Interesting twist in the Sullivan-Harris debate
Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan have been debating religion. Here’s an interesting excerpt from Sullivan’s Feb 14 entry:
…That is because I have never met a human being or a human mind that is “contingency-free”, and never will. No child grows up without the contingent facts of their family, place, genes, and any number of details that make us who we are. You and I would be very different people if we had different contingent genetics and different contingent histories. This is the experience of being human, an experience eternally different from the dream of your new, unfettered, purely rational “education,” where the young are severed from the toxins of contingent culture and faith and family….
sam has good one liners, but his talking points are not much more sophisticated than what a 12 year old could come up with. for a neuroscientist he’s pretty uninterested in the details of how people think.
how people think
i believe this is the closest Andrew has come to making that point
sam harris = josh mcdowell for atheists :-)
I find a lot of what Dawkins and Dennet say to be interesting, but Harris comes off as laughable. Perhaps I should shell out for his books before coming to that conclusion though.
tggp, the book is pretty similar to what he says. harris might not believe in god, but he believes he has god-like powers of intuition and introspection, so no need for rigorous theory or empirical data.
I’ve never read one of Sam Harris’ books, but I have heard two or three thirty to fifty minute speeches / lectures by him on the net and by podcast.
I was at first moderately impressed but then it struck me that he was primarily preaching to the faithful (atheists), confirming their (and more or less my) views in less guarded fashion than usual. He was primarily PREACHING in a way. Rather than providing any very impressive biologically or even below thin gloss historically rooted analysis.
I never understood why atheists are so interested in the “existence of God.” Surely, to an atheist, the question is meaningless.
At least, I’m an atheist, and it strikes me as meaningless.
Now, the fact that a great number of people in my general geographical vicinity subscribe to a concept that can neither be justified nor refuted, and therefore can’t withstand Occam’s razor, is certainly at least worthy of some political notice.
But “religion,” at least as Harris and Sullivan define it, is hardly the most significant such concept.
News to anti-Catholics: the power of the Pope has been declining more or less monotonically for oh, only about the last 500 years.
Note to anti-Protestants: the only First World country in which there is any significant remnant of Protestant religious indoctrination is the US, and this assumes a very generous definition of “significant.” Call me again when Ralph Reed is the president of Harvard. Born-again Christians in the US have the numbers, but they don’t have the power centers and they never will. All real power in the US is in the universities, the media, and the civil service, and the representation of born-again Christians (no, Jimmy Carter doesn’t count) in these organizations is miniscule. Nor is it increasing.
Note to anti-Orthodox: the average age of death in Russia is what, these days, 43?
Note to anti-Nestorians: — but I think you get the picture.
I never understood why atheists are so interested in the “existence of God.”
harris makes his reason explicit: 9/11. murder in the name of god. most atheists who spend a great deal of time on this have some personal reason (generally more prosaic, like being raised and tormented in a fundamentalist family).
i tend to agree that evangelicals will always be thin on the ground in the elite because of the nature of their religion (evangelicalism isn’t a denomination, it is a religious sensibility). but this is perpetuated in part by counterforces, and that is where militants like harris can play a role. they wouldn’t exist in a society that was religiously apathetic.
Considering all the weird-ass crazy ideas people have been murdered for in the last 200 years, “God” is not exactly high on the list. I realize that 9/11 is very recent and very near, but if you’re making arguments about time and eternity and shit, you ought to have some perspective.
Not that I’m expecting you to speak for Harris…
Of course I know what you mean, but “evangelicalism” is a confusing term – because it means something different in every century. Methodists used to be the epitome of “evangelical.” In its dictionary definition it refers to a tactic, not a target.
(And I’m not sure exactly who we have to thank for this, but whoever got their religious slogan (“Say no to racism”) on the World Cup logo seems pretty damned evangelical to me.)
There are basically two kinds of Christians in the US: Unitarians who don’t believe in God or Hell or original sin, and “born-again” Trinitarians who do. Historical denominations are meaningful for some of the latter and very few of the former. Of course I generalize.
Since the Unitarians, as previously mentioned, control basically all the institutions of memetic transmission, it seems a little strange for any self-professed rationalist to spend most of his time fretting about the relatively defunct Trinitarians. Again, it implies an unusual concern with this “God” thing relative to other confusions, which may be more potent or pertinent.
it isn’t a dichotomy, it’s a range. e.g., in stark & bainbridge’s work the future of religion ‘tension’ has this rank order:
unitarian univ., congregationalist, episcopalian, presybterian, methodist, baptist, nazarene, seventh day adventist, etc.
there isn’t a ‘natural break’ in this range. as for methodists, they are the canonical example of the tendency for evangelical sects to become ‘mainstreamed’ and so lose their vigor. some groups, like the ‘free methodists’ broke off precisely for this reason (i believe there are ‘free presbyterian’ churches too). strictly speaking even roman catholicism was originally an ‘evangelical’ sect, before the conversion of constantine.
but yes, worldly success corrupts. thank god.
And thus spoke the greek polytheist to the monotheist: the dream of your new abstract deity will never work. People have grown up with real gods, they will never understand this newfangled bland tradition-free monotheism.
As an atheist, I have interest in seeing “god” debated because I have interest in seeing the truth see the light. “god” followers are also actively trying to force their religion down my throat and trying to make laws support their religion, which also affects me directly, and makes me want to spar with them.
If the “god” worshippers kept their noses out of my business and did not try to legislate their religion or claim special benefits for it, I probably would be far less interested in “god” debates.
With the Sullivan-Harris debate, I am curious not so much about the content, but to see just how far Sullivan – will he finally admit that there is no rational basis for them and that he has no reason to believe other than an emotional one? In the end, we’ll probably see that the debate is pointless, but it may cause a few people to start to think and maybe they’ll also realize the truth in the process. That’s how many people end up becoming atheists – seeing the truth after being lied to for a lifetime.
My views here are pretty close to those of Mencius. And it really isn’t entirely clear to me that the 9/11 attack should be regarded as much connected with religion as such, let alone Islam in particular.
OBL’s stated reasons for “declaring war” on the America were basically secular in nature, namely America’s meddling in his part of the world and killing his co-ethnics, and our strong support for his national enemies such as Israel. This strikes me as much more of a nationalistic or ethnic motivation than a religious one.
I’d similarly argue that the Serb vs. Croat fighting and massacres were ethnic/nationalistic rather than religious in character, even though the only actual distinction between Serb and Croat is their religious affiliation. Same for the Protestants and Catholics in Ulster, with many of the worst elements being agnostic/atheist “Protestants” and “Catholics.”
There’s a huge difference between a conflict in which religious affiliation serves as a marker for ethnic alignment and a conflict along actually religious lines.
And considering that OBL himself (and his core followers) are indeed religious fanatics, obviously this particular case is at the extreme edge of the question under discussion.
And it really isn’t entirely clear to me that the 9/11 attack should be regarded as much connected with religion as such, let alone Islam in particular.
Gotta disagree. I doubt you were ever a fundamentalist of any sort — not even one of Harris’s ilk. I was (not atheist, but rather a fundamentalist Christian), and so I understand and believe to be true Harris’s statement that The result … is that your fellow moderates tend to doubt that anybody ever really is motivated to sacrifice his life, or the lives of others, on the basis his heartfelt religious beliefs. Moderate doubt—which I agree is an improvement over fundamentalist certitude in most respects—often blinds its host to the reality and consequences of full-tilt religious lunacy.
If you KNOW a thing to be true, then you’ll act in conformity with that belief. Jihadist Islam is not political at its most basic level (of course it has such implications); rather, it is religious.
By the way, such knowing belief is not the exclusive province of the “religious” as such — witness the Bolsheviks, Leninists, Stalinists, etc. But the fundamentalist (writ, human?) tendency is the same, is it not?
Er, as far as I’m concerned, the views that the elite insist on as modern and rational (anti-racism, pro-multiculturalism, feminism, etc) *are* a religion. Isn’t it generally true that people who are Real True Believers don’t see themselves as Believers? They just see themselves as inhabiting the world in a sensible way, while everyone else is deranged? Meanwhile the rest us look at them and think, “Wow, that’s pretty zany.” So the clash for me is between traditional religions-that-are-clearly-labeled-religions and the elite-religion-that-pretends-to-be-rational.
But I’m coming from a p-o-v that says that there is no such thing as a person, let alone a culture, that lives without a religion. (Except of course in the institutionalized sense.) We all have hopes, dreams, and items we take on faith; we all worship heroes, god-like characters, etc. In other words, religion is simply a dimension of experience. You can be into it or not; you can connect with it or not. But, like the aesthetic dimension, it’s there no matter what your opinion of it is.
I don’t know that I’m prepared to argue the point, but it’s a p-o-v I find very helpful …
razib: there are no “natural breaks” anywhere, since memes, unlike genes, are not digital.
But this doesn’t mean you can trust the thing to classify itself. Most memetic movements in history have been named by their enemies. “Unitarian,” for instance, was originally a term of abuse. “Baptist” no longer means much of anything at all.
I still hold that the doctrine of universal salvation, versus the doctrine of salvation by faith, is your best divide. It corresponds almost perfectly to the red-state/blue-state thing. Universal salvation leads you very quickly to humanism, democracy, and state-worship. Salvation by faith leads you very quickly to, snake-handling, gay-bashing, and Pat Robertson-worship. A pox on them both, I say!
Michael,
If my experience is any guide, I think you’ll find that the more you think about it, the scarier it is.
Here’s one old book that might adjust your instruments a little…
DiverCity:
Just as you suspect, I’ve never been particularly religious. But I do still hold to my analysis.
Consider the 9/11 attacks, perhaps the most extreme example of the sort under discussion. Certainly some of the hijackers were religiously fanatic jihadis. But others apparently drank liquor and chased women in the weeks of waiting before the attack. Needless to say, devote—let alone fanatical—Muslims do *not* drink liquor or chase women…
Certainly, religious fanaticism may be a prime motivator of the suicidal fearlessness quite useful in many military operations, but it is not the only one. And remember too that such religiously-based fanaticism is also frequently deployed in the far more numerous wars of an absolutely traditional and non-religious character, e.g. the First World War.
The problem with religion, and belief in god more specifically, is that it requires people to believe something in direction contradiction to our best empirical evidence and probabilities. Which inhibits a genuinely scientific, empirical worldview. There is just as much of a chance that there is a flying spaghetti monster up there as that any given interpretation of god exists. It’s a shame Harris seems to fail to realize this – science can be changed with new knowledge, and any faith based on it can (and should) share that characteristic. Of course, Andrew Sullivan is not exactly intelligent regardless. Log Cabin Republicans are missing a couple of gray cells, imo.
Certainly some of the hijackers were religiously fanatic jihadis. But others apparently drank liquor and chased women in the weeks of waiting before the attack. Needless to say, devote—let alone fanatical—Muslims do *not* drink liquor or chase women…
these sort of complexities are issues. the individuals who drink liquor, etc., are often quite good at rationalizing these sort of behaviors in their own heads. the bigger point is that we need to move beyond our own introspection (folk psychology) and try to understand the peculiarities of how the mind actually works. that’s why the opinions of the fundamentalist, or those who have observed them, can’t be taken at face value.
Which inhibits a genuinely scientific, empirical worldview.
you left out one word: intelligent. and, since most people lack of the requisite intellgence they won’t be particularly bewitched by a scientific worldview since it is all gibberish to them anyhow. the main way to convince the stupid about science is through applications, engineering. at which point it becomes like magic, and your esteem is derived from pre-scientific psychological impulses.
to be more clear: saganesque scientific enchantment is probably not a possibility for 90% of humans. whatever alternatives to religion you posit, i don’t think science on a deep level can be one of them.
RKU, I don’t mean to contend that fundamentalists will necessarily and logically think through inherent contradictions in their behavior as judged against their religious beliefs or that all of their actions will conform to doctrine. Certainly they will not. Thus, there will always be contradiction, rationalization, and, as Razib said, “complexities.” But actions will be informed by belief, at least to some extent, and I think to a very great extent, which is very scary, especially considering that fundamentalist “religion” can indeed be (and in my view too is) the views of the enlightened and rational elites identified by Mr. Blowhard….
“Saganesque scientific enchantment,” or “Einsteinian religion” (as Dawkins calls it), has another name.
At least back when I was in high school, it was called Transcendentalism. And the whole thing was blamed on a couple of guys named Emerson and Thoreau – one of whom was apparently a preacher, of some sort. He was blind and played the blues. Or was that someone else? I forget.
A lot of religions have a high-culture form and a low-culture form. High-culture Buddhism is all, like, Leonard Cohen, and shit. Low-culture Buddhism is all about big gold statues.
It’s not exactly clear what low-culture Transcendentalism looks like, but I suspect it may involve, in some way, the word “organic.” Razib is definitely right that Sagan and Einstein are not exactly in the picture.
It’s funny how people always come up with dreamy figures like Sagan, or even Einstein, when they want to turn Science into a religion. I mean, what about, say, Feynman? Can’t we use Feynman? And what would be the low-culture version of that?
Mencius — Edgar Lee Masters wrote a debunking bio of Lincoln? Weird, bizarre, great. Tks. I had no idea, though I’m a big fan of “Spoon River.”
jvarisco writes — “The problem with religion, and belief in god more specifically, is that it requires people to believe something in direction contradiction to our best empirical evidence and probabilities.” There are *many* different ideas of god, and for many people the presence of a god-ish sort of something (or somethings) is as plain and factual as anything in life can be. There’s no “faith” (in the sense of willing-to-believe-despite-the-evidence) involved. Also, where Andrew Sullivan is concerned: are you nuts? Andrew Sullivan is a superbright guy. Oxford, Harvard, a stint editing a major magazine at a very young age … You got better credentials? You may think he’s deluded or wrong, fair enough. But disagreeing with someone doesn’t mean the other guy isn’t superbright. The superbright disagree about a lot of things.
A miracle: Deepak Chopra gets to the heart of this issue:
“Reductionism-which too many scientists are guilty of, as are their opponents, the creationists–tries to smoosh all questions to fit one explanatory mold, that of physical matter. Creationists, for their part, try to smoosh all questions into being acts of God. Nietzsche, an expert at disdain, rejected what he called the doltish assumptions of materialism. In a kinder vein let me offer an example of how explanations can be correctly arrived at:…”
I find his example completely accurate.
razib: btw, there’s a very simple alternative. We can just have them worship the State.
mb: yeah, you might want to find an old inner tube and wrap it around your head before starting in on this one. I find it can generate a lot of pressure in the ventricles. A good followup and cooldown can be achieved with Wolfgang Schivelbusch.
But actions will be informed by belief, at least to some extent, and I think to a very great extent, which is very scary, especially considering that fundamentalist “religion” can indeed be (and in my view too is) the views of the enlightened and rational elites identified by Mr. Blowhard….
1) the key is the extent
2) another issue is one’s belief about one’s beliefs
p.s. without religious belief, fundamentalism, the first crusade would never have happened. it was irrational (the odds were really, really, long). so i don’t discount belief, especially at the fundamentalist extremes. but we need to be careful about overplaying how important belief is, vs. post facto rationalization of other motives given a religious justification (even if the justification is sincere).
I suspect the low-culture form of Science is called “Technology.” Basically, you tell the ignorant masses that Science gave them the gift of the cellphone they like, and some fraction will be are all impressed for a while.
Regarding the complex interrelationship between religious and military conflict, my own model is as follows:
First, let us assume the existence of a religious tendency itself as a given, its human origins being either directly or indirectly based on Darwinian evolution. Presumably the cause is a very strong effect, given the near-universality of religious practices.
Next, with regard to conflict, I would argue that there is a strong “groupist” tendency to instinctively assume that those around you who share your language, culture, and general habits (lumped together as “ethnicity”) are members of your closely-related clan, and hence your near-automatic allies against those who do not share those “ethnic” traits. Hence the very useful role of uniforms in almost all militaries.
Now to the extent that the memetic properties of a religion generate—even if for purely random reasons—a set of such particular behavorial “ethnic” traits, they naturally lay down the likely markers for “us vs. them” responses. Yet these responses may actually have no direct connection whatsoever to the underlying theoretical tenets of the particular religion in question.
As an example, my impression is that while the leaders of the “Protestant” faction in Ulster were generally quite religious, including some who personally regarded the Pope as the Antichrist, the leaders of the “Catholic” faction were mostly nationalistic/secular/marxist, who didn’t care much about the Pope one way or the other.
There’s also an old joke that the few Jews in Ulster were required to declare themselves to be either “Catholic Jews” or “Protestant Jews.”
But there are different levels of belief. There’s “belief” in a usually-shallow sense — as in what someone would respond if you asked him “What do you believe?” And then there’s belief in a much larger sense, the kind of thing you’d pick up if you lived with or around someone for years and eventually found yourself thinking, “Hmm, y’know, everything I’ve observed about her suggests that she’s acting on some deeply held convictions …”
If I can play older if not wiser for a sec: these two kinds of belief seldom match up perfectly. What a person says he believes often doesn’t match up at all with what his/her deepest convictions finally seem to be. And, let’s face, it few of us know what our deepest convictions really are, at least until you have some huge life-jolt and they suddenly stand out in full relief …
So it often seems to me that when religion and belief get talked about around here, we’re discussing fairly shallow things: religions as in people who make big efforts to believe and subscribe to organized institutions; and belief as in what a person would say if you asked him about his beliefs. I dunno, both are interesting, but neither one strikes me as terribly important. What people really believe in the deeper sense, and what their religion is (in the “I accept and embrace this so fully that I don’t even think of it as a religion” sense) is far more interesting, no?
I guess science and scence only week is over at GNXP.
With regards to what the original post is about I must sort of disagree with something Mr. Blowhard wrote above. I don’t know much about this Harris guy, but Sullivan I have read quite a bit and though he is ‘articulate’, extremely so, he’s not all that smart, articulate people always seem smarter than they really are.
Neither Sullivan nor Harris are equipped to go into metaphysics so they seem to be arguing about Christian scripture or what is high falutingly put the ‘revealed’ part of Chrisianity, a topic neither of them actually understands much at all. I wouldn’t put a discussion between them on a ‘Beavis and Butthead do Religion’ level, but they’re not all that much better and most certainly not worth bothering about.
If you want to peruse two smart guys going at it, I suggest these two.
http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p20.htm
I never can tell if links work on this thinhg, hopefully it will.
RKU:
That’s not the old ‘Jewish’ joke from Ulster.
Guy walking down street, feels pistol barrel in sticking into his back and hears the question ‘Catholic of Protestant?’. Thinking quickly he says ‘Jewish’, then hears “I’ve got to be the luckiest Palestinian on this planet!”.
Michael Blowhard said–
Er, as far as I’m concerned, the views that the elite insist on as modern and rational (anti-racism, pro-multiculturalism, feminism, etc) *are* a religion. Isn’t it generally true that people who are Real True Believers don’t see themselves as Believers?
Yeah, I agree. I think the difference between supernatural religions and secular ones, while not entirely inconsequential (particularly in the potential for clashing with science, though the Soviets were sometimes no slouch at that), is also a distinction without a difference in many cases. The core of what they have in common is adhering to a dogma or rather web or interconnected dogmas, either rigidly or more flexibly, but usually (and especially among the more “religious”) ardently if some lines are seen to be crossed by other believers or pseudo-believers. Opponents in anything other than peripheral matters are EVIL, and must be punished by one method or another; they are not merely wrongheaded and in need of correction strictly with facts and logic.
Interestingly the modern left has succeeded in getting everyone else (almost) in liberal Western societies to sign on to their core beliefs as well: anti-racism, pro-multiculturalism without ANY distinctions (almost), feminism (at least itÂ’s core), ‘blaming the victimÂ’ is wrong, the egalitarian ideal, and so on. Thus their weapon is to threaten to shame, diminish and humiliate those who push their lines too far as “racists” or “sexist” and so on. ItÂ’s key that they are exposing apostasy and heresy — they depend upon a shared communal adherence at least formally with their core beliefs. They depend upon the defense “but IÂ’m not a racist” to be made in worried rebuttal, which they can then attack using an ever expanded definition of whatÂ’s “racist”. So now even noting that cultures differ and that that sometimes matters a lot in group or average outcomes is virtually certain to be denounced as “racist” in many quarters (but could not have been a few decades ago). With some considerable sting to it, requiring effort and defense and sometimes somewhat false denials (e.g. around HBD issues).
But I’m coming from a p-o-v that says that there is no such thing as a person, let alone a culture, that lives without a religion. (Except of course in the institutionalized sense.) We all have hopes, dreams, and items we take on faith; we all worship heroes, god-like characters, etc.
Well here we differ. YouÂ’re probably right that no culture exists or can exist without religion-like dogmas. ItÂ’s probably wired in for most, and it usually takes some effort for even those relatively dogma free, to break free. But I think a certain small but not insignificant fraction of people can. 10%? Hopes, dreams and moral preferences, and a conviction that some moral norms must be followed more or less (murder is wrong, a degree of altruism especially when it isnÂ’t really too expensive (or even if it is when talking about your near and dear) is a good thing).
ItÂ’s probably impossible for those who retain a strongly idealistic nature to be dogma free or anyway dogma very light. ItÂ’s probably only possible among the more or very pragmatic in outlook.
To me the key characteristic of religions that separate them from mere moral preferences, and hopes and dreams, is that they demand as I said adherence to a dogma, or rather usually an interrelated web of dogmas. I canÂ’t really think of a dogma I adhere to for example. I used to probably adhere to something like our Bill of Rights in some sort of democracy as a sort of dogmatically upheld best form of government, but I donÂ’t anymore. I still strongly prefer it for we Americans as weÂ’ve developed. But IÂ’m open to the idea that in some times and places that sort of thing can be give short shrift for awhile with arguably better results overall than if my preferred system had been put in place from the get go. IÂ’m thinking at the moment of the undemocratic paternalistic autocracy (of a mostly fairly gentle and only mildly corrupt nature) in Singapore from independence until a few years ago, when it became more democratic. If it wasnÂ’t the fastest rise from a low to a very high income country (with a large and thriving middle class) in human history, there are none that have much exceeded it.
Yes I take many things on faith. But almost nothing for dogmatic reasons. There’s almost nothing I take on faith that I can think of that I wouldn’t be perfectly fine with being questioned and for that matter proven wrong. I take many scientific theories on faith. I have studied many others enough to have some appreciation of the evidence, but there are certainly vast areas where that isn’t true. But there’s a process I respect for establishing, and also questioning and re-examining and refining – and sometimes largely junking – scientific theories. It’s way beyond my resources of time and in some cases maybe intelligence (some areas of physics I imagine) to go about actively questioning it all myself.
So in that sense OK faith. But that’s a very different sort of faith from the kind that would make me angry and think you were becoming evil and were unspeakably “ignorant” for questioning something I take on faith in any very telling or disquieting way.
I think almost all the posters and a lot of the commenters here are of that frame of mind, and no more “secular religious” than that. In contrast to the vast majority of leftists. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were like that. You seem to me to be here, and on your site. It’s one of the reasons I like is so much around here.
Sam Harris has a philosophy degree from Stanford according to his website. It’s a reason I found “The End of Faith” one of the most irritating books I have ever read. As Razib says above, he has “no need for rigorous theory or empirical data” nor, I would add, cogent argument. And he should know better!
dougjnn – I agree with the tenor of your comments about pragmatism and also that ThereÂ’s almost nothing I take on faith that I can think of that I wouldnÂ’t be perfectly fine with being questioned and for that matter proven wrong.. I would add that I definitely don’t worship heroes, god-like characters, etc.
just an fyi, harris is in a neuroscience graduate program right now.
also, let’s remember that sullivan was a pretty typical sneering xtian before his recent changes (e.g., remember him being all gleeful about dennett saying he was a theist according to robert wright a few years back?). but he pretty clearly still believes he’s a sincere xtian though the motives and dynamic of his rationalizations are pretty clear
from the outside.
JMcT — Andrew Sullivan not smart? Happy to agree he slips into glibness sometimes. But still! I mean Oxford, Harvard … A dissertation on Michael Oakeshott … I don’t know anyone who reads Oakeshott who I don’t consider very smart, let alone who writes well on Oakeshott. (And Sullivan’s writing about Oakeshott is awfully good, IMHO.) And as a pro commentator/pundit, he’s provocative and fresh on a regular basis, year after year. Agree with him or not, of course. You think that’s easy? Well, maybe you guys have much much higher standards for smartness than I do … Still, in a crowd of a couple of random hundred people, Andrew Sullivan’s going to be one of the brightest, no? He might even be the brightest of the verbal crowd, no? Which means he’s in the top … 1% maybe? That’s pretty bright.
Dougjnn — I’m with you on 110% of what you write, and am enjoying learning from your thinking. But I’m puzzled by your apparent conviction that religion is necessarily dogmatic. I thought “dogmatic” was a modifier — you can be dogmatic about your politics, or your religion, or your tastes, etc. But I didn’t realize dogmatism was automatically a part of the “religion” thing … Anyway, I’d suggest that “dogmatic” can certainly be a problem, and “religious” can certainly be a problem, but that they aren’t necessarily the same thing, let alone the same problem. People can be dogmatically scientific, for example, and *that* can become a problem. (For instance, it can be fun and rewarding to try to explain religion or art in scientific terms. But it can also lead a person to miss the point of both entirely.) I’d also suggest that your formula of “moral preferences, hopes, and dreams” pretty much equals a religious viewpoint — though probably not a dogmatic one!
The core thing I don?t like about Sullivan is that he?s fundamentally a polemicist, who relishes scoring points, rather than uncovering truths. He?s not rigid (rather the reverse in fact, endlessly shifting as convenient) and is not entirely unconcerned with what emerging evidence suggests about what?s true (Iraq war adventure), but it?s mostly about scoring pints for ?ol Andrew.
In contrast fellow political pundit Mickey Kaus, who writes at a similar level of facts light grand overview opinion making, and who has also positioned himself as something of a political iconoclast and free thinker, seems much more interested in teasing out nuggets of truth and revealing dogmatic delusions than wounding his foes de jour.
dougjnn,
You might enjoy trying to figure out what to make of Hoppe or Kuehnelt-Leddihn.
Andrew Sullivan not smart?
he’s smart, but not well informed in all the areas he comments on.
Michael Blowhard?
People can be dogmatically scientific, for example, and *that* can become a problem.
Oh for sure. Though legions of historians of science have told us that that?s not a promising way to go about making really major theoretical contributions. It?s the scientific method which inherently promotes examination, re-examination and sometimes revolutionary change that?s inherently anti-dogmatic, by no means all the toilers in the scientific fields. It seems to me.
But I’m puzzled by your apparent conviction that religion is necessarily dogmatic. ? But I didn’t realize dogmatism was automatically a part of the “religion” thing …
Well you make an interesting point. But I guess I can only partly agree.
There is an essence of mystical or ecstatic or transcendent (meditation, etc.) side of most or all religions that is not concerned at all with dogma but rather of a direct ex experience of loosing oneself in some manner. And significant (though widely varying) numbers of the religious are primarily concerned with and looking for these experiences. But aren?t they all surrounded by various dogmas and correct practices and taboo or forbidden ones? Forbidden at least in the sense that if you go that way you?re out of that religious club?
When exploration of spiritual experiences become completely dogma free, doesn?t that cease to be following any organized religion at all?
However I certainly wouldn?t argue that there are not widely varying emphasis on the importance of rigid adherence to dogma, or mastering any very elaborate code, in different religious sects.
dougjnn,
Also, everyone has some definition of right and wrong, which is a consequence of their cultural upbringing. Morality is acquired in about the same way and about the same time as language. Both are restricted by anatomy, but neither can be derived from it.
If you lock a baby hominid in a closet and feed it through a slot, of course, it will grow up with neither. But describing the resulting creature as “human” is a stretch.
So I have to concur with Michael: if you don’t think you have a religion in the sense he uses, you probably just think of your ethical system as “ethics.” This is perfectly normal and fine, but it is also often useful to think about what to do when you encounter other hominids who have different definitions of right and wrong.
I think of a cultural “kernel” as a set of factual inferences and ethical judgments about the world that are transmitted at an early age and tend to remain stable throughout life.
Via the kind of abstract reasoning we are using our large, convoluted cerebral tissues to engage in here, one can show that inferences make unsupported predictions or are otherwise unfalsifiable, and one can show that judgments are hypocritical (if A is better than B and B is better than C, C cannot be better than A).
But the idea that reason will only converge on a single kernel is not justified by these facts. This conceit of rationalist millenialism, the fallacy of progress, shares more with theism than with logic. And links between them are hardly hard to find. Unitarians, for instance, often like to describe themselves as “progressives.”
Mr. Blowhard:
Okay, on Sullivan, it very may well be a case of bad luck in the sense that when he writes about things that I happen to know about, they are things that he doesn’t happen to know about or has some sort of mental block. I’ve never read anything by Oakeshott for instance, so I can’t really judge what he has to say.
I went to an Ivy League school (Penn) and have worked with Harvard and Princeton types quite a bit and am married to an Eli and am somewhat less impressed with ‘where one went to school’ type stuff, pleny of such people aren’t really good at anything other than going to school. That might go double or triple for the professors.
I agree, that Sullivan is tremedously articulate though, a consumate chattering class member.
5 or 6 sentences somewhat overstates how much I care about Sullivan though, I don’t much care about him all. Sort of to do with Sullivan but a bit off topic do you remember the name of the Orwell essay when he describes how the commentators of his day were manic/depressive about WWII depending on whether His Majesty’s armed forces had a good week or not. Orwell’s explanation for this is that intellectuals worship power. Given that Sullivan seems to be, at least to me, the kind of guy that Orwell is talking about, do you think Orwell is right?
To make sense of religion, I think you have to separate it into a series of components. The creedal aspect, or set of official beliefs, is only one part of religion. In addition to official beliefs, religion is also a set of institutions and cultural practices. And the nature of those features is in part a function of other aspects of the culture in which it is embedded.
Harris seems to think that religion is primarily a series of propositions. And that when people of good sense and will critically examine those propositions they will abandon religion. I think he’s wrong. I think religion has proven itself to be adaptive over a long enough run that rational people should expect it to continue. It may be that at some time religion will disappear. But it won’t be because people suddenly become more rational.
Hey you, Razib, what a hypocrite you are! You don’t know anyone here (At Blakprof.com), “personally”, nor do you, reportedly, allow off-topic comments, or insults on your board. Yet, you go there and disrespect everyone who post there. How tact-less your right-sided brain operates. Perhaps, unlike Ras, you’ll learn to leave people alone.
I’ve pleaded with Ras, often, to tell me, if all of his assertions were found to be true, then what? Does that mean that my humanity, though less perfect (by his evaluations), equate to less than his? He’s never defined the objective. What’s the point?
Although, I lurk, and responded once or twice (at blackprof.com), using anonymous with the small “a”, I didn’t bring stuff from other blogs there, I left Ras to his own devices. What unfolded was relationships devolving disastrously, as did my own with him.
[i believe this is in reference to another “razib,” and this individual googled “razib” and found “me” via google, as i do not know who “Ras” or what “blakprof.com” is. i’ll leave this comment so this individual doesn’t think i’m being unfair to them and post follow up comments – the real razib]
JMcT — Yeah, you’re right, Ivies and such are overrated, no question. I just tend to find that the problem with Ivy types isn’t that they aren’t bright. God knows most of ‘em score well on tests.(As you point out, what else can they do?) The problem with them tends to have more to do with ego and character questions, don’t you think? I mean, many of them are just appalling people. I wish they were less bright — they might be less dangerous. Sullivan … Intellectuals … Power … Hmmm. I don’t really know what to say. I like Orwell’s skepticism about intellectuals, god knows. And the English dislike for excessive “cleverness” pleases me no end. (I had a very good time reading Paul Johnson’s “Intellectuals,” unfair though it is in many ways.) But I don’t really know what to make of political people generally. Dislike ‘em as a class — after all, what they really care about is power. I’d be gloomy if a relative or a friend married one. And political commentators … What to make of them as people? Who on earth would want to do such a thing for a living? Does such a person really want to be a power person himself? Or is it possible to be a political commentator and be fairly cheery and innocent — sort of like a sports commentator? You may be perfectly happy following the spectacle … But Sullivan wants to affect the debate … Hmm. I dunno, really. The whole power and politics mindset is so foreign to my nature I don’t really have any instincts about it, except to pull out the shotgun and tell ‘em to keep a good distance. What’s your own hunch here?
Dougjnn — To my mind (perhaps over-soaked in anthropology), the “organized” part of “organized religion” is a problem. Most tribal religions, for instance, aren’t organized in the sense that Catholicism or Judaism or the Presbyeterian Church are. Tribal people simply live their lives, surrounded by spirits, singing songs, performing rituals, telling tales in which what we consider “facts” and “myths” blend completely … The “religion” part of their life is inseparable from everything else they do: cooking, hunting, reproducing, avoiding the rain, etc. You can’t separate it out without destroying it. To my mind we all really live that way, 9/10ths unconscious, relying on all kinds of patterns and expectations and habits, few of which we’d even want subjected to intense “rational” inspection. Let’s say you’re with a girl and sharing a sexy moment. Does it make sense to stop and analyze it? The sexiness will slip away, right? Or most likely, anyway. Same with much of life. Good feelings, bad feelings, luck … Some days seem to flow pretty smoothly, some days don’t. Do you have good scientific explanations for why? Or do you kind of grab at scraps and then move on? Years of this kind of thing build up … Patterns emerge … Most Americans, for instance, seem to believe (in the larger sense) in success. Not just that if you get a degree and work hard you’ll do pretty well in a material sense, but that this will do something for you in a deeply-rewarding, life-is-justified sense. Others seem to live for their kids — their kids give them not just descendents, but a metaphysical justification for living. Bill Gates has become a kind of mythical figure for many people. People identify with movie stars, and imagine that if they met them they’d be buddies. Characters in the news become semi-fictional characters in our shared mythology: Monica, Jack Welch … People invest lots of cosmic hope in politics and politicians: somehow it will be transformative with a capital T if only a Democrat will be elected President. That kind of thing.
Sorry for gassing on. My only point is that organized religion is one thing, and is easy to sneeze at and dismiss. But the inchoate stew of hopes, dreams, assumptions, hunches, impressions, stories, images, etc that we swim in and are part of every day is another (if sometimes related) thing, and might very well merit the name of … I dunno, unconscious shared substratum? Religious/aesthetic dimension? Some people would use a shorthand for it, shrug, say “Why not?” and call it God. That isn’t the God of the familiar organized religions. But maybe it’s a handy and useful shorthand anyway.
I saw Harris speak and was surprised by the amount of time he spent contrasting Eastern and Abrahamic religion. He seems to believe that the contemplative methods can be extracted from the supernatural gobbledygook. Hard-core rationalists might reject the possibility that the self can investigate the self. Labeling Harris as a reality-dessicating rationalist certainly misses the point.
I think that Mencius wildly underestimates the power of “‘born-again’ Trinitarians” in the United States. The evangelical Protestant Christian memeplex is completely dominant in many communities. The elites in the mainstream media and universities may be secular or “Unitarian”, but their influence in the daily lives of millions of people is surprisingly minimal. Anyone who has lived in an evangelical Protestant Christian community knows that there exists an entire parallel infrastructure of memetic transmission.
Have you ever seen the documentary film Jesus Camp? My graduate-school peers here at UCSF were shocked by the religious worldview of the people in the film. I was more shocked by the fact that my peers were unfamiliar with this alternative consensus reality.
Michael Blowhard and Mencius?
You both have responded with interesting and valid points.
The core of the distinction I?m making between organized religion (secular and supernatural) with moral dogmas, and belief systems or taking some things on faith (expediently and non-dogmatically) is pretty well summed up in the short bit that potentilla picked out to quote in agreement:
There?s almost nothing I take on faith that I can think of that I wouldn?t be perfectly fine with being questioned and for that matter proven wrong..
That is not characteristic of what I?m calling organized religion, or adherence to a moral dogma. Which I?m saying something like 90% of those who call themselves secular adhere to in one form or another.
Which is part of why sites with the intellectual openness of GNXP are still pretty rare ? though not unique. There seems to me to be a small but growing network. (I?m certainly NOT talking about committed far right wing or racial nationalist or supremacist sites like Stormfront or less virulently, AmRen. Aside from being ugly and rather frightening (beneath a sometimes polite veneer at least at the later), they clearly have their own unshakable dogmas.)
[mentioning the groups above invariably brings them out of the woodwork, bring don't litter, it attracts animals]
chairmanK,
I am just using the word “power” in a different way.
There are certainly a lot of Trinitarians and you can certainly live your life within their framework. (My girlfriend is a “Jesus camp” alum.)
But their political power is very small. All of the “born-again” institutions are voluntarily organized and have little or no support from the State. Their entire revenue stream is dependent on maintaining a high level of continuing direct commitment from their base. This is why they evangelize – they have to.
This position is starting to approach that of Catholics in 17C through 19C England. And the arguments of those who want to repress them further, like Dawkins, are very reminiscent of the arguments of those who opposed Catholic emancipation. Perhaps, to paraphrase Nixon, we’re all Cromwellists now…
Dougjnn — Let’s hear it for GNXP! It’s great to be able to swap thoughts and impressions like this.
dougjnn,
I certainly think the effort to apply reason to one’s own belief system is very worthwhile.
But it is important to remember that most of the historical faiths that have claimed to be based on “reason” have been, if anything, crazier than the traditionalist ones. See under: French Revolution. And of course the points you make above.
Admitting that one’s own kernel is not absolute is a good start in differentiating oneself from these past efforts, which can’t really be regarded as unconditional successes. For example, I was basically brought up as a Unitarian, and this faith is still the source of my personal definition of right and wrong. It is the assumptions derived from this ethical system – the doctrine – that strike me as questionable.
Labeling Harris as a reality-dessicating rationalist certainly misses the point.
this is very true. harris has great reluctance disavowing eastern mysticism (even reincarnation). his skepticism is pointed precisely at abrahamic religions.
razib: Could you give me a link or quote in which Sam Harris talks about reincarnation? If he is indeed reluctant to dismiss reincarnation, then he loses my respect.
Mencius: What prompted my objection was your statement about the “institutions of memetic transmission”. If you’re talking about political power, then, okay, I agree with you. The military, the Federal Reserve, the Social Security administration, etc. betray no hint of Christianism – just plain old secular bureaucratic statism. However, I still disagree with your prediction that the proportion of Trinitarian Christians in power will not increase in the future. When I was an undergraduate at Harvard – a traditional stronghold of secularism and Unitarian theology – I noticed that faith-alone Trinitarians were a vocal, well-organized, and protected minority among my peers. These people are in the pipeline to attempt a democratic seizure of state organs. I read a senior thesis in which the author mentioned Jesus Christ in the acknkowledgements section. You know that the “Cromwellists” have already lost when a psychology concentrator at Harvard can declare Jesus as her “Lord and Savior” in her honors thesis without fear of being ridiculed by her professors.
razib: Could you give me a link or quote in which Sam Harris talks about reincarnation? If he is indeed reluctant to dismiss reincarnation, then he loses my respect.
he’s heckled on this issue at the beyond belief conference (you can see the videos at THE EDGE). he basically says he “hasn’t read all the studies, so he can’t just dismiss it a prior.”
Great news, we will never get rid of religion and it will drive the human specie toward extinction.
Yvonne Ridley: From captive to convert
chairmanK,
We certainly don’t disagree on the facts. There is no question but that the Trinitarians – like the English Catholics! – are scheming for power, and I don’t want them to get it.
Their successes to date are pretty unimpressive, though. For example, if you look at gay rights (one issue where I take the Unitarian party line) the Trinitarians have been advancing backward for about the last 30 years, despite investing a substantial fraction of their political energy in the subject. Where is Anita Bryant now? Where, the Briggs Initiative of yesteryear?
I am probably the only person on the planet who believes that (a) “democracy” is an inaccurate description of the American state, (b) this has been true for the last 75 years, and (c) a restoration of this failed system of government is more to be feared than hoped for.
It is true that a return of democracy (in the sense that, say, Tocqueville used the term) is probably the only force powerful enough to dismantle the “nonpartisan” civil service state. But it is also powerful enough to replace it with something much worse. Of course they don’t phrase it this way, but one of the reasons Unitarians have such a powerful hate of George W. Bush is that they see him as a pure product of democracy. I don’t think they’re wrong about this at all.
In my dream world, the first step a new democracy would take would be to abolish the civil service and disestablish the universities and public schools, and the second would be to abolish itself. Obviously the distance between this reverie and reality is considerable, which is why I oppose any revival of democracy (such as that attempted by the Trinitarians) at the present time.
Razib said?
harris has great reluctance disavowing eastern mysticism (even reincarnation).
Reluctance to disavow reincarnation for a self proclaimed and evangelizing atheist is truly bizarre.
I can somewhat understand not wanting to disavow certain of the core spiritual practices of eastern religion ? such as meditation and yoga for example. That is, because in some ways they empirically WORK. That is they can have notable calming effects, and reduce and then eliminate (as one say mediates enough to approach “nirvana”) inner conflict and neuroses and such. All of this may be in some ways similar to taking a narcotic drug ? that is it in effect short circuits some neural processes that evolved to reward us for successful efforts at propagating our genes though e.g. achieving more social status and what not. But there can be some empirical results of a sort to the practices. However the practices are all surrounded by lots of hocus pocus supernatural belief. Perhaps he rejects that but not necessarily the practice.
With reincarnation in contrast the core essence of the belief is that a supernatural spiritual essence of ourselves will and previously has animated other life forms. It?s about as supernatural in core belief as it gets. No possibly mostly true historical tales to learn lessons from there!
Leads to thoughts that he?s rather a fraud. He?s not really an atheist. He just can?t stand essentially totalitarian Abrahamic monotheisms, and claiming he?s an atheist is a more congenial and widely persuasive (within Western societies) manner of attacking them and wooing people away from them than openly adopting some version of eastern mystical belief.
It is amazing to learn this about Harris.
But really they are all the same – Harris, Dawkins, Dennett. The goal of this whole “neo-atheist” movement is just to formalize the Unitarian victory, and declare their opponents officially insane. Another blow in the great struggle between homoiousis and homoousis. Whoop de do. I am, like, so far from having a dog in this fight…
Reluctance to disavow reincarnation for a self proclaimed and evangelizing atheist is truly bizarre.
yes, but not necessarily. atheism is simply a statement about god, it doesn’t logically entail rationalism, materialism, naturalism, etc. in the west there is a strong connection between the various isms enumerated and atheism, but that is because supernaturalism and a theistic god are pretty tightly wedded in western high intellectual tradition. in india and china karma and the dao serve as substitutes for the god concept for the elites. i don’t buy that karma or the dao really means anything substantively diff. than god, but in the semantical domain you have to give it it’s due.
Razib–
Your last is really pretty new to me, and I’d be fascinated to hear a lot more detail!
To clarify, by “your last” I meant the totality of your last post.
Well, but actually especially the last two sentences.
i don’t buy that karma or the dao really means anything substantively diff. than god, but in the semantical domain you have to give it it’s due.
Mmmmm…
May be you are not too well informed about that if you are conflating karma and the dao.
Granted that karma has all the “moralistic” and “intentional” attachements that gods usually have.
But karma is a concept from India and dao from China which is quite different.
It its “strict” (non popular) form the dao is just some preset collection of constraints about the dynamics of the natural world without anything personal or intentional.
Of course, like with Buddhism, the folk expressions of the daoist faith are filled with a rich multitude of fancy spirits.
At the other end of the interpretation the dao is no more theistic than stating a set of values for cosmological constants.
The most important difference in focus from western metaphysics is the emphasis on process rather than ontology.