First lets just note that it is historically untrue that Europe ran off its religious people and that they came here. It is true that Europe is demonstrably less religious than the U.S. But all this has little to do with what we are here to discuss.

As for Harris, I am glad this has come up because it gives us a chance to talk about why his seductive argument is off topic at Talk to Action.

Harris believes that religion is inherently bad and is the underlying source of many problems.  He equates rationality with anti-religiosity and religion with irrationality. This is of course, a theological debate, and amounts to a highbrow wrapping of cheap name calling.

We are not here to debate religion and anti-religion.  Even if one thinks Harris is right (and I don't) to argue that the only way for civilization to be saved is by the end of religious belief -- is a political dead end.  Since his argument is a political dead end if one believes it, the end of civilization may be a self-fulfilling prophesy as his followers act out the very antireligious behaviors and religious bigotry that only inflames those who we have a chance of reaching. Harris and people like him are part of the problem, not the solution.

Our task at Talk to Action is to figure out how we can work together to solve the political and social problems with the religious right that we can actually solve -- because we live in a constitutional democracy and we have the means to do so. Harris opposes our purposes in part because he opposes the core values of constitutional democracy, and because he clearly does not believe in working with religious people towards common goals.

In addition to his antireligious view, even the short passages quoted are riddled with faulty history, sociology, and more.  Let's look briefly at just one aspect of his argument.

Harris places religious people on a bogus scale that defines "moderates" as those who support the secular idea of religious equality and respect for diversity. Well, there are many fundamentalists who take this view as well.  He defines as "extremists" people who do not agree with this. But reality is far more complicated.

Harris glibly declares that religious moderates believe all faiths are equal. Not so. People who believe in constutional demcracy, and people who seek interfaith understanding, respect each other's faith and radically accept people's right to religious difference and equality under the law, while in turn believing what they will.  They do not necessarily believe that all faiths are equal. The key is understanding that people are equal in the eyes of the law and that civilization depends on people being able to get along.

The notion of religious equality and pluralism is rooted at least as much in our actual political, legal and constitutional history as in our religious traditions. As has been discussed on this site by several of us, it was the theocratic style governance of the colonies that was overthrown by the ratification of the Constitution and the disestablishment of the state churhes that created religious equality and pluralism -- not religious moderates.

Learning to respect the right to religious difference, and to forge alliances that will allow us to preserve constitutional democracy is a central task of our time.  The anti-religious views of Sam Harris are an obstacle to our being able to achieve that. The logical extension of his argument is that constitutional democracy is not possible.

Indeed, Mr. Harris specifically attacks the idea of the right to believe as one will -- the very value at the core of both the Constitution and the First Amendment.  If we cannot believe as we will, we cannot speak as we will. Because the right to believe differently underlies the right to speak and to publish freely.

Lets be very clear: Here is Harris' stated purpose as quoted above:

I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance-born of the notion that every human being should be free to believe whatever he wants about God-is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss.

If we follow Harris's reasoning, we should all run out and repeal the first amendment and Article 6 of the Constitution.

Hey, there's a winning strategy.

by Frederick Clarkson on Tue Dec 27, 2005 at 03:04:08 PM EST

However, Lorie, correct me if I'm wrong - but I think I see where you were going with your argument...

I believe that what Lorie was trying to illustrate is that religious moderates use the "can't we all just get along" argument against religious fundamentalism...  The main thrust of moderates, generally speaking, is to say "everyone's beliefs are equal", and the fundamentalists are entitled to their viewpoints, but so are everyone else entitled to theirs too...

But - using Harris' words, Lorie picked up on a concept that perhaps religious moderates should NOT be so accomodating of fundamentalism... perhaps people really should be "intolerant of intolerance", and argue that fundamentalist belief is NOT on an equal footing with moderate belief, and therefore should not have equal protections...
(A logical argument that could be used here would be to say that fundamentalist belief leads to immoral actions, therefore one could claim the belief itself is immoral and should be stopped...)

What Lorie may be suggesting is that, instead of using the "old" strategy of saying the religious right is wrong because it is right to allow everyone to have their own religious beliefs (and the RR is trying to create a theocracy), we really should be trying a "new" strategy to characterize the religious right as a totally immoral and bankrupt philosophy in and of itself (as compared to the actions taken in its name being bad - the belief itself is bad).

Lorie - if I'm dead wrong, accept my apologies... :)

In any case... it's an interesting concept, no?

-Emily
...I've piqued my internal Philosopher...

by EmilyWynn8 on Fri Dec 30, 2005 at 03:06:59 PM EST

As for Harris, there are portions of his argument that smell of a straw man. Instead I will offer a few observations.

I was in Birmingham, Alabama one Saturday afternoon a few years ago when a local pagan group threw their festival in a local park, with a large banner that said, "All Faiths Welcome." Operation Rescue then showed up and brought a lot of people to tears with their signs and general belligerance.

Whether or not Harris' argument is valid, the fact of the matter is that there are plenty of people who walk around with an open-ended attitude of "All Faiths Welcome" until the day comes that they're personally on the receiving end of something or someone that they didn't, to that point, associate with "faith."  There are others who bristle with indignation at the suggestion that some religious people are gaming the political system in an effort to take away the freedom of others, who attribute that goal of persecution solely to the government and the irreligious.

As I have commented earlier on another thread: certain strategies inherent to Christianity, in American culture, are acceptable here in this country, and even privileged. The striving toward a "shining city on a hill" when they arguably already live in the closest thing to that they could ever get, but must manufacture visible and proximate evils to purge since real problems are difficult and consume time and money to solve, is one such strategy.  It gives the bored aimless suburbanite targeted by evangelists "mission," "purpose," and reason to participate in a church, a corporation. Inevitably, many church leaders find totalism, and the use of government to "renew the culture" into a surrounding, mutually supportive totalist system, very attractive as a strategy to sustain and perpetuate themselves. The Bush Administration manufacturing enemies overseas, churches manufacturing enemies at home, the individual who posits demons everywhere working against him or her personally - it's the same totalistic phenomena, of never-ending cosmic warfare in which all participate, repeating itself at the micro and macro level.

Perhaps the most disturbing observation that I can make here - at risk of being 'off topic' - is that this country may simply be past the point where "faith" is reclaimable. Worse, the benefits gained by anyone trying to "reclaim faith" accrue only to those who you don't want to be supporting.

This is because the public image, the "brand" of Christianity now belongs both to those who own the media and other resources and who can shape that "brand" in the public mind, and to those who can make their message strongly resonate with certain dangerous but prevalent attitudes already present in American culture.

As an example of how much media bandwidth they control, I can turn on my TV here in the office that's wired up to the DirecTV service and get 7 channels of Christianity - one of them Catholic - and an additional Mormon channel. One of them (the NRB channel) just started up a few days before Christmas, replacing an educational/academic channel, and it runs Pat Robertson's 700 Club five times a day along with his daily newscast and daily quack health product show. It's rumored that I'm going to get yet another Christian channel in the next week or two that will take the place of PBSYou, that's being cut because of budget cuts. All these channels pump out messages 24 hours a day that aren't just "dominionist" or "right wing" or "theocratic" or whatever box you'd like to put them in - they take these things as a few of very many givens that are pretty much running counter to life in this country as you believe it should be lived.

I suppose all this sounds rather bleak, but it has been my experience in what little I've tried to do to counter some of these groups that approaching them with an argument over the nature of faith is counter-productive, and that what is needed is a clear secular response unclouded by religious controversies that puts forward some kind of vision of how people should get along with each other, and that provides a strong disincentive to the use of "faith" to support anyone's political position.
--
Acquire the Evidence: on Ron Luce, Teen Mania Ministries and the "BattleCry" campaign. acquiretheevidence.com

by Mike Doughney on Tue Jan 03, 2006 at 01:50:25 AM EST