why did I write this?
A couple years ago, a just-published book called The End of Faith got a lot of attention. As the title implies, it is an somewhat flamboyant attack on religion in general. An unpromising concept, but the book is much better than I expected. The author, Sam Harris, is surprisingly rigorous and mature, though a few lazy fallacies1 early on overshadow his "central thesis."2
Harris, incidentally, would say that my perception of these "fallacies" is evidence of my being socialized (even as a non-religious person) to defend religion's privileged immunity from reason. This privilege is so ingrained in liberal discourse,3 he argues, that most of us unreasonably refuse to even consider, let alone debate, that certain religions, or, more specifically, religion in general, is a force for bad (even evil).
His lengthy chapter "The Problem with Islam" is one of the most disturbing and interesting-not so much for the points he makes about Islam itself as for the charges he levels against the way we (again, "we" who have proclaimed ourselves "enlightened liberals") insist on talking about it-about Islam in particular, and "other" ideologies, cultures, political systems, etc., in general.
Maybe this hit a nerve for me because I have engaged in exactly the kind of thinking that Harris finds so infuriating. When it has been proposed to me, to stick with Harris's example, that Islam itself (rather than cultural/socioeconomic/historical circumstances4) is a disaster for the world, I've written it off as "racist," "imperialist," "Orientalist," "arrogant," "ignorant," or something of that nature.
The people who suggest this may often be those things, but I have to admit that Harris is right to point out that I (I mean "I" specifically) am as groundless-as irrational-in my rejection of these ideas as is the person who often makes them. In other words, that for all I know those ideas may be entirely true. I reject them because I would rather not believe them.
Or, more likely, I reject them because I don't want to think of myself as the kind of person who is willing to entertain them. What sort of person is that, anyway?5
It is the open attack on this idea of cultural "equivalence," phrased in the comfortable language of liberal discourse, that is the disturbing aspect of the Islam chapter.
The phrasing is important. We are all used to hearing nationalistic, or religiously based, arguments against the idea that some peoples are simply more ethical or rational than others-or that we can and should say that other people's cultures, or at least significant aspects of those cultures, are wrong. It's especially easy to write these ideas off, and hard to look at them openly, because they are often supported in ways we find repugnant.6
Harris arrives at this point from the other direction: nationalists are irrational to believe that their country must be fundamentally superior to all others, and religionists are incorrect to believe the same of their religions; in the same way, liberals are irrational to argue that religions and cultures must be ethically or ontologically equivalent. Our world is "inescapabl[y] specific"-in other words, arbitrary. And in such world, populated by a species of intelligent beings that has evolved for no particular reason to have (some) very specific needs, certain groups of people will be much better at meeting those needs than others.
As I read this chapter, I happened to find myself dealing with a certain aspect of Taiwanese culture that differs extremely from what I grew up with. It's easy enough to criticize what I dislike about American culture, but somehow I've never felt comfortable doing the same about Taiwan.
Not that to say I never criticize Taiwan, but I would be reluctant to openly say anything as impolitic as "The traditional Chinese family is bad bad bad." What I tend to say instead, when called on to speak on the subject, is "The traditional Chinese family structure is difficult for Westerns to relate to. It relies on different conceptions of the individual and the self. I think some aspects of it are really admirable, but some others have become problematic, since they have yet to be reconciled with the adoption of some 'Western' (to use that reductive term) ideas into Chinese society."
And yet, as I come increasingly into contact with "the traditional Chinese family structure," I can't escape my own dislike of it-or the fact that I believe many aspects of it are not "different" but wrong.7
If Harris were here in my room, he'd certainly clap a hand on my shoulder and tell me that it's okay to think this way-it's right and it's rational. But this also relates to a flaw in Harris's book: it nearly ignores Asia, which, after all, is most of the world. And in doing so, it underestimates the power of conservativism to do what Harris often blames on religion.
For example, Harris blames religiosity for anti-drug, anti-sodomy, and other irrational "anti-pleasure" laws in the United States:If God sees and knows all things, and remains so provincial a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual behaviors or states of the brain, then what people do in the privacy of their own homes, though it may not have the slightest implication for their behavior in public, will still be a matter of public concern for people of faith.
Maybe, but what about the good old-fashioned idea that I am right and everyone else needs to believe what I believe and act the way I act just because? Or, if not "just because," then what about "because that's the way it's done"-not necessarily just by me, but in the traditions of this society?
Taiwan, for example, is pretty free from Western religion, and yet the penalty for drug smuggling is (potentially) death. Adulterers can still be fined here, and their mistresses can go to jail. What god are the Taiwanese afraid of offending?
There may be elements of religion in Taiwanese conservativism (ancestor worship,8 for example, supports patriarchy), but even Harris would have to admit that that can't explain it entirely. Couldn't the same, to a lesser degree, be of America? He doesn't say.
But like Harris's impression of the Bible itself, there is a tremendous amount of great stuff in this book. The analysis of religion's relationship to reason is especially good. The pious, he argues, are not inherently unreasonable people-in fact, religion may be the only area in which they completely exclude reason. However, religion can act as an assumption on which "reasonable" behavior will be founded. This means that religion often has a one-way dynamic with reason. This in itself is nothing new, but he deals with it in an unusually clear way, and there's value to having such a controversial opinion laid out in a reasonable way. (So often it's left to those who get off on being counter-cultural.)
As the institution whose death the book presumes to report. For me, the treatment of faith always falls just short of being satisfying-in other words, of addressing faith itself. But he argue persuasively for one point that is not made enough: followers of religion ought to make a clearer distinction between which of their beliefs purport to be validated by faith, and which by reason, even if the reason is founded on that faith.
The latter, at least, ought to be open for debate, but often aren't. Harris argues that this is because there is an improperly fluid relationship between the two, so that a particular belief might claim to be the product of a sober inspection of the evidence, but, when the evidence turns against it, revert to an unassailable matter of faith.
In other words, a Catholic's faith may tell him that Jesus was the son of God, died on the cross for humanity's sins, and then rose again, but does that faith extent to the infallibility of the Church? Or does that belief derive from evidence and reason? If so, a rational person must be open to the possibility of its being wrong. If not, a rational person shouldn't try to "prove" it, or even support it, through reason.
The book's strongest indictment against faith is to point out that, often, belief occupies a hazy and utterly irrational middle ground-it claims the support of evidence and reason, but refuses to be challenged. If this is Harris's faith, though, it describes something more basic-and more prevalent-than religion.
_____________________
1One of my least favorites is that he lazily equates religion in general with religious fundamentalism, using the argument that "good" Jews/Christians/Muslims must either be fundamentalists, or at the least contribute to an environment in which fundamentalists are protected from rational discourse. There may be something to this, but he whips through it quickly, and then uses it to prop up many of his other arguments.
2There are also way too many endnote.
3Harris himself, unsurprisingly, could probably be called a liberal, though some of his views would certainly appeal more to conservatives. He's not inconsistent, though-if anything, he exposes some hypocrisies of the political clusters currently termed "liberal" and "conservative."
4Assuming that a religion can be meaningfully separated from these.
5This is the same reason I believe (sincerely believe) in global warming.
6Harris, unfortunately, does not comment on the almost-irony that many of his arguments are similar to those made by religious fundamentalists in defense of aims that Harris find reprehensible, such as spreading religion by force.
7What the hell is "traditional Chinese family structure" anyway? When people ask me questions about "Americans" or "America," I always tell them that America is a big place with a lot of people and a lot of different cultures. But there are some things that can be called "American," or "Taiwanese," or whatever. I can imagine some people reading this footnote (hypothetical people (I doubt any actual ones will have gotten through it) "duh, moron," and others reading it and thinking, "no, asshole."
8To call this a religion is forced. It's also not entirely clear to me that people actually believe in the literal tenants of this "religion," and yet it remains something they follow. My girlfriend, for example, won't speak ill of the Buddhist/Taoist/popular gods, but as far as I can tell doesn't believe in them either. This seems to be the case for a lot of people.
Harris, incidentally, would say that my perception of these "fallacies" is evidence of my being socialized (even as a non-religious person) to defend religion's privileged immunity from reason. This privilege is so ingrained in liberal discourse,3 he argues, that most of us unreasonably refuse to even consider, let alone debate, that certain religions, or, more specifically, religion in general, is a force for bad (even evil).
His lengthy chapter "The Problem with Islam" is one of the most disturbing and interesting-not so much for the points he makes about Islam itself as for the charges he levels against the way we (again, "we" who have proclaimed ourselves "enlightened liberals") insist on talking about it-about Islam in particular, and "other" ideologies, cultures, political systems, etc., in general.
Maybe this hit a nerve for me because I have engaged in exactly the kind of thinking that Harris finds so infuriating. When it has been proposed to me, to stick with Harris's example, that Islam itself (rather than cultural/socioeconomic/historical circumstances4) is a disaster for the world, I've written it off as "racist," "imperialist," "Orientalist," "arrogant," "ignorant," or something of that nature.
The people who suggest this may often be those things, but I have to admit that Harris is right to point out that I (I mean "I" specifically) am as groundless-as irrational-in my rejection of these ideas as is the person who often makes them. In other words, that for all I know those ideas may be entirely true. I reject them because I would rather not believe them.
Or, more likely, I reject them because I don't want to think of myself as the kind of person who is willing to entertain them. What sort of person is that, anyway?5
It is the open attack on this idea of cultural "equivalence," phrased in the comfortable language of liberal discourse, that is the disturbing aspect of the Islam chapter.
The phrasing is important. We are all used to hearing nationalistic, or religiously based, arguments against the idea that some peoples are simply more ethical or rational than others-or that we can and should say that other people's cultures, or at least significant aspects of those cultures, are wrong. It's especially easy to write these ideas off, and hard to look at them openly, because they are often supported in ways we find repugnant.6
Harris arrives at this point from the other direction: nationalists are irrational to believe that their country must be fundamentally superior to all others, and religionists are incorrect to believe the same of their religions; in the same way, liberals are irrational to argue that religions and cultures must be ethically or ontologically equivalent. Our world is "inescapabl[y] specific"-in other words, arbitrary. And in such world, populated by a species of intelligent beings that has evolved for no particular reason to have (some) very specific needs, certain groups of people will be much better at meeting those needs than others.
As I read this chapter, I happened to find myself dealing with a certain aspect of Taiwanese culture that differs extremely from what I grew up with. It's easy enough to criticize what I dislike about American culture, but somehow I've never felt comfortable doing the same about Taiwan.
Not that to say I never criticize Taiwan, but I would be reluctant to openly say anything as impolitic as "The traditional Chinese family is bad bad bad." What I tend to say instead, when called on to speak on the subject, is "The traditional Chinese family structure is difficult for Westerns to relate to. It relies on different conceptions of the individual and the self. I think some aspects of it are really admirable, but some others have become problematic, since they have yet to be reconciled with the adoption of some 'Western' (to use that reductive term) ideas into Chinese society."
And yet, as I come increasingly into contact with "the traditional Chinese family structure," I can't escape my own dislike of it-or the fact that I believe many aspects of it are not "different" but wrong.7
If Harris were here in my room, he'd certainly clap a hand on my shoulder and tell me that it's okay to think this way-it's right and it's rational. But this also relates to a flaw in Harris's book: it nearly ignores Asia, which, after all, is most of the world. And in doing so, it underestimates the power of conservativism to do what Harris often blames on religion.
For example, Harris blames religiosity for anti-drug, anti-sodomy, and other irrational "anti-pleasure" laws in the United States:If God sees and knows all things, and remains so provincial a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual behaviors or states of the brain, then what people do in the privacy of their own homes, though it may not have the slightest implication for their behavior in public, will still be a matter of public concern for people of faith.
Maybe, but what about the good old-fashioned idea that I am right and everyone else needs to believe what I believe and act the way I act just because? Or, if not "just because," then what about "because that's the way it's done"-not necessarily just by me, but in the traditions of this society?
Taiwan, for example, is pretty free from Western religion, and yet the penalty for drug smuggling is (potentially) death. Adulterers can still be fined here, and their mistresses can go to jail. What god are the Taiwanese afraid of offending?
There may be elements of religion in Taiwanese conservativism (ancestor worship,8 for example, supports patriarchy), but even Harris would have to admit that that can't explain it entirely. Couldn't the same, to a lesser degree, be of America? He doesn't say.
But like Harris's impression of the Bible itself, there is a tremendous amount of great stuff in this book. The analysis of religion's relationship to reason is especially good. The pious, he argues, are not inherently unreasonable people-in fact, religion may be the only area in which they completely exclude reason. However, religion can act as an assumption on which "reasonable" behavior will be founded. This means that religion often has a one-way dynamic with reason. This in itself is nothing new, but he deals with it in an unusually clear way, and there's value to having such a controversial opinion laid out in a reasonable way. (So often it's left to those who get off on being counter-cultural.)
As the institution whose death the book presumes to report. For me, the treatment of faith always falls just short of being satisfying-in other words, of addressing faith itself. But he argue persuasively for one point that is not made enough: followers of religion ought to make a clearer distinction between which of their beliefs purport to be validated by faith, and which by reason, even if the reason is founded on that faith.
The latter, at least, ought to be open for debate, but often aren't. Harris argues that this is because there is an improperly fluid relationship between the two, so that a particular belief might claim to be the product of a sober inspection of the evidence, but, when the evidence turns against it, revert to an unassailable matter of faith.
In other words, a Catholic's faith may tell him that Jesus was the son of God, died on the cross for humanity's sins, and then rose again, but does that faith extent to the infallibility of the Church? Or does that belief derive from evidence and reason? If so, a rational person must be open to the possibility of its being wrong. If not, a rational person shouldn't try to "prove" it, or even support it, through reason.
The book's strongest indictment against faith is to point out that, often, belief occupies a hazy and utterly irrational middle ground-it claims the support of evidence and reason, but refuses to be challenged. If this is Harris's faith, though, it describes something more basic-and more prevalent-than religion.
_____________________
1One of my least favorites is that he lazily equates religion in general with religious fundamentalism, using the argument that "good" Jews/Christians/Muslims must either be fundamentalists, or at the least contribute to an environment in which fundamentalists are protected from rational discourse. There may be something to this, but he whips through it quickly, and then uses it to prop up many of his other arguments.
2There are also way too many endnote.
3Harris himself, unsurprisingly, could probably be called a liberal, though some of his views would certainly appeal more to conservatives. He's not inconsistent, though-if anything, he exposes some hypocrisies of the political clusters currently termed "liberal" and "conservative."
4Assuming that a religion can be meaningfully separated from these.
5This is the same reason I believe (sincerely believe) in global warming.
6Harris, unfortunately, does not comment on the almost-irony that many of his arguments are similar to those made by religious fundamentalists in defense of aims that Harris find reprehensible, such as spreading religion by force.
7What the hell is "traditional Chinese family structure" anyway? When people ask me questions about "Americans" or "America," I always tell them that America is a big place with a lot of people and a lot of different cultures. But there are some things that can be called "American," or "Taiwanese," or whatever. I can imagine some people reading this footnote (hypothetical people (I doubt any actual ones will have gotten through it) "duh, moron," and others reading it and thinking, "no, asshole."
8To call this a religion is forced. It's also not entirely clear to me that people actually believe in the literal tenants of this "religion," and yet it remains something they follow. My girlfriend, for example, won't speak ill of the Buddhist/Taoist/popular gods, but as far as I can tell doesn't believe in them either. This seems to be the case for a lot of people.