Letter to an Atheist: A Response to Sam Harris

Faith's Indecent Exposure

Take Off The Fig Leaf, Sam

Faith is like a reproductive organ. But this is the 21st century. It’s ok to be faith-positive. It’s not something to be embarrassed about. “Everybody has one,” so to speak, so there’s no shame in admitting that you “have one too.” You can brag about how small yours is, but I think we can let go the ideals of Renaissance proportion, secure in the knowledge that big faith doesn’t make one a barbarian any more than small faith makes one civilized. Faith is to the mind what a reproductive organ is to the body. To say a concept is rational, is to say it was conceived by faith in the axioms of reason. And everybody knows that you can’t “remove the organ and demand the function.” You can’t “castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.” (C.S.Lewis, The Abolition of Man)

In Letters to a Christian, Sam Harris describes faith as something that’s “antithetical to reason,” and faith-based religion as something that’s “in perpetual conflict with science.” Using the definition of faith found in Hebrews 11:1 “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” he suggests this definition “gives the game away,” as if this passage exposes faith as something that’s intellectually indecent. Sam’s criticisms are typically leveled at faith as expressed in the major world religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), but criticisms of particular religious dogmas cannot be applied to faith (or theism) as such. To do so is to commit a Motte and Bailey fallacy. Intelligent theists do not think faith is antithetical to reason. Nor do they think there’s deep conflict between faith and science. They think rational and scientific objections to faith (or theism) are superficial, at best. Even if Sam is right, does his criticism of faith-based religion as something that’s “in perpetual conflict with science” give one sufficient reason for rejecting faith? Isn’t science in “perpetual conflict” with itself? Two of our most fundamental scientific theories are in conflict with each other! Should we reject General Relativity or Quantum Mechanics because they are incompatible? Is it “antithetical to reason” to believe both? If the answer is no, then conflict with science is not a sufficient reason to reject faith.

Odd Bedfellows?

Faith is not antithetical to reason, or unscientific. Quite the contrary, faith is a necessary condition for reason and science. Faith and doubt are components of every healthy belief. The only alternatives to faith and doubt are certainty and total skepticism. “A [Pox] on both your houses!”Certainty is a psychological sickness that produces ideologues, and their irrational offspring, ideologies. The consummate skeptic, Pyrrho of Ellis, required attendants to keep him from walking off cliffs. Take better care of your brain than Pyrrho did, whose brain fell out of the hole his mind opened.

Faith is a means to rational ends. It bridges the gap between doubt and belief. For theists faith is the means “by which we believe in God.” (Catholic Catechism) Faith is non-rational, but it’s a necessary non-rational step. Here, the theist, the atheist, and the scientist all get caught with their pants down. Every scientist worth her philosophical salt understands the importance of doubt, but this doesn’t prevent her from having faith in the axioms of science, or holding beliefs she thinks are justified by available evidence. Sam might not want to see her faith. That’s fine. It’s a bit Victorian, but he’s entitled to his intellectual prudishness. He’s not entitled to his own philosophical facts. One cannot believe in reason, or in the axioms that form the philosophical foundations of science without faith. Possessing a measure of faith is a litmus test of one’s intellectual honesty and psychological health. The trick is to calibrate it correctly.

How much is too much? Is there such a thing as having too much faith, or too little faith? Of course. It’s possible to err in both directions. For example, someone who does not believe in anthropogenic Climate Change may have too little faith (believe too little), and a Chemtrails conspiracist may have too much faith (believe too much). The interesting question is not whether one has faith, or not. The interesting question is, what is the substance of one’s faith? What does one have faith in, and why?

The first philosophical step toward any belief is a step of faith. Reason comes second, science third. Imagine something presenting itself to your senses led you to claim “a thing exists.” Imagine that you stretch this inference a bit to make the additional claim that “I am not this thing,” and then you stretch it a bit further and claim “the context within I and this thing exist is another, third thing.” At this point professional philosophers will have begun hyperventilating. Buddhists would have begun shaking their heads at “I.” But most people, theists and atheists alike, wouldn’t balk at any of these claims. I exist, other things exist, the ‘world’ exists. But notice that we only begin to reason after making one of these claims. For example, if “I exist” is true, then the opposite claim is false. The rational methods we call science appear only after we’ve accepted these three claims, and the additional claim that our reason is valid.

Sam’s “Bootstrap” Is Faith

Properly understood, science constrains itself to making claims about the parts of existence that we can access with our senses and our instruments. Questions like “Is morality objective?” cannot be asked or answered by science. Hume was the first one to articulate this problem (Hume’s Guillotine), i.e. there’s no logically valid way to get an ought from an is. Instead of offering a solution to this existential koan, Sam simply brushes it off. In his view, to question how one bridges the logical gap between is and ought is to “hit philosophical bedrock with the shovel of a stupid question.” Admittedly, Sam’s response to this question is one of the reasons why I love him, but it doesn’t get him off the philosophical hook. Ironically, Sam’s quip sounds a lot like God in the Old Testament book of Job. When Job asks, “why?,” God responds by saying “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2 KJV) Similarly, Sam’s rhetorical strategy for responding to someone with the philosophical hutzpah to ask “Why should I care about suffering?” is to make them look stupid, and feel small. Effective as this strategy is, it’s also another species of logical fallacy. Instead of providing a solution to the is/ought problem, Sam sidesteps the question, waves his rhetorical wand to make the questioner disappear (like the ‘self’), and attempts to establish an objective morality by scientific fiat. One might say he ‘loses his head’ in Hume’s Guillotine. Ultimately, Sam is forced into making the same kind of non-rational claim that theists make to ground his belief in objective moral truth. Sam calls it a “bootstrap.” Theists call it faith.

Nietzsche: Sam’s Fickle Philosophical Friend

Sam used Nietzsche’s critique of Pascal to buttress his case against the Christian faith. Fair enough, but Nietzsche’s no fan of objective morality. For Nietzsche, instinct and psychology provide better explanations for the origin of morality than reason.

“Fear is the mother of morality.” (On the Genealogy of Morals)

“Morality is the idiosyncrasy of decadents having the hidden desire to revenge themselves upon life.” (Beyond Good and Evil)

One could quote Nietzsche, ad nauseam, in critique of Sam’s arguments for an objective morality. William Lane Craig provides a lucid logical critique in his debate with Sam (linked below). Although one cannot use psychological motivation as a logical critique of his argument, one can wonder if Sam’s psychological aversion to evil and suffering is effecting him similarly to the way he thinks “original sin” effected Pascal, i.e. by corrupting his reason. Does Sam’s fear of moral monsters tempt him into making a logical misstep? Does Sam’s desire for revenge upon jihadis compel him into taking a leap of faith to secure an objective ground for morality? One can imagine Nietzsche accusing Sam of weakness. Of attempting to “lead mankind around by the nose,” by establishing a new class of soulless scientific priests who reveal objective moral truth to the herd as if they’re speaking ex cathedra. Simply put, it’s a philosophically sloppy attempt to baptize morality and give it the sheen of scientific authority. Suppose Sam’s attempt to clothe morality in the vestment of scientific authority were successful, would he answer this question: Where does science derive its authority? Nietzsche did.

“Strictly speaking, there is absolutely no science ‘without presuppositions;’ the very idea is inconceivable, paradoxical: a philosophy, a ‘belief’ must always exist first in order for science to derive from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right of existence.” (On the Genealogy of Morals)

In other words, to assess the authority of science we have to interrogate the philosophy of science. Saying something’s true because it’s scientific is a little bit like saying something’s true because it’s in the Bible. What, ultimately, distinguishes someone like Sam Harris from someone like Blaise Pascal? Again, Nietzsche answers us.

“What distinguishes us [Harris] from the pious and the believers [Pascal] is not the quality but the quantity of belief and piety.” (Emphasis mine, Human, All Too Human)

In other words, the difference between the faith of a theist like Pascal, who would have grounded objective morality in God, and the bootstrap of an atheist like Sam, who attempts to ground objective morality in science, is not a difference of quality.

Failure to Close: Fontanelle Bro’s

As a theist, I share Sam’s ‘soft spot.’ Both of us exercise faith to maintain different beliefs. If the rational quality of our beliefs is held constant, the challenge becomes to believe the correct number of things. Since we will always have beliefs, and err in the quantity of our beliefs, we will always need to exercise our doubt and our faith. I agree with Sam’s assertion that ethical claims can be objectively true or false. I disagree with his assertion that ethical claims can be established scientifically. Like Sam, I recognize my dependence upon axioms. One must acknowledge one’s axioms; one must also be free to question them. Sam discourages this. He thinks these are “stupid questions.” I disagree. But, I understand. He wants to establish solid rational grounds for waging war against real moral monsters. Sam’s moral clarity and heroism should be celebrated. His moral philosophy should not. Either his allergy to suffering caused his philosophical eyes to swell shut, preventing him from staring into the non-rational moral abyss, or he walked right up to the edge, winced, and walked away.

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Notes:

If you want to hear Sam’s argument for objective morality, watch his debate with William Lane Craig [52:34-55:15, 1:18:09-1:22:53, 1:25:58-1:36:20] and/or his podcast with Alex O’connor.