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atheism
June 2008 
Sam Harris - For Christs sake, at least he is doing something.
Posted on Aug 1st, 2007
by 
Staale
Staale
After reading "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris a few months ago I've been following the atheism vs. religion debate in the US with great interest.
Living in Scandinavia, which according to Harris himself is one of the most atheistic societies in the world, it is difficult to really grasp the kind of religious milieu this debate is taking place in.
I have come to gain tremendous respect for his courage and the level of articulation he displays, after checking out on youtube of some of the people he is up against.
One of the objections his thesis comes from Integral circuits, is that he is guilty of a pre/trans fallacy. That in criticising non-rational modes of awareness he then also bears down on the genuine transcendental states of consciousness, and thus tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
But when I read his work and listen to him talk I find he always makes very clear distinctions on what he means to criticise. From my perspective, he seems to strike downwards exclusively, attacking mythic dogmatic belief structures whilst leaving the higher ones alone. He also openly advocates meditation and even mysticism.
I think the most interesting problem Harris adresses is ethnocentrism (although he doesn't use that word). And he believes that the most important factor that keeps this ethnocentric belief structure from growing into a more healthy world-centric one is mythic religion. From an integral perspective it does sound reductionist, indeed. But even so, cracking the dome of religious dogma that shelter the happy ethnocentric mean blue meme campers is too important to not be acted upon and nobody else seem to be doing anything significantly helpful.
The fact is that on estimate 70% of the worlds population is at an ethnocentric or lower stage of development. That means that the 30 remaining percent are in for a long wait for the rest to catch up. It is obvious that simply cutting God out of the card game and say we should all be rational will not do the trick. It would be like cutting the bottom 3-4 rungs of a ladder and then asking a child to climb it.
Harris' cure is that we raise the bar for public discourse, so that it no longer becomes acceptable to hold beliefs about the world that are irrational, say, that the Creator of the universe hates gay people etc. The ideal is that it would be as unthinkable to put forth such unjustified belifes as it would be if someone would claim astrology to bear an influence on policy making today; people would be embarrased about it. And that all beliefs and truth claims people make about the world should be challenged by logic and evidence just as in virtually all other areas of human knowledge today. Will this solve the problem of ethnocentrism? Probably not, but I honestly think it will help.
In Europe (Northern Europe at least) we have achieved a significantly higher level of honesty and decency in the public debate. In Norway we've even had a former priest(!) as prime minister and even he was very careful when mentioning god. And he would always speak in secular language when addressing political issues.
Today America is the most Christian country in the world., and I would guess Europe is the most secular society. I don't know what has made it so. What strategy will most effectively bring about this change for other nations? I don't have the answer.
But considering Harris' goal, him seeing Europe's model as more desirable - his strategy of writing books appearing on telly and bashing the nation over its head again and again with the logical fallacies of their beliefs might not be too bad of a strategy at all, even though it is not very "integral".
In development the cognitive line is said to be a sort of arrowhead paving the way for development of other lines, if that is so, repeating the message of a secular world centric model of reality over and over again and exposing people to the force of it's logic, will at worst drive Christians nuts and at best jolt them into re-valuating their mythic beliefs at about the world.
Go Harris, go!
Sam Harris on Scarborough Country - Oct 28, 2004
Living in Scandinavia, which according to Harris himself is one of the most atheistic societies in the world, it is difficult to really grasp the kind of religious milieu this debate is taking place in.
I have come to gain tremendous respect for his courage and the level of articulation he displays, after checking out on youtube of some of the people he is up against.
One of the objections his thesis comes from Integral circuits, is that he is guilty of a pre/trans fallacy. That in criticising non-rational modes of awareness he then also bears down on the genuine transcendental states of consciousness, and thus tossing the baby out with the bathwater.
But when I read his work and listen to him talk I find he always makes very clear distinctions on what he means to criticise. From my perspective, he seems to strike downwards exclusively, attacking mythic dogmatic belief structures whilst leaving the higher ones alone. He also openly advocates meditation and even mysticism.
I think the most interesting problem Harris adresses is ethnocentrism (although he doesn't use that word). And he believes that the most important factor that keeps this ethnocentric belief structure from growing into a more healthy world-centric one is mythic religion. From an integral perspective it does sound reductionist, indeed. But even so, cracking the dome of religious dogma that shelter the happy ethnocentric mean blue meme campers is too important to not be acted upon and nobody else seem to be doing anything significantly helpful.
The fact is that on estimate 70% of the worlds population is at an ethnocentric or lower stage of development. That means that the 30 remaining percent are in for a long wait for the rest to catch up. It is obvious that simply cutting God out of the card game and say we should all be rational will not do the trick. It would be like cutting the bottom 3-4 rungs of a ladder and then asking a child to climb it.
Harris' cure is that we raise the bar for public discourse, so that it no longer becomes acceptable to hold beliefs about the world that are irrational, say, that the Creator of the universe hates gay people etc. The ideal is that it would be as unthinkable to put forth such unjustified belifes as it would be if someone would claim astrology to bear an influence on policy making today; people would be embarrased about it. And that all beliefs and truth claims people make about the world should be challenged by logic and evidence just as in virtually all other areas of human knowledge today. Will this solve the problem of ethnocentrism? Probably not, but I honestly think it will help.
In Europe (Northern Europe at least) we have achieved a significantly higher level of honesty and decency in the public debate. In Norway we've even had a former priest(!) as prime minister and even he was very careful when mentioning god. And he would always speak in secular language when addressing political issues.
Today America is the most Christian country in the world., and I would guess Europe is the most secular society. I don't know what has made it so. What strategy will most effectively bring about this change for other nations? I don't have the answer.
But considering Harris' goal, him seeing Europe's model as more desirable - his strategy of writing books appearing on telly and bashing the nation over its head again and again with the logical fallacies of their beliefs might not be too bad of a strategy at all, even though it is not very "integral".
In development the cognitive line is said to be a sort of arrowhead paving the way for development of other lines, if that is so, repeating the message of a secular world centric model of reality over and over again and exposing people to the force of it's logic, will at worst drive Christians nuts and at best jolt them into re-valuating their mythic beliefs at about the world.
Go Harris, go!
Sam Harris on Scarborough Country - Oct 28, 2004
Access: Public
yeah, i'm rooting for Harris too, moreso than with Dawkins. and here's another perspective on this issue: Why the God Delusion is also a Delusion.