Processing the Sacred
Absolute Knowing through the subjective historicity of Dawkins, Harris and Peterson
This month we are focusing on the question of the Sacred. We will be inviting and hosting spirit scientists Dr. Andrew Davis at The Edge of Human and Cosmic Value, Dr. Ruth E. Kastner at Thought Lab for thinking Science and Spirit, and Dr.
in Real Talk to reflect on Politics and Love. You can find out more, or join our quest here.In a currently unreleased podcast, I noted to philosopher
that when I usually think of religion, I tend to think about it philosophically, from the outside, as opposed to from the inside. He noted to me, from the perspective of someone who had explored religion in various forms from the inside, that we should not “mystify too much” the “inside of religion”. He furthermore suggested that the zero-level of religious experience is a question that life presents to us, but which we do not know how to answer, and yet we are always tempted to answer it.The paradoxes of most religious identities should be self-evident.
In any case, this note resonated for me because I try to design The Portal to be a space that has the courage to stay with difficult questions without a final answer, as well as a space that protects philosophical inquiry that can stay on the outside of religion, while at the same time respecting its interiority from a distance.
In short, The Portal is a space of philosophy, that seeks to explore the intersections with religion and art in a way that is generative for all three domains of Absolute Spirit.
This month at The Portal we are dedicating a month of inquiry to the question of the sacred. Are we experiencing a return to the sacred in our culture? What does that mean?
For me, these questions have for some years been modelled and understood through the lens of (surprise, surprise) the Phenomenology of Spirit.1 Hegel’s stages of development — Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Reason, Spirit, Religion, and Absolute Knowing — represent modes we can all traverse in a process governed by a dedicated personal discovery towards truth.2 This structure has given me a sense of situating where I felt our culture is, had been, and was moving in its process of coming to terms with truth.
When I was 19 or 20, coming into my own relation to a deep intellectual inquiry, the culture was very much in a “mode of the rational”. The archetype for this rational mode was perhaps represented by the New Atheist moment, led by figures like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, among others. The idea was that reason could replace on a civilisational level what spirit and religion had actualised in the past. Richard Dawkins set up his “Foundation for Reason and Science”, in part, to forward this agenda. The core was that “reason and science” could “sublate” “spirit and religion” (although of course he wouldn’t be thinking in terms of Hegelian mechanism of “sublation”).
Dawkins, paradoxically, tended to think in a deconstructive form. In his famous book, The God Delusion (2006),3 he forwarded the thesis that God was “delusional false belief” without evidence. He suggested that if an individual is delusional, we call it insanity, but if a collective is delusional, we call it religion. For Dawkins, a religious society is an insane society. Thus, we should deconstruct religion and attempt to work out morality from a rationalistic and scientific point of view.
Well, maybe God is “delusional false belief”? Maybe God is a hypothesis “without evidence” verifiable through science? Some might say, and then what?
I recently listened to a podcast with the brilliant physicist David Deutsch, who forwarded the epistemological hypothesis that the “empiricist trap” is starting an argument based on following the evidence.4 The idea is that if we collect enough evidence, and support a hypothesis with enough evidence, then we can guarantee a stable ground for our reason.
Fair enough, but where is the the trap?
Deutsch suggests that the trap with this approach is that it does not start with the problem, which he likens to a conflict of ideas. If we don’t start with the conflict of ideas, say between religion and science, then no matter how much evidence we collect, we will find ourselves following the wrong path.
In Hegelian terms, we could call this starting point the contradiction of ideas, or in Freudian terms, we could call this the incompatibility of ideas. The premise is the same: starting with the evidence might be able to fortify a rational grounds, and we may be able to get pretty far with that approach, but it can also lead to us getting stuck trying to solve the wrong problem. Why? Well, because we didn’t start with the problem, we started by collecting evidence to support a hypothesis that — for some reason — we wanted to solve.
This seems to be the fundamental trap that someone can fall into when they try to use reason to resolve problems of spirit and religion. If you are operating on the level of reason, and then want to jump “like a shot from a pistol” (to reference Hegel),5 to the level of absolute knowing — and the science that proceeds from this cognition — we can end up shooting our own self in the foot, or the other for that matter (like a child who picked up and started to use the pistol before realising the power of what s/he was holding).
Well then! What to do?6
The problem of spirit and religion seems to be that spirit and religion “in-and-for-itself” encounters delusional false belief as the truth of the real, or what in the German Idealist tradition we might call a “transcendental illusion”. Human consciousness, in its necessary process towards absolute knowing, which historically manifests to Western and probably Global consciousness as Science, must confront a form of ethical life and moral destiny which are not reducible to rationalistic laws of thought, and open up conditions of possibility for Spirit and Religion.
Here, we should always remember that “science” is not equal to “rationalistic laws of thought”. Science is first and foremost a method of inquiry into the truth of the real. In Hegelian terms, reason can formulate laws, principles, tendencies of natural thought (like, for example, Darwinian principles of natural selection), but reason lacks embodied grounding in pragmatic insight for communal duty.
Reason (on its own) lacks Spirit.
Now you can gather all the evidence you like about God as a “delusional false belief”, but if you are not working with, tarrying with, the negativity of this problem (this contradiction, or incompatibility), then you are bound to find yourself arguing with a wall (ironically), and not an actual other (human being).
Today it is hard to escape the conclusion that, talking to a New Atheist about Religion, like Dawkins, feels a lot like talking to a wall.
In any case, I think our culture in general, has been trying to work out the movement from reason to spirit for some time. We probably call this the “culture wars”. In fact, one of the symptoms of the New Atheists, we could argue, and a prominent feature of the culture wars, is Sam Harris’s own attempt to work the problem of reason and spirit. Harris approaches it via the “spiritual path”, primarily mediated by the “Waking Up” book, podcast, and app. Harris has perhaps escaped his New Atheist label and become the archetype for what is often referred to as “spiritual but not religious”. His book, Waking Up (2014),7 even has the tag line in the subtitle: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion.
Thus, if Dawkins tagline was something like “A Guide to Reason without Spirituality or Religion”, Harris moves one Hegelian step down the dialectical line, by bringing Spirituality into the fold (without religion). What does this include or entail? In a recent Philosophy Portal “Singularities podcast” with Peter Robinson, I think we got a pretty concrete window into this question and problem.
Robinson drank the “New Atheist Kool aid”, embracing the worldview that God was a “delusional false belief” which “lacked evidence”, but still found himself, beyond his own scientific point of view, immersed for most of his adult life in a “spiritual community”. While upon entering this community he had the perspective that he was “rational” and “the others” were “a bit bonkers” (insane, you might say, suffering from “delusional false belief”). However, he came to see a divide opening up between “evidential facts” and “personal valuation”, and the way in which this divide impacted the relation between individual and communal worldviews. After living for many years in this spiritual community, he started to see “the others” who had previously been perceived as “a bit bonkers”, to actually embody “wiser and open-minded” positions. He had to admit that his view was “a bit bonkers” (insane, you might say, suffering from its own form of “delusional self belief”).
What is going on here?
In our discussion, Robinson suggested that he was coming to learn that the spiritual worldview was differentiating itself from the rationalist worldview on the basis of valuation in a community, not in terms of marshalling facts to support evidence, but rather engaging the concrete problem of others: how well can we relate and how beloved can we become in our community? On the basis of that concrete problem, Robinson experienced in his personal life process, the dialectical negativity where reason becomes spirit. There is something “sacred” about the relation and something “sacred” about being beloved in community.
and I reflected on this, in the aforementioned unpublished Singularities podcast, as being related to “charisma”.8 You can have all the “evidential facts” you like, and it can be structured by the most rational argumentation possible, but without charisma, it amounts to nothing that relational community dynamics can derive insight from beyond perhaps a utilitarian function.This is as true as it is problematic.
If we return to Hegel’s Phenomenology, we find that he knew that, just as reason had its own lack, spirit has its own lack. For Hegel, spirit lacks the fact that spiritual community is a diversity of “vibes” (affects governed by charisma) that has not thought itself and can easily find itself, as a result, in irreconcilable tensions when it is forced to think its own diversity. In other words, spiritual community focuses on relations that co-exist via affects without a rational consensus, but for that reason, when it encounters real difference — a difference that makes a concrete difference — tensions break out, and the communal whole is threatened by the very differences that once opened up an attraction based on resonance and charm.
The spiritual community becomes a moral war zone of good versus evil.
In other words, a spiritual community may have charisma, but it has not truly reconciled itself with difference and otherness, and the problems of good and evil that run along each of our singular hearts.9 It is for this reason that spiritual communities often fall into traps that
outlined in his “terrible communities” articles:Structurelessness,
Cult states, and
Intimacy without friendships
This issue of the “lack in spirit” came up in a recent podcast discussion between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson. The video displays on YouTube with a caption that reads “Can we agree about evil?”, and the video title reads “Jordan Peterson & Sam Harris Try to Find Something They Agree On”.10 To me, the gold all happens towards the end of the podcast, where Jordan Peterson frames the moral problem of good and evil as a Christian or religious problem of benevolence and malevolence.
Peterson suggests that the Bible itself is structured by a progressive pattern of sacrifice that culminates in the passion story, where we confront the idea that salvation and redemption from evil and towards the good can only be achieved if we voluntarily (freely) carry the world’s tragedies and confront the worst evils. He defines the worst tragedies and evils as forms of unjust suffering via vicious punishment to those least deserving, in the accompaniment of betrayal and the baying of the mob.
Sam Harris responds by framing the problem of good and evil as a Buddhist or a spiritual problem of wisdom and ignorance with the possibility of a scientific solution to the issues of morality. From this angle, Harris proposes a neuroscientific “cure for evil” through modifying ignorance via brain receptor sites (in the context of stopping “Josef Stalin from becoming Josef Stalin” or retroactively “curing Josef Stalin after he became Josef Stalin”) so that “malevolent sociopaths” can be turned into “entirely normal people”.
Harris ends this neuroscience thought experiment with inspiration along the lines of his spiritual notion of “Waking Up”:
“Imagine being able to engineer the following experience for Josef Stalin, where you deliver him the cure for all that ails him ethically, but he still has a knowledge of what you are doing, and a memory of all the malevolent stuff he did in his past. Imagine what it would be like for him to wake up from the dream of his sociopathy, and experience for the first time what it was like, to be a normal well-intentioned, decent human being. […] Imagine the feeling of regret to have been at all entangled with that causality, whatever little purchase you have on it in the present, because you are no longer evil. Imagine the gratitude of being rescued from the kind of mind that was so cavalier about the deaths of so many people.”
At the end of the day, Harris is justifying this thought experiment with the idea that evil is caused by ignorance, and that this ignorance can be resolved into wisdom through a future neuroscientific manipulation of brain receptors.
One might think that this thought experiment is not so wise…11
What would Hegel say about all this?
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel outlines the transition from spirit to religion, under the idea that spirit lacks a universal idea which resolves issues of good and evil in relation to the concrete experience of an other as absolutely evil. Here we could frame the disagreement between Peterson and Harris on morality as a disagreement on the level of an universal idea to resolve this problem of absolute evil:
Peterson proposes the Bible and progressive sacrifice, culminating in the sacrifice of Jesus for mankind to deal with the issue
Harris proposes spiritual neuroscience as progressive brain modification towards brain normalisation to deal with the issue
One is a traditional Christian viewpoint, the other is a post-modern transhumanist viewpoint. This is really where our culture is stuck.
What follows from this if we look into the chapter on Religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit? While Hegel does not mention either the Bible or Jesus, we can safely say that Hegel could come down on the side of Peterson in this debate, while at the same time, Hegel would encourage Peterson to continue wrestling with god.12
Why?
Because what Hegel is trying to do with the chapter on Religion is, on the one hand, recognise the universal idea at the core of religion, and on the other hand, recognise the historicity of religion itself in a way that does not eternalise one religion or one story. In other words, Hegel treats both the the structure of the Bible and the story of Christ as a type of vanishing mediator that must be actually experienced by historical spirit in order to be understood in its truth in-and-for spirit.
The truth of the universal idea here is one of personal self-sacrifice for the community that purifies the community via accepting the tragedies of the world and confronting evil. In fact, what takes spirit out of spirit and into religion is precisely this accepting the tragedy of evil consciousness and confronting it in the actual other human being. However, and at the same time, Hegel recognises that this personal self-sacrifice for the community that purifies the community is neither the truth of the community, nor the end of the process.
In fact, this brings us to the “religious problem par excellence”, that is the problem that the religious community itself lacks. What the religious community gains in a solidarity through a universal idea in progressive sacrifice, an accepting of the tragedies of the world, and a confrontation with evil (opposed to subjecting everyone to neuroscientific brain modification for “normalisation”), it loses in the imperfection (and the impossibility) of all members to enact this negative ideal. To be specific: the religious community will claim it is not divided, that it is a unified whole, but the religious community in actuality is divided, dependent on the one who absolutely and actually sacrificed.
This is why I liked
’s note that we should not mystify too much the inside of religion. The mystification of the inside of religion is at one time necessary for those moving through the universality of its idea (who need its stories and use them to mediate pain), but at the same time untrue, lacking in a fundamental way, and especially for the individual who sacrificed for the community.In other words, in the same way that Reason lacks Spirit, in the same way that Spirit lacks Religion, we can say that Religion lacks Absolute Knowing. As I have said somewhere, in order for Religion to form, one needs a subject of Absolute Knowing.
Now this form of absolute knowing, the form of absolute knowing that does not jump “like a shot from a pistol” from reason (like Dawkins), or from spirit (like Harris), is the true knowing. I would even go so far as to claiming that Peterson seems to be approaching this knowing, in the sense that he is “wrestling with god”, and in that wrestling, may find the truth of the drive beyond the myths that hold religion together. As good Lacanians know: drives mythify the real.13
To be precise, this form of absolute knowing is a knowing that not only knows the lack of reason: that reason can formulate laws, principles, tendencies of natural thought, but it lacks embodied grounding in pragmatic insight for communal duty; not only knows the lack of spirit: that pragmatic insight for communal duty unreflectively encounters the problem of good versus evil; but knows also the lack of religion: that the religious community is itself divided from the true source of knowing in its attachment to mythological stories, and its external dependence on a subject of absolute knowing.
The true source of knowing is only known by the one who truly sacrificed for the community, and it is into that community where absolute knowing as singularity becomes actual, becomes the actuality of drive.
This is spirit science.
It is not a coincidence that philosopher Slavoj Žižek grounds his understanding of Hegelian spirit science in the story of Galileo, who was unjustly threatened with torture by the religious community for discovering a truth. The story of Galileo, like the story of Christ, represents an actual sacrifice for truth. While the story of Christ’s sacrifice is perhaps about the truth of good and evil, the story of Galileo’s sacrifice is perhaps about the truth of movement in the real as such. When we, as singularities, move through the real of the truth of good and evil in our particularity, we are confronted with the truth of movement in the real in its universality.
This is where I think our culture will move once it has processed the truth in the lack of religion. However, unlike Galileo, we will not be struggling with a cosmic movement independent of us (like the planets of Jupiter), but struggling with a human movement dependent on us, which is perhaps much more true to a universal quantum spirit science.
This is what I hope The Portal can help us think.14 The Portal provides a space, outside of religion, that can protect philosophical inquiry, while at the same time respect the interiority of religion, at a distance. In protecting a space of philosophical inquiry, I take this to be the protecting of a space dedicated to the real spirit science question of the truth of movement in the real.
This month The Portal is focusing on the question of the Sacred. We will be inviting and hosting spirit scientists Dr. Andrew Davis at The Edge of Human and Cosmic Value, Dr. Ruth E. Kastner at Thought Lab for thinking Science and Spirit, and Dr.
in Real Talk to reflect on Politics and Love. You can find out more, or join our quest here.For the first official Philosophy Portal course, see: Phenomenology of Spirit.
For more, see my original/opening blog post: Phenomenology of Spirit.
Dawkins, R. 2006. The God Delusion. Black Swan.
You can find the podcast here: “David Deutsch, Peter Boghossian, & Reid Nicewonder Talk Fermi Paradox, Ideological Contagion, & More”.
The actual quote from the Phenomenology of Spirit: “27. It is this coming-to-be Science as such or of knowledge, that is described in this Phenomenology of Spirit. Knowledge in its first place, or immediate Spirit, is the non-spiritual, i.e. sense-consciousness. In order to become genuine knowledge, to beget the element of Science which is the pure Notion of Science itself, it must travel a long way and work its passage. This process of coming-to-be (considering the content and patterns it will display therein) will not be what is commonly understood by an initiation of the unscientific consciousness into Science; it will also be quite different from the ‘foundation’ of Science; least of all will it be like the rapturous enthusiasm which, like a shot from a pistol, begins straight away with absolute knowledge, and makes short work of other standpoints by declaring it takes no notice of them.” (p. 16). We can say that Dawkins, in his treatment of religion, and the way he relates to theology in general, is like a “shot from a pistol” which “begins straight away with absolute knowledge, and makes short work of other standpoints” (i.e. religious standpoints) “by declaring it takes no notice of them.” This is in fact, or at least seems to be, an issue of contention between Dawkins and his frequent New Atheist interlocutor, Alex O’Connor, who has, in fact, studied theology, and thus takes notice of positions that Dawkins simply ignores, and thinks can be deconstructed with “reason and science”.
Contradiction, incompatibility?
Harris, S. 2014. Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Simon & Schuster.
Or as the kids say today, “rizz”.
As
has been writing, this involves thinking through some of problematics of forgiveness, see for example: “On Forgiveness (Part II)”.If you watch the video, you will see that when Sam Harris says this, Jordan Peterson, a man currently writing a book about “wrestling with god”, is struggling very hard to bite his tongue at this “spiritual neuroscience”, but I would bet this issue, and perhaps this very interaction, will come up when Peterson finally publishes the book.
If you are wrestling with God, I encourage checking out a series pioneered by
of titled “Wrestling with Christianity”.Both Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins can agree on one thing: they don’t understand Jacques Lacan, see: Psychedelics, Consciousness, and AI.
We also need spaces like
’s to learn the crafting of voice itself, and David McKerracher’s to expose ourselves the frontier of contemporary theory.