Thou shalt have no God besides Human Reason!
And Sam Harris came down from the mountain, and said unto the assembled:
Let us hope that Stark’s candor inspires others in our government to admit their doubts about God. Indeed, it is time we broke this spell en masse. Every one of the world’s “great” religions utterly trivializes the immensity and beauty of the cosmos. Books like the Bible and the Koran get almost every significant fact about us and our world wrong. Every scientific domain  from cosmology to psychology to economics  has superseded and surpassed the wisdom of Scripture.
Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.
Exterminate the brutes.
Personally, I wish that politicians wouldn’t pretend to be religious if they aren’t, just as I wish Al Gore wouldn’t pretend to understand climatology. This Romantic heroism of disillusionment crap, though . . . it’s really stale.
Meanwhile, Patterico points out forensic problems with the lefty conspiracy timeline in the US Attorneys flap.
Slopes getting slipperier: Global warming to blame?
I’m not even a believer, and I find this mind-bogglingly stupid. The Bible may not be scientifically rigorous, but it says a lot of important things about how to behave toward one’s neighbors and loved ones.
I may not be a believer in the Ascension, but I’m definitely a believer in forgiveness and charity and love.
The irony is that blowhards like this guy do much more to harm their cause than they do to advance it. With friends like this…
Is that you channeling Kurtz, or are you claiming that Harris is doing so?
“The masses believe a wrong thing” is not the same statement as “The masses cannot help but believe a wrong thing, and so must be removed”. Go ask Mr Goldstein about that ontologigger again…
To be honest I feel sorry for Mr Harris. His fear of the unknown, or the possibility that God does exist, must tear him apart. When I read articles like his, the only point that sticks out, is his obvious fear…God have mercy on his soul, the poor bastard
David Ross–
He blames the “balkanization of the world” on religion. How is one mythos to be sacrificed to another?
National Review had an interesting review of the Sam Harris, and two other anti-Religion books, in the issue that came home last week.
Harris is just a man in need of love.
Dan Collins: “How is one mythos to be sacrificed to another?”
Don’t ask me. Your comment was about Sam Harris’s method – so ask him. What is his prescription? You have hinted that Harris recommends the methods of Heart of Darkness: conquest and terror, with ultimate plans for genocide. I demand that you prove that Harris has suggested this, or else that you retract your snark.
I am partial to grapefruit in my juiceboxes, by the way.
Demand away. Is it possible to allude figuratively? Does he not, in fact, summon the spectre of a specious, less valid consciousness? Where does this inevitably lead us? Is not atheism, when it becomes so passionate, not itself as divisive as any of these religions? Is his argument meant rhetorically to totalize?
I don’t believe his rhetoric is justified. I don’t believe that his characterizations are true. I will respond to him in any way that I see fit, and if you don’t like it, too bad.
(emphasis mine)
Geez, I’ve been around the Evangelical circles but I missed this groundswell of intolerance. I also appreciate Harris connecting fanatic (Dominionist?) Christians to Muslim Radicals being as they share all of those bombings and beheadings and airplane hijackings and…
Oh, wait a minute…
Speaking of Mr. Goldstein, the lack of other attribution in the title of this post led me to believe that he had written it, until I got down to the end. I realize that there are people who can look straight at giant blinking red letters spelling out DAN COLLINS and still credit (or rather, blame) Jeff for the post, but that doesn’t mean you should forget them entirely.
And I agree with (most of) the quoted bits of the article. Glancing through the whole thing, though, shows Harris to be an arrogant, pompous ass. But I’m pretty sure I knew that already.
Does he not, in fact, summon the spectre of a specious, less valid consciousness? Where does this inevitably lead us?
Dunno. Do you believe that hippy trippy dippy neo-pagan airheads who believe they can feel, like, emanations from the wounded Gaia have a “specious, less valid consciousness”? Do you therefore want to exterminate them for it?
I am perpetually amazed by how dogmatic athiest can be, for all of the talk about doubt their assertions are remarkably concrete.
This is not just an absolute claim to higher knowledge, it is a creed that promises another path to enlightenment. One that purports to be evidence based, but in the absence of such evidence, amounts to nothing more than another type of faith.
Is it just me, or if this was really happening, don’t you think that would get more play in the media? Just some more moral equivalence bullshit, I guess. I am sure there are plenty of alleged Christians who may call for the deaths of homosexuals (by my reckoning more than one = plenty in only that it is such a sickening interpretation of Jesus’ love and compassion), but they are quite appropriately marginalized and defanged.
These idiots who try to equate True, or Muhammed’s and his immediate followers’, Islam with true, or Jesus’ and his disciples’, Christianity are as dangerous as the islamofascist shits they allegedly oppose. Please re-read the Koran and the Bible (preferably the NEW testament) and get back with me on this one, Mr. Harris. The biggest problem in this world is that we have too many people practicing Muhammed’s brand if Islam and not enough people practicing Jesus’ brand of Christianity. I’m not being a religionist, either. I just chose the two biggest and arguably most influential religions in the world.
The Secularism touted by the radical atheists is nothing more than a religion into itself. Heck, these guys even have their own Pantheon of “gods” (with a little “G” on purpose) (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, etc.). I figure if there is ever any future call for the burning of heretics in this country, figuratively or otherwise, it’ll be from these guys before it’ll be from any mainstream Christian association.
TPN: Well said!
Those Christian Dominionists are howling, howling I tells ya for the blood of homosexuals and heathens. Hey, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Angie is right about this: What a pompous ass.
OTOH: Do dominionists play dominos? Order pizza from Dominos? Practice and believe in world domination? Occasionally visit a dominatrix?
Dominonists! Dominos! Domination! Dominatrix!
Such fun words…
All bronze age civilizations reached a roughly equivelent level of scientific understanding in their development. Most had a degree of understanding about near astronomy, rudimentary physics, in some cases complex math, the calendar, post and lintel engineering and some level of chemistry and biology. However, every one of them reached that point, past general observation where theoretic science starts, and stagnated with the exception of Christian culture.
Sure, I’m aware at the Catholic Church’s resistence to many early scientific theories. To be sure, they challenged the concepts that opposed the dogma of the time. However, it was predominately Christian Europe that took over all major scientific discovery in the theoretical sciences.
The reason for that is that every other society had either a pantheon of chaotic Gods that did things for emotional or irrational reasons or were told that the physical universe’s only signifigance was that it was to be escaped. There was no reason to study past observations because “the Gods” didn’t have consistency of action. Christian scientist believed that God was a God of order and that by undrstanding the order of his creation you could understand the nature of God. Therefore, everything worked togather for a reason. If you couldn’t understand the reason then you just weren’t looking at the problem right, but the order was there.
Darwin, Linneaus, Mendel, Flemming, Lamarck, Smith, Hutton, Lyell, and many other scientist have one thing in common. They all had theological degrees. Yes, they disputed and overturned many religous explainations about the natural world but none of them ever considered that things are hopelessly chaotic because they believed in a God of order.
Studing science and believing in science over the divine explainations is still a relatively young concept. Likewise, scientist today do work that stands on the foundation of these theist obsevations and experiments. Sam Harris may consider himself to be vastly educated beyond the scope of religion but he his blythely ignorant about it’s imput and influence on the sciences.
I’d also add to that which any intellectually honest scientist would admit: The data you base reality on is only one experiment away from being totally wrong. Just ask the guy that said the world is flat. That was science.
Harris is like and idiot version of Chris Hitchens. Like, all of the atheistic furor but no hard-bitten thunder, humor or depth. Hitchens is respectable in some ways—in a similar fashion to Fallaci.
The fact, that perhaps will never get driven into some folks’ skulls is, that faith and reason are not incompatible but complementary. There is no good faith without reason (Faith without truth is heresy?) and there is no good reason without a form of faith in certain pre-supposed truths.
Einstein knew that his theory was correct before anyone ever verified the observations that proved it (his general theory anyway). So, as I see it, no matter how scientific you are, you still have faith in science. As a scientist, and while these global warming alarmists are quite unscientific they still provide an excellent example, you often have faith in something that is not proven. Faith in your gut feelings and intuition is actually an essential part of the scientific method. Without it, science would not advance. Nobody would hypothesize.
So while God is not scientifically verifiable, having faith that he will be is no more of a leap than Einstein’s first insight into the universe, if that’s what your intuition leads you to believe.
I just try and remain open to possibilities. The scientific method is stringent, as it should be, but what good is science without possiblities?
I’ve always believed it takes as much faith to be an atheist as it does to believe in God. And to quote a famous agnostic, GB Shaw, “You can’t blame God for religion.”
Some of the greatest music ever written actually. But God must have a great sense of humor given how wincingly awful most of contemporary Christian music is these days.
Considering I’m subjected to it by my wife, I’m convinced it more like one of the plagues that Egypt suffered.
The purpose of religion isn’t to explain how the universe is put together  to describe the properties of the hydrogen atom or to tell us what the surface temps were “in the beginning”  but to help one overcome one’s failings and flaws. It’s an internal experience of transformation and transcendence, not an explanatory model for the movement of the spheres.
People get in trouble when they try to read scripture as a scientific text or scientific data as a religious text. You can’t infer the size of the universe from Genesis any more than you can get lessons in ethics from the fossil record.
However, some people just plain aren’t interested in what religion has to offer, and of course they are free to decline to participate. Unfortunately, the true nature of religion is then closed to them; they continue to lash out at bizarre strawmen that are unrecognizable to believers. The debate then just gets ugly, because people are coming from such a radically different set of assumptions about reality that they can only talk past each other.
Kinda like Left and Right discussing the WoT, ne?
I’d also add to that which any intellectually honest scientist would admit: The data you base reality on is only one experiment away from being totally wrong.
This is true.
Just ask the guy that said the world is flat. That was science.
This is not. It is an observation. Anyone who noticed that ships can sail out of sight, off the apparent edge of the planet, and return safely could guess that the surface of the Earth is curved.
In any case, this was not “science” in any meaningful way, since it involved no systematic testing of the hypothesis. Those who did do such tests (admittedly few) discovered that the Earth was curved.
Your assertions about scientific history are likewise wrong. This part in particular:
Sure, I’m aware at the Catholic Church’s resistence to many early scientific theories.
taken with this:
There was no reason to study past observations because “the Gods†didn’t have consistency of action.
is simply breathtaking.
Am I the only one who suspects that Harris is a charlatan? He confesses to having been a vagabond, he suddenly gains prominence as an anti-religion speaker and writer. He claims to be studying neuro science but won’t say where, that is, he does not have academic credentials but he claims to be getting them, but it’s impossible to check his claim . . .
I would have liked for him to explain the 7% or so who aren’t Christian but still believe the Bible is the literal word of God, what an odd lot they must be.
And while the Bible may have muffed the details a bit, flat earth and all that, if taken as a figurative and poetic oral history it is a fairly impressive bit of work. The order of creation in Genesis fits remarkably well with the current theory of evolution, for instance. And Cain and Abel are a pretty good parable about the probable growing pains as we developed agriculture, animal husbandry and civilization.
Whenever I get sucked into discussions with activist atheists or too-proud Christians, I tend to retreat into poking through Thomas Sowell’s book “Conflict of Visions”.
Tends to focus the mind.
And how much Zyklon-B have priests manufactured, exactly?
I’m gonna put my copy of “Dogma” in the DVD and see what all the fuss is about.
I’m not even a believer, and I find this mind-bogglingly stupid. The Bible may not be scientifically rigorous, but it says a lot of important things about how to behave toward one’s neighbors and loved ones.
So what? That does nothing to validate theism; the Bible is a book written by humans who held certain ethical ideas. There is nothing to stop a particular faith from adopting as truth something that actually happens to BE true.
You just need to go outside of religion—i.e. use your reasoning mind—to discover that it is true.
Make up enough BS and sooner or later you are going to get something right. That’s called “luck”.
The followers of religion that managed to get just about everything wrong aren’t likely to last longer than one generation.
To be honest I feel sorry for Mr Harris. His fear of the unknown, or the possibility that God does exist, must tear him apart.
Funny, it’s Dan Collins who seems to be freaked out about something that isn’t there.
He blames the “balkanization of the world†on religion. How is one mythos to be sacrificed to another?
Have you actually read any history? Until the Enlightenment came along with “Come and let us reason together”, world history consisted largely of religio-political leaders asking “how do we sacrifice the heretics?”
Why is your reaction to a mere criticism of religion, the dogmatic assumption that it must lead to, well, the kind of behaviour that is historically associated *with* religion? Is it because that’s the only disagreement you think is possible?
Is not atheism, when it becomes so passionate, not itself as divisive as any of these religions?
When was the last time a war was fought over different disbeliefs?
This is not just an absolute claim to higher knowledge, it is a creed that promises another path to enlightenment.
Hmmmm… according to the history I know, the era in which this “creed” rose to prominence was actually called the “Enlightenment”.
However, some people just plain aren’t interested in what religion has to offer, and of course they are free to decline to participate.
That’s because there is nothing true that religion happens to offer that cannot be grasped by reason.
Is that a trick question?
I’m pretty comfortable in reconciling science with my faith and I have yet to encounter any direct contradictions between the two.
Especially since science has a very difficult time in explaining what caused the Big Bang.
Umm..
Let me put it to you this way, Seerak…
There are two forms of A priori knowledge, and neither of them are reason. There is the Intellect, which would be for instance, what one such as Einstein would have utilized; and there is Revelation. Say I know the number of kids you have despite the fact you’ve never told me. What does that mean? Did I just guess? What if I didn’t? Can your reason explain that? Or, does your reason lead you to validate the existence of something greater than mere reason or what is apprehendable by it? I would not deny the importance of reason; clearly those who do NOT reason are certainly in dire straits. But there is a source which lies beyond the faculty of reason to interpret physical cues and observations.
If you have ever simply ‘known’ something without any empirical evidence you have probably experienced intellection if not potentially revelation.
Its also not impossible to receive a revelation on ah, really minor and trivial things. It goes without saying that not only did and does God reveal himself in particular and specific ways (I.e. Jesus Christ) but in a continual, general fashion.
It is precisely this position and/or understanding that permits one to for the first time (and thereafter) begin to see the universe for what it really is.
Call it a ‘decisive intuition’ if you will. You cannot ask me to prove what I just said; it is not empirically provable (or, not within foreseeable future to me.)
If you want to, as a person grounded in reason, grasp the very beginning, the edge of what God is, perhaps consider the void; not the sucking void of destruction but the void of an unfurnished room, or an unplanted garden; now consider that this void represents (depending on its size) a space of potential. This is reasonable and undeniable. Now conceive that this ‘void’ is all of material existence before it came to be. This infinite potential points to the creative power of God. Or, moreover, it is this space in the mind that inspires an infinite number of plans and ideas; shapes, forms and so forth. Ad infinitum.
It is in this similar fashion that God’s image is printed on the whole of the Cosmos unmistakably.
I would argue that you are precisely wrong- and I have empirical evidence of this- that the reasoning mind leads back to God inextricably. Because this is precisely what happened to myself.
Out of doubt was born a void; and that void was a potential; and God filled that space with grace.
Amen, biatches.
*As somebody once said, you can block a child from all knowledge of any myth, but you cannot take away from him the innate need for mythology.
*
I always liked Fallaci line: “I am an atheist, thank God. And I have no intention of letting myself be killed for it.”
*There’s a good interview with Sam Harris in Wired from last autumn. In it, he’s happily describing how we’ll all smarten up one day, and subsequently be unable to understand why were so deluded for so long. “Suddenly I notice in myself a protective feeling toward Harris. Here is a man who believes that a great global change, perhaps the most important cultural change in the history of humanity, will occur out of sheer intellectual embarrassment.”
*
Bad example. That actually originates from some time earlier. And quite a lot of heretic-sacrificing got done in the lately concluded century, too–they were called counter-revolutionaries, kulaks, wreckers, etc., instead.
Harris is something, but it is not an intellect. Intellection involves more than a mere collection and sorting of material facts. He has moments of what appears to be intellect (but who knows.) He’s dead flat, IMO. I may disagree with Hitchens about religions being the source of all trouble, but I can tell behind the eyes he’s struggling with God in his own way.
The response you noted, Sanity Inspector, is indicative of a religious drive (that is universal–) which can even be seen in Harris himself. It is really, completely true that ‘Those who do not believe in God will believe in anything.’
The question is not at times ‘Do you believe in God’ (for they say even the demons do.) But instead, how much…
Or, God forbid, if you try to make the self God. That is the very incarnation of the complete potential of evil within man himself – with or without the adversary’s help.
With friends like these, who needs enemies…
In a sense, I agree with Harris, that we are going to slowly ‘wake up’. But the result of this awakening will not be at all what he expects or calculates it will be.
C’est la vie.
For me the question is how to define God, I kind of know what makes sense to me, but it is not an easy thing to communicate. Especially to lightweights like Harris who can’t seem to get past the notion of a white-haired old dude on a throne in the sky.
The current science of the big bang says we can’t know anything about before it. As to atheists having gods, well, they have the advantage of their gods actually existing…
I used to believe in God, but increasingly I find myself believing in Jesus Christ.
As someone very wisely observed a long way back in this thread, what we need is more people following the message of Christ and fewer people following the message of Muhammad.
Christ was a man. The Church is just a construct.
Yet if not for the Church, we would nowadays know nothing of Christ. Or much else that we call Western Civilization, for that matter.
Angie,
And your proof would be?
The key discoveries in genetics we made by Christian Europe. The key advances in andvanced Math and physics were made in Christian Europe. Chemistry, Geology, and Biology were all specialized in Christian Europe.
So did eveyone in Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas just get dumb after they discovered the calender, simple math and remedial medicine? I don’t think so. But the fact is that there cultures were not the ones that produced mixed gas law, the theory of superposition, avagardo’s number or evolution. The didn;t come up with any of the theories like that because behind the reason for science lied the simple question: Why?
When the reason for thunderstorms is because the god of the east wind and the god of the west wind are wrestling, there isn’t a motivation for understanding wind patterns or barametric pressure. When the reason for earthquakes is that the great crab inside the earth is venting his anger, there isn’t any reason to look at the difference between felsic and mafic lava flow compositions.
However, in Christian Europe, where the earth is assumed to be God’s creation, understanding the nature of it’s design would provide insight into the designer. Likewise, the universe is expected to be ordered due to the fact it was created by one ordered God.
Am I saying that every scientist was a Christian? No. Am I saying that every expeiment was sanctioned or even supported by the Church? No. However, the fact reamins that they lived in a Christian society and were subject to the concept of an orderly universe created by God every day of thier lives. In that society, there was a motivation for both experimentation and the expectation that all matter functioned in an orderly, observeable, verifiable fashion.
And as far as the flat earth part, you made my point. It was and obseration that was taken as science until a person, in Christian Europe by the way, noticed the irregularity and posulated a theory and proved it.
If you care to dismiss what I say, thats fine but every science book I own has a bunch of Christian Eruopeans discovering things like Calculus, genes and Radioactivity. All the other cultures, not so much, or at least not until they westernized and sent their kids to school in Europe.
Seerak you might want to reconsider invoking the Enlightenment, or at least refresh your understanding of the history of the age of Reason.
Start by attempting to identify any single noted thinker of that age who ever esposed a creed that even remotely resembles Harris’ assertion that
You do understand the definition of Deism, don’t you?
The current science of the big bang says we can’t know anything about before it. As to atheists having gods, well, they have the advantage of their gods actually existing…
Fascinating stuff, this talking about ‘before the big bang’. So we do know something about it, it’s there. But we can’t know anything more about it therefore we can’t really prove this but trust me the big bang is there. If this is science then what is ‘belief in God’?
Consciousness and creation are ongoing quantum events. Science looks at creation like a point in time and so it appears that way. God is more of a probability where the odds can rise greatly depending on how you are looking. The act of viewing affects the observed, kind of like God rewarding your faith. This is a scientific [Heisenburg] and spiritual [Aquinas] dictum.
Maybe. But there is no Sunni Church and still the knowledge has come down.
Andy, its not so hard. Look at this analogy: you can tell that something has blown up, but you can’t tell what sorts of things it did before it was blown up.
The evidence for the Big Bang is sort of straighforward, and explained several pop science books.
Like the one with the quotation, “Let there be light.”
<ducks, runs, gets hit anyway>
Angie Schultz said: Do you believe that hippy trippy dippy neo-pagan airheads who believe they can feel, like, emanations from the wounded Gaia have a “specious, less valid consciousness� Do you therefore want to exterminate them for it?
Well, I can’t say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind, but being a decent person I bat it down and don’t encourage it.
Well, the extermination part. I don’t bat down the specious, less valid part.
No, I don’t. But where people have made a god of “reason,” history shows that the effects have been, let’s say, subpar. There is no equivalent to love thy brother as thyself in reason.
As for the hippies, I don’t blame them for the balkanization of the world.
It’s a funny thing, though, the way that Sec Proggs can bemoan the passing of a civilization or a language, can worship exotic cultures and their beliefs, can read Carlos Castaneda, can believe that medical insurance ought to cover craniosacral therapy, yet believe that the Abrahamic religions are despicable.
It’s all the moral absolutes, Dan. Those darn Abrahamic religions just don’t have the moral flexibilty to allow for all the stuff that we do iIn Vegas while under Johnny walker judgement without telling us that we’re wrong. Now, God knows we don’t want a God that will actually tell me I’m wrong. I just want the spiritual ATM card of free blessings