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July 7, 2006
What He Said
I haven't read The End of Faith by Sam Harris, but after reading this interview with him in Salon, I want to. He hits on some of the reasons why I find many true believers intellectually, morally and spiritually repellent, and why I refuse to let my family bear their testimonies to me. Here are two excerpts from the interview conducted by Steve Paulson:
What about the Bible? Do you see this as a recipe for religious intolerance?
Oh, I do. There's no document that I know of that is more despicable in its morality than the first few books of the Hebrew Bible. Books like Exodus and Deuteronomy and Leviticus, these are diabolical books. The killing never stops. The reasons to kill your neighbor for theological crimes are explicit and preposterous. You have to kill people for worshiping foreign gods, for working on the Sabbath, for wizardry, for adultery. You kill your children for talking back to you. It's there and it's not a matter of metaphors. It is exactly what God expects us to do to rein in the free thought of our neighbors.
Now, it just so happens, however, that most Christians think there's something in the New Testament that fully and finally repudiates all of that. And therefore, we do not have to kill homosexuals. We don't have to kill adulterers. And that's a very good thing that most Christians think it. Now, most Christians actually are not on very firm ground theologically to think that. It's not an accident that St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine thought we should kill or torture heretics. Aquinas thought we should kill them, Augustine thought we should torture them. And Augustine's argument for the use of torture actually laid the foundations for the Inquisition. So it's not an accident that we were burning heretics and witches and other people in Europe for five centuries under the aegis of Christianity. But Christianity is at a different moment in its history.
But isn't this a problem mainly when you read the Bible or the Quran literally? Doesn't the conversation change once you stop reading sacred scriptures literally? If you understand, for instance, the historical context -- when Judaism or Christianity were first emerging, they were religions competing with other religions. Doesn't that free you up to appreciate their spiritual teachings?
I'd be the first to agree that it's better not to read these books literally. The problem is, the books never tell you that you're free not to read them literally. In fact, they tell you otherwise, explicitly so. Therefore, the fundamentalist is always on firmer ground theologically and -- I would argue -- intellectually than the moderate or the progressive. When you consult the books, you do not find more reasons to be a moderate or a liberal. You find more reasons to be a fundamentalist. I agree, it is a good thing to be cherry-picking these books and ignoring the bad parts. But we should have a 21st century conversation about morality and spiritual experience and public policy that is not constrained by superstition and taboo. In order to see how preposterous our situation really is, you need only imagine what our world would be like if we had people believing in the literal existence of Zeus. I defy anyone to come forward with the evidence that puts the Biblical God or the Quranic God on fundamentally different footing than the gods of Mt. Olympus. There are historical reasons why Zeus is no longer worshiped and the God of Abraham is. But there are not sound epistemological or philosophical or empirical reasons.
There's no doubt many awful things have been done in the name of religion over the centuries. But, of course, there have also been many wonderful religious people. I would argue, for instance, that Martin Luther King has been the most important moral leader in America over the last century. And I think it would be impossible to make sense of what he did without talking about his faith. It seems to me his Christian faith compelled him to be an activist and it's what gave him strength in very difficult times. What do you make of those kinds of people who've been inspired because of their faith?
I agree, King was an incredible person who did heroic and necessary work. A couple of answers here. There's no evidence that those things can only be done in the name of faith, whereas there is considerable evidence that really terrible acts of violence are being done only because of what people believe about God. For instance, while there are Christian missionaries working in sub-Saharan Africa doing heroic work to relieve famine, there are also secular people, like Doctors Without Borders, who work alongside them, doing the same kind of work and not doing it because they think Jesus was born of a virgin. They're not preaching the sinfulness of condom use the way Catholics and Christian ministers tend to do. So while Christian missionaries are helping people, they're also helping to spread AIDS with their sexual taboos and their prudery. So that's one issue.
I'm also breaking a taboo. I'm rejecting the idea that all of our religions are equally wise and emphasize compassion to the same degree. This is just clearly not true. Martin Luther King, to some significant degree, was animated by Christianity. But when you look at why he preached nonviolence to the degree that he did, he didn't get that from Christianity. He got it from Gandhi. And Gandhi got it from the Jains. Jainism is a religion of India that preaches this doctrine of nonviolence. To argue that that's the true face of Christianity is really misleading. Christianity also gives you the Jesus of the "Left Behind" novels who's going to come back and just hurl sinners into the pit. And the God who's going to punish homosexuals for eternity.
[....]
We've been talking about how intolerant so many religious people can be. But aren't you asking us to be very intolerant of religion?
It may sound paradoxical but it's not. I'm advocating a kind of conversational intolerance. It's really the same intolerance we express everywhere in our society when someone claims that Elvis is still alive, or that aliens are abducting ranchers and molesting them. These are beliefs that many people have. But these beliefs systematically exclude them from holding positions of responsibility. The person who's sure that Elvis is still alive and expresses this belief candidly does not wind up in the Oval Office or in our nation's boardrooms. And that's a very good thing. But when the conversation changes to Jesus being born of a virgin or Mohammed flying to heaven on a winged horse, then these beliefs not only do not exclude you from holding power in society; you could not possibly hold power, in a political sense, without endorsing this kind of thinking.
It should be terrifying to us because many of these beliefs are not just quaint and curious, like beliefs in Elvis. These are beliefs about the end of history, about the utility of trying to create a sustainable civilization for ourselves -- specifically, beliefs in eschatology. These are maladaptive. For instance, if a mushroom cloud replaced the city of New York tomorrow morning, something like half the American people would see a silver lining in that cloud because it would presage to them that the end of days are upon us.
Posted by Holly at July 7, 2006 1:39 PM
Comments
The few fundamentalists I know annoy me with their air of superiority. They all seem to be doing very badly in life: lousy jobs, too many kids, estrangement from family who don't drink the Koolaid, health problems, on public assistance,etc. and yet they think they are so much better off than I am and want me to find true happiness as they say they have.
And many of them have what I consider to be bad morals, too, which they try to cover up with smarmy religiousity. In particular, they bring kids into the world that they can't afford to bring up properly. That to me is a great sin.
I'm so glad to be a non-believer. And brought up as one, so I'm immune to the purported advantages of Christianity. Sure, there are denominations of people who don't speak in tongues and aren't into snake handling, but it's all superstition to me.
Posted by: Hattie at July 8, 2006 3:36 AM
The few fundamentalists I know annoy me with their air of superiority.
gotta agree with you there--and I include Mormons in the category of fundamentalists, as they believe the bible and all scripture is fundamentally truth, and that fundamentally true scripture serves as the fundamental basis of their religion.
Posted by: Holly at July 8, 2006 7:44 AM
What a great snippet of Sam Harris’ interview. I love the comparison of Greek Gods to Christianity.
It is amazing to me how so many forget the history of religion, but then, I have to remember that many fundamentalists consider liberals to be the “educated elite,” which is really another way of saying that they are uneducated and underprivileged – so that ignorance and superstition are their closest neighbors.
Thanks for sharing this.
Posted by: frankengirl at July 10, 2006 10:58 AM
I have to remember that many fundamentalists consider liberals to be the “educated elite,” which is really another way of saying that they are uneducated and underprivileged – so that ignorance and superstition are their closest neighbors.
I have never thought of it quite that way, Frankengirl, but you are right.
Posted by: Holly at July 11, 2006 9:35 AM
I have this book in my pile of stuff to read (which might not be some big if I would quit adding to it). I'll get to it after I finish 'Misquoting Jesus'.
Posted by: Creepy at July 11, 2006 11:37 PM