None of this would be particularly usable in terms of argument or convincing someone else. I saw "coincidences" on a level that made no sense, without there being what could be called "something more" than the ordinary world of cause and effect, operating only locally. Like three events that did not occur to me before or since, that would be rare for anyone, and that all happened, seemingly independently, one after the other, on one day, in about an hour. And that seemed to mean something. Basically, something like "Don't worry, it's covered."
And I also experienced something directly, it would be called "mystical" here, except that it's really quite ordinary. It's a shift in perspective. Suppose that we are seeing all of life through a mirror. We don't realize this, because we don't see the signs that the mirror exists, we don't see the edges. Sometimes we might see that the mirror is dirty, though. I won't go there yet.
However, what does a mirror look like? Suppose that a mirror has a certain characteristic color. Let's call that color "clarity." Suppose that one has a faculty for seeing that color. (I suspect we all do.)
This isn't "scientific." There is no way to show that there is any "clarity" other than the reality of what is reflected. Or directly seen. It's an experience, though, and because of it, the whole elementary level of Zen koans became transparent for me, and when I asked a Zen master about this, he confirmed it. I was something like 22 years old. I didn't have training, I was just lucky, or something.
I don't consider this truly significant, but I could probably write a book about it. It's not the way I think any more, particularly. Again, all this did for me was to connect me with wide religious traditions, which I saw, then, as referring to experience that was not the "ordinary way" of looking at things. I've not fully expressed this at all, I was just describing the gateway that I walked through.
Because I wasn't taught by any individual or within any tradition, I didn't have a method for transmitting this. I was able to confirm some others, though. Landmark Education, however, is teaching "transformation," and a crucial part of that is the concept of "nothing." It can easily sound like total BS, but ... people actually -- and with reasonable reliability -- experience it, can talk about it with each other, it is easily visible, and it has transformative value, people do become more competent, more effective, happier, fully self-expressed, etc. Call it "clearing away the cobwebs," perhaps. Again, clarity itself. No content.
Okay, sorry about confusing you, that's not my goal. You are referring to "bulk behavior," that more or less assumes that Muslims and Jews and Christians "worship the same God." Sort of. But each of those categories covers a huge variety of actual beliefs. Some Christian concepts of God are very different from some Muslim concepts. When I said that there is no "over" I meant that I wasn't rejecting anything by accepting Islam. And when I said that there is no "other" (religion), I meant that "lslam" is a name -- this is standard -- for the natural relationship of the human to Reality.
(That's very standard Islam, only I use the term Reality to refer to God. Color me ecumenical.)
What "other religions," then? Buddhism is actually a whole set of religions, there is a huge variation. Many Buddhists don't accept the "Buddhist mythology," just the actual practice, the psychology, if you will. Buddhism has been considered an "atheist religion," because some forms don't refer to a deity at all. My interest, though, is in what those who actually practice Buddhism experience. Why would I be interested in rejecting this or in thinking my own experience superior?
I'm not sure what "supernatural" means. Out of the ordinary? But isn't deep rationalism out of the ordinary? What are we talking about?
There is something called, loosely, "causeless joy." Call it "existential joy." Is it real? I really don't know, I just know that it's really cool! In the end, whatever I experience is a state of the brain, a pile of patterns, right? Except for one thing. What is this "I" that supposedly is having this experience? There is a pile of patterns, that's a practically universal understanding -- and very Buddhist, the skandhas. But is there anything else? I'd say, sure, but I can't prove it. What else there is, I'll call Reality. I can't prove that Reality exists, but so what?
I don't talk about "belief in God," not for myself. Certainly many people use this language, but, for me, and in my reading of the Qur'an, the issue is a basic relationship with Reality. What you pointed out from EY was a kind of trust in Reality, he called it the Universe.
Is Reality sentient? That would be more of the issue, eh? I don't know. I am simply moved to trust it.
Now, as to the Qur'an, it's pretty simple. It's not that the Qur'an is "untranslatable," per se, it is that each word in Arabic has a huge number of possible meanngs, and to translate it into English requires choosing English meanings, and the English set of meanings for a word is often very different from the Arabic set of meanings. So by translating it, one is "specifying" the meaning more than what was present in the original (and/or possibly adding new meanings). And this is necessarily limited by the understanding of the translator. From what I've seen, the best isn't nearly good enough, and the task is largely impossible, unless one replaces a "translation" with an explanation that covers every possible meaning of a text, and that would be ... huge. And would still doubtless be incomplete.
Two of the followers of the Prophet were arguing about the text. One said it went a certain way, call it A. The other said, no, it was B. So they went to the Prophet. He listened to the first, and said, "Yes." He listened to the second, and said, "Yes." And then he said that the Qur'an was revealed in seven dialects, and that each dialect carried seven levels of meaning.
It might help to understand that "seven" is common Arabic usage for "many." That tradition is a commonly-accepted one. It kind of blows the fundamentalists out of the water.
The Qur'an calls itself a "reminder." I read that as implying that it will only show us what we already know.
Now, as to the Qur'an, it's pretty simple. It's not that the Qur'an is "untranslatable," per se, it is that each word in Arabic has a huge number of possible meanngs, and to translate it into English requires choosing English meanings, and the English set of meanings for a word is often very different from the Arabic set of meanings.
Is this specific to the Arabic language, or is it just the mismatch there will be between any two languages? I note that Christians take a completely different view of their sacred text: it must be provided to ever...
Every now and then, you see people arguing over whether atheism is a “religion.” As I touch on elsewhere, in “Purpose and Pragmatism,” arguing over the meaning of a word nearly always means that you’ve lost track of the original question.1 How might this argument arise to begin with?
An atheist is holding forth, blaming “religion” for the Inquisition, the Crusades, and various conflicts with or within Islam. The religious one may reply, “But atheism is also a religion, because you also have beliefs about God; you believe God doesn’t exist.” Then the atheist answers, “If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby,” and the argument begins.
Or the one may reply, “But horrors just as great were inflicted by Stalin, who was an atheist, and who suppressed churches in the name of atheism; therefore you are wrong to blame the violence on religion.” Now the atheist may be tempted to reply, “No true Scotsman,” saying, “Stalin’s religion was Communism.” The religious one answers “If Communism is a religion, then Star Wars fandom is a government,” and the argument begins.
Should a “religious” person be defined as someone who has a definite opinion about the existence of at least one God, e.g., assigning a probability lower than 10% or higher than 90% to the existence of Zeus? Or should a “religious” person be defined as someone who has a positive opinion (say, a probability higher than 90%) on the existence of at least one God? In the former case, Stalin was “religious”; in the latter case, Stalin was “not religious.”
But this is exactly the wrong way to look at the problem. What you really want to know—what the argument was originally about—is why, at certain points in human history, large groups of people were slaughtered and tortured, ostensibly in the name of an idea. Redefining a word won’t change the facts of history one way or the other.
Communism was a complex catastrophe, and there may be no single why, no single critical link in the chain of causality. But if I had to suggest an ur-mistake, it would be . . . well, I’ll let God say it for me:
This was likewise the rule which Stalin set for Communism, and Hitler for Nazism: if your brother tries to tell you why Marx is wrong, if your son tries to tell you the Jews are not planning world conquest, then do not debate him or set forth your own evidence; do not perform replicable experiments or examine history; but turn him in at once to the secret police.
I suggested that one key to resisting an affective death spiral is the principle of “burdensome details”—just remembering to question the specific details of each additional nice claim about the Great Idea.2 This wouldn’t get rid of the halo effect, but it would hopefully reduce the resonance to below criticality, so that one nice-sounding claim triggers less than 1.0 additional nice-sounding claims, on average.
The diametric opposite of this advice, which sends the halo effect supercritical, is when it feels wrong to argue against any positive claim about the Great Idea.
Politics is the mind-killer. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all favorable claims, and argue against all unfavorable claims. Otherwise it’s like giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or stabbing your friends in the back.
If . . .
. . . then the affective death spiral has gone supercritical. It is now a Super Happy Death Spiral.
When it comes to our original question—“What makes the slaughter?”—the key category to pay attention to isn’t religion as such. The best distinction I’ve heard between “supernatural” and “naturalistic” worldviews is that a supernatural worldview asserts the existence of ontologically basic mental substances, like spirits, while a naturalistic worldview reduces mental phenomena to nonmental parts. Focusing on this as the source of the problem buys into religious exceptionalism. Supernaturalist claims are worth distinguishing, because they always turn out to be wrong for fairly fundamental reasons.3 But it’s still just one kind of mistake.
An affective death spiral can nucleate around supernatural beliefs—particularly monotheisms whose pinnacle is a Super Happy Agent, defined primarily by agreeing with any nice statement about it—and particularly meme complexes grown sophisticated enough to assert supernatural punishments for disbelief. But the death spiral can also start around a political innovation, a charismatic leader, belief in racial destiny, or an economic hypothesis. The lesson of history is that affective death spirals are dangerous whether or not they happen to involve supernaturalism. Religion isn’t special enough, as a class of mistake, to be the key problem.
Sam Harris came closer when he put the accusing finger on faith. If you don’t place an appropriate burden of proof on each and every additional nice claim, the affective resonance gets started very easily. Look at the poor New Agers. Christianity developed defenses against criticism, arguing for the wonders of faith; New Agers culturally inherit the cached thought that faith is positive, but lack Christianity’s exclusionary scripture to keep out competing memes. New Agers end up in happy death spirals around stars, trees, magnets, diets, spells, unicorns . . .
But the affective death spiral turns much deadlier after criticism becomes a sin, or a gaffe, or a crime. There are things in this world that are worth praising greatly, and you can’t flatly say that praise beyond a certain point is forbidden. But there is never an Idea so true that it’s wrong to criticize any argument that supports it. Never. Never ever never for ever. That is flat. The vast majority of possible beliefs in a nontrivial answer space are false, and likewise, the vast majority of possible supporting arguments for a true belief are also false, and not even the happiest idea can change that.
And it is triple ultra forbidden to respond to criticism with violence. There are a very few injunctions in the human art of rationality that have no ifs, ands, buts, or escape clauses. This is one of them. Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever.
1Link: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lf/purpose_and_pragmatism/.
2It’s not trivial advice. People often don’t remember to do this when they’re listening to a futurist sketching amazingly detailed projections about the wonders of tomorrow, let alone when they’re thinking about their favorite idea ever.
3See, for example, “Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions” in Map and Territory.