Sam Harris is no friend of Christianity.
The author of “The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation,” Harris also is co-founder and CEO of Project Reason, a nonprofit foundation dedicated to the promotion of science and secular values. Even so, I think Harris’ latest book offers something useful for believers.
“The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values” posits that science - not religion - should be the rightful arbiter of morality. Ancient texts, clerical edicts, denominational traditions and the like can be misguided and often harmful when determining right and wrong, he argues. Instead, Harris believes an act should be considered moral or immoral depending on demonstrable scientific evidence that it either enhances or detracts from a conscious creature’s “well-being.”
In other words, if it’s good for us – in a measurable, life-enhancing way – it’s good. If it’s bad for our state of well-being, it’s bad.
Harris likes to push buttons with his brand of secularism – on a recent Daily Show appearance he said, “Anyone in this room could improve the Ten Commandments in five seconds.” Even so, I think he is on to something here. Harris’ theory might actually be useful when Christians find themselves arguing over how to interpret Scripture in relation to certain moral issues. Could factoring in dispassionate science be one way to remove human (and therefore fallible) interpretation from the equation?
Let’s consider one of those Ten Commandments: “…the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work.” This has been interpreted in countless ways over millennia. For disobeying it, followers of Jehovah have suffered everything from whispers during church coffee hour to death. In my own lifetime, opinions on how to properly observe the Sabbath have drastically changed. Could science possibly be of any help?
In Harris’ terms, observing a specific day of the week according to precisely defined strictures has no “well being” benefit. But taking a regular rest to recharge your body – and yes, Sam Harris, your spirit – has proven health benefits. We’re a better people for it. So in a way, Harris’ scientific morality supports the idea of the Sabbath – as long as we don’t get too wrapped up in the exact way everyone should follow it (and punish them if they don’t).
We could apply this sort of thinking to more contentious areas: The role of women in the church. Tithing. Homosexuality. Do you see ways Harris’ theory can help us find a common ground when it comes to these – or other - topics that are fiercely debated within the church?
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Comments (12)
Many of the debates within christianity that are most contentious are about interpreting biblical mandates in terms of what is best for people. For instance, any number of questions around gender and sexuality. Conservatives claim it's best for families if women are are the primary caregivers. Others claim it's better for both parents to share responsibility and to have other vocations. Both use science as a form of evidence for their assumptions.
I don't disagree with your sabbath example, but in most of these cases how you interpet scientific evidence will be colored by your pre-existing ideas of what's good.
If they were,then how come they've continually changed, not only in the world as a whole but within the subset of the people who follow what you would undoubtedly claim to be God's special revelation? Seems to me that if the "letter of the law" is given to us by the revelation of God, then God's pretty lousy at revealing things, as there has never been a time when morality wasn't undergoing changes and reinterpretations.
How would science evaluate the command against taking the Lord’s name in vain or having no other gods before Him or not coveting?
The prohibition on coveting is pretty easy, in that a covetous, materialistic, and consumerist-capitalist society like the contemporary U.S. will ultimately collapse under its own exploitation of its resources and the rest of humanity.
The religious prohibitions are best understood sociologically in light of a particular community's moral commands, which with the advent of pluralist culture cannot and should not be encoded into the laws of a secular state, but can certainly be enforced within the community so long as the state's monopoly on the use of violence is maintained.
Science at best can affirm the wisdom of revealed morality, as in the case of the biblical ban against homosexuality,
Huh? It was the act of making homosexuality taboo that caused homosexual practices to "introduce disease into the population [and] harm the participants physically," and even the pseudo-science used today by anti-LGBT bigots to provide flimsy justifications and rationalizations for their hatred is entirely reliant on demonizing a set of practices that are borne of same-sex sexual activity's being pushed underground rather than the integration of LGBT people into all levels of society.
Furthermore, even the right-wing pseudo-science, if it's honest*, has to contend with the fact that STD rates and the other measures they use to prove the "unhealthiness" of homosexuality really only apply to the practices of a subset of gay men - and, in fact, lesbians of all ethnic and demographic groups have lower rates of all of the diseases and such that the bigots claim are the natural, scientific result of homosexuality. This cannot be explained away.
The Bible is not anti-science, it is complementary to science.
Only if the Bible isn't read as a scientific text, but rather as a form of revelation given to people whose understanding of the scientific laws and history of the universe was completely incompatible with (and, dare I say, inferior to) our own.
* I know honesty is too much to expect from anti-LGBT bigots, since intellectual and moral honesty would demand that they repent of their bigotry and work toward equality, but work with me here.
I don’t quite understand your statement, “It was the act of making homosexuality taboo that caused homosexual practices to introduce disease into the population” When did homosexuality become taboo? If anything, its much more widely accepted and practiced openly now. Most western countries have thankfully repealed the sodomy laws. However, it has been taboo for the last several thousand years. Followers of Islam stone homosexuals. Moses prohibited it 4000 years ago. Paul considered it shameful 2000 years ago. “And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved”. It’s not just the AIDS plague, this at-risk population historically has suffered from increased chances of anal cancer to amoebiasis, giardiasis, and a host of parasites, bacterial, viral, and protozoan not to mention structural damage to those parts. That’s why I say, if we want to join Sam Harris and define morality by well-being then these practices endanger individuals and society.
You may be right about the better health of lesbians. But these are the quandarys we find ourselves in if we define morality by well being. Male homosexuals would be immoral, lesbians would be moral. That’s why Paul rooted his morality in revelation, not well-being “God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other.”
I don’t read the Bible as a scientific text. Science dates the Big Bang at 13.5 billion years ago which I happily accept. The Bible’s intention is to define who the creator is, not how. I know you consider me a dishonest, anti-LGBT bigot without intellectual or moral honesty. I don’t know how to tell you I love homosexuals because I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t believe me. My niece informed the family last week she was gay. My advice to her mother is, we love her all the more. We never, never, never abandon or criticize her.
Homosexuality, in Romans 1, is again associated with pagan idol worship and alienation from God. In its context, Romans 1:18-32 is standard Jewish rabbinic polemic, recalling Psalm 106 and the apocryphal book of Wisdom 13-15 (see here: http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible... in it's treatment of Gentile paganism and debauchery, and is thoroughly answered in Paul's rebuttal of Romans ch.s 2-8. It is not a 'proof-text' for condemning homosexuality; instead, it is a rhetorical argument setting up Paul's deconstruction, according to the gospel of grace, in ch.s 2 and 3.
The morality code, if were looking for one, begins one chapter ahead, in Lev. 19. "Turn ye not unto idols, nor make yourselves molten gods: I am the LORD your God." (v. 4) "And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for the poor and the stranger: I am the LORD your God." (vv. 9-10) "Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbor, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until morning." (v. 13) "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbor, and not suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD." (vv. 17-18) "Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness." (v. 29) "And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as yourself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God." (vv. 33-34) Etc.
If we're honest, we must admit we affluent American Christians have fallen far short of these lofty moral concepts. Truly, "There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." (Rom. 3:10-12)
Moral codes (religious or secular) convict those who violate them and punish rulebreakers. They do not bring greater human freedom; instead they foster an oppressive legalism---a binding paradox where the virtuous (moral law) begets vice, which begets denial, coverup, hypocrisy, and greater vice. A vicious cycle only broken by compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.
Ultimately, the only virtue, the only moral code we can depend on, is love. Even a child understands this. We don't need a computer-generated scientific moral code to instruct us in the right way of living. We have always known the way, and we know we fail to live up to it: "Love your neighbor as yourself."
The time for childish thinking is past. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. This is love: not that we loved him, but that he loved us and gave himself for us. He who loves has fulfilled the Law; against love there is no law.
Fashioning a society according to its well-being is really nothing new. It's not even something that's particularly helpful, since I don't know of many ethical systems that think they're looking out for anything but well-being, in some form or another. The helpful thing to do here is to say exactly what is meant by well-being, to say who is included in this well-being - or, if we're going to go with "conscious creatures," it may be helpful to say how we're organizing them... as individuals, as a collective, as a hierarchy from least conscious (like a mouse, or something) to the most conscious, and so forth - and to say how we're going to get there. Maybe Harris does this... I'm not sure. But religious systems have also been doing this since their inception, so...
Yes, Christians should be looking out for well-being. No, I don't think science will offer any help on something that hasn't been defined, and probably can't be empirically measured. We should maybe work on putting up some definitions of well-being, notice how they differ, question why they differ, and try to come to an understanding that way. It's not scientific, but it'd probably be helpful.
Jesus agreed: "The Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath."
Excellent thoughts. Scripture agrees, both in Deuteronomy and in the Gospels, as it declares that at the core there are only two moral laws: Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. All the rest is commentary. Any act compatible with love of God and love of neighbor is moral; any act incompatible with those things is immoral.
Their dilemma: How can they thunder at people with such strong moral judgments while at the same time rejecting any basis for absolute morality. It simply gives away the game. It looks like this: “We reject all notions of a God (but our deepest hostilities are reserved for Christianity because it’s really politically correct to do this and we get big applause when we do it). And, FYI: we are SO ANGRY at the obvious growth and spread of religion on the globe (especially when our agenda to distort the science of biological evolution to spread philosophical naturalism should have persuaded these dimwits to get over their religious non-sense a long time ago!). So, brace yoursleves because from our new Mount Sinai, we will thunder forth our own commandments against religion.”
Even the tone of their writings (although perhaps Harris works hardest to be calm) gives the game away! Their tone is based on their underlying emotional outrage and anger which leads them into a quagmire of illogical argumentation.
I think it ironic and absurd that atheists like Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens engage such strong moral opposition to decry other moral appraisals. Especially since a consistent atheist position is that morality is a man-made measure and therefore all of it is merely opinion without superiority ---except what people attribute to it for their own purposes. How dare they imply that the bible or any other view is inferior to their own. This is where they give the game away.
See: Atheists contradict themselves:
http://thinkpoint.wordpress.co...