Sam Harris says morality can be scientific

I love Sam Harris' books.

His "The End of Faith" came out about a year after I started this churchless blog in the fall of 2004. It provided me with a surge of faithless energy, validating my decision to do what I could to help rid the world of destructive religious dogma.

"Letter to a Christian Nation" (2008) also was a winner, but didn't appeal to me quite as much. Never having been a Christian (aside from pretending to be one in my early elementary school years), I guess his focus on the ridiculousness of Christianity seemed self-evident to me.

Now, though, I'm fully fired up about "The Moral Landscape," which I've just begun to read.

Two chapters into it, I'm freshly impressed with Harris' ability to blend rigorous logic and a scientific outlook (he has a Ph.D. in neuroscience) with an earthy attack-dog sensibility. In his newest book what he's attacking is the oft-heard notion that science deals with facts and religion with meanings.

Given this assumption, much of the moral battlefield is ceded to armies of warring combatants brandishing competing holy scriptures and sacred sayings. Those of us who value reason, reality, logic, and the scientific method are relegated to the sidelines.

Harris writes:

The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume famously argued that no description of the way the world is (facts) can tell us how we ought to behave (morality). Following Hume, the philosopher G. E. Moore declared that any attempt to locate moral truths in the natural world was to commit a "naturalistic fallacy."

... Other influential philosophers, including Karl Popper, have echoed Hume and Moore on this point, and the effect has been to create a firewall between facts and values throughout our intellectual discourse.

However, the central point of "The Moral Landscape" is that human knowledge and human values can no longer be kept apart.

As we learn more about what contributes to the well-being of us Homo sapiens, and what doesn't, it would be crazy to set aside our sapience and blindly follow the moral advice of religious pre-scientific magical-thinkers who were (and sadly, still are) mired in supernatural superstitions and fantasies.

Even though I was never a crazy Christian, for many years I was a crazy follower of an Eastern system of religious thought. Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a form of Sant Mat, accepted the reality of karma accrued over countless births in myriad forms of life.

So, for example, it was thought that someone born blind might have poked out the eyes of a dog in a previous incarnation. And in general, that if something bad happens to a person, this is a justice-balancing act of the cosmos (personified as "Kal," the Lord of Karma).

This is an example of how religiosity prevents us from seeing moral truths clearly. Good becomes bad, and bad becomes good, when people overlay what is actually happening in the world with imagined desires, wishes, laws, or commandments of an unseen "higher power."

Here is our situation: if the basic claims of religion are true, the scientific worldview is so blinkered and susceptible to supernatural modification as to be rendered nearly ridiculous; if the basic claims of religion are false, most people are profoundly confused about the nature of reality, confounded by irrational hopes and fears, and tending to waste precious time and attention -- often with tragic results.

...It makes no sense at all to have the most important features of our lives anchored to divisive claims about the unique sanctity of ancient books or to rumors of ancient miracles. There is simply no question that how we speak about human values -- and how we study or fail to study the relevant phenomena at the level of the brain -- will profoundly influence our collective future.

After picking up "The Moral Landscape" in the morning, yesterday I bookended my reading day with TIME magazine. I found an article about the Westboro Baptist Church right in line with what Harris is talking about.

The 70 members of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas stage protests at military funerals around the country because they believe God is punishing troops for America's tolerance of homosexuality -- even when those killed, like Matt [Snyder] were not gay -- and that all of God's judgments must be celebrated.

In a reasonable reality-based world, judgments about the morality of homosexuality (including the appropriateness of the U.S. armed forces' "don't ask, don't tell" policy) would be based on evidence about gays: how homosexuality arises; how, if at all, gays differ from straights in areas other than who they are sexually attracted to; and so on.

But once religiosity enters into the moral debate, facts make an exit.

The TIME article says that a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion on the lawsuit filed by the Snyders against the Westboro Baptist Church said that the First Amendment protects statements that fail to contain a "provably false factual connotation."

The Westboro signs were hurtful and wildly inappropriate -- "God hates you," for example -- but you can't disprove God's hate.

No, you can't. And you can't prove it either.

Thus this sort of claim, along with every other faith-based assertion, has no place in societal discussions about what is moral and what isn't. Harris is absolutely correct when he says:

There are surely physical, chemical, and biological facts about which we may be ignorant or mistaken. In speaking of "moral truth," I am saying that there must be facts regarding human and animal well-being about which we can also be ignorant or mistaken. In both cases, science -- and rational thought generally -- is the tool we can use to uncover these facts.

...Meaning, values, morality, and the good life must relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures -- and, in our case, must lawfully depend upon events in the world and upon states of the human brain. Rational, open-ended inquiry has always been the true souce of insight into such processes. Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident.

Comments

[Tricia]

Hi there,

It's by the scientific process of thinking about doing something, doing it, seeing the results, then revising how you go about doing something that we see the results of our moral decisions. It just makes sense to be decent to others, not cheat on your spouse, and refrain from robbing banks. The logic of morality and the way that so many atheists and nonreligious people act truly good and loving (and so many Christians are bigots, gossips, cheats, etc.) helped me to get to where I am now- questioning the faith I've believed since I was a young girl. I'll have to check out a Sam Harris book in this process.

Cheers!

Tricia

[George]

Isn't it quite simple don't do to others what u would not want done to you.

Not sure science or religion have anything more to say.

[Spence Tepper]

Why make judgments about anyone? When Christ said "Judge not, lest ye be judged" I think that was quite beautiful. And He also said that we should limit our dialogue to the basics "yes" or "no". Take it literally? No. Understand what Christ is saying about too much judging of one another, too much condemnation which destroys the spirit of peace, brotherhood and love.

When He said "Let the one without sin cast the first stone" He gave the world a gift. And he forgave the adulteress without question. He did not ask her to pledge her allegiance to Him. He just told her not to sin anymore. He freed her of the prejudice, hatred and cruelty of religious and scholarly dogma that was about to stone her to death.

This danger did not simply come from the priesthood, but from the rabbinical scholars as well. The danger of killing each other from sheer hatred is not always held in check by intellect or understanding, but by great intellect and great understanding such hatred has often been escalated to a frightening degree of destruction. The engineers and biologists working for Hitler believed and acted so.

You may not believe Jesus was "God" or you may not believe in any religion. But these teachings, when we have faith in them, take us beyond the finger-pointing of religious dogma. They are a stairway to happiness.

You don't have to believe everything attributed to Him in the Bible. You are free to believe what appeals to you.

That is what freedom from dogma is all about. And that includes freedom from the dogma of scientism, a belief, a religion that tries to use science, coopt science to promote political and philosophical views.

You don't have to be a scientist to believe what appeals to you. Just so long as you accept your choice as your own, without having to lean on the excuse that you are following "Christianity" or "Sant Mat" or "Baba Ji" or "Guru...." or "Science" or "Buddhism" as the excuse.

If you are going to be free, why not learn to say "It just appeals to me..." and not need anything else?

It is only when we try to prove we are right and someone else is wrong that we get into this problem. If you are a true scientist, then you accept the world as it is. Or, as a good scientist, you focus on a limited area that you can do something helpful with.

So you can believe and have faith in these teachings of Christ because they resonate as the highest expression of morality and kindness. If they do for you.

Or you can try to pick them apart, or claim Christ must have been very ignorant since He didn't live in the modern technical age. You can make science your religion, too, but then you miss the point of science, which is open minded, investigatory, learning and letting go of misunderstandings without blaming anyone.

Science is not the practice of witch hunts, public torture or execution and tribunals, even by intellectuals. Though intellectuals have used their own beliefs to do this much to the character and careers of others. Then it is just politics.

And when intellectuals use it to wield power over the "ignorant" they become ignorant. The point of science is open-ended, free of politics. It is not to wield power but to free ourselves and then to help each other to be free.

It is the unfolding of understanding through investigation and the withholding of judgment.

When it is used to "prove" something that has money and politics behind it, it is no longer science in the pure sense, but in an applied sense, and applied in very corruptible ways - as evidenced by big money pharma research, big money military research.....

And true science is faith in your hypothesis. Complete and total faith. Every good scientific experiment requires the utmost dedication, often our whole lives in pursuit of the understanding of one principle of nature. You must carry the ability to believe in what has yet to be proven to be a good scientist. Enough faith to actually construct and complete real investigation, real experimentation. Not something you brag about to others, talk about to others. Something which you do for its own intrinsic value to you.

Is the point of science to publish papers? Or to find the truth, and then, in the best way you can, objectively communicate that to your community?

When the scientist gets lost in the interpersonal and political and career dynamics of publish or perish, popular or poverty, then what they are doing becomes tainted, and you get false results, false reporting. And it can take years of work simply to disprove the false reports of a desired scientific outcome that has become popularly accepted simply because it is attractive.

But why not believe in an active principle rather than in one's own negative judgment of others? And why use the excuse of science to believe what appeals to you personally?

I think Christ got it right. And science can add only to the extent that it is much healthier to laugh and accept the world as it is, healthier to help others rather than to tear them down.

You can choose to be a warrior, if you like, but it isn't necessary. You can also be peaceful. And maybe that is healthier, too.

If something doesn't appeal to you, fine. But if you must act to harm or destroy it, then own your own veiled hatred. Rather than find "objective reasons" to hate. That is backwards, then.

Love or Hate. It is a purely subjective choice. Once you make it, naturally, there are all sorts of reasons to justify either choice.

And if you can't make the choice, if you are a fence-sitter, own that too.

But the Lover can't hate the hater, because then the lover is no longer a lover. And the Hater can't give up hating, much as they pretend to love, unless they accept they will no longer be a hater, and grieve the loss of hate, and let go all their character traits built upon it.