Sam Harris in Berkeley

I was in Berkeley last night to see Sam Harris talk about his new book, The Moral Landscape. Harris makes a convincing case for how science, so broadly defined that I think ‘rationality’ really serves as a more appropriate phrase, can allow us to determine right from wrong, or when one of those clear positions is not available, the ethically most optimal behavior.

Harris’s argument really only requires you to accept one assumption – that morality is based on human wellbeing; ie, human suffering (of all kinds, physical, psychological, ‘spiritual’ if you will even) is bad, human happiness and fulfillment, good. I know that many of the religious will lay their objection precisely here – that without God you cannot provide any reason for why human suffering should be considered bad – and yet when Sam Harris asks his audience to imagine the worst possible world, one in which everyone is suffering the maximum amount of suffering possible, he points out that no one would ever find reason to argue that this would be a good or neutral world, whatever their metaphysics. (I could go a lot more into this, but I imagine he does so in a much better way than I could, so for the curious I would read the book.) But it also occurred to me that religion itself often lacks a compelling argument for why human suffering should be considered bad – after all, the concept of original sin has been interpreted by many religious groups to mean we ought to be suffering, that we deserve suffering, and that our lives are hardly about happiness. It is difficult to see why this (and several other) religious metaphysics actually compels us to care about the well being of our fellow human beings any more than our reason and instinctual humanity does.

From there, Harris’s argument is largely common sense or, at least this is how it came across to me. This is not to belittle his accomplishment; to display how clear his argument is, Harris has to cut through a lot of obfuscation caused by outdated philosophical debates and postmodern obsessions about subjectivity.

Of the three biggest “New Atheists,” I have to say Harris is my favorite – his background in philosophy and his interest in transcendent, emotional experience makes him more well-rounded, in my mind, than either Dawkins or Hitchens, and allows him to speak more broadly about the implications of atheism to the human condition, rather than simply discrediting religion and leaving it there. I was particularly impressed by his contribution to this discussion. He still, however, goes after Islam in a way which I feel unfairly leaves out the social and political context of Islamic terrorism - and I will talk much more about that next week, when I post about my recent interview with Reza Aslan – but no one is perfect.

Morals without God? Why not?

This article by Frans De Waal is both very interesting and very confusing. Most of the article is spent explaining De Waal’s and other’s findings on ethical behavior among primates, such as a sense of fairness and genuine altruism. The studies De Waal’s discusses are strong arguments for the evolutionary origins of ethics and morality, and De Waal also wisely dismisses the argument that all animal altruism is selfish, pointing out that if this were the case, all human altruism must be considered selfish, as well.

De Waal then changes track, however, and argues for a conclusion that contradicts with the evidence he has presented. While primates appear to have a basic sense of fairness built into them, De Waal explains, morality as we understand it is only possible with high level thinking. Human ethics becomes morality because we have to imagine scenarios involving more complex questions, and larger groups of people, than primates encounter in small group settings. Therefore, this requires systemization and logic, and, De Waal appears to argue, religion.

Science is not in the business of spelling out the meaning of life and even less in telling us how to live our lives. We, scientists, are good at finding out why things are the way they are, or how things work, and I do believe that biology can help us understand what kind of animals we are and why our morality looks the way it does. But to go from there to offering moral guidance seems a stretch.”

Continue reading…

(Bad) reasons for god

I just watched a video presentation by Timothy Keller. He is a Presbyterian Minister who wrote a book entitled “The Reason for God.” I felt a sense of “Déjà vu all over again” while watching his presentation. I have read a lot of Christian apologist’s books. When you are raised an evangelical Christian and then declare yourself an atheist when you are 18 years old, you get a lot of these books as well-meaning gifts. I have a pretty awesome collection of books by Ravi Zacharias, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, C.S. Lewis, Norman Geisler, and others.

Keller starts with making the same old “atheists are mean” argument. We should respect human beings because because that is the way we would like to be treated. This does not mean we don’t have the right to criticize institutions that have incoherent beliefs or are abusive. This also does not mean that we have to give any degree of deference to ideas that are bad. Do we “respect” the ideas of astrologers? Any atheist who is nasty to religious people should stop. But the ongoing project of pointing out the philosophical problems and bad effects of religion should never cease. Continue reading…

“Spiritual?”

When I hear the word “Spiritual” my eyes roll into the back of my head, and I start to “zone out.” I don’t want to be rude or condescending to people who use that word, but it has no communicative value because there seem to be as many definitions of the word as there are people who call themselves “Spiritual.” I roughly understand when someone self-identifies as “Methodist” or “Hindu” or “Catholic” or “Buddhist.” But people who claim to be “Spiritual” can be anything from a fundamentalist Baptist or Muslim to an Atheist, and pretty much anything in between. A couple of vague interpretations of the word include concepts like “believing in something higher than yourself” or “a longing for a deeper moral truth” etc. These still seem too vague. Many Atheists are in awe of how vast our universe is. Is this sense of wonder “spiritual?” Many Atheists have highly developed ethical systems with specific moral standards that they feel very strongly about. Are these ethical systems “Spiritual?”

Continue reading…

Book review: “The language of god: a scientist presents evidence for belief.”

I would like to propose an alternate (although wordy) title for this book. “The language of God: How a really good scientist can make many great discoveries and accept a changed version of a religion that is somewhat compatible with science.”

This book penned by Francis Collins spent many weeks on the NY Times bestseller list in 2006. Dr. Collins has done great things for humanity in his work on the human genome project. He is a medical doctor, the Director of the NIH and a member of the highly prestigious National Academy of Sciences. His goal in writing this book is to show that science and religion are compatible. In one sense this is true. Dr. Collins does not argue for a type Christianity that takes the bible literally, or even seriously. In fact, he mainly quotes the bible to show that if you read Genesis in a completely figurative sense it is compatible with science. From reading this book, it seems his Christianity is based more on the writings of C.S. Lewis than the words of the Bible or Jesus. Continue reading…

Why atheism will replace religion/primitive atheism

I saw 2 articles this week that I think are related in an interesting way.

First, Psychology Today had a blog post entitled “Why Atheism will Replace Religion.” The argument is that stable wealthy nations generally have more atheists than unstable less developed nations, because science and technology help people in the developed world control their own lives, making the all-powerful god unnecessary.

Second, last year linguist Daniel Everett published a Book entitled “Don’t sleep, there are snakes; life and language in the Amazonian jungle.” Everett’s study of the Piraha people in South America has raised many interesting linguistic questions. But the most interesting thing to me, is that Everett went to the Piraha with the goal of converting them to Christianity, however, he left the Amazon convinced that atheism is the correct position because of the way the Piraha live. The Piraha don’t believe in things they can’t see. While I understand that this isn’t the fully realized position of Naturalism that I embrace, the Piraha are primitive people and they are also empiricists. If they can’t experience a thing, they automatically doubt it. I know what you are thinking out there, theist “You can’t experience particle physics or math either!” I agree. But empiricism is a great place to start. Empiricism is what led to the discoveries of particle physics and math, not faith. The “game” in science is devising tests to find out new truths. These tests are experience even if they involve indirectly observing phenomena.

So what do these two stories have in common? Imagine a great continuum between the hunter-gatherer tribes in South America, and the most technologically advanced societies in the world. You will find atheists at both ends of this spectrum, and many points in between. Why do you think this is? Could it be that it takes social pressure to accept a religion? I think that the great religions of the world have failed to make their cases for many reasons, but one is the argument from Divine Hiddenness. If there is one true god who loves us all so much, why are there so many contradictory religions out there?

I tried very hard for many years to accept, believe and practice the religion in which I was raised. But at the end of the day I couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance of trying to believe something I was nearly certain was not true. This is why I post on this blog, and one of the reasons it exists. Just like the Piraha, I want to love my wife, my friends, and my dog. I want to enjoy nature, be an ethical person, enjoy an occasional craft beer, and live a good life. I have no gods because they don’t make sense to me. I speak out about my atheism, because being an atheist is one of many human experiences that is fully realized and good and I will not let religious demagogues tell me that my life is not good because I don’t accept their religious mythology.

Accommodationists

I read an interesting piece by biologist Michael Zimmerman on The Huffington Post yesterday. I’d like to respond.

First, I agree wholeheartedly with the goal of the Clergy Letter project. I think it is very important that clergy members convey the message that evolution is true, observable science based on facts, proven every day and vital for human knowledge and especially medical science that makes people’s lives better every day. I will always support and applaud anyone (not just a clergy member) who make this point clear and debunks Creationist and Intelligent Design falsehoods.

However, the title of the article is “Science and Religion: Respecting the differences.” The point is basically that we naturalists should stop being “intolerant” of religion. He says that science’s scope is limited to falsifiable observable hypotheses and religion is not an observable falsifiable hypothesis, therefore it is outside of the bounds of science. Examples of these “non-scientific” areas are aesthetics, morality and spirituality. I think this is wrong for the simple reason that most religious people don’t believe in a non-scientific god. Rather they believe in a god that does things in the world, therefore, it is possible (at least in principle) that this god’s “effects” can be tested. I believe that the god idea is nothing more than a failed hypothesis.

I don’t think Zimmerman’s argument has much credibility, as it is similar to Gould’s “Non-Overlapping Magisteria” (NOMA). It is true that science is limited by falsifiability and observability, but it’s scope has continually expanded since people stared observing the world. Religion says “I don’t know how this works-I guess god did it!” Science says “I don’t know how this works-let’s create a test to figure it out!” Science doesn’t have “sacred cows.” If scientists decided to “stay out” of the areas that religion has taken for itself, we would still live in a geocentric, astrology governed, superstitious world. It is because scientists have challenged religion’s ideas that we have scientific and technological advances.

Zimmerman is only half right that science has “nothing” to say about aesthetics, morality and spirituality. It is true that we don’t understand everything that is going on inside the human brain. But the current advances in neuroscience, including the “god helmet” experiments discussed earlier, do give us a good idea about what is going on inside the brain when we make decisions. Isn’t at least attempting to set up tests to understand what is going on in our minds better than just consigning these phenomena to magic spooks that supposedly animate our bodies?

My questions for Zimmerman are as follows: Didn’t religion have all the answers for law, government, science, technology, morality, and every other area of human experience until people used science to understand the way the world actually works? Why should we science-minded, rational naturalists, just shut up and let clergy tell us what their ancient traditions teach us about “aesthetics, morality and spirituality?”

Note: I have edited this post for content. Although I strive to write in a passionate manner, I don’t want to be disrespectful of people. I do disrespect some ideas I think are bad, but I strive to get rid of language that may offend people, i.e. make them think I am attacking them, and not their ideas. Also, I correct myself about NOMA. It does have credibility, in the sense that Gould was a working scientist and published a paper about the topic. However, I think that NOMA is wrong for the simple reason I stated above. Despite the “sophisticated theologians” ideas about their religious traditions, most people believe in a god that does things in the natural world. This is a scientific proposition, and thus needs to be tested with science.