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God Is My Strong Tower

From the Pastor’s Desk…

The Lamenting Atheist

      “It is, of course, taboo to criticize a person’s religious beliefs,” proclaims atheist Sam Harris in a Newsweek diatribe, “The Case Against Faith” (November 13, 2006).  Really?  I hadn’t noticed.  Ridiculing the faith of believers, rather, seems to be one of the favorite pastimes of many members of the media.  And if Harris is right about what many Americans believe as dictated by their religion, then perhaps there is something here worthy of ridicule.  A few samples:  that the entire universe was created about 6,000 years ago, that dinosaurs were passengers on Noah’s Ark, that “light from distant galaxies was created en route to the Earth and that the first members of our species were fashioned out of dirt and divine breath, in a garden with a talking snake, by the hand of an invisible God.” 

      This is a problem.  In fact, this is a caricature.  No Catholic is constrained by his religious faith to believe as historical the stories of Genesis.  The accounts of the creation, the fall of man, and the flood of Noah are presented to us through a literary device of the mythic (in the highest sense of that word) and teach us profound truths. Now, Catholicism is by far the largest religious group in America, and yet Harris never refers to it or Catholic belief.  Yet one gets the impression from Harris’ article that these silly propositions, pretenses of historicity, are standard Christian belief.  Truth is, these are beliefs seemingly required of those of evangelical persuasion – those Christian children of the Reformation who read the Bible only literally.  But Harris goes further, ominously, to say that “much of what people believe in the name of religion is intrinsically divisive, unreasonable and incompatible with genuine morality.”

      This is the kettle calling the pot black, as we shall see.  Harris speaks of “genuine morality”… hmmm.  Perhaps one of the reasons so many Americans cling to their religious beliefs, in spite of all the lamenting atheists out there, is that they have a dim awareness of what happens in a society where atheism predominates.  Albania comes to mind, a country bludgeoned back into the dark ages by its atheistic regime.  There was also Soviet, atheistic communism with it secret police, gulags, economic disintegration, and, of course, severe persecution of the Church and believers.  But Harris lives in America, which he describes as having the status “as a superpower, [marked by] our material wealth and … continuous advancements in our technology….”  How on earth, one wonders, could such a nation become so powerful, rich and advanced, a nation that has from its beginning been overwhelmingly made up of religious believers? 

      But I digress.  Back to the “logic” of Harris’ argument:  a large, but select, group of Christians believe scientifically untenable things; this shows that Christianity is thus stupid and morally obtuse; thus, religion “poses a tremendous danger.”  Implied is the Albanian solution:  exclusion of religion from the commonwealth, or as one caption in Harris’ article expressed it – “a view that religion is not only morally dubious and socially unnecessary but a threat to the survival of the species.”  Actually, what is going on here is a disagreement concerning morality (Harris mentions gay marriage and embryonic stem cell research).  Harris does not like the moral positions of many Christians, and so he demonizes religion.  It’s evil… because it disagrees with Harris.  He proceeds to set up a straw-man – evangelical beliefs concerning creation, the flood of Noah, etc. – and deduces everything from it:  people who believe that the universe is only 6,000 years old are dangerous, and just as religion dictates that absurdity, so in like fashion it bans embryonic stem cell research.  There you have it:  being morally opposed to the latter is on par with believing the former.  Nice trick. 

      As the Catholic Church would have it, the age of the universe is truly a scientific question; though guesses about this may have been made in the past, derived from divine revelation, with the coming of science, the Church waits for the results of research… just like Harris, I presume, would do.  Embryonic stem cell research is not merely a scientific issue; it has tremendous moral ramifications.  Just as the Church has no authority to declare the age of the universe, so science or scientists have no authority to declare moral dogma.  Yet they do, Harris among them.  And the standard they set is truly dangerous:  whatever impedes the furtherance of science is evil; religion stands in the way of embryonic stem cell research (with its moral qualms on par with its other fringe beliefs); therefore, religion is “a threat to the survival of the species.” 

      This sounds a bit “intrinsically divisive” to me.  But Harris’ whole position is also unreasonable and therefore of dubious morality.  In typical, modern “scientific” fashion, for example, Harris explains to us why it’s okay to destroy a 3-day old human embryo:  because it is quantifiably explained as – and notice the reductive, begging-of-the-moral-question definition here – “a collection of 150 cells” (my emphasis).  No, the Church responds, rather scientifically, the embryo is a complex organization of some very particular cells – human cells – from father and mother that is in a day-by-day, moment-by-moment movement toward developing into a recognizable entity called a human being, the makings of which are there from the very moment of conception.  The principle of agency, the “form” to use philosophical language, that unifies this material and directs its advance in an extremely complex manner toward growth as a human being we Christians and other believers and some of the world’s greatest philosophers call the soul, the organizing principle, that is the very person the embryo is.  But in Harris’ mind, since there are only 150 cells here, and no brain nor neurons, then “consequently, there is no reason to believe they [the human embryo] can suffer their destruction in any way at all.” 

      Here is yet another one of those sweeping, dogmatic assertions in the name of science that would, if thought about, confound us humans in a most basic way.  Is human life, begun in its embryonic stage in the womb, of so little account that the abrupt ending of it in the laboratory of no consequence?  The very purpose of the existence of the human embryo – to be a living, breathing man or woman – is taken away, the gift of life is denied; and such persons “cannot suffer their destruction in any way at all,” when the most basic of all goods is taken from them?  Is a lack of awareness the “standard” for allowing the denial of justice?  That is, just because someone is unaware that an injustice is being committed against him, does that make the injustice acceptable?  But also, looking at this from the merely physical, is this act of destruction sanctioned simply because there are no nerves yet to physically know the pain of it?  After all, human beings of whatever stage of life can painlessly be put to death; we call it euthanasia.  I can guarantee you that such a man as Harris is pro-abortion, and his stance on that issue is condemned by his very words here:  for we know, scientifically, that the fetus experiences, physically, the pain of its destruction… with its already-developed nerves.  There is any number of ultra-sound recordings of the fetus frantically trying to dodge the lethal needle thrust into the woman’s womb; there are the recordings of the “silent scream” of the enwombed infant as he or she is scalded to death by saline and ripped apart.  It is Harris who is being unreasonable, because his whole view is contradictory and irrational.  Is this the kind of “genuine morality” he would have us adhere to?

      And yet Harris has the audacity to claim that “one of the worst things about religion is that it tends to separate questions of right and wrong from the living reality of human and animal suffering,” the very thing he has done with his approval of the destruction of the “living reality” of the human embryo.  He shows himself contradictory again in his disapproval of the religious opposition to gay marriage, and proclaims with the same illegitimate “authority” atheists constantly presume for themselves, that this is an area “where no real suffering is at issue.”  Perhaps all the contrary statistics regarding the consequences of the gay lifestyle are merely “unreal suffering” to Harris:  the almost universal inability of homosexuals to live monogamously, the much lower life-expectancy of active gay males (by 10 years or more), the far, far greater likelihood among them of drug and alcohol abuse and the contraction of STDs (including AIDS), and a much higher suicide rate. 

      Some Christians – biblical literalists – may often confuse theology and astrophysics, but that doesn’t necessarily keep them from seeing the obvious in these debates of morality – that, for example, to which an ultra-sound bears witness and that which is so overwhelmingly clear in the beautiful scene of a mother holding in her arms the new-born child, who was never, ever a mere “collection of 150 cells.”  Some confusion about science among certain groups of Christians is, after all, nothing compared to the moral confusion espoused by Harris.  Yes, there are some things, scientific facts, that the Church or any religion is not equipped of itself to know and teach; but there are some things – the most important things by far – that cannot be known, comprehended, by the scientific method.  There is a danger, I admit, in the ignorance of Christians concerning true science.  But there is a far darker danger in the usurping arrogance of “science” on questions of morality, ethics, and philosophy.

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