08.24.09

Wright, Buddhism, ‘meta-self’, and Darwinism/natural selection

Posted in Evolution, Science & Religion at 12:20 pm by nemo

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23wright.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Robert Wright is hard to figure, as the saying goes. In the same week he regurgitates the most out of date brand of selectionist Darwinism/evo-psych and reports on his attendance at a Buddhist meditation retreat.

Is the contradiction here simply confusion, or is it a deception?

Darwinism and the world of Buddhism can never be made compatible, so therefore we must demand a clarification from Wright, and also a demand that he not try to produce some kind of revisionist Buddhism that is neutralized to be a brand of scientism-compatible dead religion.

Buddhism (and the great tradition of which it is an exemplar) posits a belief in a non-spatial non-temporal ’self’ (or paradoxically no-self?/) that is trans-organismic, experiences multiple births. The path of ‘enlightenment’ is a religious endeavor seeking to transcend this condition.

The point here is that we cannot eviscerate the belief in a non-temporal/non-spatial self (or meta-self) in order to produce agreement with Darwinian confusions.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for Darwinism to work here: the non-spatial/temporal aspect of the organism arises by a mystery we don’t understand, and is not directly accessed via mechanisms such as natural selection.

So no compromise is possible here. Beware of these Darwin hucksters who are hoping to rewrite religion according to their requirments, since they can’t overcome them directly.

Note: Buddhism is traditionally presented with a doctrine of ‘no-self’. Whatever the significance of that, it is no objection to what is said here.

In general there are plenty of fake Buddhists around (this blogger is not actually a buddhist either, but buddhism is useful for discussion, and representative of a whole spectrum of views) who will be glad to compromise here and create a recreational pseudo-Buddhism, with meditation as some kind of relaxion exercise, or stress reduction technique.

Wright tries to use armtwisting here on the issue of natural selection and its creative power. Bullshit.

Never compromise with these people. Despite their media power, they hold a weak hand and have to crash sooner or later.

What is needed here is not more ‘religion’, however, at least not the less disciplined ‘Christian’ brand, but an intelligent secularism that is able to medite the questions of science and religion, a la Kant.

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