Sam Harris Strikes Again
Thanks, once again, Sam Harris!
Paul Campos pens a God-awful column in today's Rocky Mountain News, in
which he gets to slam secularists as sadistic pedophiles thanks to the
good offices of my favorite atheist mystic, Sam Harris. [DEL: I
haven't the time or the inclination to rip it completely to shreds,
but I'll note some of the highlights. :DEL] Time for a fisking.
Campos, pretends that (1) the fact that human beings can disagree
means that knowledge from evidence and logic (as opposed to blind
faith) is impossible, and (2) that the mysticism of Sam Harris (which
I detail more in the first link) is "the" alternative to said blind
faith.
'If you talk to God," the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz observed,
"that's called 'prayer.' If God talks to you, that's called
'schizophrenia.' " Szasz was making an ironic observation about how
the definitions of concepts like "reason" and "madness" are
controversial and politicized.
In his much-discussed book The End of Faith, Sam Harris says
something that sounds similar, but lacks Szasz's ironical nuance:
"Jesus Christ - who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated
death and rose bodily into the heavens - can now be eaten in the
form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite
Burgundy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt
that a lone subscriber to these beliefs would be considered mad?"
What irony can be found in Harris' polemic, which is dedicated to
proving that religious belief consists of irrational superstitions
which are increasingly dangerous in this technologically advanced
age, is almost exclusively of the unintentional kind.
Harris wants us to reject "faith" and embrace "reason," by which he
pretty much means the philosophical view known as materialism, with
a dab of vaguely Buddhist mysticism thrown into the metaphysical
mix.
Even if Campos had discarded Harris's gratuitous Buddhism and focused
his attack on "materialism", he would have had an easy go at smearing
secularism. One of the most common misconceptions about a non-mystical
view of the universe is, after all, that it necessarily entails the
sort of deterministic, "billiard-ball" notion of causality we see in
the next paragraph. This is patently absurd when one considers the
idea that free will is a different type of causation. Free will
manifestly exists. The fact that we cannot explain it yet does not
invalidate reason as a means to knowledge, nor does it mean we can
just make up whatever else we like while we're ignorant about the
point.
Materialism is the view that at bottom reality consists of nothing
but particles in fields of force, and that all events are caused
solely by the operation of mindless physical laws. Several things
should be noted about this belief. First, believing in materialism
is an act of faith like any other. The ultimate nature of reality
isn't a scientific question, and anyone who expects science to
provide answers regarding such matters doesn't understand either
science or religion.
Campos is correct when he says that "The ultimate nature of reality
isn't a scientific question...." This is something I, a secularist and
a scientist, have pointed out myself. But in doing so, I have pointed
out that many sloppily substitute terms like "science" or
"materialism" -- or both, in the case of really sloppy writers like
Campos -- for "reason". Indeed, it is the faculty of reason that
allows man to grasp the nature of reality through the appropriate
discipline, the discipline of philosophy, of which religion is at best
a primitive first stab. Later on, I will deal with Campos's assertion
that rejecting faith as a means of knowledge (or, as he phrases it,
"believing in materialism") is, in and of itself, an "act of faith".
Now, so far, it would seem that I am being a tad bit unfair to Campos.
Certainly, if this were all he said, that would be the case, because
Sam Harris, who claims to be a neuroscientist and is famous for having
written The End of Faith, is certainly guilty of scientism. But as you
will see, Harris's sins allow Campos, in condemning them, to pose
behind the mask of piety while cashing in on Harris's crimes against
intellectual honesty.
In fact, Campos begins in short order.
Second, the debate about whether the world is ultimately a
meaningless flux or something more has been going on for thousands
of years. The belief that materialism is a product of
post-Enlightenment thought in general and modern science in
particular is itself a product of historical ignorance.
Third, while Harris is quite right that many religious doctrines
sound outrageous to nonbelievers (they often sound outrageous to
believers as well), those who worship in the temple of materialism
fail to consider how outrageous their beliefs can sound to the
uninitiated.
Consider three statements: 1. Torturing a child for one's own
sexual gratification is evil. 2. Shakespeare is a better writer
than George Lucas. 3. Human beings have free will. An
intellectually honest materialist must reject all these claims. At
most, he can recharacterize them in much weaker forms. So, for
example, he can observe that in our society sadistic pedophilia is
considered evil, and that it's this social judgment that determines
the content of morality.
Harris's comments on the strangeness of various religious doctrines
are mostly on the money and come from the implicitly rational first
parts of his book. In the later, new-agey sections, Harris makes all
kinds of hokey statements, like when he smuggles in altruism while
attempting to discuss a "rational" foundation for morality, and ends
up spouting off the following nonsense:
[W]e can see that one could desire to become more loving and
compassionate for purely selfish reasons. This is a paradox, of
sorts, because these attitudes undermine selfishness, by
definition. (!) (191-192)
Things like this makes him, as a "defender" of secularism, easy prey
for someone like Campos, who wants to use problems caused by Harris's
fundamental irrationality to attack his rational facade.
Campos tosses in the argument from intimidation for good measure when
he says that, "An intellectually honest materialist must reject all
these claims." Were Campos himself intellectually honest, he might go
about proving why any one of these claims necessarily contradicts a
secular outlook. Or, since he later discards proof as necessary,
perhaps he could explain to us why his "belief" that these positions
are incompatible with secularism should be accepted above all others.
Or, at least, since he seems to think that secularism is not
necessarily false, he could explain why he took the time to write this
column and get it published. (The level of evasion professional
writers can get away with in our current cultural climate positively
flabbergasts me! Would electroshock treatments or a lobotomy perhaps
further my writing career? But I digress....)
I'll take just one of the three points I supposedly can't defend as an
example. Harris never defines man as "the rational animal", ties
morality to man's life as a standard of value, or explains that
political freedom is the foundation for a proper society because it
allows man to use reason, his tool for survival, unhindered by others.
This is what makes Harris and his ilk unable to explain why, exactly,
torturing a child for one's sexual gratification is evil (and
criminal), for example. The criminality of this act is easier to
explain: It violates the child's rights. The act is immoral on several
counts it would take too long to explain fully. Among them: (1) Since
torture is not part of life proper to a human being, the torturer
damages his own psychological welfare. (2) The torturer invites
self-destruction via criminal penalties or acts of defense on behalf
of the child. (3) He is injuring someone else outside the context of
self-defense. Pedophilic torture isn't just "considered evil", Mr.
Campos, it is evil, and I know exactly why. The question is whether
Campos really does.
Contrast this with what Campos has to say.
But this recharacterization fails utterly to capture what most
people mean when they say sadistic pedophilia is evil. What they
mean, although they might not articulate it in these terms, is that
torturing a child for sexual pleasure is an outrage to the moral
order of the universe. It is not evil because a particular society
considers it evil: it is simply evil.
How would Campos know this? And how does he know that everyone else
(or anyone else) knows this? And, except for the deterrent of capture
(which even the stupidest criminals seem to grasp), what does any such
moral injunction have about it to motivate compliance? Suppose some
perv finds a "consenting" child and a way not to get caught? He has no
clue about what a proper life is all about and is thus less likely to
consider psychotherapy or even such measures as chemical castration to
prevent himself from performing this monstrous act. Why? Because he
won't understand why this is a monstrous act. He'll just have a list
of do's and don't's, and maybe a fairy tale about eternal hellfire he
may credit.
And on a related note, consider torture in the context of adults. Is
torture "just wrong" or might it be moral in some circumstances? How
would we know when it is alright to torture someone? I don't "just
know". Just yesterday, I noted how people who think things are "just
wrong" are mucking up the ongoing national debate over whether America
ought to outlaw the torture of captured terrorists.
Or consider any other moral issue. Oops! I guess that's why Campos had
to choose such an easy moral question -- or at least one that most
people would be afraid to open up for debate. If something is "just
wrong", you really can't marshal any arguments for why it shouldn't be
done. I guess that's why the likes of Campos find reason so unnerving
that they have to set straw men like Sam Harris ablaze. "Gosh! If
people start stringing too many syllogisms together, they'll toss out
morality!" Better to abandon reason than to, say, apply it to
morality, these types are basically saying.
Interestingly, Campos no only echoes Jonathan David Carson in
attacking the straw man of scientism, he also starts sounding a lot
like Lee Harris, who argued, based on subjectivism, that it is
legitimate to hold a debate about whether Creationism or evolution
accurately describes biodiversity! Note the bold.
Materialism, as a philososphical doctrine, has the great advantage
that it reduces the catalog of things that actually exist to those
which can be investigated by science. It has the great disadvantage
that it requires treating as illusions morality, art, free will,
and much else that most people call "reality." That, of course,
does not make it false. It does, however, make it literally
incredible to anyone who hasn't made the leap of faith materialism
requires. [bold added]
Don Watkins correctly identified the essence of such arguments when he
said:
On the Kantian premise, it doesn't matter why men disagree. Since
truth is determined by man's consciousness, the very fact that men
disagree means there is no truth. So long as some men deny the
Holocaust, whether or not it happened "cannot be considered
settled." So long as some men believe that cannibalism is moral,
the question "cannot be considered settled." And what about the
belief that nothing can be considered settled unless all men agree?
Well, hell, that's just self-evident.
Actually, Campos sounds like Lee Harris, but with a twist. Whereas Lee
Harris argues that there is not truth, Campos simply holds that reason
cannot grasp truth. There is no need for debate, in Campos's mind,
because everything is a matter of faith. While Campos pays lip service
to the notion of reality, his "faith-based world" is for all practical
purposes no different than Lee Harris's socially-constructed world:
Either way, you just go with whatever's on your mind regardless of
facts and logic. (And this shakes out in morality: "Do your own
thing." vs. an arbitrary moral code whose lack of justification can't
answer the obvious question, "Why not do your own thing?")
So for George Lucas -- I mean Paul Campos -- not only is disagreement
among men "just self-evident" as Watkins put it, so is everything
else. Pedophilic torture is "just wrong". And men "just have" free
will. And Shakespeare is "just better" as a writer than George Lucas.
And secularism "just treats as illusory" a whole bunch of territory
that Paul Campos "just knows". The fact that he took the time to write
a lengthy essay on the point indicates to me that, at least on some
level (indicating measures of dishonesty, insecurity, or both), Paul
Campos does not "just know" that faith is the only way to answer moral
questions. Why else would he argue the point at such great length?
(And if, contrary to what I think, he does respect reason, why did he
argue so poorly?)
Campos then ends, not on the note of riteous indignation that
pedophilia/materialism/secularism "deserve", but with the petulant
disdain of an adolescent applying peer pressure.
Indeed, I consider holding beliefs such as that sadistic pedophilia
is evil because it violates the basic moral order of the universe
to be part of a fairly minimal definition of sanity. But then I
lack the materialist's faith.
Translation: "My faith is better than your faith. Neener neener
neener!" How profound. And how relevant.
Belief divorced from evidence and proof is hardly a definition -- even
minimal -- of sanity. It undercuts one's mind and with it, morality
and, if done consistently, it even undercuts sanity.
-- CAV
PS: This reminds me of something I said when reviewing the Sam Harris
book:
[O]ne of my greatest concerns about the book is that it would
"champion some new version of revealed truth as a means of
knowledge. [The book] would then end up aiding religion while
appearing to champion reason."
I would say that that fear has been realized in the sense that Sam
Harris seems to be doing a great job of discrediting reason through
the straw man of the scientism-cum-Buddhism he pretends is reason.
Posted at 10:24 PM. Permalink
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3 Comments:
Yay! What a great fisking. :)
Posted by Blogger Jennifer Snow on November 30, 2005 4:14 PM
I agree with Jennifer above,a great fisking job. The ravages of
pragmatism laid bare.
Posted by Anonymous Michael Neibel on November 30, 2005 8:14 PM
Thanks. One further point, though. Campos's fundamental error is not
that he is making a pragmatist argument.
The fundamental error Campos makes in this essay is epistemological.
He regards faith as a means of acquiring knowledge about the universe.
His personal philosophy could be even more fundamentally flawed, at
the metaphysical level (i.e., primacy of consciousness), but that is
neither evident nor relevant here.
Gus
Posted by Blogger Gus Van Horn on November 30, 2005 11:46 PM
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