Letter to a Christian Nation

The only thing that guarantees a truly open-ended collaboration among human beings is their willingness to have their views (and resulting behavior) modified by conversation--by new evidence and new arguments. Otherwise, when the stakes are high, there is nothing to appeal to but force. If I believe that I can get to Paradise by flying a plane into a building, and I am content to believe this without evidence, then there will be nothing another person can say to dissuade me, because my leap of faith has made me immune to the powers of conversation.

--Sam Harris

My take is that Sam's statement has they same kind of value as chanting "All we are saying, is give peace a chance." To trust in the good will of others much less ourselves is beyond naive. It is fatuous and dangerous. Dialogue and skepticism is not enough either. Such attitudes underestimate the resliance of people to change their core values and beliefs and to defend those values and beliefs with every tool as their disposal. Flying jets into buildings is merely the logical extension of deeply seated beliefs that we scarcely can comprehend, rational-- not irrational-- actions to advance those beliefs. If there is hope, it lies with taking as a given the depravity of humanity, and to accordingly create institutions that promote transparancy and accountability, divide and diffuse centers of power, and protect and promote secularism, pretty much using the formula that our founding fathers conceived. I no more trust power in the hands of scientists and scholars than I do in the hands of politicians and priests, and religionists (or areligionists for that matter) have no monopoloy on fanaticism, as Hoffer suggests in my link below:

http://mymallandnews.bizland.com/truebeliever.htm

The paradox of Sam's statement lies in the disconnect between his assumption of and appeal for rationality and in his irrational and unfactual appraisal of human nature. If people are willing to love one another, there would be no hate and no wars. But that statement is no less meaningless than Sam's claim-- that if everyone relied on evidence, goodwill,and collaboration, iirational beliefs and behaviors wouldn't take hold. Surely, there is much more historical evidence to support my point of view than there is to support his woolly-headed utopianism. Would he be willing to change his viewpoint on that that basis?

I finally put down Sam's book after reading the first chapter. I got annoyed by what I saw was an attack on a straw man-- a shallow characture of of an extreme variant of Christianity that I'm not even sure really exists. The critique that writers such as Richard Dawson, Harris, and Christopher Hitchens make are not without validity. But I get the impression that they do in their own critique precisely what they object in the beliefss of religionists-- the embrace of straw men, lack of balance, dogmatism, sweeping generalizations, and demonization when it best serves their argumentative purpose. Hitchens writes that “the only thing that counts is free inquiry, science, research, the testing of evidence, the uses of reason, irony, humor and literature, things of this kind. Just because we hold these convictions rather strongly does not mean this attitude can be classified as fundamentalist.” I think Hitchens is correct. I don't view convictions of any kind per se as fundamantalist. However, stridency of argument even when that argument is founded empericaly and rationally can become dogmatic, which closes down the open-ended collaboration that Harris seeks.