[MD] The Trouble With Wilber

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Krimel:
...I've invoked Wilber against theism here already. Like all major thought 
systems in history, he can find some truth in it but he also criticizes 
religious conservatives as cognitively underdeveloped mythic thinkers, 
egomaniacs who hide from rational evidence. In this sense, I think both he 
and Pirsig are anti-theistic. And yet they both criticize scientific 
materialism for being spirtually empty. I think they both offer a vision of 
reality that allows us to have spirituality and a brain at the same time.

Marsha asked:
What of the Religious Left?  And the poor, excluded religious middle?  Are 
they keen thinkers?


dmb says:
i suppose there are some people and organizations that could be described as 
members of religious left (Jim Wallace, Paul Tillich, Liberation Theology, 
the Unitarians) but if the religious left is imagined as a movement that can 
act as some kind of counterweight in American politics and culture, I would 
say that there is no such thing as the religious left. And generally 
speaking I'm with Sam Harris. He condemns religious moderates insofar as 
they seems to make the religious right seem legitimate, insofar as they lend 
support to the idea that its okay to believe things for which there is no 
evidence.

Poverty is definately going to have profound effects on a person's 
intellectual development and I think that loss of human potential is a 
great, great evil. This is one of the central reasons that social Darwinism 
freaks me out. It blames the victims of this crime.

How about you, Marsha? Do you think there are acceptable forms of theism? Do 
you think it a good move to fight right-wing theists with left-wing theists? 
Somehow I don't think that's what you meant to imply. I'd guess the problem 
you see here is something more like elitism. If that's the case, I guess I'd 
have to admit that it is a kind of elitism. Wilber definately has a 
hierarchy (holarchy, as he puts it)built right in to his system. That's very 
unpopular these days, but I'd point out that the MOQ also shares this 
feature and it is an important part of the perennial philosophy too. If 
Wilber is correct, the modern West is just about the only culture that 
doesn't rank reality in a hierarchy.

dmb

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