DWill wrote:Whoa! Back to Sam Harris' book. I think he gets many things right in that first chapter. I like the way he doesn't just come down upon "religion," but on the fact that so many of the world's people believe that God wrote a book, and unfortunately for us there is more than one book. His argument about the value of religious moderates I'd like to discuss, but I'll first ask if anyone thinks he's ratcheting up the fear a bit. This may sound like a strange question in view of 9/11 and other attacks, and the technological opportunities for greater mayhem. It's not so much that the fears are unjustified, as it is where this kind of rhetoric may take us. Does it lead to preemptive war, major erosion of civil liberties, waterboarding and other torture, all in the name of keeping us safe? Are all the conceivable measures we might put in place to keep us safe worth the price?
I had stated previously that I had read Ch. 1, but that was an exaggeration. I'm still reading it.
Sam Harris is very persuasive and his writing in this first chapter is excellent. He points to how we look through rose-colored glasses with regard to our various holy texts. Or, more likely, most folks are simply not aware of the fragmented, disjointed sources that comprise the Christian Bible.
Sam Harris wrote:The idea that any one of our religions represents the infallible word of the One True God requires an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology, and art even to be entertained—as the beliefs, rituals, and iconography of each of our religions attest to centuries of cross-pollination among them.
That is well stated, isn't it? It is amazing how religious beliefs have fallen so far off the map of critical thinking. Harris sets up a couple of thought experiments to illustrate this point. For example, imagine that a well-educated Christian of the fourteenth century was revived.
Sam Harris wrote:The man would prove to be a total ignoramus, except on matters of faith. His beliefs about geography, astronomy, and medicine would embarrass even a child, but he would know more or less everything there is to know about God. Though he would be considered a fool to think that the earth is flat, or that trepanning (drilling holes into the skull) constitutes a wise medical intervention, his religious ideas would still be beyond reproach. There are two explanations for this: either we perfected our religious understanding of the world a millennium ago—while our knowledge on all other fronts was still hopelessly inchoate—or religion, being the mere maintenance of dogma, is one area of discourse that does not admit of progress. We will see that there is much to recommend the latter view.
This kind of goes back to what I was trying to say on another thread. What has theology given the human race except imaginary details about an imaginary God? While science has forged ahead and given us actual knowledge about the world we live in, theology and religion have given us nothing at all, at least in terms of real world data. The man from the fourteenth century would know much of the same religious dogma that we have today which somehow gets passed down from generation to generation without anyone questioning it. That people to this day continue to accept this stuff on faith, I think, is scary for the human race. This is one gaping large blind spot.
So Harris is very convincing, but like Dawkins his criticisms of Christianity and Islam focus on only their most rigid, Fundamentalist forms. I would suggest that in America at least that most people who consider themselves Christians are much more moderate in their beliefs. To maintain extreme Fundamentalist views requires, as Harris says, "an encyclopedic ignorance of history, mythology, and art even to be entertained." I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the religious landscape in America is already changing very rapidly. The new crop of atheist books are a testament to this.
One of Harris' main arguments in this chapter is that moderates, by their very staunch defense of freedom of belief, are allowing the religious craziness to continue. I'm not sure about this. I still think a positive, pro-science approach will always work better than mocking or condemning people's beliefs. Considering our religious heritage which still very much permeates through our culture, and to accept that our sense in something mystical might be genetically based, what more can we do? Yes, we absolutely must draw the line at preventing religious dogma from entering our educational and political systems, but a certain degree of patience is called for as well. There are many foundational aspects of Christianity that we rely on without really thinking about.
Something Harris said once I think does a very good job at getting people to stop for a minute and actually think about their beliefs. He said that everyone is an atheist with regards to other people's gods. For example, Christians are atheists with regards to the Greek deities or to Yahweh of the Hebrew Bible. And Harris says he is just an atheist to one more degree. This really illustrates what "atheist" means in a way that really defuses the word's negative connotations.
More later. This is a long chapter.