Truth and the Devil

This week’s Newsweek has feature debating the existence of God. It begins with an article introducing some theistic and atheist concepts, which leads into a several page debate between Rick Warren and Sam Harris. Overall I perceive it as a fairly generous portrayal of the arguments against theism (I’ll let theists judge if it was a beneficial portrayal of theism). There were, however, some interesting parts to take note of.

For instance, this passage from the introductory essay:

Ah, say the atheists, see, we told you exclusivist faiths like Christianity are forces for evil. So let’s get rid of faith, replace it with rationality and science, and all shall be well, or at least vastly better. But the atheist solution has its own problems. In “Letter to a Christian Nation,” Harris likens himself to an abolitionist and religion to slavery, but who is to say that a wholly scientific world would not itself soon produce dogma and strife over the findings, interpretations and applications of experiments and research? It is possible, even probable, that science would become a kind of religion, with creeds and convictions and arguments over the nature of reality. Labs would replace cathedrals, brain scans holy books. It would be different, but would it necessarily be better?

Arguments like this one seem to characterize atheism or, more specifically, science, as just one religion among many. It fails to take into account that science, for all intents and purposes, is the opposite of religion, at least as far as acquiring knowledge is concerned.

Now, I can see how people could end up creating something resembling a religion out of almost anything, including celebrities, and football teams, but the methods of science itself would make it difficult for any religion-izing of it to take place. Any dogmas and creeds that a scientific world would generate, would themselves be inherently unscientific. Science searches for knowledge that can be discovered only through reason, observation and experience, regardless of the preconceptions of the observer. No dogma is necessary for science to work, indeed dogma stands explicitly in the way of the process of science.

Regardless, the potential consequence of one view over the other has no bearing on its veracity, which is what we are discussing here.

I also have problems with this particular passage:

Theocracies—that is, governments organized around religious dogma—are not conducive to the cultivation of the kinds of societies many Americans value. But history teaches us that religion need not be entirely barred (as if it could) from public life in order to build a culture of liberty and freedom of inquiry and conscience. The key is how a culture manages the different factions contending for influence in a given time and place. The brilliance of the American experiment lies in its creation of a republican arena in which all manner of forces—religious, economic, geographic, what have you—can take their stand within the confines of a system in which checks and balances limit the possibilities of radicalism of any kind. Our government is slow, cumbersome and resistant to reform—by design.

Liberty and republican values are the guardrails against extremism, either religious or secular. Religion should not dictate education or science policy, for example, but there is nothing wrong—and there is much right—with its being one voice among many in the shaping of our public lives. One cannot be for one group’s right to speak out and exert influence and be against another group’s right to do so. The battles must be fought on the merits, and religion should be one force on the field, not the only one.

This moderate solution pleases neither the atheists nor the fervent believers, which may recommend it even more. The more conservative faithful think centrists are squishy, and some atheists argue, as Harris puts it, that “religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others … all we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of Scripture imposes on us.”

This passage appears to equate atheism with extremist theocrats, as two extreme options where the centrist position is preferable. As such, it implies that there is an equally extremist atheist position who also wish to use the power of the government to promote their own particular philosophy. I personally do not know any individual atheist, nor any atheistic organization that wishes to use the power of the government to eradicate religion from public life. My own position is that the government needs to remain entirely secular, as put forth in the Constitution, in line with the views of the Founding Fathers. Neither promoting nor restricting private religious views, nor promoting or restricting any atheistic philosophy.

Regardless, the introduction ends, the debate begins. I noticed throughout that Warren does these little dances around certain topics in order to, prevent alienating many evangelical christians, as well as to make sure he doesn’t sound like a total loon. Take, for instance, this passage:

Is the Bible inerrant?
WARREN: I believe it’s inerrant in what it claims to be. The Bible does not claim to be a scientific book in many areas.

I’m really not sure what this mean. Does the Bible claim to be inerrant in some passages and errant in others? Are there some areas where the Bible does claim to be a scientific text?

He sidesteps the next question as well:

Do you believe Creation happened in the way Genesis describes it?
WARREN: If you’re asking me do I believe in evolution, the answer is no, I don’t. I believe that God, at a moment, created man. I do believe Genesis is literal, but I do also know metaphorical terms are used. Did God come down and blow in man’s nose? If you believe in God, you don’t have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it’s fine with me.

Who brought up evolution? If Genesis is literal and uses metaphor, doesn’t that ultimately make it metaphorical? Where does the metaphor end and the literalness begin? How do you decide which is which? Again, by avoiding any specifics, he avoids offending those who might have a more literalist/young-earth-creationist point-of-view, without having to openly agree or disagree with them.

Unfortunately, with the next exchange, he walks right into a common conundrum for those promoting the idea of an interventionist God:

WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He’s an intern at this church, and so I said, “God, I need you to help me with this,” as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, “I’m an immigration attorney; I’d be happy to take this case.” Now, if that happened once in my life I’d say, “That is a coincidence.” If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

There must have been times in your ministry when you’ve prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.
WARREN: Oh, absolutely.

So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.
WARREN: Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I’ve had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I’ve never met an atheist who wasn’t angry.

On the one hand, Warren attempts to provide evidence for his God by telling a story about a woman getting an immigration attorney (a wholly improbable event, I’m sure), but then is stumped by God allowing an innocent girl to die. One of God’s actions (the one with a happy ending) is proof positive that God exists, and instead of the opposite occurrence (the one with a tragic ending) being proof against God’s existence, instead it only implies that we have no idea what God is really up to. It’s an inconsistent reasoning, one that’s not disprovable. In reality, the best explanation is simply that good things and bad things happen in this world, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Pretending good things are evidence of God’s existence only works if you concede that bad things are evidence of his non-existance.

So, his last thought about atheists hiding behind rationalism is actually very telling about his own position. Rather than atheists hiding behind their rationalism, it appears that Warren is hiding behind his faith, unable to truly follow where his rational thoughts might take him. He then has the gall to accuse atheists of being angry. It’s a complete non sequitur, and ad hominem argument that comes out of nowhere.

Fortunately, Harris takes it all in stride, and doesn’t reciprocate. Warren says Harris’s books are angry, Harris responds simply, and then tries to get back on topic:

HARRIS: I would put it at impatient rather than angry. Let me respond to this notion of answered prayer, because this is a classic sampling error, to use a statistical phrase. We know that human beings have a terrible sense of probability. There are many things we believe that confirm our prejudices about the world, and we believe this only by noticing the confirmations, and not keeping track of the disconfirmations. You could prove to the satisfaction of every scientist that intercessory prayer works if you set up a simple experiment. Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. [Warren is laughing.] I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting.

Harris comes back to the topics Warren was hoping to avoid, and makes well-reasoned arguments against both the power of prayer, and the unremarkable nature of so-called ‘miracles’.

Here’s another example of Warren attempting to really side-step the subject at hand:

Rick, if you had been born in India or in Iran, would you have different religious beliefs?
WARREN: There’s no doubt where you’re born influences your initial beliefs. Regardless of where you were born, there are some things you can know about God, even without the Bible. For instance, I look at the world and I say, “God likes variety.” I say, “God likes beauty.” I say, “God likes order,” and the more we understand ecology, the more we understand how sensitive that order is.

HARRIS: Then God also likes smallpox and tuberculosis.

WARREN: I would attribute a lot of the sins in the world to myself.

HARRIS: Are you responsible for smallpox?

WARREN: I am responsible to do something about it. No doubt about it. I am responsible to do something about the 500 million who get malaria every year and the 40 million who have AIDS, because I will be held accountable for my life. And when I say, “God, why don’t you do something about this?” God says, “Well, why don’t you? You were the answer to your own prayer.”

He totally bypasses the question proposed by the moderator, and goes off into his own tangent. Then also side-steps the responses to his own tangent.

I could go on and on with examples from the interview, but that would make this post longer than it already is.

I’ll mention briefly examples of standard theological arguments that Warren raises. He brings up this tired argument that atheism is responsible for more crimes/deaths than religion, something Harris is always good at refuting. He then brings up the standard canard that atheists cannot have morality. Fortunately, the moderator (or perhaps the editor of the article) keeps things concise, not allowing the conversation to be bogged down too much with arguments that could fill volumes by themselves.

It would have been nice if the same old stereotypical arguments against atheists wouldn’t have been brought up time and time again, but I think Harris does an excellent job of getting his own points across succinctly and honestly. An example, when answering a question about the majority of the world who believe in a god, and how that is evidence in and of itself for some kind of god to exist:

HARRIS: It is quite possible for most people to be wrong—as are most Americans who think that evolution didn’t occur.

WARREN: That’s an arrogant statement.

HARRIS: It’s an honest statement.

One more good one from Sam:

HARRIS: How is it fair for God to have designed a world which gives such ambiguous testimony to his existence? How is it fair to have created a system where belief is the crucial piece, rather than being a good person? How is it fair to have created a world in which by mere accident of birth, someone who grew up Muslim can be confounded by the wrong religion? I don’t see how the future of humanity is in good care with those competing orthodoxies.

Warren was given the last word, and I can’t imagine many theists were pleased with his conclusion.

WARREN:…We’re both betting. He’s betting his life that he’s right. I’m betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. When we die, if he’s right, I’ve lost nothing. If I’m right, he’s lost everything. I’m not willing to make that gamble.

It’s a simple application of Pascal’s Wager. An bad argument for the existence of god, which, if Sam was given a response, I’m he could have easily addressed.

Overall, it’s an entertaining read, and, though I feel that Sam came out on top, it’s usually a matter of opinion in debates like this.