Sam Harris Myths (3)
No wonder even fellow-atheists find Sam Harris hard to stomach at times. He's so one-sided. If Christians do bad things (and they do) it's because Christianity is a poison and corrupts the human family but if atheists do bad things (and they do) it's because they're fascists and communists and too like Christians. Yes, see for yourself.
In that LA Times piece Harris sets out to deflate ten myths that he claims keeps atheists out of positions of political power. The myths he sets up to debunk are of his own making (you have to watch how he phrases things) and when you read the piece you soon see he doesn't deal with the real criticisms of atheism. He ridicules the myth he sets up and immediately moves to attack what Christians believe. Even then he attacks straw men that he has built.
His Myth 7 is that Christians think atheists can't experience what we might call "higher" emotions. He says, "There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly." I confess I have never in all my life met a Christian who denied this. [He claims this is the kind of thing Christians think and that's what keeps atheists out of the Oval Office.]
You need to understand this. Harris wants to assure us that atheists are as fully human as Christians—they can love and feel and appreciate as much as anyone. No Christian I ever met doubted that; but having said that, on Harris' own terms—he feels and values and seeks because he's "hard-wired" to do so. His atheistic colleague, physicist Steven Weinberg, said that thought and emotions are biochemical reactions—they're all the result of impersonal forces acting on matter (see). Atheists—on their own terms—when they feel and seek and value these things they are doing absolutely nothing more than a mosquito is doing when it sucks blood or what a fungus does when it grows in the dark. Let me repeat, that's not the Christian view—that's Weinberg, Dawkins, Harris and consistent atheism. When they call such human feelings or thoughts or actions "higher" than that of the experience of an intestinal parasite, when pressed, atheists are forced by their faith to admit that they are only "different" and more "complex". It's true that the "higher" human experiences work toward producing a higher or better ecosystem but that assumes that the word "better" has any objective or rational meaning. I doubt if the mosquito or the parasite would share our opinion. "Better" for whom or what and "better" in what way?
Harris' Myths 1 & 4 are all confusion. He complains that Christians accuse atheists of believing that life is meaningless and arose by chance. He immediately attacks Christians, saying that they believe life is only made meaningful because 1) they believe in life after death and 2) that it lasts forever. At one level or another, this is sheer ignorance. It isn't the length of life that gives it meaning. (See) Furthermore, on atheistic terms the life of a degenerate and cruel scoundrel has as much "meaning" as the life of a family-loving and socially useful atheist. Harris' shoddy and ambivalent use of important terms muddies the waters.
It was an atheist, H.J Blackham, who said that the most damning argument against atheism was its "pointlessness"! It was an atheist, Jean Paul Sartre, who pronounced human life "absurd". It was an atheist,Wolsley Teller, who insisted that the universe knows nothing of meaning or purpose and that it cares neither for our coming or going.
Were these atheists saying that atheists didn't experience warm relationships? Were they saying that feelings of compassion and generosity were non-existent? Not at all. They felt and experienced such things. So what did they mean? They were taking the cosmic view of things: The entire universe, including the human race, simply happened and we'll simply be swept away again—end of story!
Any fool can tell you that the word "meaningful" can be used sensibly of just about anything. The chance roll of a dice in a game of "Snakes & Ladders" has "meaning"; it fits into the structure of the game we contrived. The pre-mating ritual of sewer rats has meaning. But what does it mean to say we have "meaningful" relationships? Harris doesn't say—he just rolls outs the words. Does he mean emotional responses are exchanged, devotion to one another through life exists or that atheists can feel deep satisfaction with their mates or that they purposed to raise some happy and morally upright children? I've never known a believer who said atheists couldn't experience such things! (No wonder some fellow-atheists think Harris is over the top.)
Harris keeps forgetting that he is an exceedingly complex organism consisting totally and completely of bio-chemical reactions that came about as the result of blind purposeless evolution. His experiences, individually or in totality as a life, are what they are—to speak of them as having "meaning" is an arbitrary convention. The stink of rotten eggs is what it is—it doesn't have "meaning". The scientist (within limits) can tell us what "stink" is, why that stink is as it is; he can even say in his description of what he sees, "This means…" but in a universe in which everything is nothing more than existing "stuff"—there is no "meaning". Harris knows that so he must also know that he's ducking and diving. [On his terms even the ducking and diving is finally inner "hard wiring" that itself is nothing but existing "stuff". Mind is matter in motion to the atheist!]
He pretends in Myth 4 that he is dealing with something but it's more smoke and mirrors. "Although we don't know precisely how the Earth's early chemistry begat biology, we know that the diversity and complexity we see in the living world is not a product of mere chance. Evolution is a combination of chance mutation and natural selection."
Harris talks as though "natural selection" was magic! "Natural Selection" exists within and is a part of the world that came into existence by chance so NS is itself a chance product. Bless me, if some matter without personal intervention just happened to develop the capacity to "clump" and atoms were born, what followed must have "just happened". Even the impersonal laws of physics just happened when the "singularity" exploded with a Big Bang. (The single Big Bang theory is coming under pressure and there is now talk about numerous Big Bangs.)
So about 13.5 billion years ago we had a big explosion, debris scattered everywhere, evolving with breakneck speed as it went and all that exists evolved out of it. The resultant structures and conditions of the universe included Natural Selection and they all "just happened".
In light of that atheistic faith I'd say everything in their universe arose from chance. Harris says that's a myth foisted on atheists and serves to keep them from the presidency of the United States.
Even giving Natural Selection (the unfit are killed off) its best face, you'd think to hear Harris that NS emptied "chance" of its meaning. Providing a given creature has a trait that has greater survival potential than its competitors we would guess it is more likely to survive and reproduce (if it can reproduce) but how did it get the greater survival trait to begin with? In Harris' words: "chance mutation". NS might explain how the fit survive but it can't explain how the fit arrive! If it weren't for "chance" NS would have nothing to work with and since NS is itself a product of "chance" and everything evolved from both, what's Harris all upset about? Maybe the atheist is right and no one guided or purposed the "upward" climb but if he's right why doesn't he simply say it's all chance? (I suppose because he's afraid it'll keep him out of the Oval Office.) People like Dawkins and Harris want to eat their cake and have it as well.
What do people mean usually when they use the word "chance" or "random"? Of "random" the Oxford English says things like "without aim or design, without conscious choice, without purpose." That's what the rank and file of us generally mean. So when Christians say that atheists believe in a universe that is the result of "chance" Harris knows fine well what they mean but writes as if he didn't.
Here's this opera singer on stage, belting out a dramatic number, head back, eyes closed and mouth wide open. A feather floats down from the ceiling and straight into his throat. No harm done but everyone laughs or at least suppresses it. We call that a "chance" or "random" event and we're perfectly right to do so. What do we mean? We mean that as far as we can tell no one purposed it (not even the pigeon). But the truth is, given an accurate mathematical description of that event the feather would stick in his throat again. When we call a thing "random" or "chance" we don't mean the laws of nature were obliterated—we mean there was no personal guidance in the matter, no one purposed the result. Given the singer's position, the distance between his throat and the ceiling, the timing of the feather's descent and the singer opening his mouth and tilting his head back (and the other contingencies)—the feather couldn't have missed him! In spite of that, the common sense people among us insist that it was a chance event.
And here is this atheist complaining that atheists have no chance of being President because Christians call such things "chance". And here we have him confessing that the only material NS has to work on comes from "chance mutations" and then pouting when we take him at his word.
Oh well.
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