Every Atheist Needs: "Waking Up" by Sam Harris

[rug]

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Godless Mom

Boy! You think you a know a person (from reading tweets), and then they go and write something so beautifully surprising and delightfully different. The atheist community has some amazing authors, and Sam Harris is definitely already one of them, but nothing has been written like this before. Nothing.

First, the style. This could have easily been a dry book with no personality and and an intense snooze-factor, but with Sam’s intelligent wit and frequent use of openly honest personal stories, this was anything but dull. The small glimpses into Mr. Harris’ past as someone who has an obvious passion for understanding consciousness and the human mind, and someone who has traveled to remote corners of the world to practice meditation found me mesmerized. I couldn’t stop turning the pages.

I think the thing I enjoyed the most about this aspect of the book, was that his personal stories grounded him. He’s so extremely down to earth, and that’s the absolute last thing an atheist expects from a book about spirituality and meditation. The anecdotes will surprise you, though. Sam appears, in his talks and debates, to be utterly collected. I mean, he’s always the calm one, the sane one, the one tethered to reality. He keeps a steady cool as he talks, with the only interruption being an eyebrow lift when he utters something brilliant that he knows will make the crowd laugh. He’s got a charisma that doesn’t lend itself easily to imagining him upset, angry or frustrated. Ever. So, when he writes stuff like this:

The moment I heard the first drops, I was transformed into a hapless, uncomprehending, enraged man racing down a staircase. I’m sure I would have comported myself with greater dignity had I come upon the scene of a murder.

It’s not only totally unexpected, but helps us relate to him as absolutely human. This led me to truly understand the central point of the entire book. He wants us to see the benefit of meditation. The Sam he paints unravelling down the stairs is so vastly different from the Sam we see at debates, and after reading this book, I am sure that his long and colourful history with meditation plays a strong role in how cool and collected he is in the public eye.

http://godlessmom.com/every-atheist-needs-waking-up-by-sam-harris/

[phil89]

1. The benefits of meditation are

Empirically validated... And have nothing to do with atheism. Why would anyone assume it's at odds with a position of rejecting claims of a god's existence?

[rug]

2. It looks like he's addressing the concept of spirituality in his book.

That could present a conundrum for some types of materialists.