Brent's Challenge, Religious Study, and Sam Harris

Well, did the title get any attention?

(Very Long Post follows - sorry, I got started and just went on and on, oh well, if you want to read it anyway, here it is.)

Brent issued a challenge regarding the study quoted by the Times - I've Been Saying This For Years
I wonder how the Fundmentalist Christians will respond to this? Ah, who am I kidding. I know how they'll respond. .... By denying it. By lying to themselves. By ignoring the evidence. By sticking their fingers in their ears, shutting their eyes tightly and singing "La, la, la, I can't hear you!"

ARB is scared to death of fundamental Christians ( Faith Scares Me ) using Sam Harris' monologue concerning the points he makes in his book.

There seems to be a connection here. What do these fellows seem to be saying? Oh, this must be it - Christians are to be blamed for society's ills and (extrapolating on Harris) something ought to be done about them because they pose a positive threat to the Utopia that we, educated, non-biased, critical-thinking visionaries would be able to create if those we could just get rid of those blasted fundies.

Before you go berserk - the last paragraph was tongue in cheek. Just in case you wondered.

Alon Levy in his comments on the thread has pretty well demolished the validity of the quoted study but I wonder if anyone realizes how easily it was assumed to be valid simply because it used the magic words "scientific studies show." Did anyone perhaps stop and consider and maybe decide to be more cautious next time?

The same with Sam Harris and his work. I listened and watched his monologue several times. I read the first ten pages of his book and have ordered a copy so that I can get the full argument. But his position is clear: It is time to make some changes. It is time to stop according people the freedom of their religious beliefs because religious "faith" colors everything they do and think and therefore, by extrapolation, they consitute an internal "problem" which may require a "final solution." Of course he did not go this far... yet, but the ground work is there.

The thing that ties both of these two things together is that there is very little self-criticism on the part of those pushing for a more progressive ( I dislike the term, its opposite is regressive and therefore opposition to it is akin to the question "do you still beat your wife?") agenda.

For example: Isn't it at least counter-intuitive to jump on reports about a report and chortle with glee over the fact that it supposedly gives credibility to the idea that religion is actually counter productive to our social well being. ARB (smilingly) says religion, like any drug, creates dependents, co-dependants, dysfunctional families... illicit trade... :-)

Doesn't anyone pause to think: OK, Isn't it counter-intuitive that if some believes in and preaches that: families are treasured possessions, that men and women ought not to divorce except in the most egregious of circumstances, that children are precious and ought not to be neglected, and that work is a positive blessing for the provision of family needs, and that mutual respect is to be accorded within the family structure - that somehow this contributes to a higher prevalence of family dysfunction?

Doesn't it sound strange to conclude that if someone believes in the sanctity of human life that it tends to cause higher murder rates? Or if someone believes that greed is a sin and that one ought not to elevate riches beyond their proper place - that it somehow creates more avarice?

The question I have is: why didn't the enlightened minds who push for an objective evaluation of available evidence prior to coming to their conclusions - not stop to apply Occam's Razor and ask of themselves - could there not be another explanation for the fact that the US leads the world in "dysfunctionality" (Assuming that to be true. Having done some world travel, I am not entirely on board with it), than simply "correlating" it to the high percentage of Christians in the culture?

Here's all that can truly be concluded from the report (with which the author agrees). There is some statistical evidence that shows that the presence of a large religious population segment, by itself, does not guarantee social health in a given society.

Well, whoopee. How much money did someone pay for that? Beyond that nothing more can be said based on these facts.

To argue anything more is to offer arguments like the following:
Based on the results of hurricane Katrina, there seems to be a negative correlation between the relative degree of a state government's ability to deal with catastrophe and the presence of a female governor or a black mayor.

Immediately we have to ask - so what does this mean? All that it means is that the presence of a female governor or a black mayor does not guarantee an effective government response. Period. It does not say anything about whether there is any intrinsic relation between good government and the opposite of female / black politicians.

With regard to Sam Harris we see the same kind of perverse logic being pursued. Speaking of people who have the absolutely crazy notion that Jesus might actually be returning to earth (which of course I believe) and that it might be any minute (which I believe) and that it is highly probable within the next 50 years (which I allow may be the case but equally that it may not) - he says - this has to color everything they do, they think and all their actions.

Well, whoopee, again. Yep. This is not new. It is also true for every generation of Christians for the last 2000 years. Christians know that they are to live in the immediate expectation of Jesus' return but be prepared for it not to happen. They are to be "wise as serpents" in this regard. But it has not prevented them from founding hospitals, universities (e.g. Harvard), orphanages, medical relief organizations (check out Zimbabwe and the American effort against AIDS there), etc. etc. etc. Christians don't stick their head in the sand because they believe Jesus is coming back. They haven't done it in the past and they are not doing it now.

Sam Harris is exactly right about moderate Christians and the inconsistency of their belief. But his concern is that they will not provide an effective bulwark against the threat that fundamentalists pose to the health and well being of our society, which can only be pursued if they are side-lined, quarantined, or otherwise disposed of in some manner such that more enlightened minds can lead the poor deluded masses into the promised land. There we go again. That same "religion causes social dysfunction" argument. Further, he proposes no methodology which even remotely suggests that some other social metaphysic will produce better results than that in place now. To do so would require him to give some warrant for accepting it and I have seen nothing to suggest he has such warrant so far.

I'll get back to you on the Sam Harris stuff after I have read all of his book. But the initial impression is that he is a dangerous demagouge who has far more in common with the Fundamentalist TeleEvangelists he so despises than he cares to admit. His methods are the same the end desired is different.

So, my challenge back to Brent and ARB is this: are you truly willing to apply the same critical analysis to the metaphysics of empirical materialism as you are to Christianity? And if so, are you willing to truly examine and accept the consequences of such a self-study?