Asymmetric Religion and Philosophy

My buddy Noel from Magnasquids brought this Richard Harris column to my attention. Along with Richard Dawkins, he's the atheist "it" boy at the moment. I'll do five today and five tomorrow. And, here we go:

10 myths -- and 10 truths -- about atheism
By Sam Harris, SAM HARRIS is the author of "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" and "Letter to a Christian Nation."
December 24, 2006

SEVERAL POLLS indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.

Atheists are often imagined to be intolerant, immoral, depressed, blind to the beauty of nature and dogmatically closed to evidence of the supernatural.

Even John Locke, one of the great patriarchs of the Enlightenment, believed that atheism was "not at all to be tolerated" because, he said, "promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human societies, can have no hold upon an atheist."

That was more than 300 years ago. But in the United States today, little seems to have changed. A remarkable 87% of the population claims "never to doubt" the existence of God; fewer than 10% identify themselves as atheists — and their reputation appears to be deteriorating.

Given that we know that atheists are often among the most intelligent and scientifically literate people in any society, it seems important to deflate the myths that prevent them from playing a larger role in our national discourse.

I'd like to see that evidence. I do think that people who consciously choose their world view (as opposed to having taken it for granted for their whole life) tend to be more reflective and thus, smarter. But this goes for somebody like C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton as well as for atheists. Almost all atheists have chosen their philosophy since, as indicated by Harris himself, belief tends to be the default position. Before I start, let me say that this is one of the most intellectually flaccid articles I've read on the subject.

1) Atheists believe that life is meaningless.

On the contrary, religious people often worry that life is meaningless and imagine that it can only be redeemed by the promise of eternal happiness beyond the grave. Atheists tend to be quite sure that life is precious. Life is imbued with meaning by being really and fully lived. Our relationships with those we love are meaningful now; they need not last forever to be made so. Atheists tend to find this fear of meaninglessness … well … meaningless.

This is a case of Richard Harris having his cake and eating it too. He wants to be an atheist yet won't concede that without God, his life is meaningless, at least in the cosmic sense.

First, one must define what one means when they say their life is "meaningful." Does it mean that they enjoy living? Or, does it mean that their life has some significance beyond themselves?

Under the first definition, I'll assume that he enjoys his life and concede, therefore, that his life has meaning. What about people that are severely depressed or suicidal people? Do their lives have meaning under this definition? What about babies who can't comprehend meaningfulness or people in comas who aren't aware of their life? Do their lives have meaning? I guess not.

Under the second definition, life is meaningless without God or some greater force saying that it is. In order to make my argument, I'll assume three things:

1. Something can't be two different things or have two opposite properties at the same time.
i.e., It's logical that a table can't be both round and square at the same time. It's also logical that something can't be round for Joe and square for John.

2. Things are what they are whether you like it or not or whether you perceive them or not.
i.e., The table is round whether you see it or not or whether or not you deny its roundness.

3. One can't decide the properties of something by themselves, unless they make it.
i.e., I can't say that something is square when it's round. I can decide, however, to make a square table.

Applying these simple concepts to life's intrinsic meaningfulness we'll see that life needs something outside of itself to give it meaning. Gold, for example, doesn't have intrinsic value. It's only worth something because we say it does. Gold certainly doesn't declare its own value. In order for life to be valuable, in and of itself, it needs to either be proven scientifically (outside of its purview-you can't prove worth like you can prove the atomic weight of gold) or have an authority to declare it so. For theists, life is valuable because people have souls and God thinks that makes us important.

For atheists, life is valuable because people think it is. I suppose, under this theory, somebody can have a different opinion or just disagree. I can think that my dog is more valuable than a person in China. After all, I gain more enjoyment from my dog than I do from somebody whom I never met. Does that make it so? A Christian would say no because a dog doesn't have a soul.

And, what does an atheist tell somebody who says that his life is meaningless, worthless, or that his dog's life is more valuable than his own? Millions of people think that exact same thing. Does he convince him by saying that life has meaning because it can be "fully lived?" Wouldn't trying to convince somebody of your philosophy make you, therefore, dogmatic (Religious people disagree on many issues, but they say the other person's wrong)? How would he have arrived at that conclusion? By what authority could he have claimed that "full living" makes life meaningful?

If the person says "it doesn't matter; that for you, life is meaningless, but for me, life is meaningful and neither of us are wrong," doesn't that violate the logical assumption I made above that the same thing can't have contradictory properties simultaneously. How can the same thing, life, be both meaningful and meaningless? It either is or it isn't.

Mr. Harris' life is meaningful not because I or he thinks so, but because God thinks so.

If one defines meaning as something intrinsic Any meaning atheists choose to give your life is a crutch to avoid the psychic pain of the alternative. It's cheating.

2) Atheism is responsible for the greatest crimes in human history.

People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

There have been societies, however, that have been taken over by people with more enthusiastic beliefs. What Richard Harris is saying is that if people don't care about things, they won't fight. Yes, he's correct. They're also less likely to defend themselves when somebody who does care forces a choice upon them. Now, let's say that Britain is being taken over by Communists. Is Mr. Harris going to fight them? Why? Because their dogmatism is wrong? Isn't Harris calling Communists wrong kind of dogmatic. Let's say there's a country suffering at the hands of a tyrant. Would a country led by Harris try to help those people? Why would he decide to fight evil? If he did decide, wouldn't that require some kind of dogma?

Lastly, the kind of mass murders perpetrated by the Communists and Fascists didn't happen in religious societies because they had a code holding them back. I'll accept Harris' argument that atheism didn't directly cause the murders, but atheism also did nothing to prevent them.

3) Atheism is dogmatic.

Jews, Christians and Muslims claim that their scriptures are so prescient of humanity's needs that they could only have been written under the direction of an omniscient deity. An atheist is simply a person who has considered this claim, read the books and found the claim to be ridiculous. One doesn't have to take anything on faith, or be otherwise dogmatic, to reject unjustified religious beliefs. As the historian Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-71) once said: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

I don't know exactly what he's talking about because of his [intentionally] obscure language, but if you think that you're right about some non-scientifically provable issue and that somebody's wrong, you're dogmatic. I admit to being dogmatic. Who cares? I won't kill you because you're not a Catholic. Isn't that the important thing? Harris has fallen into a stupid trap. He takes a word that has run away from a word merely because it's taken on a negative connotation.

4) Atheists think everything in the universe arose by chance.

No one knows why the universe came into being. In fact, it is not entirely clear that we can coherently speak about the "beginning" or "creation" of the universe at all, as these ideas invoke the concept of time, and here we are talking about the origin of space-time itself.

The notion that atheists believe that everything was created by chance is also regularly thrown up as a criticism of Darwinian evolution. As Richard Dawkins explains in his marvelous book, "The God Delusion," this represents an utter misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. Although we don't know precisely how the Earth's early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection. Darwin arrived at the phrase "natural selection" by analogy to the "artificial selection" performed by breeders of livestock. In both cases, selection exerts a highly non-random effect on the development of any species.

He's just merely playing with meaning. I don't know why this is important, but when people say "chance," they probably mean "unguided." Everybody knows that the universe follows natural laws.

5) Atheism has no connection to science.

Although it is possible to be a scientist and still believe in God — as some scientists seem to manage it — there is no question that an engagement with scientific thinking tends to erode, rather than support, religious faith. Taking the U.S. population as an example: Most polls show that about 90% of the general public believes in a personal God; yet 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences do not. This suggests that there are few modes of thinking less congenial to religious faith than science is.

It shows nothing of the kind and Mr. Harris should be embarrassed. Instead of giving us a reason the two are incompatible, he just shows that scientists tend to believe this. What if the numbers were reversed? Would he then say it did have something to do with it?. What if the poll was taken at a time when more scientists were religious? Could cultural or non-scientific reasons have an effect?

Mr. Harris is also deceptive. Notice the word, "personal" before God. That means that a substantial number of scientists are at least Deists, or believers in an uninvolved God. Many distinguished scientists are religious, by the way.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris

Letter to a Christian Nation: Counter Point by RC Metcalf

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins