Are depressed people more realistic?

[Angrboda]

what is "atheist dogma"?

Well, it isn't anything like religious logic.

I would say that any atheist that holds that in order to be an atheist, then there is a specific ideology that must be held is atheist dogma. One example is that when Sam Harris speaks of "spirituality", he says that many atheists cringe at that word, because of it's religious association, and therefore will shout "There cannot be any spirituality in Atheism!".

I can't help but wonder if Sam isn't simply wrong. I wonder if perhaps Sam's fascination with meditation and Vipassana isn't akin to Newton's obsession with alchemy. A bit of woo that has found a warm, comfy spot in his soul and refuses to be evicted. But I think, perhaps, people suggest that because Sam Harris says it, and he's really smart on other things (including neuroscience), we should listen to him on this. That's little more than the argument from authority rearing its ugly head. As Michael Shermer says, "Smart people believe weird things because they are better at rationalizing their beliefs that they hold for nonsmart reasons." (Or Feynman, "I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.")

I'd likely be one of the first to suggest that spirituality has a useful place in anyone's life (even beyond the fact that I'm deeply religious), but only spirituality properly understood and kept in its bounds. What Sam Harris appears to be advocating by spirituality is simply alternative religion, and imo, those alternative religions he's drawing on are just as corrupt and woo filled as the mainstream. So what is Sam ultimately recommending? It sounds like he's suggesting we follow the path set out by these other religions because "they seem to work" and "they haven't been proven false." These seem like the same excuses that mainstream religions use. Why is this kind of thinking more respectable because it's Buddhism or whatever?


Granted, I haven't listened to or read Sam at any length, but it seems he's following the same trap that others in the west follow, that because a religion, its practices and its beliefs (and their criticisms) aren't as familiar or deeply ingrained in the Western mind, that somehow they are less suspicious of them than the religions that people in the west are familiar with (though what little I've read suggests, that if you are from the East, you have similar complaints about those practices as Westerners do about Christianity and Islam). As a Taoist and Hindu, I should be clear about my biases. I really dislike Buddhists and Buddhism, and think it's all a crock of shit. But for reasons stated, because Buddhism is different and unfamiliar to westerners, it seems to get an automatic pass.