MEMEING NATURALISM
OCCASIONAL EXPLORATIONS OF SCIENCE - BASED,
HUMANISTIC NATURALISM AND ITS IMPLICATIONS,
WITH A FOCUS ON CURRENT NEWS AND COMMENTARY
BY
ANDRE COMPTE-SPONVILLE
REVIEWED BY TOM CLARK
© Copyright Tom Clark. 2008
The modern Naturalism Movement is a socio-political
movement that is rooted in naturalist philosophy.
It is a relatively modern movement in it's
present-day form. The premier organization
that promotes naturalism as a comprehensive
world-view is the Center for Naturalism.
Tom Clark, who has written here on Nirmukta,
is the director of the CFN. His book Encountering
Naturalism: A Worldview and Its Uses presents
arguments for the naturalistic worldview
and it's implications. Many in the naturalism
movement have taken it upon themselves to
question non-natural claims that are believed
without question by many people including
some skeptics. Chief among these is the belief
in contra-causal free-will (which is the
belief in a human agency devoid of natural
causes and beyond the control of the self-
it evokes a dualistic notion of mental function
and assigns a supernatural exception to the
causal rule of nature). Tom Clark calls this
the 'Little God', one that even many atheists
do not doubt. The CFN ponders on the implications
of a lack of free-will on society and many
in the movement hold that a social order
without the non-natural idea of free-will
must be a more compassionate and just society.
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The Center For Naturalism
Naturalism. Org http://www. naturalism. org/
and http://centerfornaturalism. blogspot.
com/2008/07/case-for-naturalistic-spirituality.
html Reviews The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
By Andre Compte-Sponville Viking - December
2007, 224 pages, $19.95 |
July 14, 2008
The Case for Naturalistic Spirituality
Because most folks are dualists, the idea
of naturalistic spirituality still seems
a contradiction in terms. Spirituality is
generally thought to involve "higher
planes," souls, spirits, and other supernatural
phenomena. How can naturalists, including
atheists, take spirituality seriously without
violating a core tenet of their worldview,
that no separate supernatural realm exists?
Very easily, as Andre Comte-Sponville artfully
argues in The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality.
Spirituality properly understood has nothing
essentially to do with the supernatural,
and is far too important a matter to leave
to religionists and new-agers. To do so would
have naturalists ignore central questions
of life's meaning and purpose, of how we
can best live together given the ultimate
nature of things, and what our relation to
that nature is. None of this requires or
implies god.
This book is a delight and inspiration, without
the least condescension or self-seriousness,
beautifully direct, personal, touching, and
profound. Comte-Sponville writes with the
ease and assurance of someone who has thought
deeply on these matters, and indeed he's
been writing and speaking for years on godless
spirituality. The Little Book is the distillation
of his wisdom, which is heir to both West
(Spinoza, Pascal, Nietzsche, Sartre, Wittgenstein
and some modern French philosophers unknown
to most American readers) and East (Buddhism,
Zen, Taoism, Vedanta). Although he has no
animus against faith, so long as it's not
imposed, his primary objectives in the book's
three chapters are to show that 1) we don't
need theistic religion for a viable ethics
or community, 2) there are good reasons to
believe god, traditionally conceived, doesn't
exist, and 3) spiritual experience is a naturalistically
valid mirror of basic existential truths.
We are embedded in an impersonal, self-subsistent,
untranscendable and value-less reality -
Spinoza's Nature, the All - therefore values
and meaning are human-relative affairs. But
understanding and feeling that we are rooted
in an ultimately mysterious non-human absolute
can, by temporarily stripping away the self,
afford us the peak spiritual experience of
immanent unity. Naturalistic spirituality
shows us that our lives, finite, conditioned
and purposeful, open into the eternal, unconditioned
and purposeless.
Living in the post-modern, irreligious age
(at least in France!), we must, he says,
avoid the twin temptations of sophistry,
that truth has no claim on us, and nihilism,
that morality has no claim on us (Nietzsche:
"Nothing is true, everything is allowed").
We are therefore enjoined to follow the Enlightenment
in its insistence that there are truths and
ethics to be had independent of religion.
These are secured by fidelity, fidelity to
rationalism: "to reason, to mind, to
knowledge," and to a progressive, practical
humanism: "Our primary duty. that of
living and behaving humanly." Because
impersonal nature affords us no recourse,
this is a contingent, fallible project, but
for that reason all the more worth pursuing:
Nothing can guarantee the triumph of peace
and justice or even any irreversible progress.
Is that any reason to stop fighting for these
things? Of course not! On the contrary, it
is a powerful reason to go on paying the
utmost attention to life, peace, justice.
and our children. Life is all the more precious
for being rare and fragile. Justice and peace
are all the more necessary, all the more
urgent, because nothing can guarantee their
ultimate victory. (54)
Comte-Sponville provides a concise survey
of the traditional arguments for god and
their insuperable shortcomings, then goes
on to give additional reasons for why it's
very likely (although not ultimately provable)
that god doesn't exist: there's no good evidence
he does; the untoward amount of evil and
suffering in the world; the sheer mediocrity
of the human animal (is such a creature the
best god could do?), and the fact that theistic
beliefs so patently conform to our deepest
wishes. That god is all- good, and provides
us with everything we could possibly want,
is an excellent reason to suspect he does
not exist! Given these reasons for doubt,
it's of the first importance that society
keep church and state separate, allowing
space for the right not to believe. He ends
the second chapter saying:
Freedom of thought is the only good that
is perhaps more precious than peace, for
the simple reason that, without it, peace
would simply be another name for servitude.
The book contains much that's personal to
the author, which makes good reading and
good sense. After all, even if they are informed
by philosophies and traditions, spiritual
matters are deeply personal - they are one's
own grappling with meaning and existence.
In the 3rd chapter, he describes a transformative
mystical experience that, as he puts it,
let him finally understand what as a philosopher
he'd been lecturing and writing about all
these years. The elements of the experience
are described as suspensions - suspensions
of thought, of time, of the ego, "the
tiny prison of the self." This permits
an opening into the self- less present:
What a relief, when the ego gets out of the
way! Nothing remains but the All, with the
body, marvelously, inside of it, as if restored
to the world and itself. Nothing remains
but the enormous thereness of being, nature
and the universe, with no one left inside
of us to be dismayed or reassured, or at
least no one at this particular instant,
in this particular body, to worry about dismay
and reassurance, anxiety and danger.
(149)
He points out that mystical experiences and
the spirituality they express and inspire
make a personal god, holding out hope for
future salvation, unnecessary. Nature, being,
the all, the absolute, reality (he says use
whichever word suits you) is immediately
sufficient, present and perfect, that is,
without defect. Faith, belief, dogma, hope
and fear play no role, so religion in the
traditional sense becomes irrelevant. Nor
is there any conflict between our best analytical
and empirical modes of knowing - what we
can pin down about nature - and the personal
existential realizations stemming from experiences
of unity. Such spirituality has nothing to
fear from science.
All told, Comte-Sponville, a true humanist
and universalist, gives us a philosophically
and anecdotally rich account of how those
without faith can remain authentically ethical
and engaged in life, even as it opens onto
infinity. The human project is part of reality,
but in no sense does it encompass reality,
which rather encompasses us in its mystery.
We have to make our peace with this, perhaps
even find fulfillment in the fact we aren't
the measure of nature. Naturalists looking
for enlightenment will find in this book
an inspiring, profound expression of the
spiritual possibilities inherent in their
worldview.
© Copyright Tom Clark. 2008
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