Here's something for fellow Atheists to consider 
Even though as a Buddhist the word 'God' is not in our
dictionary, but this article does has its points.
http://www.kenwilber.com/blog/show/191
Journal
The New Atheism is as Flat as a Pancake
November 13, 2006 21:00
(posted by ~C4Chaos)
I just finished reading the recent WIRED
feature on The New Atheism. The trinity of active mainstream
atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett) are at it
again evangelizing the gospel of the God-less society.
For the most part, I agree with them. Belief in God is not required
and it's the cause of so much suffering around the world via
religious extremisms. However, their approach is too
fundamentalistic for my taste. While I personally don't limit the
idea of God to its Christian or Muslim or Jewish concept, I also
don't think that logic and rationalism alone could ever take the
place of faith and religion. It's like saying that integral
calculus can be taught to students without them learning basic
algebra.
The biggest flaw of the New Atheists is that, their ideas, no
matter how rational, are FLAT. They are too
focused attacking the the idea of God without defining which level
of God they're attacking. I say that they're pretty much
attacking the mythic
God. However, they're making a lot of performative
contradictions and thus elevate their own level of God in the
process: the mental
God (read: logic, rational).
But if there's one good thing that the New Atheists are doing, it's
that they're elevating the psychological development of people who
are ready to step out of mythic belief in God. I just hope that
these people don't get stuck in rational level because there are
other higher levels of God that can only be understood and
appreciated once we take a skinny dip into the
trans-rational.
Kudos to the WIRED
article for not buying into the atheistic Kool Aid
"The New Atheists have castigated
fundamentalism and branded even the mildest religious liberals as
enablers of a vengeful mob. Everybody who does not join them is an
ally of the Taliban. But, so far, their provocation has failed to
take hold. Given all the religious trauma in the world, I take this
as good news. Even those of us who sympathize intellectually have
good reasons to wish that the New Atheists continue to seem absurd.
If we reject their polemics, if we continue to have respectful
conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn't
necessarily mean we've lost our convictions or our sanity. It
simply reflects our deepest, democratic values. Or, you might say,
our bedrock faith: the faith that no matter how confident we are in
our beliefs, there's always a chance we could turn out to be
wrong."
(Note: For more details on levels of God and a more-embracing
spirituality, check out the book
Integral Spirituality, and the ISC
portal).
