Sep

24

Sam Harris and Religion

Filed Under Books 

Since I don’t have a job yet, I’ve had a lot of time in the last few weeks to do some reading. I picked up several books from the local public library—mostly fiction, and some non-fiction from the Radford University library. I plan to write a couple of book reviews in the next few days.

I found two books by Sam Harris at RU: The End of Faith and A Letter to a Christian Nation. As the titles might suggest, Harris is not a fan of religion, especially not in public life. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford and is supposed to be working on another degree in neuroscience or something like that. He is clearly an atheist.

His two books are polemics against the role of religion. He claims that religion has no place in our modern society. Any good things that religion can provide can be found elsewhere and religion itself is the cause of substantial misery in the world.

Ironically, several of his positions I agree with. He is an ethical realist, which means he thinks there is such a thing as right and wrong (or at least good and bad). He contends that Islamic nations cannot develop democracy overnight because of their religion—there is good empirical evidence to support this claim. He argues that religious moderates are straddling the fence and need to choose one side or the other.

But these points of agreement are far removed from his central ideas. Unfortunately, it can be hard to determine exactly what his central ideas are. I could take a month’s worth of posts and critique his arguments page by page. In the interest of time (and my sanity), I will critique only two main ideas.

First, he argues against the existence of God on traditional modernist grounds. He seems to have been steeped in modern philosophy and theology without seriously considering the claims of religion (Christianity in particular). Hence, his attacks on Christianity actually amount to attacks on the religion more than on the faith or the Bible. Sure, he attacks those too, but most of his theological and interpretational arguments attack Catholic doctrines or seem to imply that the Old Testament civil code demands the obedience of New Testament Christians. A student of the Bible would probably think that he hasn’t actually read the Book. As far as his philosophical attacks on theism go, he floats several arguments that are either circular or poorly formed. They are the kinds of arguments that philosophers like Alvin Plantinga simply ignore because they are so bad.

In fact, Harris’s arguments typically aren’t all that great anywhere. His books read like a high school debate—though he gets away with some things that high school debaters can’t. There is little continuity between his points and he can’t seem to follow an argument all the way through. He makes large logical jumps in difficult sections. He also tends to dismiss major objections to his arguments. Almost surprisingly, he does acknowledge some of the problems, but then summarily dismisses them in the same sentence.

For example—and this is the second main idea—he claims that “questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures” (170-171). This standard is old but has been resurrected by some contemporary philosophers. The problem with this standard is the definitions. What is happiness and what is suffering? How do we tell them apart? He doesn’t even address this. But there is another problem. Suppose I find great happiness in killing people. And suppose that I go to somewhere where there is immense suffering. If I kill all of those people, it makes me happy and relieves them of their suffering. By Harris’s standard, my action would be morally defensible. But even Harris doesn’t think that I would be doing a good thing. He admits that this kind of problem is difficult, but then he leaves right there. In his own words: “Admittedly, the problem of adjudicating what counts as happiness, and which forms of happiness should supercede others, is difficult—but so is every other problem worth thinking about” (End of Faith 185). This is hardly an answer, but it illustrates his method of dealing with serious objections to his position.

Harris resorts to the high school tactics when he reaches logical dilemmas like the previous example. Instead of defending his position, he tends to shift the flow of thought to another argument against religion. He appeals to the emotions and prejudices of his audience rather than to the reason he so vociferously endorses.

Alexander Pope said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Sam Harris has learned a little, but has spoken too soon. He could use some more study in the nature of religion and the logic of his own arguments. He conspicuously neglects any serious, conservative modern theologian or philosopher when he generates his ideas about religion. He uses arguments that have been duly addressed already (or simply absurd on their face)1 as if they are conclusive and beyond dispute. If what he employs is called reason, then let us have faith.


  1. For example, he quotes Bertrand Russell on whether Jesus was a good moral example: “ ‘Apart from logical cogency, there is to me something a little odd about the ethical valuations of those who think that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent Deity, after preparing the ground by many millions of years of lifeless nebulae, would consider Hitler and Stalin and the H bomb.’ This is a devastating observation, and there is no retort to it” (173). It’s nice of Harris to declare that an absurd statement is beyond dispute. back↩

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