Sam Harris very politely disagrees

Sam Harris' response to Andrew Sullivan has been up for awhile, but I've only gotten round to it now. The most notable thing about Sam's new response is how it differs from my own and Dan Clem's on superciliosus.

Last time I blogged about the Harris/Sullivan debate there was a lot of overlap between how I responded to Andrew and how Sam did. We each addressed the same basic points Andrew made but with different examples and arguments. This time Sam touches on points I didn't cover and I touched on points he didn't cover. There is almost no overlap in which aspects of Andrew's argument that we've each addressed. That's in part a measure of how much was wrong with Andrew Sullivan's argument but also because, for the most part, Sam doesn't deal with Mr. Sullivan's essay any more than necessary. Sam wants the questions he has already asked in his past essays answered.

In all probability we could find all Andrew's arguments refuted in Russell Glasser's and Matt Dillahunty's counter-apologetics encyclopedia, Iron Chariots (wiki.ironchariots.org). We don't really need Andrew to learn about Christianity and Catholicism. We need Andrew only to find out about Andrew, one man with his own peculiar interpretation of his religion.

I just ignored Mr. Sullivan's claim that "we are evolutionarily programmed for faith," while Sam notes that this is debatable (I'd say very debatable) and then Sam accepts it for the sake of argument to show how it doesn't support Andrew's implied claim, that since we are programmed for faith there must be something out there to have faith in. Sam shows how we can't conclude that any specific religious doctrine is likely to be true or even say that religious faith is desirable in our own time, or even compatible with our long-term survival as a species.

Sam on the other hand ignores Andrew's remark that, "God-as-love is no small idea; it is an immense idea." I used that line to launch into several paragraphs on how the idea of God-as-love is an immense contradiction considering how the biblical God supposedly damns people to eternal Hell and how his behavior in the Old Testament was deeply antagonistic and controlling. I noted biblical passages such one about how the Midians were killed, on God's instructions, all of them except the virgin girls.

That's an absurdly tough kind of "love" we find in the Bible. Fundamentalist religions tend to see the world in terms of a battle between good and evil. This Manichaean paranoia is built into the Bible and moderate religion cannot hide it. There is a dualism between good and evil and God and all his acts are, by definition, good. But "good" is NOT really the opposite of "evil." The opposite of "good" is "bad." The opposite of "evil" is "'gracious,' 'nurturing,' 'merciful,'" etc..

This Manichaean paranoia is also evident in the fundamentalist Bush Administration where they see the world in terms of “you’re either with us or against us” which is seen in their specious claims that any criticism of the war in Iraq, or indeed, the Bush Administration is the same as giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They are convinced that their actions are sanctioned by a higher power. This is how a republic dismantles its own democratic principles, about how politics becomes militarized, about how a Manichaean ideology undermines the rational exercise of power.

The only real overlap comes from Sam and me both commenting on Andrew's remarks about death. Sam actually made an argument and noted that it's not as difficult to imagine one's own nonexistence as it seems. We don't find it hard to accept that we didn't exist before we were born, so why is it difficult to believe that we'll cease to exist after we die? To quote one of Sam's better lines: "The 14th century got along fine without you (well, not so fine)." Sam even asks, "How is your last essay anything but exhibit A in a criticism of religion as 'the denial of death'?"

I quite agree, and that does seem to be a key factor religious belief; to deny death. However, I didn't make the argument Sam did. I just noted that Andrew mentioned fear and existential panic and then I asked "what is to fear in death?" Death is a reason to be sad, you're saying good-bye to everything you know, but it is Christianity that has tried to make us to fear death with its threats of Hell. Then I noted some ideas on how humanity's idea of the afterlife had evolved to include Hell long before Christianity used the concept and before Judaism adopted it.

Life is indeed too frail and too short for our tastes and we want more. Religion promises us more. It promises us knowledge and hope beyond what science can give us. It's no wonder people feel compelled explore religious claims. We aren't born knowing how the world works and I explored religion myself. I was raised Christian and when I started questioning I read lots of books and I hung around with some liberal Christians and fundamentalists too. Then later I looked at other religions and tried Transcendental Meditation. And after awhile I finally decided religious people didn't really know what they thought they did. There were always these horrible plot holes in their stories. I gave them the chance and they failed to earn my faith. Other ways of knowing, science and skepticism, earned my faith and trust.

Andrew has said, on his blog, after the flaws in his reasoning had already been pointed out by Sam:

Reasoning about faith is a paradox. Some readers have asked when I'm simply going to surrender to Sam. Well: in many ways I have surrendered. I'm fascinated by what reason can illuminate about faith - and have found Sam's arguments enriching to my own faith. But I can no more be reasoned out of faith than I was reasoned into it. I really have no choice in the matter. But I hope to understand it better and to see it in the truest light possible.

Andrew's claim that he can not be reasoned out of a faith that he was not reasoned into is absurd from a rational perspective and there seems to be an assumption of something supernatural in his faith (indeed, it's explicit in some Christian doctrine that faith is a supernatural gift, a grace, from God). This isn't normal human faith. Normal human trust and faith has to be earned. For example, many Americans trusted Bush and Cheney in the run up to the Iraq war. Why not? The majority of Democrats voted for giving Bush the power to start the war. Evidence was offered at the U.N. about aluminum tubes Iraq had that could only be used to process nuclear material. Our government supposedly had access to information we didn't have and it was their job and not ours to know these things. We just expect some kind of competence we can't achieve, without making it our job, from our government when dealing with these details that are over our heads.

For many Americans it was reason enough to trust them and just go on with their lives and let the Bush administration do its job. Voters didn't have a choice until they got to vote again. As they started seeing the claims and predictions of Bush and Cheney falling short their trust fell away and most of us voted for another option, Democrats. There were no WMD. The aluminum tubes weren't used to process nuclear material. The insurgency was not in its last throes as Cheney had claimed. And naturally, as these failures accumulated, more Americans, including Andrew, started to doubt the honesty and/or competence of the people they had elected. Most of Americans stopped trusting them as we naturally should. The Bush administration failed to earn our faith when they had the chance. Even Andrew Sullivan looks upon those who still have faith in the Bush administration today as being a bit irrational. Now why doesn't Andrew's faith in Christianity fail him as much as his faith in the Bush Administration has? Was the fact that Andrew was reasoned into this faith in Bush the reason he could be reasoned out of it? That line of argument doesn't actually make sense.

The evidence against Christianity is stronger than the evidence against the Bush administration's case for war. Yet, Andrew's faith in his religion is not shaken like his faith in Bush was and he doesn't even try to present evidence for having faith outside of mentioning vaguely a few very subjective experiences.

The other side of Andrew's claim, that he did not acquire his religious faith through reason, is rather vague. How did he acquire it? I assume he really acquired it during childhood. He grew up Catholic. However, I think Andrew, if pressed, would claim his faith is really a supernatural gift from God, for that is Catholic teaching, and he really doesn't see it as something he was indoctrinated into as a child. A child has good reason to trust his parents and his teachers and so when they tell the child there is a Santa Claus, there is a God and Jesus loves you, the child trusts them, he has faith in those who are teaching him. These parents and teachers earned this faith by actively supporting a child who can't live on his own. The child as easily believes in Santa Claus as he believes there is continent called Australia where kangaroos hop around. The child isn't reasoned into belief in either Santa Claus or God or Jesus or Australia, children simply trust those whom they depend on and drink in whatever they are taught. This is where Andrew really got this faith (that he was not reasoned into) and if he had been raised by Buddhist or Muslim parents instead he'd have acquired a different faith and on some level Andrew knows this.

There is a big hole in Andrew's logic on this point. Other religions believed with the same sincerity as Andrew's, as Sam points out, speak heavily against Andrew's evidenceless faith being the supernatural gift he seems to think it is. Andrew says he has no choice in the matter. If so, he is saying he doesn't have the ability to consider his own faith rationally when confronted with the evidence Sam has offered. Andrew can't even imagine any evidence that would change his mind. Not Jesus' bones, not the written letters of Roman frauds discussing how they were inventing Christianity for profit, not a message out in deep space written with glowing plasma in letters several times the mass of Jupiter explicitly explaining no religious books are true. Absent from Andrew's considerations is any idea that reason and argument can challenge his faith. His faith is magically above argument and reason. It is supernaturally irrational.

When Sam gives Andrew the Monty Hall deal of offering Andrew three theological choices, it's because Andrew forces Sam into calling out Andrew on what it is Andrew explicitly has faith in for Andrew can't even say what that is. This is the Monty Hall deal Sam offered:

I'd like you to focus, however, on a few competing doctrines in terms of their plausibility:
(1) There is no God.
(2) There is a God, but all of our religions have distorted Her reality. Jesus was just an ordinary prophet who happened to become the center of a myth-making cult. God loves everyone and has never been concerned about what a person believes. After death, all people, Christians and non-Christians, simply merge with the Deity in a loving embrace.
(3) Christianity is the one true religion, and Catholics have the truest version of it.

Sam asks, "How much money would you (Andrew) be willing to wager on the divinity of Jesus? Would you bet your life on it?" It should be noted that early Christians did bet their lives on it and they became lion food. Andrew has not bet his life, he has only invested time, energy, and emotion in being a Catholic. And given the benefits Andrew claims from his faith, Sam says, "This seems less like an investment and more like a withdrawal of funds." And that maybe more of a cut at Andrew's rational thinking than Andrew realizes. The New Testament and early Christian history is full of the heavy prices the followers of Jesus paid. Andrew's claims of benefit ring hollow in context.

Sam suspects that if proposition (2) were revealed as true, Andrew would be both consoled (who wouldn't?) and not surprised to learn that Christianity was wrong. Considering Andrew's evasiveness about what it is exactly that he believes I'd say Sam is making a smart bet. Wishful thinking and the denial of death seem to be the foundation of Andrew' s faith so far.

Consider the ability of Nigerian scammers to con people out of money often depends on such wishful thinking.

I've gotten spam email telling me I've won the lottery or that a relative has died and left me a fortune. There is a part of me that wants to believe it, but my rational mind tells me this has got to be a scam when I see the scammer wants money from me first or simply too much information, enough to steal my identity. It's called advance fee fraud and it is a confidence (faith) trick in which a sucker is persuaded to advance relatively small sums of money in the hope of realizing a much larger gain.

According to Wikipedia, "The Nigerian scam is hugely successful. According to a 1997 newspaper article they: "have confirmed losses just in the United States of over $100 million in the last 15 months,' said Special Agent James Caldwell, of the Secret Service financial crimes division. 'And that's just the ones we know of. We figure a lot of people don't report them.'"

If you can't confront just how dubious these propositions are then you might just get taken in by a Nigerian con man, or buy a copy of "The Secret," the book by Rhonda Byrne, or fly an airplane into a skyscraper because of your faith. The more faith one invests in these dubious propositions the harder it becomes to evaluate specific claims or article of faith.

A Christian's life is supposedly a pathetic little thing to give in return for his reward in eternity. Are they heroes of truth or are they suckers who got scammed? Or are they something else?

I'd like to see Sam continue that line of speculative questions. Would Andrew sing while being feed to the lions? Have the benefits of his faith been worth the price he might be asked to pay?

Andrew Sullivan talks death

Andrew Sullivan's latest reply to Sam Harris is up and it's called, "The Undiscovered Country."

Andrew says:

...I found myself a little embarrassed in retrospect by the forthrightness of my claims to faith. I feel an unworthy apologist for Christianity in many ways. I'm not a trained theologian nor a priest nor even someone who thinks of himself as a good Christian.

That was Andrew surrendering his faith to theologians he doesn't understand very well because of their vagueness, obfuscation and doublespeak. He'd rather do that than thinking for himself.

Sam, according to Andrew, argued that Andrew's:

...notion of God "doesn't have much in the way of specific content (apart from love)." I have indeed held back a little (although God-as-love is no small idea; it is an immense idea).

It's also an immense contradiction considering this God-as-love supposedly damns people to eternal Hell. In the Old Testament God's character is fairly consistent, the Bible portrays Moses as someone who talked God and took orders from him. This God then told Moses to go around and kill people for various absurd reasons, and that's in addition to his own previous terrorist actions like flooding the Earth. This is what the Old Testament tells us about how the Midians are killed, all of them except the virgin girls:

Numbers, Chapter 31


On God's instructions, Moses sent soldiers against the Midianites in response to some of the Israelite men having had sex with some of the Midianite women. Moses then ordered them to slaughter all the captives, saving only female virgins. The latter were apparently kept for purposes of rape. Verse 35 talks about 32,000 virgin captives; this implies that there were probably about 32,000 young boys killed.

Deuteronomy 7:1-2: ... the seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.

Joshua 6:21: And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

In the invasion of Canaan by the Israelites, after the walls of the city of Jericho fell, the soldiers ran into the city, and killed every man, women and child, even infants and newborns. Their goal was to entirely wipe out the Canaanite culture by destroying its people. It is, by definition, genocide. When Moses orders the worshippers of the golden calf killed it's an example of murderous religious intolerance:

Exodus, Chapter 32
Exodus 32:26-28: "Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD's side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men."

God had responded to the people's desire to change their religious beliefs by killing off thousands of them. This contrasts with the concept of "separation of church and state" in an extreme way. Current laws in most of the civilized world allow individuals full freedom to change their religion. It's only in a few of the Islamic countries where religious beliefs are enforced.

Mass murder of fighters for democracy:
Numbers 16:2-3: "And they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown: And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the LORD?"

Numbers 16:20-39: "And the LORD spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment... the ground clave asunder that was under them: And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up..."

Num 16:41-49: "But on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the LORD...And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Get you up from among this congregation, that I may consume them as in a moment..."

Fundamentalists don't appear to have a problem with the violence of God, assuming as many do, that God's wrath will not be aimed at them. However, the majority of liberal traditions in all three religions that are rooted in the Old Testament image of God do have a problem with this. They devise all sorts of complex theologies, obfuscations and Orwellian doublespeak trying to contain the poison. Christianity may have been the first attempt to contain the dangerous beliefs in an Old Testament God that lead Jewish zealots to their self-destruction.

Remember "1984" and the Party's slogan: "WAR IS PEACE." Using the term "GOD IS LOVE" is also doublespeak because if we look at God's behavior in the Old Testament he more often acts out of hate, he punishes and destroys. He drowned the world, flamed 2 cities, ordered Moses to kill thousands... He sends non-believers to hell for eternity in the New Testament. What is love if it is not nurturing and helping? What does punishment that last for eternity accomplish in shaping behavior? At the very least God's love is highly conditional. "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY" applies to Christian thinking too. While I might feel free doing what I want, it just makes me a slave of Satan. Believing eventually comes down to obedience out of fear, the same reason a slave obeys, but it is supposed to make us "free." The Old Testament is a record of the horror God supposedly inflicted, the New Testament is a promise of horrors to come when the Jews failed to inflict those horrors on the Romans and then got pushed out of their land in 70 AD.

This Christian doublespeak is used by politicians like George W. Bush now. Consider the way Bush throws around terms like "evil" as in "axis of evil." Like bin Laden he tries to paint a picture of a battle between good and evil. But "good" is NOT the opposite of "evil." The opposite of "good" is "bad." The opposite of "evil" is "'gracious,' 'nuturing,' 'merciful,'" etc.. The opposite of 'that which deprives of benefit' is 'that which shares benefit.' "Nothing is evil lest thinking make it so" and "evil" is simply an ungracious assessment of ungracious acts. Thus good and evil are relativistic unless we clearly defined the terms in ways other than "what God wants" especially if the only people telling us what God wants can't be tested for such communication. If this were not a Christian country more voters would have seen through Bush's Christian doublespeak.

Andrew knows that his...

...refusal to say outright that because I believe that Jesus was and is the Son of God, the tenets of other faiths - Islam, Buddhism, Judaism - must be logically false. Mine, you insist, is a solid truth-claim that requires being addressed, especially because these mutually contradicting truth-claims are the source of so much conflict and dissension. You're right, I think, to judge me "a little evasive" on this score.

That is a remarkable confession Andrew just made about his own evasiveness. Unfortunately when Andrew tries to get a little less evasive this is what he says:

As a Christian, I do deny Islam's claim that Jesus was not actually divine. I deny Judaism's claim that the Messiah has not yet come. I deny any other number of truth-claims held by people of other faiths.

Interesting how he puts it in the negative frame and leaves it as minimal as possible. He doesn't like his Christian dogma, does he?

…nature of the phenomenon we're discussing - faith - has no universal rubric upon which to rationally decide one claim over another.

The idea that faith has no "rubric" is Christian doublespeak. The rubric would be things like trust and promises and duty. The idea that faith and trust between people needs to be earned is somehow left out.

"IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" is a reverse of "Knowledge is power." The New Testament tells you faith is more important than the world's logic or knowledge: 1 Cor.1:19 "For I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." 1:27 "But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;" The dependence on faith and seeing doubt as a sin is an attack on gaining knowledge.

I am very much aware that humans have no common rubric by which to judge these religious truth-claims except their internal coherence, their congruence with historical data, their longevity, and one's own conscience.

Isn't internal coherence and congruence with historical data enough to shoot down biblical claims?

For example, I pointed out in my review of "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" how one of Ted Koppel's theologians started arguing for the bodily ascension of Jesus into the sky. So, where did his body go? Does he think heaven is up in the sky? What's up there is 350,000 feet worth of atmosphere and then the vacuum of space and the Van Allen radiation belts. Where did Jesus' body go? Is Heaven hiding behind a cloud?

The idea of the bodily ascension of Jesus into the sky is based on an ancient and very wrong model of our world where they actually thought that heaven was upstairs in the sky, either beyond the crystal spheres or the dome of the sky. It shows up in other biblical stories, like when God comes down to smash the tower of Babel because it's getting too close to heaven.

… a pragmatic and a religious move - pragmatic because I want to live in a peaceful world (I like my iPod and my civil society), and religious because the violence such certainty provokes violates the very teachings of the God I worship. I'm tolerant because I am a Christian.

Does Andrew think he would be less tolerant if he were not a Christian? And where does he get tolerance from his Christianity? From a God who would damn all who don't believe in him? From a God who orders Moses to kill whole nations, including their children?

... all these alternative modes of understanding - science, history, etc - are as contingent in the human mind as faith itself.

No, Andrew, as you know, science is not as contingent in the human mind as faith. That's a bald faced lie. Faith should be earned, honestly earned, by all who ask for it. What other institution and book would you give such faith to in the absence of evidence and with so many overt contradictions and divisions over interpretation?

… some avenues of knowledge are less contingent than others. And you have a point there. The question soon becomes one of relative contingencies. Is scientific thought less contingent than theology?

Yes. Science is remarkably less contingent than theology. That's why it's the same science across the globe, but the religions are different.

I was intrigued, as I'm sure you were, by the recent piece, "Darwin's God," in the New York Times Magazine, that posited an evolutionary origin or a neurological accident for the universal human tendency to believe that something is "out there" when, empirically, it isn't.

Sullivan might be unaware of the debate Scott Atran and Sam Harris have had over at Edge.com.

My own faith came alive most fully when I believed I was going to die young. It came alive as I watched one of my closest friends die in front of me at the age of 31. During that "positive hour," to quote Eliot, I also experienced religious visions, I heard a voice inside of me with a distinct tone that seemed to me divine, I experienced a moment of terrible doubt followed by a moment of complete, unsought-for relief. Maybe all this was a function of fear and existential panic. Maybe it was all a coping mechanism.

A function of fear and existential panic? Andrew seems to admit that it is the fear and denial of death that drives his faith. But what is to fear in death? Death is a reason to be sad, you're saying good-bye to everything or to a loved one, but it is Christianity that has tried to make us fear death with its threats of Hell.

If you read ancient mythology you can see humanity's idea of the afterlife evolving. You can see how the theologians kept simplifying and pumping up the volume on their portrait of the afterlife. The Egyptian afterlife was a complicated mess where kings had multiple souls and multiple afterlives. No other civilization devoted as much attention and resources to their dead as did the ancient Egyptians. Their elaborate funeral rites, their painstaking mummification technology, their vast Necropolis and their huge and complicated literature about the afterlife, all are witness to this fact.

In earlier Egyptian civilization, it seems only the Pharaoh and his family had an afterlife, and they became gods. The massive pyramids constructed during the early dynasties happen here. By the end of the sixth dynasty, the afterlife is expanded to include nobles. Then, with the cult of Osiris, the slain and resurrected god, in many ways a very Christ-like figure, the democratization of the afterlife is completed, and all were given souls.

As Egypt began to decline their view of the afterlife was simplified, the mummification got cheaper and faster, the rituals less involved and less expensive. As this happens the Greeks take over and there is some crossbreeding between the religions. In the ancient Greek religion, Tartarus was the closest thing to Hell and it was only for the especially wicked characters and enemies of the gods. That's where Sisyphus must repeatedly push a boulder up a hill for eternity and where Tantalus is kept just out of reach of cool water and grapes for sharing the secrets of the gods with humans. Tartarus is where enemies were cast after being defeated by the gods, including the Titans and Typhus. Elysium, or the Elysian Fields or Elysian Plain, seems borrowed from Egypt and it was the closest thing to a Heaven in their religion and it was inhabited at first only by the very distinguished, but later by the merely good. There are no streets of gold or pearly gates. Instead the Elysian Fields are characterized by gentle breezes and an easy life like that of the gods.

When Rome takes over, Tartarus became the eternal destination of sinners in general. Then Christianity pumped these threats and promises up to maximum volume with a Heaven and Hell and the ultimate simplification presented in seemingly the vaguest language possible.

Before Christianity we can see that death was not feared as much by how the Romans and Greeks treated death.

Maybe these psychological and spiritual experiences are simply the best way that humans have devised through countless millennia for coping with their own conscious knowledge of their own mortality.

Man's attitude toward death has changed. Christians force their fear of death on the rest of us. Consider the right-to-die advocates like Jack Kevorkian. Proponents of physician-assisted suicide have been advocating its legalization for those who are terminally ill but our Christian society resists. Some of us think a suicide is the best way to die if you're terminally ill. You have choice. You have control. You’re ready.

And how can we not be human? And who would want not to be human?

Being human doesn't mean you have to let some priesthood pull your puppet strings with phony hopes and fears.

What you are asking for, as I have argued before, is salvation by reason.

There is no salvation of the kind you're asking for, Andrew. There is only living better and dying better. There is only facing the reality that death is the end of us.

But even after you have been saved by reason, you will die, Sam. And what will save you then?

He will say good-bye to everything he knew and then he won't care about anything because there is no him to care any more. This is the same thing that will happen to Andrew in spite of all his faith.

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Harris versus Sullivan, the battle continues

Andrew Sullivan's latest response to Sam Harris, called "The Unclean Glass," is up.



Andrew begins, of course, by distorting Sam's position because if he didn't Andrew's head would explode. The longer this goes on, the more insane moderate Christianity seems. Andrew Sullivan does a great job on politics, he seems clear and rational, but when it comes to his faith we can begin to see how his thoughts have been befogged.

Sam asked Andrew to "Imagine a discourse about ethics and mystical experience that is as contingency-free as the discourse of science already is." Andrew distorts that into being "completely contingency-free" (meaning contingency in an absurdly ultra-broad way) rather than "as contingency-free as the discourse of science already is." There's a difference, because, as Andrew correctly notes, science is not "completely contingency-free." Science, is however, far more free of contingency than any religion is. Everything in science is open to question. There is, contrary to creationist claims, no dogma in science and "dogma" is the word Sam should have used.

Sam slipped. He didn't specify the kind of contingencies science is free from (it is dogma you meant, Sam. Don't throw Andrew's language back at him, it's loaded). Normally Sam wouldn't have to bother with such specificity and it should be obvious from context. However, when you talk to someone as deeply in denial as Andrew is, you have to speak with so much specificity that one's language becomes leaden and dull.

Andrew then goes on and on to preach to Sam things I'm pretty sure Sam already knows, such as about David Hume and faith in our own senses and memory. That helps Andrew feel superior to the assumed ignorance of the atheist. However, having faith in my senses isn't the same as having faith in dogma, and by dogma I mean stories passed down for generations that can't be checked on. My senses are me and what I seek to explain (even if they're the known illusions of itchy phantom limbs) the Christian dogma is a hand me down (I was raised Christian and rejected it).

Andrew, yet again, avoids answering Sam's questions about this dogma/contingency simply and directly. This was Sam's question: "...the specific beliefs that would make you a Christian and a Catholic, as opposed to a generic theist. Do you believe in the resurrection and the virgin birth? Is the divinity of the historical Jesus a fact...?" As I said, dogma is the contingency that Andrew's previous post was avoiding and Sam was asking about the clearest cases of Christian dogma. Andrew continues to avoid being direct about this. However, the implied answer is that, yes, Andrew believes in the resurrection and the virgin birth of Jesus as well as the divinity of the historical Jesus. (Why does Andrew avoid saying it directly? Does just saying it sound too dogmatic even for him?) Andrew's "rational, empirical explanation" for his belief in that dogma is that those whom saw Jesus saw something "so astonishing, so utterly unlike anything that had ever occurred before, that they became on fire with this new truth."

Hmmm, if Andrew saw David Blaine levitate off the ground, handle a few poison snakes and turn water into wine would he think it logical to assume Blaine was born of a virgin? Would he believe anything attributed to Blaine? If Criss Angel seemed to teleport out of a locked chest and then guessed Andrew's card would it mean that Criss Angel was the son of God? If Penn and Teller could do the cups and balls trick with clear plastic cups would Andrew have to conclude Penn and Teller were divine beings? Born of virgins? Would he get on fire with whatever Penn and Teller told him?

Andrew turns the question around, instead of answering why he believes Jesus rose from the dead he asks Sam why Andrew himself and so many others believe Jesus rose from the dead. He asks "What is your explanation? How do you account for why one person out of the billions who have ever lived had this impact? How probable is it that all these countless followers were all deluding themselves completely?"

Well, contrary to Andrew's assertions, it's obviously quite probable that all those followers are deluding themselves. What does Andrew make of the believers in Islam, Hinduism etc.? Look at all the things people do believe, Andrew, and then think that through again. Aliens abducting people, faith healers curing people, John Edward talking to the dead, Sylvia Brown telling you where the body is buried, Elvis sightings, Nazi holocausts that supposedly never happened, white supremacy, Ouija boards, voodoo, penis enlargement pills, breast creams, real estate scandals, Scientology, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Ted Haggart becoming a heterosexual, the honesty and integrity of George Bush … and on and on and on. People's brains are apparently full to the brim with BS.

Andrew points to the "many" Gospels (including Gnostic gospels Andrew? The gospels of Thomas, Judas and Mary?) testifying to the "power of his message," noting that only one of the thousands of Rome's victims is remembered in this way…" (well, two if you count Spartacus are remembered by name by me, scholars might come up with more names) and not just remembered but "worshiped over two millennia later…" Andrew then asks: "Does this not intrigue you?" Have you never asked how on earth did this happen? He then says: "As a simple piece of historical inquiry, it's an astonishingly unlikely turn of events."

It's not really astonishing if we look at the bigger picture of human history, not just Christian history. Andrew is impressed because Jesus is not just remembered but worshiped over two millennia later. Let's compare that with Egyptian religion, with how long Isis, Osiris and Ra were worshipped. It kicks off sometime before the "Archaic Period" (3414-3100 BC) when there is the unification of all Egypt. By 3000 BC at the very least, people had already been worshipping Isis, Osiris, Ra, and the Amen but now it's big. Further south, the Kushites seem to have also worshipped them. This religion lasts for more than 2,000 years as a state religion, closer to 3,000 years, and that is longer than Christianity has lasted. It sort of, but not quite ends, as a state religion with the Persian Period (517-425 BC) I think. But if being a state religion is the rule, Christianity died after the Enlightenment (perhaps its own Persian Period?) and that makes Christianity's life span significantly shorter than that of the Egyptian religion. In some ways, however, Isis, Osiris and Ra get incorporated into some forms of Gnostic Christianity and they continue far into the first centuries of AD.

If Andrew is going to accept long endurance, great numbers of worshippers and huge temples as indicators of "truth" rather than "truthiness" he'll have to start believing in Isis, Osiris and Ra. He'll also have to consider Hinduism and believing in Zeus. The point there is that it's not just the Egyptians, it's the Babylonians, Sumerians, the ancient Chinese, Indian Hinduism and other religions that have had, and continue to have, long lives and that have shaped their cultures with their own dogma. Is Andrew going to have to give them equal belief?

Looking at the bigger picture we can see that religion evolves and dogma like that about the names of specific saviors and what they did to save us is the most ephemeral part of religion. The part that continues through all of them, from Sumerian sun gods to the Islamic Koran to L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology, is a belief in a life after death, belief in magic and of powers beyond man's feeble abilities.

Andrew also asks, "...if Jesus wasn't nothing, … what was he in your eyes?" What Jesus was to me (I don't know about Sam) was a man who twisted an old religious meme into a new and more viral form. I explained my views in two essays over a decade ago, those are here:

http://www.textfiles.com/occult/notcrst1.txt
http://www.textfiles.com/occult/notcrst2.txt

Also here:

http://artofhacking.com/IET/CHRIST/live/aoh_notcrst1.htm
http://artofhacking.com/IET/CHRIST/live/aoh_notcrst2.htm

"What secret did he hold that so many others haven't?" The secret was that into those gospel stories about Jesus got weaved the greatest religious mind-fuck yet invented. And also because his followers would kill and die for the religion because they got so mind-fucked. Read my essays and future entries in this blog for more detail on all that.

"That is an empirical question. And it merits an empirical answer." And there are such answers. But even if I'm wrong about Christianity being rooted in a mind-fuck we just have to consider that if you flipped a few million coins and get a specific number of heads up, the odds against the number you got would be millions to one. Only one number can come up on one throw and that's the way it is with state religions. One religion wins, the others die, and Christianity became a state religion that then persecuted others as they were persecuted for believing the wrong religion.

Andrew then goes on to cut his nose off to spite his face. He says; "No human society has ever functioned without the large faith that underpins all the little faiths: religion." Yes, Andrew, and prior to the Enlightenment no secular societies had ever existed. America was one of the first. Before then they all had state religions. You don't want that, do you? Your fundy friends would like it.

Andrew says; "No society has ever existed without the mature human acceptance of what we do not know and what is greater than we are. No civilization has ever been atheist at its core." America comes pretty close to being agnostic to its core by introducing freedom of religion and the two biggest competitors in governing the largest masses of people are officially atheistic, Russia and China. Are they somehow not atheistic to the core? What is the core here? If it's about what the majority believes I think Sweden is more than fifty percent atheist.

Andrew says; "No polity has ever been constructed in the absence of faith, or in the absence of a tradition of faith that makes belief in the present possible at all. Earth to Sam: Does this not tell you something?" It should tell Sam that Andrew is losing it. A lot of things have happened that have never happened before. Secular states, walls of separation between church and state, end of slavery, gay rights, women voting and this internet we're all using. We are certainly moving in a direction in which there will be a polity constructed in the absence of faith.

Andrew asks; "Or is it plausible that human beings tomorrow will become something that in all of human history and pre-history they have never, ever been?"

Yes! Andrew, yes! We are becoming something different; we already have become something that never existed before. If we hadn't changed and become secular gays wouldn't have any change of getting married and America would have a state religion. Already a majority of the worlds top scientists are atheists – can you account for that Andrew?

Andrew even commented on another aspect of it in his blog. Here:

Faith and the Universe

Andrew quoted Carl Sagan on the intersection of science and faith and said that what our generation has internalized is the utter insignificance of this planet and human beings, in the context of what we have come to know about the universe. Such knowledge was not only unknown to those who wrote the Bible, it was unknown to every human being before. It is brand-spanking new and it has changed everything. Andrew only noted, via Sagan, Galileo's push into the new ideas about our universe. What about Darwin, Freud and Turing?

Andrew says this new knowledge alters his faith. Alters it? It should have demolished it.

He says; "Denial of evolution, in my view, is a sign of weak faith, not strong faith. It's a function of terrible fear, not the confidence of a loving God." Evolution is somewhat compatible with some deistic notions of God, but evolution is not something a "loving God" would do to his creatures. Evolution needs a thousand dead failures for every incremental move forward. Evolution isn't going to stop because man arrived, so stop thinking of yourself as the crown of creation.

Christianity has some other core doctrines, like that of original sin, like that of "the fall," that evolution demolishes. If Darwinian evolution is true then there was no original sin, there was no fall after which man is thrown out of paradise. Murder, theft, deception, rape and more existed long before our first ancestors walked onto land. Man didn't fall into these sins because they were part of the survival strategies of prehistoric fish. God would have had to have invented and injected sin into the world before man emerged and that contradicts the core message of Genesis.

Evolution means there was no Garden of Eden and no original sin and no fall. Now, some would say that this Eden and original sin are being read too literally. They come up with allegorical meanings for Genesis' first chapters, like how man's original sin, really eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, was about man first becoming conscious. Oh, sooo, Jesus will save you from consciousness? Are you sure you like that interpretation?

Andrew then, poseur alert, poseur alert, writes: "Religion at its deepest is the attempt to reconcile this profound human predicament: that we exist in bodies but dream beyond them, that we are caught between the irrational instinct of beasts but endowed with the serene hope of angels. This paradox of humanity - which you would erase into a clean slate - is what religion responds to and has always responded to…" And this is from the guy who likes to expose others as poseurs. Then from some guy called Oakeshott; "…in the poetic quality, humble or magnificent, of the images, the rites, the observances, and the offerings (the wisp of wheat on the wayside calvary) in which it recalls to us that 'eternity is in love with the productions of time' and invites us to live 'so far as is possible' as an immortal."

Doesn't that narcissistic interpretation of religion sound grand! He calls it humility. He has the "serene hope of angels," and the gullibility of a child that believes in Santa Claus. He lives 'so far as is possible' as an immortal because he doesn't want to face his own imminent death. He writes so glowingly, so poserly, in wonder of his religious superstitions. What utter mush!

Sam, don't give this guy the clean glass, he is obviously the guy who shit in the last one.

Yes, Andrew, there is a God.

There is a debate that's been going on between atheist Sam Harris and pro-religion blogger Andrew Sullivan over at beliefnet.com, here:

And now, with apologies to the most reprinted newspaper editorial ever; Francis Pharcellus Church's Sept. 21, 1897 response to Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to the editor of New York's Sun.

here is my letter to Andrew:


Yes, Andrew, there is a God.

Andrew, your little friend Sam is wrong. He has been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see and reason. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Andrew, whether they be men's or children's or Nobel laureates like Steven Weinberg, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. In this great ignorance of ours man sees the boundless possibilities of the world about him, and the more ignorant the more possibilities there are and if you are ignorant enough, then all things seem possible you just won't be able to imagine any of them without knowledge. And that is why men believe in things they can't imagine.

Yes, Andrew, there is a God. He exists as certainly as fear and gullibility and lies told to children exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no God. It would be as dreary as if there were no Andrew. There would be no childlike faith then, no obfuscation, no comforting delusion to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight and art and love and other things like that. The eternal gullibility with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. No longer could you conquer your death in the same way that Pastor Ted Haggard has conquered his homosexuality and so became a heterosexual in just three weeks.

Not believe in God! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might as well not believe in Santa Claus! You might hire scientists to examine your stomach after communion for signs of the transubstantiation of the wine and wafer, but even if they did not see evidence of your cannibalism, what would that prove? Nobody sees God, but that is no sign that there is no God. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fear of death, gullibility and delusions can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Andrew, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No God! Thank Santa Claus! He lives, nay a million, billion Gods live forever. A thousand years from now, Andrew, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, they will continue to make terrified the heart of childhood and bring violence and misery into the world.