Where Atheist Revolution Went Wrong

In a recent post "Where Elton Went Wrong" on the Atheist Revolution blog:

"Faith is the enemy of science and those of us who want our leaders to make decisions based on sound reasoning are likely to oppose it. Of course, the list of religiously-motivated ills is long and has been addressed previously here and elsewhere, so I will not indulge in this tangent right now. Instead, I will limit myself to pointing out that Christianity is quick to condemn persons with non-Christian beliefs. Rather than simply acknowledging that there are persons with other beliefs, Christianity chooses to disparage them. So much for tolerance."

And then,

"The alternative to banning religion is to gradually help people realize that it is an unnecessary and dangerous presence in their lives. Through science and reason, we must help people progress beyond their primitive religious dogmas."

It's obvious that the atheist position may not be defended rationally as long as it denies the existence of different levels of religious mind. A simple and yet comprehensive way to demonstrate these levels is the notion of altitude, used in the Integral Approach. There are at least four major forms of religious mind: magical religion, mythic religion, rational religion and contemplative religion. These four cannot be treated as one and the same religion, although we find them present and alive in all major religious traditions in the world. Magic and myth are found often fused in more popular, exoteric forms oriented to worship, while rational and contemplative are found together in more esoteric forms oriented to profound transformation. Anyone refusing to acknowledge such distinctions is not being rational or reasonable or informed or well-intended. Without addressing the level of mythic belief, one simply spoils the argument.

It's important to note that atheism may also span the spectrum of altitudes. In ancient India, 2,500 years ago, in the time of the historical Gautama Buddha, there where atheists of a mythical variety claiming their irrational belief that everything in universe, including awareness, arises solely from material elements.

~C4Chaos recently wrote on this subject of FART (faith, atheism, religion, transformation) and I fully agree with his arguments, and WIRED magazine also had a feature on The New Atheism, starring atheist evangelists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett - not so fluffy. Religious extremism is not typical religious behaviour, and fundamentalism/literalism is not typical religious thought, even when 90% of religious people regularly demonstrate such patterns. Why? Because 90% of irreligious people also regularly demonstrate irrational, narrow-minded behaviour and reasoning.

From WIRED:

"Even those of us who sympathize intellectually have good reasons to wish that the New Atheists continue to seem absurd. If we reject their polemics, if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn't necessarily mean we've lost our convictions or our sanity. It simply reflects our deepest, democratic values. Or, you might say, our bedrock faith: the faith that no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there's always a chance we could turn out to be wrong."

~C4Chaos:

"The biggest flaw of the New Atheists is that, their ideas, no matter how rational, are FLAT. They are too focused attacking the the idea of God without defining which level of God they're attacking. I say that they're pretty much attacking the mythic God. However, they're making a lot of performative contradictions and thus elevate their own level of God in the process: the mental God (read: logic, rational)."

What we need at this point is a strong discussion of the notion of "conveyor belt" in progressive religious and spiritual circles, but even more urgently we need spiritual leaders and teachers reaching for wider audiences and explaining the crucial distinction to be made between levels of religious mind (not between traditions, as has been argued on the mythic level for centuries, but instead within traditions, within schools of thought and practice). Making such a distinction on a wide scale - in education, in ministry, in media - will by itself counteract effectively the main forms of absolutistic dogmatism that are cause of many brutal conflicts today (and that are being equated with religious thought by most ardent atheists). Yes, God desperately needs PR agents. Religious traditions are systems of worldviews that can most effectively be criticized - and their institutions transformed - from within. Not to say that atheist critics should hesitate, but they should definitely adopt a more balanced understanding of the complex nature of spirituality. In brief, there are levels of religious mind, levels of morality and levels of discourse.