Chapter 5: Unreason at the Head of Project Reason, by Tom Gilson
In this chapter Tom Gilson first provides an overview and a breakdown of William Lane Craig’s and Sam Harris’ debate entitled “Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural,” which took place at Notre Dame University on April 7, 2011. Afterwards he takes a critical look at Harris’ book The Moral Landscape.
Apparently, Gilson was so incensed by how badly Harris slammed dunked this debate, he felt it necessary to rescue his co-author’s discredited arguments. As with the majority of other chapters Gilson accuses Harris of making emotional appeals, rather than relying on reason during this debate. He writes,
One debater brought forth a series of logical arguments based on precise definitions, carefully delineated lines of thought, and technically sophisticated modal and syllogistic logic. [No doubt, Gilson has just described his view of William Lane Craig’s arguments] […] His opponent, astonishingly, ignored most of his arguments completely, as if he hadn’t even heard them. […] For he took an entirely different tack: one based largely on rhetoric and emotion instead of reason. [This obviously was his impression of Harris’ performance.] (39-40)
Gilson repeats Craig’s argument in their debate about Harris failing to ground his assertion that morality is equivalent to the “well-being of sentient creatures.” He claims that Harris has simply re-defined morality to mean the “well-being of sentient creatures” without justifying this view. (42)
I would agree that Harris looks to have begun at what appears to be an arbitrary starting point, but I happen to believe that he started at one of the more logical and sensible places. As Harris rightly said in his debate, and I’m paraphrasing here, were a world with no conscious beings – only rocks – to exist, it could easily be said that morality does not exist in that world. But with the introduction of conscious, sentient beings morality comes into play. Given this seeming truism, another fact becomes apparent. Science is our best tool of discovering the facts about not only the world in which we live, but also about us as human beings and what is most conducive to our “well-being.” As Harris argues, there are very real consequences regarding the well-being of human beings. In The Moral Landscape he uses the lack of a nurturing home for young children and describes their physical and emotional trauma that results. [1] These are real effects and they are measurable, so why couldn’t science help us to discover the best ways to live and treat one another? Surely, this is more grounded than, say, relying purely on a philosophical justification for avoiding the debilitating effects of a home lacking a nurturing environment. Anyone would simply assert that they reject your premise. However, it would be downright foolish for someone to deny the cold hard truth, with years of scientific data behind it, that says that children who lack a nurturing environment are emotionally scared as a result.
On the other hand, if you look at William Lane Craig’s position, the belief that the Christian god is the source of morality, this position is an absurd starting point and for a number of reasons. 1) There has yet to be any solid proof that this being even exists. It is illogical to argue a position that is based upon a premise that has no evidence in its favor. As a philosopher, I would think that Craig would have to agree. 2) Even granting the premise that the Christian god is real how would this being determine morality? Given Craig’s belief in the divine command theory, this view is not a rational one to ground your beliefs about morality. And this common argument does not need to reference the bible. As Keith Augustine has written,
The divine command theory (DCT) of ethics holds that an act is either moral or immoral solely because God either commands us to do it or prohibits us from doing it, respectively. On DCT the only thing that makes an act morally wrong is that God prohibits doing it, and all that it means to say that torture is wrong is that God prohibits torture. DCT is wildly implausible for reasons best illustrated by the Euthyphro dilemma, which is based on a discussion of what it means for an act to be holy in Plato’s Euthyphro. Substituting “moral wrongness” for “holiness” raises the dilemma: Is torture wrong because God prohibits it, or does God prohibit torture because it is already wrong?
While DCT takes the the first route, Euthyphro takes the last one: If a good God prohibits torture he does so because torture is intrinsicly wrong, not merely because he declares torture to be wrong by fiat. But if torture is intrinsicly wrong, then it is wrong regardless of whether or not God exists. Either certain acts are wrong regardless of anyone’s opinions or commands (including God’s), or else all that we mean by “torture is wrong” is “God prohibits torture.” Rather than grounding the objectivity of ethics, DCT completely undermines it by insisting that God’s commands (like those of individuals or societies) do not require justification in terms of any external principles.
DCT is thus a kind of moral relativism: what’s right or wrong is what one’s God (like one’s self or one’s society) says is right or wrong–and there are no moral standards apart from this. Yet if God said that 2+2=100, 2+2=100 would nonetheless be false because 2+2=4 is true regardless of what God says. The same point holds for moral propositions like “inflicting unnecessary suffering solely for fun is wrong.” If that proposition is true, then it is true regardless of whether God commands or prohibits inflicting such suffering.
If there is no standard of “being morally right” apart from God’s commands, then God could literally command us to do anything and it would be right for us to do it by definition. Whatever God commands becomes the standard of moral rightness, and there are no moral values external to God to constrain what he would or would not command. So if God commanded one person to rape another, DCT entails that that rape would be moral because “doing the right thing” is logically equivalent to “doing what God commands.” A highly implausible implication is that it is impossible to even imagine God commanding a wrong act. What counts as moral or immoral behavior on DCT is completely subjective–dependent upon God’s fiat–and thus arbitrary. (emphasis mine) [2]
In the debate Harris was citing the acts of extreme cruelty to demonstrate to the audience the problems with this theory Craig proposes. If the god of the bible either allows or commands immoral acts wouldn’t it then be logical to conclude that god is immoral? This is why Harris said in the debate: “[…] Yahweh is perfectly fond of genocide, and slavery, and human sacrifice.” According to Craig’s premises, is Craig then in favor of slavery? His god appears to be perfectly OK with it, so by his own logic he would have to be OK with it too. I think Harris brought up these immoral acts of god for another reason as well. In the debate Craig argued that god is “the greatest conceivable being and therefore, the highest good.” He continues to name several of god’s alleged qualities that would make him a “foundation for objective moral values and duties.” He says god is “holy and loving,” “generous, faithful,” and “kind.” He concludes by arguing that these qualities are what make god the “absolute standard against which all actions are measured.”
Well, clearly any god that allows the existence of slavery is not on the right side of morality and is clearly not “kind” or “loving,” let alone, “holy.” Any god that would slaughter hundreds of innocent men is not a good role model to follow (Numbers 16:35). This was Harris’ point, which it appears Gilson has missed entirely. Harris was in no way making an emotional appeal or using rhetoric. It was his attempt to make a serious point. He was making a very relevant point about the serious issues with using the Christian god as a foundation for morality.
Since I’ve already dealt with the entire premise of the debate I will forgo tackling the rest of Gilson’s comments about the debate. Much of it is merely repeating what Craig said during the debate, pretending Craig has a leg to stand on with his arguments.
Gilson concludes his chapter with a brief look at Sam Harris’ book The Moral Landscape, which defends the same argument Harris uses in the debate. He presents two passages which span pages 174-175 of The Moral Landscape. In the first quote Gilson claims Harris is denying accusations that the New Atheists are uncivil in their discourse about religion.
There is now a large and growing literature – spanning dozens of books and hundreds of articles – attacking Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and me (the so-called New Atheists) for our alleged incivility, bias, and ignorance of how “sophisticated” believers practice their faith. It is often said that we caricature religion, taking its most extreme forms to represent the whole. We do no such thing. We simply do what a paragon of sophisticated faith like Francis Collins does: we take the specific claims of religion seriously.
In this quote he claims Harris is “defending” this alleged incivility. (50-51) With this, Gilson claims Harris is contradicting himself since in the previous quote he denies being uncivil.
Let’s be honest about how Mooney and Kirshenbaum view public discourse in the United States: Watch what you say, or the Christian mod will burn down the Library of Alexandria again. By comparison, the “combativeness”of the “New Atheists” seems quite collegial. We are merely guilty of assuming that our fellow Homo sapiens possess the requisite intelligence and emotional maturity to respond to rational argument, satire, and ridicule on the subject of religion – just as they respond to these discursive pressures on all other subjects. Of course we could be wrong.
This is surely odd. How did Harris contradict himself? Because he noted how the New Atheists often utilize “rational argument, satire, and ridicule on the subject of religion?” Speaking about a subject as you would any other subject and speaking in very clear and direct terms does not imply incivility.
Gilson pulls another quote from The Moral Landscape. (51) This time, it is referring to Francis Collins. Harris writes (as quoted in True Reason),
[The Language of God is] a genuinely astonishing book. To read it is to witness nothing less than an intellectual suicide. It is, however, a suicide that has gone almost entirely unacknowledged: The body yielded to the rope; the neck snapped; the breath subsided; and the corpse dangles in ghastly discomposure even now – and yet polite people everywhere continue to celebrate the great man’s health.
Gilson says about this quote: “On one page, Francis Collins is guilty of ‘intellectual suicide.’ A few pages later, he is ‘a paragon of sophisticated faith.’ […] By what rational criterion can Sam Harris describe him as brain dead?” (51)
This is certainly a very colorful metaphorical description of Collins’ lack of rationality when it came to his “leap of faith” but Harris did not call Collins “brain dead.” It was a metaphor, describing Collins’ lack of rationality when he took that “leap of faith.” By what “criterion” can Harris say this? If it wasn’t already obvious, it is Collins’ lack of any rational justifications whatsoever for believing in a god and that a man rose from the dead. While I can understand Gilson very likely took the same “leap of faith” as Collins did, thus he does not view it as an intellectual cop out, the fact is Collins did exactly that.
Second, Harris was not contradicting himself when he described Collins’ irrational leap of faith as “intellectual suicide” and later called Collins a “paragon of sophisticated faith.” Gilson is misunderstanding Harris’ point. In this section of the book Harris was discussing the common belief that there is no clash between science and religion; reason and faith. He argues that despite the occurrence of very intelligent people who are religious believers, this does not then make two contradictory ideas suddenly become non-contradictory. He uses Collins as his example of someone who is often lauded as a person who is “living proof that there can be no conflict between science and religion.” Harris explains how he will “discuss Collins’s views at some length, because he is widely considered the most impressive example of ‘sophisticated’ faith in action.” Harris is not applauding Collins’ faith in the second example, he is using the word “sophisticated” to describe other peoples’ perceptions about those who appear to have successfully reconciled religion and faith with reason and science. Harris spends several pages demonstrating why this is not the case.
The rest of the chapter has Gilson nitpicking The Moral Landscape to death for alleged contradictions or distortions of Harris’ opponent’s arguments. This chapter was shaky from the start but now it’s gone entirely off the rails.
Gilson writes, claiming that Harris “frequently distorts his opponent’s position,”
In Letter to a Christian Nation (pg. 6), he writes,
Consider: every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian. And yet you do not find their reasons compelling.
Do Muslims really believe in Allah because of the historical evidence for Jesus Christ’s cruxifiction resurrection? I think they would be most surprised to learn that! (51)
It is hard for me to believe that Gilson could not have seen the rest of this quote, because if he had, his ridiculous comment would have been answered and then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of pointing out his error. In Letter to a Christian Nation Sam Harris said this, in full:
Consider: every devout Muslim has the same reasons for being a Muslim that you have for being a Christian. And yet you do not find their reasons compelling. The Koran repeatedly declares that it is the perfect word of the creator of the universe. Muslims believe this as fully as you believe the Bible’s account of itself. There is a vast literature describing the life of Muhammad that, from the point of view Islam, proves that he was the most recent Prophet of God. Muhammad also assured his followers that Jesus was not divine (Koran 5:71; 19:30-38) and that anyone who believes otherwise will spend eternity in hell. Muslims are certain that Muhammad’s opinion on this subject, as on all others, is infallible.
Why don’t you lose any sleep over whether to convert to Islam? Can you prove that Allah is not the one, true God? Can you prove that the archangel Gabriel did not visit Muhammad in his cave? Of course not. But you need not prove any of these things to reject the beliefs of Muslims as absurd. […] The truth is, you know exactly what it is like to be an atheist with respect to the beliefs of Muslims. Isn’t it obvious that Muslims are fooling themselves? Isn’t it obvious that anyone who thinks that the Koran is the perfect word of the creator of the universe has not read the book critically? Isn’t it obvious that the doctrine of Islam represents a near-perfect barrier to honest inquiry? Yes, these things are obvious. Understand that the way you view Islam is precisely the way devout Muslims view Christianity. And it is the way I view all religions. [3]
Once placed in context, it ought to be obvious that Harris was not arguing that Muslims and Christians believe the same things. He was making a point about how both Christians and Muslims have faith in their religions’ founders, they both believe that their holy texts are infallible (or at least mostly historically accurate), and that if someone refuses to believe in your beliefs they will burn in hell forever. Despite this, they both reject each others’ religions, and contrasts this with how atheists see all religions.
The next to last page contains this gem. Gilson writes,
In End of Faith (pg.19) he writes,
In fact, every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which no evidence is even conceivable.
That’s an odd position for him to take, considering all the historical and philosophical evidences that have been put forth in favor of Christianity. It could mean that he thinks those evidences don’t mean what Christians take them to mean – but that’s not what he wrote. Rather he said that he cannot even imagine that such things could count as evidence in any possible world. That’s a sadly close-minded position. (52)
First of all, this sentence can be found on page 23 of the End of Faith (in both the 2004 and 2005 editions). [4] Second, there are a number of claims religions make that would not be possible to present evidence for. The existence of heaven or hell is one. The resurrection of Jesus is another. One more would be Christians’ belief that their god is eternal. There are also the many supernatural stories in the bible, such as Jesus walking on water or casting out demons and healing the sick. There is no possible evidence for these events. Harris does not elaborate on what claims he is specifically referring to, but I believe these are good candidates.
The final page of this chapter just continues to nitpick at a few statements made by Harris about free will that were made in The Moral Landscape. He accuses Harris of contradicting himself about what he says about free will. Gilson writes,
[Harris] devotes most of pages 102 through 110 in The Moral Landscape to tearing down “the illusion of free will.” For example:
All of our behavior can be traced to biological events about which we have no conscious knowledge; this has always suggested that free will is an illusion…..
Many scientists and philosophers realized long ago that free will could not be squared with our growing understanding of the physical world….
No account of causality leave room for free will…our belief in free will arises from our moment-to-moment ignorance of specific prior causes…. From a deeper perspective (speaking both subjectively and objectively), thoughts simply arise (what else could they do?) unauthored and yet author to our actions.
Yet there is this on page 139:
This does not mean, of course, that we have no mental freedom whatsoever. We can choose to focus on certain facts to the exclusion of others, to emphasize the good rather than the bad, etc. And such choices have consequences for how we view the world….
It’s hard to imagine how that could make sense in light of his strong denial of free will. (53)
This misunderstanding should not be too hard to spot, had Gilson paid closer attention. On pages 102 to 110 Harris was discussing free will. Later, on page 139 Harris is in the middle of discussing whether or not we have freedom of belief. Beliefs and actions are two separate things. On page 136 is the heading “Do We Have Freedom of Belief?” It is hard to see how Gilson could have missed this change in topic. On the other hand, it appears that he was so driven to find contradictions and errors in Harris’ writings he essentially fooled himself into believing what he wanted to see.
I was not very impressed with this chapter. Gilson neglected to research many of the views he critiqued and he could have made much stronger arguments had he done this. As with the other chapters, this one did not showcase much, if any, reason.
1. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, by Sam Harris, Free Press, 2010; 9
2. The Secular Web: “Divine Command Theory,” by Keith Augustine – accessed 5-16-14
3. Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris, Alfred A. Knopf, 2006; 6-7
4. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, by Sam Harris, W.W. Norton & Company, 2005; 23
