of God. It’s just that squabbling about the almighty’s existence seems like a juvenile place to start once you’ve been humbled.