Crafting a Christian critique of pioneer New or Neo-Atheist Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, just out in paperback, prompts empathy for the proverbial mosquito in the nudist colony. Where to begin?
There is much to criticize, as well as to commend. Partly adapted from Harris’ doctoral dissertation, his most recent New York Times bestseller is one of several contemporary efforts to construct an atheist account for morality. Richard Dawkins, DanielDennett, Greg Epstein, Owen Flanagan, Steven Pinker (who endorses Harris), Dan Barker, Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse, along with Harris himself elsewhere, poke at this problem additionally or more briefly. In approving Harris, Dawkins doth protest too much (Hamlet 3:2:242), “I … [h]ad unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me … [A]s for religion, and the preposterous idea that we need God to be good, nobody wields a sharper bayonet than Sam Harris.”
Harris predicts science in general and neuroscience in particular will eventually eclipse all other resources for ethical discernment by decisively and exhaustively quantifying suffering and well-being as mediated by human (and animal?) brain chemistry, and by pinpointing “valleys” (cf. Psalm 23) of misery and peaks of flourishing across the “landscape” of conscious experience. The purpose of morality is to steer us away from valleys and toward peaks.
For Harris, atheism gears us to scale mountaintops, while “religion” (a category New Atheists apply to virtually anything they find ridiculous, repulsive, or repugnant) leads to valleys of death and squalor. With this in mind, Harris upbraids other atheist scientists who speak more gently about religion, or who decline to enlist in his anti-religious crusade. “[They] brought to mind the final scene of Invasion of the Body Snatchers: people who looked like scientists, had published as scientists, and would soon be returning to their labs, nevertheless gave voice to the alien hiss of religious obscurantism at the slightest probing …. [We] have considerable work to do.” Harris sounds like a riff on Rudyard Kipling’s notorious “The White Man’s Burden“:
Take up the atheist’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child!
Take up the atheist burden—
Have done with childish days—
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Come now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Still, traditional Christians and other believers who abide Harris’ anti-religious rants may resonate with Harris at other points. Harris believes in “Absolute Truth” with a capital “T.” He attacks moral relativism in ways reminiscent of C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. He extols marital fidelity, integrity, minimizing and eschewing vengeance, but without crediting “religious” sources for these ethics.
Harris’ prime targets are scholars who, in his view, demagnetize their own moral compasses and confuse the moral compasses of those they influence (cf. Matthew 23:15). Harris doles a portion of wrath to anthropologists, cultural relativists, and politically active defenders and propagators of injustice and absurdity who hide behind “multiculturalism” and “diversity.”
Even the most bizarre and unproductive behaviors—female genital excision, blood feuds, infanticide, the torture of animals, scarification, foot binding, cannibalism, ceremonial rape, human sacrifice, dangerous male initiations, restricting the diet of pregnant and lactating mothers, slavery, potlatch, the killing of the elderly, sati, irrational dietary and agricultural taboos attended by chronic hunger and malnourishment, the use of heavy metals to treat illness, etc.—have been rationalized, or even idealized in the fire-lit scribblings of one or another dazzled ethnographer.
Browsing the local college or university library confirms Harris is not being frivolous. To such relativists, Harris responds that some contexts, cultures, societal norms and ways of life are absolutely healthier and more worthwhile than others. “Must we really argue that beneficence, trust, creativity, etc. enjoyed in the context of a prosperous civil society are better than the horrors of civil war endured in a steaming jungle filled with aggressive insects?” Better ways of living are those “more true to the facts.” That we do not yet know all the facts—and disagree how to weigh competing values—does not mean facts and values are imaginary. Moreover, multiple good and right objective solutions to ethical conundrums may be available, but this does not make all resolutions equally desirable or equally free from small or catastrophic errors. In due course, we will discover the more elusive features of physical and ethical reality, and comprehend continuums of wise and foolish choices more clearly (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12).
Harris purveys neither a Marquis de Sade-style libertinism, nor a partying nihilism like the reveler in Isaiah 22:13. Whether Harris intends to or not, his utopian forecasts betray yearnings for Hebrew shalom, for what Jesus christens, “the renewal of all things,” for what Philippians 4:7 conveys as, “the peace that passes all understanding.” As with other secularist and scientific visionaries, Harris’ rhetoric occasionally echoes biblical millennial imagery:
Today, a person can consider himself physically healthy if he is free of detectable disease, able to exercise, and destined to live into his eighties without suffering obvious decrepitude. But this standard may change … being able to walk a mile on your hundredth birthday will not always constitute “health.” There may come a time when not being able to run a marathon at age five hundred will be considered a profound disability. (Cf. Isaiah 65).
Citizens and seekers of God’s kingdom concur with Harris in the goal to maximize physical and moral flourishing. We are confident God works in and through us, sometimes despite us, to bring fruition to all that is good and worthy in our toil (cf. Philippians 1:3-6).
Yet Harris must be confronted in The Moral Landscape and otherwritings where he advocates torture, killing people for holding beliefs he labels dangerous or unsavory, nuclear preemptive strikes, and potentially over-invasive legal and criminal procedures. Furthermore, like Harris but unlike Stephen J. Gould, I do not see religion and science as “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA), or religion as utterly distinct from ethics. Nor do I see science as irrelevant to ethics. Theology, ethics, and science can partly overlap (POMA). They ideally synergistically overlap (SOMA, an acronym serendipitously corresponding to a Greek term for physical bodies, which are Biblical examples of synergy), cf. Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12.
But Harris fails to demonstrate how a utilitarian, consequentialist, or universal ethic can be derived from or is entailed by neuroscience. Harris seems to presume this is self-evident, refusing to establish epistemological foundation for it. He must be disputed for belligerently belaboring that uncompromising atheism is the best and only midwife for human prospering.
I appreciate representatives and exhortations to integrity by everyone, including atheists. But in my opinion, none of the New Atheists successfully establish why and how objective morality exists if atheism is true and there is no Ultimate Source of Morality. This is also central to critiques of atheism by Thomas Crean, Mary Eberstadt, David Bentley Hart, Gregory R. Peterson, James S. Spiegel, Douglas Wilson, and Christopher Hitchens’ brother, Peter Hitchens.
Dawkins in The Selfish Gene and Harris in The Moral Landscape describe examples or manifestations of morality or moral intuitions. They recount some motivations for moral behavior (maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain in this life or the next, building a good reputation, reciprocity), but they do not and perhaps cannot supply an original source, authority, or universal adjudicator for moral principle, outrage, and conviction. How atheism by itself provides an optimal, let alone the exclusive basis for ethics is unclear.
Is philosophical incoherence the price New Atheists pay for denying an absolute source for absolute morals? Harris can agree that Hitler was horribly wrong, but as the little girl asked the pastor in the movie, Time Changer, “says who?” Who or what is the final judge, arbiter, or moral appeal given atheism? Is it individual preference? Majority vote? Might makes right? A local or transnational governing body? How does atheism consistently address the pithy maxim, “What is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular?”
If only someone held impeccable insight, saw the whole picture, weighed all the facts and considerations with boundless wisdom, and graced us with just the right amount of direction in light of all other necessary considerations through our conscience, through written instructions, through providential relationships, and by exemplifying or incarnating wisdom for “how should we then live,” to employ Francis Schaeffer’s famous phrase. But atheism repudiates this option.
In response to such assessments, New Atheists pretend that questioning the coherence of atheism regarding absolute morality is equivalent to declaring that atheists cannot and do not live ethically. This is a red herring, which at least sometimes (and sometimes willfully?) misses the point. I see overlapping conceptual connections between the issues of consistent belief and ethical action, but people often behave morally without possessing watertight logic for doing so.
Yet if this is true, why does it matter what people believe? Harris asserts that atheist individuals and societies are in fact functionally more moral than “religious” societies and individuals. Christopher Hitchens flourishes this alleged trump card: “Name one ethical statement made or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith?”
As to Harris’ conceit that atheists are more moral than religious people, David G. Myers, Rodney Stark, Bradley R.E. Wright, and Arthur C. Brooks marshal social science data showing religious people in North America, and societies with a significant Christian heritage, are on many measures more ethical and generous, on average, than atheists and “nonreligious” societies.
I applaud The Richard Dawkins Foundation for spearheading A+ Nonbelievers Giving Aid, but I wonder whether this charity would exist without earlier Jewish and Christian models based on the love of God who commands us to love people (e.g Romans 13:8). This love inspired Corrie Ten Boom, William Booth, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr. (the latter two dismissed by Hitchens), countless human rights workers, educational institutions, hospitals, and relief organizations ranging from International Justice Mission to Compassion International.
But if and when atheists do act more morally than Christians in specific instances or in some groups, as atheist sociologist Phil Zuckerman avers, these inadvertently godly atheists serve as peculiar prophets spurring Christians to fulfill their moral responsibilities faithfully to the Lord. Good deeds done by anyone as examples of integrity light the world, whether they are motivated primarily by hidden agendas (cf. Philippians 1:18) or by glad and generous hearts, though the latter are favorable to the former (1 Corinthians 4:5).
To Hitchens’ query, “Name one ethical statement made or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever,” it is hard to imagine, to list just a few possibilities, atheism or atheists generating the Sermon on the Mount, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” engaging in worship, conceiving several of the Ten Commandments, or living by the most important commandment according to Jesus. Since a number of these require belief in God, it is doubtful most atheists would affirm them. Nor do atheists seem likely to promote worshipping God as a moral good, though there are exceptions.
To Hitchens’ inquiry about what believers and nonbelievers could say or do, and evil actions that are performed because of religious faith, both atheists and Christians can say or do anything they are humanly capable of in their particular parameters or spheres of influence. Some will disingenuously perpetrate good or evil in the name of their creed, others will do good or bad sincerely because of what they perceive as the implications of atheism, religious teaching, or other factors. It was not “religion,” but atheism that was central rather than peripheral to The French Revolution, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and possibly to Hitler.
Thankfully, most atheists I encounter are aghast at atheist agitators for mass murder, and most Christians I know are sickened by the Spanish Inquisition and other cruelties committed in Christ’s name. The real question is whether specific goods and evils arise from, are in spite of, or are neutral or irrelevant to belief systems supposedly justifying them. This is pertinent not merely for introspective Christians and atheists but for adherents of every religion and ideology.
Instead of asking what believers and nonbelievers could say or do theoretically, what happens when we ask what they actually say and do? As George Weigel reveals, atheist revolutions also aesthetically tend to inspire giant cubes and gaudy statues, while Christianity inspires cathedrals, John Donne’s sonnets, and global renaissances of art, literature, and music spanning Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
I will be forever grateful if New Atheists arouse themselves and others to acts of charity, to creative beauty, and to reverse deadly dogmas of 18th-, 19th-, and 20th- century atheism. I fear, however, that instead of “moral landscape(s),” New Atheists like Harris will shore up amoral or immoral “sandscape(s).” When the storms of adversity pound, will moral houses grounded in atheism stand strong, or will they crumble with a great crash (Matthew 7:24-27)? What within atheism motivates moral responsibility that withstands irritating inconveniences or extreme duress? Reciprocity? Vague obligations to friends, relatives, or humanity at large? Concern for one’s reputation or for the reputation of atheism and atheists?
These only go so far, recalling C. S. Lewis’ caution in The Abolition of Man to educated elites clamoring for the very qualities that some of their/our philosophies render more difficult, if not impossible: ” ‘drive,’ or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity.’ In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
Finally, atheist lauders and pursuers of truth, integrity, and beauty can be none too careful. They might provoke or experience longings for the fountain of all Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. Agnostic Robert Jastrow in God and the Astronomers uses a mountaintop metaphor similar to Harris. Jastrow laments how probing the deepest mysteries of life might bring atheist and agnostic self-assured unwittingly scientists face to face with, to modify Lord of the Rings, the unlikeliest persons imaginable: “At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
But I don’t envision theologians at the summit. I foresee the one who John 1:4-5 testifies, “Gave life to everything that was created, and his life brought light to everyone.” I pray Harris presses on in his quest for moral flourishing. He might be surprised at who his fellow travelers are, and who waits at the crest of the highest peak.
Benjamin B. DeVan has taught religion, philosophy, and African American literature at North Carolina Central University, Peace College, and a January term mini-course at MIT titled, “Religion: Bringing the World Together, or Tearing the World Apart?” He completed an MA in Counseling at Asbury Theological Seminary, an MDiv at Duke University, a ThM at Harvard in World Religions with a thesis on Evangelical Christians and Muslims, and is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Durham writing a dissertation on the New Atheism.
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