Sam Harris is a vocal atheist who insists, among other things, that there are no such things as religious moderates. He claims that religious beliefs, and claims about religious beliefs, should receive the same treatment as claims concerning UFOs and Atlantis, and that they are an impediment to truly human living. He sees the God of the Hebrew Scriptures as psychopathic, and Islam as an inherently intolerant religion. BeliefNet was willing to interview him, and while there is a greater sweep and consistency to his professions concering the dangers to our corporate huamn existence posed by religious belief than Richard Dawkins, and while he is willing to grant to people of faith the willingness to act on behalf of others, often at great sacrifice to themselves, he counts it of less worth than other types of selflessness. His remarkably shallow insistence that only a literal reading of scripture is acceptable - as if we ever read anything literally - as well as his claims that any views other than his are intellectually dishonest is a wonderful device to shield himself from critics. The wholism of his worldly disdain for those whose view of the world and human existence is breathtaking. It is also, alas, as mistaken as many of the beliefs he purports to describe. The fact that much of what he says is inaccurate on its face should lead many who would turn to him to question his intellectual integrity.
There is something impressive, no doubt, about a person so convinced of his own moral and intellectual superiority that he is willing to consign the vast bulk of humanity to the outer darkness of ignorance and irrationality because they think differently than oneself. It kind of reminds me of, well, of Pat Robertson, profiled in a Short Take yesterday saying that believers in other faiths actually worshipped demons! People who disagree with me are damned, whetehr because they worship demons, or because they include the act of worship, and all the intellectual, moral, and existential baggage it entails, in their life.
The totalitarian nature of Harris' ideology is plain in his response to the very first question posed to him. He says:
[T]his whole style of believing and talking about beliefs leaves us powerless to overcome our differences from one another.
It would be better if all of us see the truth of Sam Harris, a truth of reason, a truth of rationality - a truth that transcends any and all questioning. We are not to question; we are not to be different; we are certainly not to celebrate our differences, even those of creed and faith. We are not to learn how to live together with all our differences - not just of religion, but of nationality, of history, of ethnicity, of class - but are to become one with a reasonable approach to the world. That Harris is unable to see the horror emebedded within this statement should be very telling for those willing to understand the implications of such a wholistic, totalitarian ideology. What else does totalitarianism mean but that it encompasses all aspects of life - most importantly how we think about ourselves and our relationships with other people and the world aorund us. No doubt Harris would argue strenuously that is not at all what he meant, how dare such a peon, such a religious peon at that, dare impugn his integrity, his morality, or his intention by claiming he has a secret desire for us all to become . . . Harrisists!
Actually, what I am saying is that there are totalitarian implications in his words, and the idology he insists is better for all humanity than the myriad ways human beings go about ordering their lives. Rather than celebrate our differences, and learn to live with them, and sometimes even through them - not surrendering to conflict, but making conflict creative and even productive - Harris sees differences as fundamental to personal and social identity as religious differences as a hinderance to the furtherance of some moral goal that, alas, is never stated, explicitly or implicitly in this interview.
Part of the beauty and majesty of totalitarian ideas are, well, their totalitarianism. They cover any and all contingency. By placing any and all claims of religious belief outside the pale of acceptable discourse, and all those who use such claims as equally untouchable, he is insulated from the criticisms of people of faith. Even thought I have not one in this entire article made a claim concerning the correctness or incorrectness of any religious belief, because I am aperson of faith, I am ipso facto irrational and therefore there is no need for him to ever even consider what I have written here.
We just ended, less than a decade ago, a century which introduced totalitarianisms into human existence. All of them were horrid, none of them were Christian (or Jewish, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or Hindu, or Zoroastrian), and at least one of them wore the mantle of "scientific socialism" as a badge of honor. To somehow turn around, now, and use such totalizing ideology as a bludgeon to beat people of faith - again, and not just those of one but of any faith; the act of faith, it would seem, is to Harris a crime against humanity - is to resurrect horrors which we had all hoped were now buried. We must never forget that those who would insist that theirs is the only true way for a truly human existence have written large chunks of the population out of the human race and are, and have been, quite willing to dispose of them because they are a nuisance of one sort or another. That Harris would insist he wishes no such thing is really beside the point. After all, since there are no such things as religious moderates anyway, why should I believe there is such a thing as a moderate totalitarian?
