The New Atheists and Integral Camp Should Talk

Paul Salamone (a buddy of mine and the dude behind the hip blog Foreignerd) posted an insightful comment in response to my blog post, The Portable Atheist: A Great Holiday Gift. Below is my response. My response went longer than I originally anticipated so I decided to make a separate blog post. Integral geeks, as well as critics, are invited to add their thoughts on the comment thread.

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Paul said: ".... Either way, the real difference between the Wilber and Hitchens (who professes a belief in the transcendent and the "numinous" btw) positions on religion is a tactical one: would it serve collective human interests better to a) use the "conveyor belt" approach, or b) root out and destroy all religious idea-viruses before they can breed and mutate the next plague? The role of moral instruction, in the latter view, would be taken on by a reconstructed "rational religion" as advocated by Harris and others. Is it easier to inculcate this into the youth, or to raise them on tradition and hope the literalistic and warlike aspects of the sacred texts do not come back to haunt us?"

exactly! and that is what i'm exploring intellectually and philosophically. i think *both* approaches--(a) conveyor belt, and (b) rational rooting out--are useful strategies that can be used depending on the situation. for reasons based on human psychological development, rational "rooting out" would not work on people at the "fundamentalistic/mythic" stage. this stage would more likely respond to a gentler and gradual "conveyor belt" approach coming from their (moderate) religious leaders, while people at (to use the spiral dynamics terms) *orange* (scientific/strategic) and *green* (communitarian/egalitarian) are at the stage of rationality which would likely respond to (and even counter) the rational rooting out approach.

the "New Atheists" are *fleshing out* the rational rooting out approach, although Dennett's proposal of including world religions as compulsory subjects in class curriculum (in elementary and high school) is also a conveyor belt approach, albeit done in a much faster way (i.e. speed up development of children by exposing them to different religions at an early age).

the Integral camp (Wilber's camp), is *fleshing out* the conveyor belt approach (e.g. integral spirituality) which includes interfaith and inter-spirituality dialogues. however, its discussion is limited on the "interior" domain. the exterior domain (e.g. evolutionary biology) is not being discussed with experts in their particular domains.

now, the issue i'm noticing is that these two camps (New Atheists and Integral) are, unfortunately, not working together, at least in the public space. yes, there was an interview by Stuart Davis with Sam Harris, but that's it. and yes, there are was an interview with Ken Wilber wherein he addressed the New Atheists, but that is not a dialogue. Wilber just talked about the New Atheists with sweeping generalizations without acknowledging their differences! here's an excerpt from that article:

"Wilber thinks we are in the midst of an important "national conversation about science and religion," but he finds it "very disturbing" that the conversation spurred by Dawkins, Harris, and the others "assumes that everybody knows what we are talking about when we talk about religion. While science is something that we can fairly well agree on the meaning of, religion or spirituality has a very broad range of meaning."

i don't know if Wilber had read the books of the New Atheists, but his sweeping generalizations make me doubtful. first, Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris, although they are dubbed by the public with "the New Atheists" umbrella, have their differences. Sam Harris doesn't even want to be called Atheist. Sam Harris even cited Wilber's book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality in The End of Faith. Dawkins, in his book, The God Delusion, dedicated a whole chapter to define the kind of God (i.e. Theism ) that he's criticizing. Dennett's Breaking the Spell, went into *painstaking* detail to describe his theories on religion (as well a covering other theories) with a proposal on how to study religions from a scientific standpoint, *without* disregarding the personal experiences of people (see the book's last chapter). And Hitchens, well, he's a sharp polemicist whom i find very entertaining. how do i know all these? because i've read their books.

my suggestion is, if you're into Wilber and his version of integral philosophy, don't just take Wilber's word for it when it comes to the New Atheists. go read their books and then analyze them with your own integral perspective. that suggestion applies to Wilber.

if Wilber thinks that we are in the midst of an important national conversation about science and religion, then how come he's not participating in these conversations? how come he's not doing dialogues (or even debating) with the New Atheists and adding his arguments on the "broad range of meaning" of religion and spirituality? i can only wonder.

another issue that i have with the Integral camp is that, aside from the closed-loop dialogues among people who resonate with the integral approach, its knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss the New Atheists as "reductionists." they caricature the New Atheists as simply debating the mythic God. well, that's partly true, but the New Atheists are doing more than that! they are elevating the discussion beyond *orange* and *green*. the New Atheists are doing the *dirty job* of taking the discussions in mainstream public, something the integral camp has yet to successfully accomplish. the New Atheists are the ones making noises and confronting the fundamentalists, religious egalitarians, theocracies, and postmodern thinkers who are shielding religions from being criticized in public.

way back in 1998, before the advent of the New Atheists, Wilber had written an excellent philosophical treatise on integrating science and religion called, Marriage of Sense and Soul. unfortunately, as insightful as it was, that book didn't get the public's attention (yes, it was read by Al Gore and Bill Clinton, but still). thanks to the New Atheists, the intellectual climate in the U.S. is now ripe to resurrect the theme of that book and put its treatise to the test of rational discussions (whether debates or dialogues) in the public sphere. i think it would be cool to publish an updated version of that book with additional chapters responding to the New Atheists. for what it's worth, with all the public attention the New Atheists are getting right now, it might even sneak in the integral worldview into public view.

however, as of now, i'm disappointed that there are no representatives from the Integral camp on conferences like Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0; no official and public response to the New Atheists; no public discussions or debates; no acknowledgments of the partial truths that the New Atheists are espousing; no constructive criticisms of the New Atheists. imho, that's not very integral of them. i can only speculate why this is so.

first, maybe the integral camp sees the New Atheists debates as first-tier food fights, hence they avoid them like the plague. i disagree with this reasoning. i think this reasoning is naive at best, and elitist at worst.

second, the Integral camp (or its proponents) is not taken seriously (or out of the radar) by the academics, thinkers, philosophers, and scientists who are organizing these conferences. gee, i wonder why.

regardless of the reasons, by not participating on these discussions about religion in the mainstream public space, i think that the Integral camp is missing a big PR (public relations) opportunity to spread the integral worldview. at the same time, it's also missing opportunities for growth from constructive criticisms that would come out of these public discussions.

my two cents.