Sam Harris: The Truthdig Interview
by Blair Golson
The most controversial aspect of my book has been this criticism I make of religious moderates. Most people think that while religious extremism is problematic and polarizing, religious tolerance is entirely blameless and is the remedy for all that ails us on this front.
But religious moderates are giving cover to fundamentalists because of the respect that moderates demand of faith-based talk. Religious moderation doesn’t allow us to say the really critical things we must say about the abject stupidity of religious fundamentalism. And as a result, it keeps fundamentalism in play, and fundamentalists make very cynical and artful use of the cover they’re getting by the political correctness in our discourse.
You also say religious moderation closes the door to more sophisticated approaches to spirituality, ethics and the building of strong communities. What did you mean by that?
Religious moderation is just a cherry-picking of scripture, ultimately. It is just diluted Iron Age philosophy. It isn’t a 21st century approach to talking about the contemplative life, or spiritual experience, or ethical norms, or those features that keep communities strong and healthy.
Religious moderation is a relaxation of the standards of adherence to ancient taboos and superstitions. That’s really all it is. Moderate Christians have agreed not to read the bible literally, and not read certain sections of it at all, and then they come away with a much more progressive, tolerant and ecumenical version of Christianity. They just pay attention to Jesus when he’s sermonizing on the Mount, and claim that is the true Christianity. Well that’s not the true Christianity. It’s a selective reading of certain aspects of Christianity. The other face of Christianity is always waiting in the book to be resurrected. You can find the Jesus of Second Thessalonians who’s going to come back and hurl sinners into the pit. This is the Jesus being celebrated in the Left Behind novels. This is the Jesus that half the American population is expecting to see come down out of the clouds.
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2 comments:
Its probably way to late to comment on this subject, but while I agree with Sam Harris' position, I find his disrespectful tone towards the religious to be a turn off.
Many of my family and close friends are deeply religious. My wife and my mother share the same sort flexibility about religion that would annoy Sam Harris.
It is the same kind of flexibility of religious thought that the Gnostics of post-new testament times would exemplify. The same annoying flexibility that let them side with Atheists, Christians, Jews, and pagans -- depending on what is being said -- that so profoundly annoyed the orthodox movement.
Sadly, the reality is that nobody is absolute. The mere fact that all humans are fundamentally flawed in our understanding of the world makes us flexible. We cannot commit to absolute truth -- doing so would make us sound as if we hand mental powers on a par with God.
But is this flexibility that makes religion continue to survive from Iron Age times until now -- and likely until the distant future.
We atheists want everyone to commit to a specific belief system so that we can smash it -- but many believers don't look at it the same way. They don't claim to know any specific facts, they only have speculations (not even beliefs, just speculations) -- and they are happy with them (to our great annoyance).
Believers: can't live with them, can't kill them!
Yes, I think there are overly-zealous atheists--and Sam Harris sounds like one sometimes--just as there are overly-zealous believers. There are other problems with Harris' work. I don't know if you remember Neil Godfrey from JM but here's what he has written about the matter (this link is too long for the space, so paste it together):
http://agnosticseeker.blogspot.com/
search?q=neil+godfrey
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