Religion: Sam Harris vs. Andrew Sullivan

I printed out and read all 40 pages of this email debate last night, and though predictably enough, I came down solidly on Harris's side, I found both sides to be remarkably honest, sincere, and free of glibness and antipathy for the other. Some of what Sullivan writes is surprisingly touching in a personal way. It ends up being a fairly comprehensive document of the issues involved, and though some of the arguments made may be familiar by now, there are fresh ones as well. It is worth reading in its entirety.

From BeliefNet:

From: Sam Harris  To: Andrew Sullivan

Hi Andrew--

First, I'd like to say that it is a pleasure to communicate with you in this forum. We've engaged one another indirectly on the internet, and on the radio, but I think this email exchange will give us our first opportunity for a proper discussion. Before I drive toward areas where I think you and I will disagree, I'd first like to acknowledge what appears to be the common ground between us.

I think you and I agree that there is a problem with religious fundamentalism. We might not agree about how to solve this problem, or about how fundamentalism relates to religion as a whole, but we both think that far too many people currently imagine that one of their books contains the perfect word of the Creator of the universe. You and I also agree that the world's major religions differ in ways that are nontrivial-and, therefore, that not all fundamentalists have the same fundamentals in hand. Not all religions teach precisely the same thing, and when they do teach the same thing, they don't necessarily teach it equally well...

More here.

Comments

[beajerry]

Wow! I think I started reading this debate several months ago, and it's still going on!?
Lots to catch up on, I hope it's worth it.

[ghostman]

In response to the post above: it's long, yes, but very much worth it. Two very smart people having at it in a thoroughly respectful debate. That said, Sam Harris proves again why he's my favorite atheist. Oh my, he is eviscerating poor Mr. Sullivan.

[Roy Belmont]

The conceit, that a member of a particular religion, at this time and in this place, can be called on to represent all religion, and by extension all spirituality, to make the case for any religion except his own, with his own biases and needs compelling his arguments, is pretty obvious.
Harris doesn't represent a particular sect of rational/positivism, except inasmuch as there's a coherent aristocracy of contemporary non-believers whose moral strength is exercized on a playing field that's safely held within the remnant architecture of empirical Christianity and its Judaic legalisms.
Sitting Bull, the Lakota chief, was what white people used to call a "medicine man". It originated as a term of convenience for something they'd long since lost any connection with, and were made uneasy by - a medium in communication with the larger world, the spirit world, the animal world, everything outside the human, which in his time and in his place was small within that larger, infinitely larger terrain.
Now we're all there is, the infinite is in our hands. Every other mammal is subservient to us or broken or marginalized or gone, and Harris' humanist arrogance is met and seconded by the divinely-sanctioned anthropocentric chauvinism of Sullivan's Catholicism - they're in total agreement about the fitness of that most basic, though still essentially taboo, truth.
Sitting Bull is not in this debate. If he had been, Sam Harris would have gotten his ass handed to him, and Andrew Sullivan would have gone home wailing.

[ghostman]

People debate who they can. Is it really a conceit for Harris to debate a prominent modern-day Catholic? It seems this is rather a very reasonable approach for someone attempting to change people's minds about religion in general and Catholicism specifically. What would you have him do? Summon the powers of God and raise Sitting Bull back from the dead?

[Sitting Bull]

Roy, put down the books and slowly back away.

[roy belmont]

ghostman-
Kicking the stuffing out of a living strawman is a convenient means of winning an argument that sets up the moral permission for you and your jerseyless clad to maintain dominant position as the culture tips and teeters toward massive contraction. Tidepools of genetic opportunity, and opportunism. The battle is for who survives, kind of a main theme from the science crowd, no?
Sullivan represents, but who and what is another matter. Harris as well, but his is a meta signifier, Sullivan's not.
For the last five years or so I've been watching academic bullies lay waste to the pitiful argumetns of delusional religionists and crow their triumph. La di and da.
What you want to look for is where the two seemingly diametric opponents are in tacit agreement, and as I tried to illustrate above, Harris and Sullivan are nowhere so agreed as in their assumptions of human fitness to rule. Harris because there is no other body capable of governance, Sullivan because human governance gets its primacy direct from the Almighty.
-
S.B.- These aren't books, they're sandwiches.

[Elatia Harris]

I read this whole exchange -- it was indeed worth it -- with high interest. From the outset Harris and Sullivan seemed well matched, and I can remember being childishly fascinated when Paul Tillich and Billy Graham debated whether God was dead in the 1960s, so I know it's important not to be shooting fish in a barrel -- which Tillich and Graham both thought they were doing -- over such issues as Reason and the possible presence of a Supreme Being. I also appreciate that these two smart guys were pretty courteous in never styling one another a psychotically deluded idiot. For getting people hot under the collar, there's nothing like fighting about God, so Harris and Sullivan deserve praise for their decency and manners.

And yet. I could not fail to notice that, while each frequently called the other on not answering the major points just made, both noneletheless conspired to leave most of these points unanswered. If a "blogalog" must follow the rules of a debate -- and if it need not, why did each repeatedly insist that his arguments had been side-stepped? -- then some adherence to the rules of argument must occur before anyone can win. Where this is either not done or, as is the case here, not possible, you have either no winner or, as has happened here, an argument which has been so badly framed as to admit of no winner.

This exchange was enjoyable, brainy and soulful. But it pitched two fundamentalists of two different stripes at each other, to tussle over why a third kind of fundamentalism was the malignant kind. In England, I have heard this called a "refectory table conversation." Sam Harris argues like a Jesuit priest, well knowing how to destroy his opponent without winning when winning isn't possible. Sullivan is a bit more sincere, and perfectly unvanquished if smashed up. Neither man is remotely altered in his convictions, nor is any reader. According to Stalin, "God favors the big battalions," so I guess the big battalions did not rumble here.

Now, what is the real argument? The argument that will help us to arrive at the new paradigm? That is the question for people of intelligence and/or faith to try to formulate.

[Sitting Bull]

Roy, the books may look like sandwiches, but they are not edible. At least we now know that binding glue may be the cause of all your problems.

[ghostman]

Roy, I'll be honest. I have no idea what you're saying, except for the strawman bit which I frankly find ridiculous. Harris not only debates Sullivan, who fails at defending religion as well as anyone, but many of the great dead religious minds he's encountered in books. Whether this includes Sitting Bull, who by the way sent his children to Christian schools, I'm not sure. You'd have to ask Harris. Or you can ask Sitting Bull himself... it appears he's now frequenting this forum.

Elatia, I think you sum the debate up very nicely, though I have small quibbles. For example, I would not be so sure that no reader is "remotely altered in his convictions." I would think that at least a few readers who might be on the fence about religion could be persuaded by Harris's arguments, though I would agree that Sullivan hasn't a prayer of winning a soul to his side. Also, I'm not sure what you mean when you write about the "two fundamentalists" tussling over a third. More precisely, I don't know who this third fundamentalist is supposed to be. I suspect you are referring to Islam, in which case I have protests. But perhaps this is not what you are referring to. I am interested in hearing more of your thoughts along these lines.

[JonJ]

I suppose this exchange could be seen as a conventional debate, to see which "side" would "win." Since I have a philosophical interest in this subject, that is, an interest in the truth rather than "which side wins," I didn't read it that way.

Basically, of course, I agree with Harris' approach, but I appreciated the fact that Sullivan honestly admitted that he was committed to his version of Catholicism (which apparently differs considerably from the pontiff's in certain respects) for completely irrational reasons: he grew up with it, feeling pride at having a culture that was a minority in England, and derives great comfort from it, especially with respect to his gay friends dying from AIDS.

Of course, this kind of position is completely defenseless against the rational criticisms of a Harris (in the sense that it cannot counter them with stronger reasons), but then no religion would have fared better, I think. Perhaps it comes down to whether one feels reason or faith is more important in one's own life.

[Elatia Harris]

Excellent points, Ghostman and JonJ. I'd like to comment upon a few of them.

Ghostman, I believe that a person who can be argued out of religion by Sam Harris, or any other rationalist, cannot be a truly religious person. A truly religious person -- by which I do not mean anyone more fanatical than Sullivan -- is bound to consider such argument irrelevant, not wrong. If Argument were such that it could deprive one of religion, then people in an agnostic state could be argued into religion no less handily. Dr. Johnson tried it, most notably in a famous diatribe demanding that his listener consider how much greater the evidence that Our Redeemer liveth than, for instance, that Canada is taken. Boswell tells us of Dr. Johnson's method in gaining a point that if he could not shoot you cleanly with his pistol, he would bloody your head with its butt. Bloodied head or no, Dr. Johnson made no believer of his interlocutor that day. Andrew Sullivan may have felt similarly unaltered after Sam Harris had at him. Sullivan may even have thought that Harris was in many ways right. Perhaps if so he wearily remembered the Hemingway character who, finishing an argument he did not win, conceded, "Very well, you are right -- let that comfort you for not being anything else." These are the thoughts that sprang to my mind in observing that neither Harris nor Sullivan had likely made any converts with their exchange.

As for my observation that despite courtesy Sullivan and Harris were two fundamentalists putting the knock on a third -- that was inspired by Harris's remarks about fundamentalists of every kind believing that all truth was to be found in their holy book and nowhere else. Sullivan, a self-styled moderate, appears moderate to me only in allowing others to hold a point of view that diverges from his own, certainly not in asking, with Pilate, "What is truth?" He is not out to convert you or to deprive you of your civil rights for not agreeing with him -- and this is actually a display of moderation -- but he clearly believes the truth has been apprehended by his metaphysics. That's why they're his metaphysics, not just the piece of flotsam he's admitting to grabbing onto in a world where everything is relative. As for the holy book in Sam Harris's hands -- well, Reason is a holy book, isn't it? Many rationalists seem subject to the fallacy that what we know of reason has set the limits of discovery -- an orthodoxy, if you ask me. The third fundamentalism I refer to is occasionally Islam, for the purposes of the dialoque between Sullivan and Harris -- but it is actually just any other take-no-prisoners belief system that comes up. To "other" such a belief system by declaring it solipsistic and malignant is merely to look away from the mirror for a moment or two.

JonJ, I think discovering truth through following this argument can be compared to determining whether you think an arranged marriage with a sensible, knowable spouse of your own background is preferable over a love match with a wild thing. Not much about truth is going to come out of that set-up. Whether faith is important in one's life is itself a rational decision -- one of many faith-based rational decisions. Rationally speaking, such a thing should not be, since one cannot reason from any givens but those of reason. Or...?

[maniza]

where would Sam Harris be without God? Poor and inconsequential.

[JonJ]

Perhaps what this Sullivan-Harris discussion illustrates best, it seems to me, is that "reason" and "faith" (it used to be called "reason and revelation" but religious people tend to shy away from the term "revelation" these days, for rather obvious reasons, so we've lost the alliteration, unfortunately) are really operating on two different wavelengths.

Reason, as represented by Harris, operates by letting the better argument win, as the old Greeks put it. Everyone presents their position on a controversy, tries to find good reasons for their positions and against the others, and so it goes until everyone is agreed that one position is uncontroverted. The result is only provisional; eventually, some new reasoner will likely come along with a new position or a new argument for or against an old one, and here we go again.

This is the approach that Western philosophy has generally taken since the Greeks; it is typified by the Platonic dialogue. Medieval Christian thinkers called it "sic et non," and went at it tooth and nail even though they were all of the same religion, more or less.

"Faith" works in a completely different way; you either believe X or you don't, and you don't need any "reasons" for your belief. If you engage in rational discussion with nonbelievers, it's mostly just to try to swat them away, like flies. "Here - you want to reason about my beliefs? Try this on for size. Don't care for it? Well, just go away and don't bother me!" The reasons that sophisticated believers, such as theologians and religious philosophers, give may sometimes be very complex and seemingly persuasive, but eventually the rationalist will always find some flaw. But even though this game may go on for a few more rounds, the believer will always break off at some point, because the rationalist game is basically beside the point for the believer. Rationalists are (usually) aware that the rationalist game is potentially endless, since there will always be a new stage in the dialogue, whereas believers just want to enjoy the certainty of their faith.

This huge gap between methodologies is responsible, I think, for the fact that the adversaries in this kind of discussion don't in the end really engage each other. They're trying to do quite different things; hence, Harris' sallies never seem to land on Sullivan, and Sullivan's eloquent expressions of his beliefs don't impress Harris at all.

In this sense, Gould may have been partly right about his famous "two magisteria," but not because reason and religion occupy two nonoverlapping "territories," but because their whole modi operandi are quite different from each other.

[Deets]

JonJ,

I think you and Elatia are talking about the same thing. You are right about the reason/revelation dichotomy, but it would be incorrect to allow Harris and Sullivan to personify each end of the distinction. There is reason in Sullivan's argument, and revelation in Harris's.

I don't find Sullivan's defense of his religiousity particularly thoughtful or engaging. (Reza Aslan makes a much better case for the necessity, if not inevitability of religion.) But the point is that there are several unexamined "faiths" at the bottom of Harris's rationalism. That the world is rational, for one thing. That ontology and epistemology overlap. That all that is "real" is material, and vice versa. That a thing can be known from the sum of its parts. And many more.

Reason works very well once it has been lifted up to a functional level by foundational assumptions. To attribute the "rationalist" perspective to someone like Harris, allows us to make these assumptions transparent, which goes a long way toward making someone like Andrew Sullivan look awfully silly. It's a charlatan's game, and we shouldn't fall for it.

[Elatia Harris]

Deets, what clear-sighted and truly interesting observations. Now I'll have to start reading Underverse, when I already have enough to do. Thanks!

[roy belmont]

ghostman -
The fuller, and more fully honest sentence would be:
"I have no idea what you're saying...and I'm convinced that's because it's gibberish."
But it's easier to keep it truncated, isn't it? Avoids that messy and unpredictable, time-wasting, whatever it's called - debate.
Winning an argument is more energy-intensive than dismissing one out of hand.
I wrote:
"...empirical Christianity and its Judaic legalisms"
which makes this, which you wrote:
"Sitting Bull, who by the way sent his children to Christian schools..."
much less wounding than I think you intended it to be. Can you see why?
If you can, now, I'm betting you hadn't before I pointed it out.
If you can't, I appeal to some other reader to help you.

[JonJ]

Deets,

Its true in a sense that rationality makes some assumptions, as Harris himself concedes. But they are simply ones that any person in her or his right mind would make -- that causal induction is possible (like causes bring about like effects). The fact that the sun has always risen in the west in all of human experience is a good reason to think that it will tomorrow, for instance.

It's not required that a secularist take "on faith" that everything real is material, though religious people often claim this. Science, in the first place, has a much different view of "matter" than it did a few centuries ago. But in any case, scientists would be quite happy to accept a theory which asserted the existence of anything, "material" or "immaterial," provided that the theory in question had good evidence. Are elementary particles "material" or "immaterial"? Doesn't matter, as long as the theory is based on evidence. The problem with the existence of gods, as a factual proposition, is that the evidence just isn't there. The debate over "intelligent design" illustrates this.

What is characteristic of religious faith is that every religious group has its own set of beliefs, which cannot be shared by others because they are just arbitrarily adopted by that group, as Sullivan admits when he says he believes his beliefs because he was raised to, and would believe others if he had been raised in another tradition. Why anyone would think that you can get at truth by obstinately hanging on to what you were taught as a kid baffles me and other secularists.

[Deets]

Elatia,

You are too kind. I hope I am able to get around to updating it before you are able to get around to reading it.

JonJ,

The presumption of a "right mind" is required for everything that follows in your post. Where is the evidence that one is in his "right mind"? There is a presumption of common sense in the rationalist view--a legacy of the Victorian era--that cannot be sustained in light of the 20th and 21st century science disallowing the assertion of a neutral or objective ("rational") observer. As you well know, the sun only "rises" in the "East" (not West) from a particular perspective, which our culture long ago rejected as illusory. There is no East, and there is no rising.

A very important critical assumption you make is that anything that exists must be evident. Rather tricky to prove or disprove, isn't it?

My point is not that Sullivan is right, it is that Harris is just as religious as he (or any of us.) Watch the Aslan-Harris debate when you have time. It's erudite and enjoyable, and Aslan suggests a much better definition for "religion" than the one commonly in use; namely, that any construct which aggregates facts into "meaning" can be called religious. Some philosophers will take the proposition further, and say not merely those viewpoints that offer Capital-M "Meaning" (what matters most of all, what is "sacred," etc.) but those which create any meaning from facts at all, those which make any set of data "intelligible," are religious. We needn't go that far to accede that no human is utterly without religion.

I personally find the truth or falsehood of "god" a red herring, since it distracts us from the bigger picture of how we each understand the world, and allows secular rationalists to pretend they don't afford themselves the same unempirical privileges as "faith-heads."

[ghostman]

Roy, I'm not saying that your thoughts are gibberish. I'm saying that I can't understand them. Your writing is sloppy and hard to decipher.

My remark about Sitting Bull sending his children to Christian schools was in response to your first post, in which you suggest that Sitting Bull's approach to religion was spiritually superior to "...empirical Christianity and its Judaic legalisms". You certainly did not include Sitting Bull in that framework, but rather contrasted him against it. I wasn't intending to wound you with my comment, as you put it, but rather to show that Sitting Bull indeed acquiesced to the very Christianity you contrasted him against.

Elatia:
Again, only a minor quibble. The already-convinced reader - that is, the firmly religious and the firmly nonreligious - are not the target audience for debates of this kind. This debate and others like it are ultimately for the folks on the fence. That said, I'm still not sure that even "truly religious" people couldn't change their mind after reading something like this. Consider the good number of deeply religious individuals who have converted to atheism or agnosticism later in their lives; and while it is probably safe to assume that their conversions away from religion were long-term processes involving many influences and inner-struggles, a debate of this kind, whether between Harris and Sullivan or Joe and Bob down the street, would have made at least a small difference at some point, even if it never led them directly to an "Aha!" moment.

[Roy Belmont]

ghostman
In the absence of requested aid-
I say:
"empirical"
You say:
"who by the way sent"
I say:
"Can you see why?"
You repeat:
"indeed acquiesced to the very".
I think that's one of the main logical fallacies there?
Where you just keep repeating a rebutted point, as if that somehow trumps the rebuttal?
Empire. Acquiesce.
Acquiescing to the superior power of the empire.
Superiority in this case being militant, physical, having no other relation to outcome than the aspect of force and its consequences.
The Christian religion, today, at this very moment "celebrates" the lack of superior militant strength of its founder against the empire of his time.
Sunday's a different story.
Acquiescence, especially where it concerns the survival of children and succeeding generations, has nothing to do with spiritual superiority, and everything to do with power. Here. In this world.
Beating someone to their knees and into submission is not a demonstration of spiritual superiority. Beating people until they surrender their children to your schools and your culture, and your God, is not a sign of spiritual superiority.
The dilemma of compromise with a morally inferior but physically superior opponent is a permanent thread in the actively evolving consciousness of ethical beings. We revere those who refused and suffered for it, but we inherit the blood of those who "acquiesced".
Domestication, the prayers of the enslaved, the minute increments of invisible molding evolution that create a comfortable servant out of the raw material of the "savage", the blindness of the served is understandable but still galling.
Your continued use of Sitting Bull's relinquishing his children to "Christianity" - as if that's what it was that took them - besides being blindly obtuse, just keeps confirming what I said.
What I'm saying.
Sullivan represents the old soft face of what Harris is a spear-carrying esquire for a new version of.
It's the same spirit - powerful, arrogant, and aesthetically grotesque - speaking on both sides; pretending to argue with itself, and winning every time.
Your inability to see that that's my point, and address it, pretty much undercuts any criticism of my writing style, or lack of one, or lack of a suitably consistent one, or lack of a suitably consistent one that your academic training has made you familiar with, etc.