21st-century Christian Philosopher

This post has a curious title. But I can give it a little more sense in context. I am commenting a speech that I watched on CSPAN2’s Book TV, given by Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. This title points to Harris’ peculiar phrasing of a secular goal, in a speech that was otherwise an appeal to abandon religion.

Bridging the Divide

Before I get into the peculiar phrase, I just wanted to discuss some key themes of the speech. Harris shows his power to argue (or not) where he agrees with less-than-moderate Christians on the character of Islam. He explains that his fellow secularists use too much moderation to avoid seeing the singular threat in Islam. He calls it a “taboo” mentality.

He shows this again in the Q&A section. He says that he bridges both political extremes. He comes on Christian talk radio, and all they want to hear is their fears about Islam verified. When he appears on more liberal radio, he can argue against religious extremism and the threat of religion, but they consider it grave to single out Islam.

But the other time, he spends saying that people would think much better without believing in God. So, despite singling out Islam, he basically says that they are the same thing, an “irrational belief” which refuses to move us forward—kind of like Santa Claus.

Now, let’s trace over what we have in this case: According to Harris, Christians are somewhat properly alarmed, but secularists refuse to see the threat coming from Islam. Not only that, but despite numerous attempts at persuasion, his secularist brethren, still prefer to see Islam as just another religion and no more threat than any the others.

Now Harris advocates growing up from our religions because they impair the thought process, but in this central issue, he has a problem. If Harris is right, the Christians see clearly, and the secularists refuse to see. Thus, the obstacle of faith does not block the Christians from seeing this issue clearly. But, even with the obstacle of faith removed, the secularist misses what Harris sees.

If Harris is wrong, then we’d expect the Christian “sheep” to be blinded by faith. But Harris, himself, has a greater problem because he ignores peer review. If shedding God is the first step to a greater awakening of manm, Science and peer review is why we should abandon God. In this greater age, people have sound arguments for thinking what they do and those arguments are reviewed by peers, to be pronounced “objective”.

If Harris is wrong, what are we to make of his intellect? By the above, we assume that any secular faction has a firm argument for their side. Yet, we find Harris dismissing the matrix of the other side as “taboo”. As a result he likens it to superstition and reflexive belief—even dogmatism, of a sort. Thus it is blinds us along similar lines as faith (if “faith” is a type of “superstition”).

So while giving a speech on how giving up God will improve the race’s ability to think, Harris presents a case where giving up God has not helped a great number of his peers see the correct answers or even shed a similar sort of taboo-like thinking. Furthermore, whoever may have the sound argument (because one of them must, right?) the other side cannot even see its soundness or that their argument is thus unsound.

His case for cleaning the mind of what cannot be publicly defended is presented along with a case study of his case against Islam being refused by the public who not only do not see the problem as he does, but have refused his arguments. So Mr. Harris asks us to suspend judgment against his claim that non-believers will save the world, because since they think so much better, they will inevitably embrace his argument, having a clear vision of the world—despite that with their clear vision of the world, they tend not to back his singularity—nor really does he…really.

Must be that I am a muddle-headed believer that I do not understand the full logic of that statement. Or perhaps it’s nothing new for me to see a “rational supremicist” (my term) show the confidence they show in events that haven’t happened “yet“. (Such as the secular world coming to understand his side.) You might ask how empiricism fits into such brash shows of confidence—but that would probably be more muddle-headedness on my part.

I’m not going to refute the whole speech here. Instead, I want to point at his confidence in clear-thinking that I find extremely puzzling. But it really is a tireless pattern that I promised you in my earlier posts. I’ve seen this pattern many times, but you can see that in my response to Chomsky, Horatio, Lumpy and now in my comments on Harris.

Tying it Together

Harris summed up his speech with the non-alternative alternative to believing in God, and what secular thought might lead to. He suggested that, having put ideas like Santa Claus behind us, we might see our way to “deepening” our communal ties.

That’s what the title refers to.

But the phrase makes me wonder what it means to “deepen” communal ties. And what are all the deform transformations that we can perform on our communal ties? Can you triangulate them? Fold them? Tie them?

As I wrote this last paragraph, it struck me that I use a similar “word algebra” that Harris used. Harris invites us to substitute “Zeus” for “God” and see how silly that makes us sound. So in a similar way, I’m trying out how silly changes in shape sound.

You see, he reasoned that Christians would feel embarrassed saying such things. He offers that substitution as the main refutation of how insensible Christian ideas are: “God” and “Zeus” are interchangeable symbols. Why don’t Christians react the same way toward both? Just another example of the way faith blinds us to seeing the equivalence between a quarrelling, euro-style, pantheon God of Lightning (related to Tieu), observed through social rituals for civic purposes is exactly like a singular, Semetic God Lawgiver/Creator who is continuous with his “son” who is the fullness of God’s wisdom, apart from any civic, holy day observances (per Colossians 2).

Why would anybody get an inkling that they are different? One explains lightning and lives on a high mountain. The other one embodies nothing so much as sense and Law itself and lives someplace where he can “hang the earth in place”.

Since it is part of a secularist challenge to exhaust the resourcefulness of the person he or she questions to demonstrate their superiority, and since we know that secularists have good, solid arguments behind them, I have little doubt that rationalists can answer all these questions, such as: What are the dimensions of communal ties? How are the collapsed or expanded in these dimensions? What are their internal forces of growth? But failing all that, I think they could answer this question: isn’t “deepen” a fuzzy word?

I would expect that the phrase “social ties” points to some cluster of our experience we wrap up with verbal shorthand. That seems a reasonable enough. But I also know that “creation” points to something real, just not something that objectively bears the proof of its relation to a “creator”.

So, what can we say about “social ties” and is there a way that they can be “deepened”?

That’s my next post.

Horatio, a recent visitor to my blog raised the question of the Many Creeds argument. I’ve written a number of discarded treatments of that argument, I like this one.

Let’s let Horatio kick it off:

“How do you know that yours is the true system, and not Islam/Zoroastrianism/Sikkhism/Buddhism/Shinto/Judaism/blah blah blah. Oft repeated, because no believer has yet provided a sound answer.”

Now, when I leveraged a similar argument against a naturalistic worldview, he responded by calling it relativism. (See here) But I observe that not only do that many groups make claims about God, but many more make claims about an answer. Add naturalism to that list, and combine it with the naturalistic reductionism, and I think you have the argument that I was giving.

Thus when I pose questions about naturalistic philosophy, they are the doubts that I would have were I to go back to believing in nothing. In my essay Christian Skepticism, I address my pre-Christian belief that assuming less would have a definite end.

But whatever my level of doubt, I can still assume less than that. I can doubt that such a process has an end, or that it does not have the end that I saw in it. Thus assuming the least actually results in a contradiction, because I have to assume something about why I am “assuming the least”. The only thing I was doing was playing it safe, but at the cost of forever hovering in limbo.

Sextus Empiricus, the classic Greek skeptic seems to have missed this problem. He writes, confident that this discipline would relieve the mind of torment: the less you believe the less you need to strive for or against. His central premise is that anything that is known can become unknown, with additional facts. Just as the way that former theories had become unknown in the light of this one.

What Empiricus missed is that his principle could be argued away in the same manner. Thus, if he pursued the end of skepticism, he did so by investing conviction in a model in which skepticism provided a seeming end. Of course, this opens up the question of whether absolute truth is as important as relative ends.

So how do I know what investing in model x will accomplish on an absolute scale? I don’t know. Can I even see the absolute scale? What basis do I have to judge what is true on an absolute scale? More to the point, will anything that knows itself as me ever have an answer, without the witness of an absolute observer?

Wil Durant’s histories opens up with the observation about world-wide morality. He posed that if you placed in a pile everything that some society on earth approved, and subtracted everything that some society condemns, you’ll end up with an empty pile. Durant said this with a great familiarity of investigating the cultures around the world in writing his histories. But atheists are still split on whether or not there is such thing as morality. Some of them confuse the fact of norming behavior with morality. Thus they answer the question of whether there is morality or not with “Yes, humans do engage in moral behavior”.

Fine, but I think we all knew that. But, is there a good morality, regardless of what people would put or take out of that pile?

Prominent atheist Michael Martin is indignant that anyone should conclude that atheists cannot maintain an absolute morality. Despite that, atheists themselves are split on this—but which one is right?

Now, I know that should I rejoin my life as an atheist (really, an agnostic), I can chose from either brand. But somehow I’m supposed to be believe that this question of “how I know I’m absolutely right” doesn’t plague me once I step over the line. Thus the endless “creeds” of atheism, are supposed to provide no barrier to my confidence in atheism, but the existence of competing claims is supposed to halt me in my tracks on this side of the divide, apparently.

Okay, I know that I’m not supposed to say that atheism is a creed, but just the lack of a theistic one. That’s kind of like saying I have something under my chair which is not an elephant, so that kind of narrows it down for you. In fact, by focusing on what you are not doing, you are kind of missing the endlessly disputable aspect of what you all believe. Thus, one could actually argue that there are many more competing claims on the atheistic side itself.

I will grant that atheists do not disagree with each other as vehemently. But if you even posit more than is evident on any level, it seems that you have a faction that can claim that you assume more than is observable, in this case the contempt for those who believe without seeing is not scaled in standard atheistic rhetoric.

The faction that believes in neither God or independent Logic or independent Morality—none of which are seen—has a sort of emotional, social accomodation for those who at least don’t place faith in God (yet still believe in an unseen). This appears less than an intellectual rigor, as it can often be represented.

But were one such group to start castigating fellow atheists, does that require atheists who want to argue for Logic and Morality to abandon their stance simply because somebody labels them irrational? Or they are not able to produce proof that will convince the random critic that there is a case for independent Logic or Morality?

On the other hand, were I to become an atheist, nothing requires me to adopt the stance “believers are a bunch of dummies.” So, atheism being as open as it is, I do not have to put a great stake in the Many Creeds argument even were I not to believe in God. As I understand it, there are no requisite beliefs other than a lack of belief in God. Thus, am I rational if I disbelieve in God yet are not entirely convinced of the litmus test of this oft-posed challenge?

Thus, the validity of the “Many Creeds” problem, might have a Many Creeds problem itself. Isn’t it then just best to become agnostic on the value of the “Many Creeds” problem? Why should it ever have to be “answered” by a believer, unless it can be answered by the unbelievers who pose it?

I am aware of no principle that would enable me to answer that question on many other aspects, if I were to give up the semantic meaning of my life now. If I set aside all that I “know” now as false, I’m subtracting information, not adding. It is doubtful that I would be able to answer any question better. I can only cross over to this other side, if 1) life’s lessons lead me this way or 2) I make a leap of faith through the fog of my doubts. I would trust that no atheist would have me do #2. So I must wait until I see the sense of it, and not just because I am stumped by a question.

But I cannot now see any path where I can fall into any faction on the other side of the line where I would then be able to give sufficient answer to everyone on the subject of any aspect of the claims of that group.

I either need to consider Many Creeds a special case for religions only—and then I need to have a ready answer why it is so, unless it is enough simply to assert that it is. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to “sufficiently answer” why that was so despite competing claims. However I cannot now see the rationale for limiting this only to claims about

Or I need to think about it’s general applicability to anything anyone invests in that is not immediately apparent to others. I know that as I explore these questions even while a theist, I lack an answer of how far to wide to apply these principles.

But skipping over that, I also have no reason to insist on such a stepped criticism where I find theists irrational out of proportion that I consider dualists or quasi-dualists irrational whether or not they can “convince” any given person or produce evidence for the second substance. I should think that I know to a pretty good degree that brains, on average, are very capable of producing all kinds of crap rationalizations, and gods—at least I think—are only a starter.

How much of the atheist stigmatization of this particular “character flaw” is simply cultural? Torquemada is evil, but is Stalin or Mao that much better because they lack a supernatural belief? I’ve conversed with free-thinkers who’ve argued that those two were “religious” in their own way. So despite that they believed in no invisible entity but the harmony of the world-state (if they did believe in that) are they just as irrational as people who believe in God?

Well, it’s at least possible to walk though the streets of a commune in a worker’s world paradise and see how idyllic it is, but will we ever hold Logic in our hands? Why does this unseen utopia put them on par with deluded theists, but those who posit some sort of independence for Logic do not flunk the same course?

So once we’ve spread the judgment around and implicated believers and non-believers of all sorts for all different crimes and balanced out the scales, we’ve only increased the universality of irrational behavior in the human beast. Now naturally we can expect a gradient, but the question remains to me, how stable the human beast is.

Stable enough to survive and increase our standard of living, no doubt. But is it stable enough to bear the weight of the claims we make? I think I’ll leave it there for now.

But, I will say that it is central enough to my analysis to avoid tying my arguments directly to my worldview, that I doubt that I would recant much of what I have written in any case. I am an eclectic philosopher simply because I cannot decide one model to use to analyze the world. And besides, I would tend to be interested in what can be said from a different point of view. Checking my worldview from other worldviews is part of my methodology.

But I’ve stood in that place, and I’ve learned what I have learned. And when I lean back and wonder how I would ever cross the line again, it comes to me clearly that I could likely only be an unbeliever again by believing in something else, by investing in another model and its promises. And because I lack the ability to see what that would be, I definitely lack the ability to answer how I know it is the case and none other.