An Unware Fight: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the View from Integral

Just finished listening to an audio via Integral Spiritual Center wherein Ken Wilber addressed the issue of the current science and religion debate, specifically by the New Atheists. Nice. I also got a special mention in the discussion due to my coverage of the New Atheists. But they still refer to me as "coolmel." Ah well, no escape from that stupid moniker for me.

Too bad the audio is only available for ISC members.  But here is the blurb I received from the ISC update.

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An Unaware Fight (audio) Evolution, Intelligent Design, and the View from Integral

The past year has seen some very public debates between proponents of Darwinian evolution and Intelligent Design. An Integral perspective of this argument reveals that these two camps—the “New Atheists” on one side, (Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris), and a variety of fundamentalist Christian apologists on the other, are not even speaking the same language, though they mistakenly assume that they are.

In this week’s featured audio, Ken Wilber discusses how, by applying an Integral perspective, particularly by including an awareness of levels of development, one can better understand the disconnect in this debate, and embrace both sides, and discover the more inclusive truth, the one that transcends and includes them both.

Here’s how: levels of development determine, though not definitively, the way we interpret our experience.  Developmental research shows us that instead of assuming that there is a “given” world (created by God or created by the laws of nature) that we can make factual statements about, we should more accurately assume that a worldspace arises when we look from a given altitude through a given perspective, and that some worldviews are more inclusive (and thus more true) than others.

In this debate the Integral model highlights how these two sides inhabit entirely different levels of development, and thus see entirely different worldspaces. As a result, they are not sharing meaning. Though the words they use to debate this issue may be identical, the meaning each party constructs out of those words is likely to be completely different.  Essentially, these two groups are not talking to each other. It’s a disconnect, one that only an Integral model can highlight.

For example, Christopher Hitchens seems to acknowledge that development occurs, and that people make meaning of their world from their level of development.  Why then, he asks, don’t people simply make meaning by trying to understand how the universe works?  Which is precisely how people at an orange altitude/rational worldview make meaning….

Sam Harris, himself a meditator, also seems to lack an awareness of levels of development in his expressed respect for Buddhism (as opposed to the other major religious traditions) as much more than a mythic worldview.  This assertion discounts that fact that Buddhism is held mythically by millions of people worldwide. There are mythic Buddhists, rational Buddhists, pluralistic Buddhists, and integral Buddhists. Each is a Buddhist, each has an entirely different interpretation of Buddhism. Integral therefore concludes that the problem is not any particular religion, it is the level of development of the adherent that can become problematic, particularly when people at different levels of development try to communicate.

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In the audio, Wilber mentioned that he was invited by Sam Harris's people to have a blogalogue on BeliefNet but he didn't have the time to participate. That's understandable. I've watched the New Atheists debate on these issues and it's too time-consuming, not to mention, draining. But they do it anyway because they have books to promote.

I think Wilber should consider having a dialog with Harris (or all of the New Atheists) as an opportunity to also promote his old book, Marriage of Sense and Soul. How about a re-issue with a chapter addressing the New Atheists? The object is not to join the New Atheist bandwagon and win debates, but to explore a skillful way of promoting and discussing the integral world view far and beyond the nodes of I-I.