Well, he gets a few things right, i.e., ‘Either Christ is divine or He isn’t,’ but Harris never gets to the point of defining morality. What other problems do you see with his argumentation?
Roger
21 thoughts on “Atheist Sam Harris On Morality”
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Harris not only does not define morality, but if you listen carefully, you'll see that He rejects the concept of Christ because two different "certainties" (the Bible and the Quran) are at odds about what happens when you accept Christ's divinity and/or you don't accept His divinity. He errs, I believe, when he assumes both the Bible and the Quran are "certainties" when only one can be. And I vote for the Bible.
Harris says it is unseemly to act as if we know something with certainty that we can't possibly know, yet he has no problem doing the same thing in regards to his own atheistic views.
Excellent points. Anymore?
Roger
Harris does not define morality; he just assumes we all instinctively know it. The problem is that he has to borrow from Christianity's idea of goodness in order to tell us what is right and wrong. He has no basis for morality.
By the way, you have Harris listed as an atheist philosopher? I wasn't aware he was a philosopher.
Hi Tyler,
I embedded the video from CNN. They labeled Harris as an Atheist philosopher.
Roger
Greta,
What does Sam Harris pretend to be "certain" about that he can't possibly be certain about(regarding his atheistic views)?
Tyler, you write: "he has to borrow from Christianity's idea of goodness in order to tell us what is right and wrong. He has no basis for morality."
On what basis do you make this statement?
How many rhetorical questions does he raise? How many moral issues does he raise? Sam imposes a moral law in his examples. No Moral Lawgiver, no moral law. No moral law, no good and no right (as opposed to wrong). If there is no good then there is no evil or wrong (as opposed to good).
Rob,
It looks like you have a rather naive and simplistic view of morality. Are you well-read in the area of contemporary meta-ethics?
Harris says, "It's not our job to not judge it and say, 'well, to each his own, everyone has to work out their own strategy for human fulfillment.' It's just not true. There are people who are wrong about human fulfillment." I couldn't agree more, but that just sounds like another "religious" worldview to me.
Landon, tell me more about contemporary meta-ethics. If humans are products of naturalistic evolution and survival of the fittest is the game, why does it matter who wins & loses? If the concern is for an over-arching "human well-being", how does one decide which life should be protected and which should be left to the natural consequences of the system?
Landon,
You ask, "What does Sam Harris pretend to be "certain" about that he can't possibly be certain about(regarding his atheistic views)?"
It is an implied certainty. He admits, truthfully, that there are things in religion that religious folks can never be 100% certain about without a degree of faith. However, the exact same applies to his own beliefs. Even if we were all atheists, we must assume no god exists, when–as it impossible to prove a negative–there is not enough evidence to lead us to that conclusion.
The remarkable thing about atheism is that it claims to be a belief of the rational, and yet atheists remain so fervent in disregarding faith's role in any belief system (including, atheism). I think as long as faith is disregarded, atheism should be intellectually disregarded, as it doesn't have a logical leg to stand on.
If you do agree that a degree of faith is required, then his argument against religion begins to fall apart. Then, both sides are arguing things they cannot know absolutely.
I also find it questionable to use the "throwing acid in a child's face" thing as reason to be rid of religion. There are good people and bad people in all belief systems. There are Stalins and Hitlers and Urbans. Bad people, and bad practices, are not exclusive to any particular belief system. It would be ignoring human nature to say as much.
He's certainly right, some ways of living are indeed wrong, but he's in the same boat we are regarding which ones. . .actually, since atheists tend to disregard faith's role in belief of any kind, he's in a worse boat.
I could go on, there are so many things wrong with his philosophy, but I'll stop here. My writing is a mess right now so I'm probably only confusing folks. haha
–Seeker
Anonymous Seeker,
My first question would be, have you read Sam Harris' books?
That aside, you say that there is not enough evidence to be an atheist, but the atheism that Harris generally promotes is simply non-theism (i.e. the lack of belief in God), not positive atheism (the belief that there is no God). One does not need much evidence to be a mere non-theist.
As for proving a negative, I'm not exactly sure why you think that can't be done.
It does not take faith to lack the belief in God. All it takes is the admission that one is not familiar with any truly convincing reasons to believe. You might say that it takes some amount of faith to maintain that there is no God, but that's different than mere atheism as Harris understands it.
You're correct about bad people doing bad things regardless of their worldview.
I have not read his book, but "non-theism" seems to be a different way of saying "atheist." Atheist, meaning essentially "There is no god," (a belief that a god does not exist), as opposed to "non-theist," which broken apart is: "Non" (meaning "not"), "theist" (meaning, one with the belief in the existence of god or gods). Essentially, "Not one with the belief in the existence of god or gods."
Perhaps a poor choice of wording on his part?
As for how you describe it. You are assuming non-belief is the default. We differ here, and perhaps might have to agree to disagree. You see, nothingness is the default belief. With no evidence pointing sufficiently in either way, to require no faith at all you must have absolutely no opinion on the existence of God.
You could promote nothing. You could neither criticize nor support religion.
If you disagree, you might try re-explaining this position. I'm familiar with it, but not to the greatest extent.
–Seeker
Phostenix said: "If humans are products of naturalistic evolution and survival of the fittest is the game, why does it matter who wins & loses?"
I'm not sure precisely what you mean by this. If what you're saying is that evolution by natural selection entails that might makes right, or something to that extent, then I can't see any reason to agree.
Anonymous Seeker,
There's something of a dispute about what the best way to define "atheism" is. I side with Harris and some other atheists in defining the word as non-theism. The prefix 'a' means 'non.' So somebody who lacks the belief in God would be an atheist. To be more precise, you can consider that 'negative atheism', in contrast to positive atheism, which is the belief that there is no God.
What you seem to be describing as a presumption of "nothingness" is actually the presumption of non-theism (otherwise known as the presumption of negative atheism, or simply the presumption of atheism). This seems to be the standard view. Take a look at Antony Flew's paper "The Presumption of Atheism."
Sorry, that's not what I meant by "nothingness." I just didn't know how best to describe the default.
A presumption of nothingness isn't quite the case, rather, no presumption, would be more accurate.
You could not doubt God's existence, nor could you doubt his non-existence. Again, the default, is the lack of a position. If Sam Harris is in such a position, he wouldn't be a non-theist (which seems to say, because the evidence is lacking, I doubt the existence of god). I'm not sure what he would be. A pure agnostic?
What I mean to say is, a non-theist, if truly making no presumptions as it seems you would hold to, cannot make the claims Harris is making in his video. He cannot make any claims at all. He cannot even enter into the argument because he has no opinion one way or the other.
Is religion important? He cannot say. Should we be strict in our beliefs? He has no opinion whether we should or should not.
If this is the case, my issue with this video still remains. He criticizes the presumptions made by religious people, while presuming himself.
He claims that morality in religion is unimportant. However, if Christianity (for instance), is true, morality is the most important thing.
He must conclude that Christianity is not true first, to come to his conclusion that those matters are not as important.
He says, "We SHOULD be talking about REAL problems. . .We talk about morality in cases that are uncoupled from REAL questions of human and animal suffering."
As far as I can tell, his supposed position seems to be confused at best.
–Seeker
Anonymous Seeker,
You're confused about the nature of non-belief, I think. If I do not hold a belief one way or the other on the matter of God's existence, then the mere fact that I don't hold the belief that God exists entails that I am a non-theist. In other words, even those who haven't made up their minds are non-theists. They don't cease being non-theists until they become theists, which is at the time that they start believing that God exists. So in a very real sense, that is an appropriate presumption.
I don't think this is even very much disputed among Christian philosophers. I have read a Christian attempt to argue for a presumption of theism, but it was unconvincing to me. I have also defended a presumption of positive atheism, though I'm not quite sure whether or not such a presumption is warranted anymore. But it is uncontroversial to say that we should have a presumption of atheism in the sense that Antony Flew argues for, which is simply a presumption of non-theism (or non-belief one way or the other).
Now, on top of that presumption, which I'm sure Harris holds, he also thinks that there is no good reason to believe Christianity is true, and that there is good reason to believe that it's false. So he feels comfortable positively asserting that God does not exist. If you want his reasons for believing this, you should read his books. I remember from "Letter to a Christian Nation" he mentioned the problem of evil as one reason he is confident that there is not a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. It's another issue whether or not his argument there succeeds in showing that God does not exist. But if you want his reasons for believing what he does, you'll have to look at what he's written and get that I think.
I'm late getting in the gate on this one, but I couldn't resist offering a few points:
– What strikes me most significant, frankly, is the immaturity of Harris's argument. Moral relativists can at the very least claim the virtue of allowing for the views of others. They preach open-mindedness (though they rarely practice it quite as universally). This guy, however, says straight out, "It's not our job to not judge it, to say 'to each his own, well, everyone has to work out their own strategy for human fulfillment.' It's just not true." He lists some issues he believes are important–"nuclear proliferation, genocide, poverty, the crisis in education"–follows that up by claiming religious issues that others believe are important are, in fact, not important at all, that they actually serve as nothing more than distractions from the issues he holds to be most significant. The end result is a child's argument, petulant and stubborn: "What I think is important is important. What you think is important isn't. I'm right, you're wrong. So there."
– I love his line, "The irony is that we really agree much more about morality than anyone lets on." Why is that? How is it that such broadly diverse religions, and even non-religious societies, agree on so many moral points? Does that not in itself indicate an objective standard? What might the source of that standard be? (This, of course, is the very beginning of C.S. Lewis's line of completely logical thinking in Mere Christianity. I wonder how Harris would respond to Lewis's "pretended knowledge". . . .)
– He offers a dichotomy between two religions–Christianity and Islam–as proof that religion is itself untrustworthy. They can't both be right, so therefore they must both be wrong. This is a manifestly illogical line of thinking. If Sir Isaac Newton tells me that two objects with mass attract one another, and I shoot back that they actually repel one another . . . the two of us are in disagreement, so we must both be wrong. Right? Of course not! If he presents evidence to support his view, he's demonstrably correct and I'm wrong. Opposing viewpoints don't automatically cancel one another out. If that were the reality, consider where our legal system would be. The plaintiff and defendant can't both be right, so by default they're both wrong. Every case would have to be thrown out of court.
– And it's on that very same note that the rest of his argument fails. In the end, he's presenting one point of view–his point of view. He believes, for instance, that Iran's nuclear program is wrong. It puts us in danger. Yet the leadership of Iran believes–just as strongly–that they're in the right. They hold that they have the right to advance their nuclear program. They believe that it's important that they do so. So in their eyes . . . what they think is important is important. What Harris thinks is important isn't. They're right, he's wrong.
So there.
Anonymous,
You would do well to actually read Harris' books before attacking this straw man you've constructed in your own mind.
As for the idea that an objective standard has to come from God, if that's what you were implying with the Lewis reference, I think Harris is perfectly justified in simply dismissing any such idea unless it can be proven that this is a valid inference. In other words, it's not up to Harris to refute the line of thinking that objective morality leads to God, it's up to the theist to show that there is such a connection here.
Lastly, on the issue of disagreement, Harris does not think that just because two people disagree that means they're both wrong. You seem to foist this rather silly view on him with no evidence that he would actually endorse such a principle. I can assure you, he is not that dumb. So everything you write in the last two paragraphs is misguided.
Oh, I mean to read Harris' books. I'm very interested in delving into his positions further. My response was to the video. He made a moral appeal. I'm refuting what he said. I'm not required to research a man's entire life and works in order to respond to a brief assertion he makes. His view is that we should forgo religion, but nothing in what he said was substantive enough to convince anyone who actually subscribes to a particular religious faith to do anything of the sort. I can only base my reply on what I'm replying to. If the subject of the piece is why we ought to ditch religion, and he says that Christianity and Islam hold opposing views and can't both be correct, then he's using that as an example to support his premise. Both are religions; both are wrong in his mind. It isn't "silly" to say that he endorses such a principle. He just did it, before our very eyes.
Anonymous,
The silly position you attributed to Harris is that if two people disagree about something, then both of them are wrong. As I said, he's not that dumb, so you're knocking down a real straw man when you ridicule such a principle.