Sam Harris' World

What would our world look like if Sam Harris’ dream came true and the age of The End of Faith had begun. A few weeks ago I went to a debate at Claremont Mckenna College in which popular atheist author Sam Harris and Harvard professor Michael Sandel were debating whether religion has a place in public life.

Harris decried faith’s role in public life as harmful dogma that divides people and often leads to death, while Sandel advocated a policy in which religious views would be welcomed to the public table and subjected to the critical examination common to all other worldviews. Rather than touching the question of whether religious claims are in fact true the emphasis was pragmatic.

While I don’t think that pragmatic considerations encompass the most critical component of faith, exploring the ramifications of this emphasis could prove illuminating. One might wonder what the world would look like if people dismissed religious faith in favor of science as the superior arbiter of truth. Harris rightly observes that people don’t start wars over whether a particular theory of planetary rotation is true.

If giving up unscientifically verifiable religious claims would reduce global violence then perhaps we should consider this bargain, but worth considering is the loss of other unscientifically verifiable beliefs. LA Times opinion writer Lee Siegel writes:

You cannot prove the existence of truth, beauty or goodness and decency; you cannot prove the dignity of being human, or your obligation to treat people as ends and not just as means. You take a gamble on the existence of these inestimable things. For that reason, when you lay scientific, logical and empirical siege to the leap of faith at the core of the religious impulse, you are not just attacking faith in God. You are attacking the act of faith itself, faith in anything that can’t be proved. But it just so happens that the qualities that make life rich, joyful and humane cannot be proved. [Oct 7, 2007]

Once again I am reminded of why I love philosophy. Its exploration of the richest aspects of life and ability to offer rational support for the intangible is fascinating. If our religious intuitions are derived in the same way as our deepest emotional and moral intuitions the same rational support we give in favor of these might serve to as a starting point to the affirmation of the validity of faith claims. Though clearly this is not a simple task it is a stepping stone towards outlining rational criteria for the intangible.

As Blaise Pascal rightly noted, “The heart has reasons the mind knows not of.” Dismissing these reasons as dogma that necessarily leads to violent intolerance is to dismiss the richness of the heart that makes our world hospitable.