Blair v. Hitch - religion is a force for good in the world

Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens had a debate over the weekend over whether or not religion is a ‘force for good in the world’. The rhetorical flourish of both sides was something indeed, but you can see for yourself what you think of the debate. At times, the two combatants start to address the other’s points before going back to their main mantras during the debate. Hitchens says very little new to those of you who follow Hitchens, but the gravitas seems so much greater given his health and the status of his stage companion.
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Tony Blair, Christopher Hitchens debate religion

Blair, Hitchens Debate: Religion Force for Good?

The great faith debate: Blair takes on ailing Hitchens in Canada

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.”

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Sam Harris appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Last night, Sam Harris made an appearance on The Daily Show. He was mainly there to pitch his new book The Moral Landscape. Harris describes his new book as a way for science to look at moral questions, ultimately asserting that it is a myth that science and morality are distinct, separate, and incapable of unification. Harris is well known for his other works, perhaps most famously, Letter to a Christian Nation.

It is good to see more atheists on his show because Jon Stewart has been notoriously over sympathetic to religious claims in the past. One example of this is when Marilynne Robinson appeared on his show and he made the statement: “I’ve always been fascinated that the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith.”

The scientific community typically refutes the idea that morality comes from science. This is especially because religious people often (especially Creationists) say that morality does come from science, and that it is evil. The claim is that, for example, Darwinism leads to social Darwinism, which leads to eugenics, which leads to an elite mutant class that eats Christians. Instead, Harris takes the view that science should stop claiming that we do not or cannot receive morals from science, but rather that science can provide a more objective standard for morality. Harris, in his interview, and certainly in his book, elaborates further on some of the ways science could go about determining a common morality. You can watch the entire interview here.

” … endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”

The humorously titled “American Thinker” blog bloviated on President Obama’s omission to mention the ‘Creator’ at a recent press conference.

Politics aside, the religious faith of the American founders is a much talked about subject, both here on this blog and in the wider atheist community, as is the mentioning of a ‘Creator’ in the Preamble. It’s a fascinating historical topic but it doesn’t matter much beyond that:

Our morals cannot be decreed, they must be derived from how we wish to treat one another.

If God commanded you to act against your fellow man, it would be immoral to do so. Morals do not come from God, they come from us: we demand them and we are the only ones with the power to grant them.

(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?”

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