NagaramApr 24

Reading Sam Harris's "Waking Up" gives the same vibes as when I read "the Satanic Bible" by Anton Levay.

It has interesting ideas and actionable advice to improve my spiritual life through meditation and contemplation, but it also refuses to present that in an isolated way because both books are positioned against something.

The Satanic bible isn't just self help its self help WHILE ALSO hating Christians.

Waking Up isn't just a book on consciousness and meditation its that WHILE ALSO being mean about the traditions that spawned the ideas.

Its the exact hateful tone that pushed me far outside of the Nu-Atheist movement a life time ago and its still gross.

#atheism #meditation #religion #conciousness

Show threadHouse Panther 
@Nagaram That's kind of an interesting take and I get the hate directed towards Christians because of all of the damage they have done throughout the years. But rather than hate, I'd like to be able to find a way to bring them over to #atheism
Apr 24 at 12:44pmWeb
Show threadNagaramApr 25

@housepanther

Same and I really think this starts with treating spiritualistic people with respect. These are folks with real profound experiences they've attributed to their spiritual understanding of the world and there is almost no amount of pure reason we can throw at that to convince them to be atheists.

Worse still calling their practices barbaric and their beliefs idiotic and they'll just continue to see us unenlightened forces of evil or something.

Show threadHouse Panther Apr 25
@Nagaram Correct. Part of human nature is holding on to core beliefs tightly. This is largely an instinctual carryover from millennia ago. I know I struggle with it from time to time. But in the end, I hate being patently wrong and I love learning. I think if we can encourage the devout to learn, we might be able to help them think critically about their own beliefs. Ridicule will only make them defensive.