Amazon.com:
Obviously there's something in the makeup of humans that impels
them toward a belief in a transcendent being. From your own work in
neuroscience, how do you account for this?
Sam Harris:
I don't know of any result in neuroscience that speaks directly to
this issue. But there are some general features of the human mind that are
clearly relevant here. We are born ready to live in relationship to the world
around us. We emerge from our mother's wombs ready to see faces as faces, to
learn language, and to gradually recognize that we are in the presence of minds
like our own. The prevalence of animism among our primitive ancestors--as
well as its persistence in certain tribes--demonstrates that we readily
ascribe human qualities to processes in nature. It is only by gaining a deeper
understanding of causal processes in the world (through science) that we come
to realize that storm clouds are not angry gods and that diseases are not the
result of demonic possession. It is difficult to say where we should draw the
line between genetic endowment and cultural inheritance, and both are surely
operative in the case of religious belief. But the basic fact is that, yes, we
are deeply disposed to broadcast our own subjectivity onto the world. The
biblical God is jealous, angry--deplorably neurotic, in fact. And the Greek
gods were like teenagers left alone in their parents' house for the weekend.
The fact that we may be predisposed to conceive of the universe in
anthropomorphic terms does not mean that we are condemned to do so, however.
Amazon.com:
Can you clarify the mix of biology and culture involved in the
above? For example, what do you think of the Dean Hamer
The God
Gene type of argument? If there is a biological drive toward
faith, what accounts for the extraordinary cultural divide between the Western
monotheisms and the mysticism of the East?
Harris:
With most higher cognitive traits, the search for an explanation
in terms of single genes is probably hopeless. But whatever the story is at the
genetic level, biology only loosely determines culture in any case. We need to
eat, but we don't need to eat pasta. We are prone to jealousy, but this emotion
can play itself out in the manner of Cary Grant or in the manner of Mullah
Omar. Same biology, different culture. Much of our behavior as human beings,
while it may emerge from our biology, is perpetuated in its present form merely
because we have not felt sufficient pressure to change it. Culture does not
systematically improve the design of its products (neither does biology for
that matter). So, while we should expect to see important differences across
cultures, these differences may not reflect anything deeper about us than the
fact that human communities tend to keep using the tools they've got for as
long as these tools are serviceable. Consider the difference between Eastern
and Western medicine.
The fact that we may be predisposed to
conceive of the universe in anthropomorphic terms does not mean that we are
condemned to do so, however.
Are they equivalently useful? No. Is
Eastern medicine better for Easterners? No. While Eastern medicine may be
applicable to certain health problems, and may even surpass Western medicine in
a few areas, there is simply no comparison between these two disciplines. No
one with an appendicitis, an aneurysm, or breast cancer would be wise to rush
off to her acupuncturist before going to the hospital. This is true in New
York, and it is just as true in Hong Kong.
With respect to spiritual practice, however, the disparity
clearly runs the other way. While Eastern mysticism has its fair share of
unjustified belief, it undoubtedly represents humankind's best attempt at
fashioning a spiritual science. The methods of introspection one finds in
Buddhism, for instance, have no genuine equivalents in the West. And the
suggestion that they do is born of a desperate attempt on the part of
Westerners to make all religious traditions seem equally wise. They simply
aren't. When a Tibetan lama talks about "nondual awareness" (Tib. rigpa
)
and the Pope talks about God or the Holy Spirit (or anything else), they are
not talking about the same thing; nor are they operating on the same
intellectual footing. The lama is using some very precise terminology (albeit
terminology that has no good English equivalent) to describe what countless
meditators have experienced after very refined training in methods of
introspection; while the Pope is merely reiterating unjustified and
unjustifiable metaphysical claims that have been passed down to Christians in
the context of a culture that has failed--utterly--to find compelling
alternatives to mere belief. Such alternatives have existed for millennia, east
of the Bosporus. This is not to ignore the Meister Eckharts of the world, but
such mystics have always been the exception in the West. And it is important to
remember that, being exceptions, they have been regularly persecuted for
heresy.
Amazon.com:
You basically characterize Western religion as dangerous and
Eastern mysticism as full of promise. How did you arrive at this conclusion?
Harris:
Mysticism, shorn of religious dogmatism, is an empirical and
highly rational enterprise. Just as people do not burn their neighbors at the
stake as a result of new insights in physics or biology, no one is likely to do
so on the basis of genuine mysticism. Religion--especially in the West--is
another matter entirely. Religious faith is a conversation stopper.
While Eastern mysticism has its fair share of unjustified belief,
it undoubtedly represents humankind's best attempt at fashioning a spiritual
science.
The only thing that guarantees a truly open-ended
collaboration among human beings is their willingness to have their views (and
resulting behavior) modified by conversation--by new evidence and new
arguments. Otherwise, when the stakes are high, there is nothing to appeal to
but force. If I believe that I can get to Paradise by flying a plane into a
building, and I am content to believe this without evidence, then there will be
nothing another person can say to dissuade me, because my leap of faith has
made me immune to the powers of conversation.
Amazon.com:
In other words, you are careful to distinguish between what you
term "faith" and "spirituality." In a nutshell, what is this distinction?
Harris:
"Faith" is false conviction in unjustified propositions (a certain
book was written by God; we will be reunited with our loved ones after death;
the Creator of the universe can hear our thoughts, etc.). "Spirituality" or
"mysticism" (both words are pretty terrible, but there are no good alternatives
in English) refers to any process of introspection by which a person can come
to realize that the feeling he calls "I" is a cognitive illusion. The core
truth of mysticism is this: It is possible to experience the world without
feeling like a separate "self" in the usual sense. Such a change in the
character of one's experience need not become the basis for making
unsupportable claims about the nature of the universe, however.
Amazon.com:
Why have earlier attempts at erasing faith through classical
materialism resulted in a level of violence similar to what you believe faith
itself has inspired (i.e., Communism)?
The core truth of mysticism is
this: It is possible to experience the world without feeling like a separate
"self" in the usual sense.
Harris:
Communism was not an attempt to erase faith. It was a new faith,
albeit one that did not look beyond this life. Communism was shot through with
irrationality. Stalin's repudiation of "capitalist biology" in favor of
Lysenkoism (a rehash of the Lamarckian doctrine of acquired characteristics:
The idea that giraffes got their long necks as a result of their ancestors
striving to reach higher and higher branches) is but one example of the
dogmatism that was the soul of Communism. Freethinking (that is to say
rational) scientists were sent to the gulag for failing to support this
ideology. Millions died from famine in both the Soviet Union and China due to
their failure to implement sane agricultural practices informed by Mendelian
genetics.
The kind of intolerance of faith that I am advocating in my book
is not the intolerance that gave us the gulag. It is conversational
intolerance. When people make outlandish claims, without evidence, we stop
listening to them--except on matters of faith. I am arguing that we can no
longer afford to give faith a pass in this way. Bad beliefs should be
criticized wherever they appear in our discourse--in physics, in medicine, and
on matters of ethics and spirituality as well. The President of the United
States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to be in dialogue with God. Now,
if he said that he was talking to God through his hairdryer, this would
precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the addition of a hairdryer
makes the claim more ludicrous or more offensive.
Amazon.com:
Following the terms of your argument about the dangers of faith,
how was it possible then for Christianity, for example, to reach a state of
relative "domestication" in the early modern period--without being derided out
of existence as an absurdity?
Harris:
Well, it has suffered some important moments of derision,
especially in Europe (think Voltaire or Hume), which may account for why modern
Europeans are not content to wander quite so far down the path of biblically
inspired irrationality as we are. More importantly, Christianity has suffered a
relentless and uncelebrated winnowing as a result of the progress of science
and secular culture in the West. Priests would still be diagnosing demonic
possession if it were not for the advances made in the last 200 years by
medical science. The situations in which prayer now seems an adequate (or even
sane) first response to human suffering have been gradually (but radically)
diminished.
The kind of intolerance of faith that I am advocating
in my book is not the intolerance that gave us the gulag. It is conversational
intolerance.
Another important feature of Christianity--which, unfortunately,
Islam does not share--is that it provides a loophole into "domestication."
"Render unto Caesar those things that are Caesar's ..." really does make a
difference when it comes time to find a rationale for separating Church and
State. Islam is far more problematic in this sense. Given the doctrine of
Islam, as it is set forth in the Koran and the Hadith, it is extremely
difficult for Muslims to justify keeping religion out of politics.
Amazon.com:
Regarding readers' reactions to the book--do you fear that this
could simply become a matter of "preaching to the converted"? Or do you hope to
jump-start the necessary conversation through a certain shock value?
Harris:
I certainly hope to start a conversation. And I'm not sure who the
"converted" are, in any case. My book seems to offend liberals and
conservatives equally. Conservatives love what I have to say about the dangers
of Islam but recoil at my attack upon Christianity. And liberals hate the case
I make against Islam (due to its political incorrectness) but love my argument
against the intrusions of Christian fundamentalism into social policy. Both
sides seem poised to resist my core argument against faith itself. Perhaps the
dedication in my book is more literal than most. I may have written The
End of Faith
only "for my mother." She, at least, agrees with me.
Amazon.com:
What are some of the most unexpected reactions to your arguments
you've come across--both pro and con?
Harris:
I have been quite surprised to find some Christians celebrating my
argument against moderate religion. One Baptist minister more or less endorsed
my book as the final nail in the coffin of religious moderation, claiming that
I have proven that there are only two viable choices, secularism or
fundamentalism. His rebuttal to my thesis was also the most surprising
criticism I've encountered--he simply offered no rebuttal at all. He spoke
about my book for 40 minutes on the radio, with very few distortions, and left
my argument against faith entirely unchallenged--as though any process of
reasoning that put faith in question would be so obviously unacceptable to his
listeners that it need not even be addressed. Listening to him essentially
pitch my book, while damning it implicitly, was really a
through-the-looking-glass experience.
Generally speaking, however, I am continually surprised to find
that even secular intellectuals believe that faith is necessary for other
people. "We'll never get rid of religion. It's just too important to people,"
is perhaps the most common rejoinder of all. How is it that anyone thinks he
knows this to be the case? Surely the first half of the 19th century was filled
with people who said things like, "We'll never get rid of slavery. It's just
too important for the economy...." Of course, this was a similar, seemingly
sensible claim. But it was the product of intellectual and moral laziness, and
it was wrong.
Amazon.com:
Dostoevsky's famous phrase "without God, everything is permitted"
(from
The Brothers
Karamazov) is often used by theists as a warning about the
dangers of living without a transcendent moral certitude. In your view, is it
safe to say that "it's with God that everything is permitted" (murder,
genocide, etc.)?
Harris:
Yes, but I would broaden the scope of the claim: With false
certainty, anything is possible. This covers the Hitlers and the Stalins of the
world as well.
Generally speaking, however, I am continually
surprised to find that even secular intellectuals believe that faith is
necessary for other people.
Amazon.com:
What's the single most practical thing that people who agree with
your conclusions could do starting now to change the overall consensus about
religious faith?
Harris:
Once again, it comes down to new rules of conversation--not new
laws or demonstrations in the street. Just imagine how different it would be if
every time a person in a position of power used the word "God," the press
responded as though he had just used a word like "Poseidon." Our conversation
with ourselves would change very quickly and very dramatically. Imagine someone
opposing stem-cell research on the floor of the Senate with a statement like,
"life is a gift from Zeus himself. No man should meddle with it."
Of course, criticism and the demand for intellectual honesty are
not enough. On the positive side, we need to find creative approaches to
ethics, spiritual experience, and the building of strong communities. The
scientific study of positive human experience--joy, love, compassion,
meditative states, etc.--will undoubtedly play a role here. But this will take
time. It need take no time at all, however, for us to realize that the people
who invoke God in public discourse are either speaking in empty platitudes or
making some very suspect claims about the nature of the world, or about the
character of their own experience. We should demand that they start making
sense, and if they fail to make sense, we should stop listening to them.
Amazon.com:
In what sense is your book a kind of "prayer"? Do you think
ultimately that humans will be able to avoid the apocalypse that you argue is
the greatest threat of religious faith?
Harris:
I am not as optimistic as I'd like to be. It is an interesting
state to be in, psychologically speaking, because I feel very motivated to make
the case against religion, but I don't see any real basis for hope that
anything will change for the better. It seems very likely that we have spent
too long in the company of bad ideas to now arrest our slide toward the brink.
I hope I'm wrong about this, but I would not be surprised if the human
experiment runs radically off the rails in our lifetime.
We should
demand that they start making sense, and if they fail to make sense, we should
stop listening to them.
The people who have their hands upon the
tiller of civilization are just not thinking, speaking, or allocating resources
in the ways they must if we are to avoid catastrophe. The fact that we elect
presidents who waste time on things like gay marriage, when the nuclear weapons
in the former Soviet Union lie unsecured (to cite only one immediate threat to
our survival), is emblematic of how disastrously off course we are (it is also
emblematic of the role faith plays in forcing us off course). So I am not
hopeful. But still, each of us has to try to contribute positively to the world
as we find it. What alternative is there?
Not long before
the birth of Christ, in an age of violence and turmoil, the Roman poet and
Epicurean philosopher Lucretius wrote an epic masterpiece titled
