In an interview with AlterNet, atheist Sam Harris makes a point that’s worth addressing (via Piny).
[Y]ou have people talking about just wanting meaning in their lives, which I argue is a total non-sequitur when it comes down to justifying your belief in God.
If I told you that I thought there was a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in my backyard, and you asked me, why do you think that? I say, this belief gives my life meaning, or my family draws a lot of joy from this belief, and we dig for this diamond every Sunday and we have this gigantic pit in our lawn. I would start to sound like a lunatic to you.
He’s right that he would sound like a lunatic but I think the analogy is off. There’s no reason to for me to believe in a giant diamond in my backyard and the kind of satisfaction one may draw from this kind of belief is superficial. No great mystery is solved by positing its existence.
Yet, most of us naturally recognize meaning and purpose as inherent in the world. We recognize that despite the disasters and tragedies we read about daily, the world is good and goodness is not something that can result from a string of random genetic mutations and mysterious explosions. As I’ve argued before, if morality is to have any force, it must be, in a deep sense, built-in to the fabric of the universe.
None of this requires a leap of faith or belief in the irrational. The basic claim of religion responds to a very powerful human intuition that goodness is not random. When a religious tradition provides a compelling explanation for the role of goodness in the world and our relationship with that goodness, the rational individual ought to take notice. Is it the only explanation? Of course not. But I think it’s the best one.
It is certainly not a perfect analogy. Your critique makes sense to me if you are considering the overall question of spirituality. Once you get down to cases and apply the idea to specific religions, the Harris analogy is much stronger, both because the vast majority of rituals do not relate to moral behavior per se, and because there are moral deficiency within the teachings.
In any case, I don’t think that he is addressing the question of the moral indication of religion but rather the ‘feel good’ argument.
What do you mean by “built-in to the fabric of the universe”?
Comment by dbs — May 23, 2006 @ 1:46 pm
I was referring to belief in a theistic God, not specific claims of particular religions. I’m skeptic, though, of “sprituality” without God but that’s a topic for another post. Harris mistake, I think, was misunderstanding a much more sophisticated conception of God as the “feel good argument”.
As for morality being “built-in to the fabric of the universe”, read the post I linked to there. To summarize briefly, I think that if morality is to have the strength to motivate our actions, it cannot be merely a subjective standard created and developed by human beings. It must be part of the hardware of the world and thus, definitionally independent of humanity.
Comment by sagoboulevard — May 23, 2006 @ 6:05 pm