and potential allies are necessary and normal.

I made my intentions very clear in my original post and it is wrong absent, ahem, evidence, to presume that my intentions are anything other than exactly what I said that they are.

by Frederick Clarkson on Sat Mar 24, 2007 at 04:44:41 PM EST

Thanks, Fred, for opening this up a bit.  From a review of the matter I think Cline is getting a little shrill to be throwing around allegations of dishonesty.  But there is a gap between theist and atheist that makes it hard for either side to accept the sincerity of the other 100%.  Some atheists nurse a metaphysical swagger that makes their arguments sound like sheer ad hominem, and it takes stamina not to answer in kind.  Regards to you for keeping a level head.

I think Harris' latest paradigm of concentric rings would have scientific value - if he were applying it to a case where his view of reality allowed for the existence of an actual continuum in the first place.

But he alleges things against religion which in effect disallow such a continuum.  And his chosen emphases so cleanly miss the true point of conjunction between the various "families" of Christian believers that it weakens further his argument for their mutual complicity in the heresy of Dominionism.

Harris would like us to believe that a continuum exists such that,

wherever one stands on this continuum, one inadvertently shelters those who are more fanatical than oneself from criticism.

His concentric rings analogy looks like something lifted out of a sociological study of communal complicity in the growth of Nazism or Fascism.  But Harris has made changes to critical elements (in areas he little understands) in order to suit his argument.  And this can't be done willy-nilly, as if "the graphics" will establish the continuum and unify the facts, where he has rejected the principle of any actual relation between facts, and offers only assumptions about the facts.

So it turns out to be a representation of his own bias instead of a scientific application.

For example, we might apply the concentric rings of complicity to indict every strand of a society that was struggling with the rise of Nazism (say, Germany in 1932).  But only because we admit the reality of an actual social continuum in the first place - in that case, the sovereign Weimar state under which each citizen (including the Nazi) had a voice with regard to the question of what party or platform is to be vested with the sovereign authority of the whole.

Harris, as I said, attempts to apply the concentric ring analogy to a subject matter (Christianity) whose continuum he does not understand.

His three groups of Christians marked for complicity are: (1) "ordinary" fundamentalists, (2) moderates, and (3) liberals.  But he represents these factions as not only mutually incompatible but even mutually destructive - and yet asks us to believe they are in the business of preserving each other:

"Ordinary fundamentalist Christians, by maintaining that the Bible is the perfect word of God, inadvertently support the Dominionists, ... Christian moderates, by their lingering attachment to the unique divinity of Jesus, protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn. Christian liberals who `aren't sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally' deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality."

The boldface in the quote is mine - illustrating the point that Harris has further neutralized the validity of his continuum paradigm by implying here that Christianity's transcendental basis is itself unreal.  If there is no head, where, then, is the body or community he is attempting to implicate as a whole?

What is more, his characterization of Christian liberals is so far off that it denies the rest his theory what he would call "a proper collision with scientific rationality."   : )

sorry about the length - I had most of the afternoon.

God bless the whole world - - No Exceptions
by John Anngeister on Sat Mar 24, 2007 at 08:36:51 PM EST

Although I am not an athiest and don't support abolition of religion as Harris does, I have just finished reading "Letter to a Christian Nation" and a lot of it makes sense.

I do agree however, that the evangelicals do protect and support the more radical element of their faith simply because they are labelled "Christian" and therefore must be good.

For example, in the last week, my brother who is quite religious (moderate)  sent on an e-mail having to do with the placing of the ten commandments in government buildings and prayer in schools.  I replied that I disagreed with him and told him that I felt it was a political thing involving the Religious Right and gave him the following web address to introduce him to the radicals who are making the great outcry:

http://adultthought.ucsd.edu/Culture_War/The_American_Taliban.htm l

His reply was that I was attacking Christians and the Christian religion, among other things, and he has not spoken to me since.  

Now if these same people ran for office, he would vote for them simply because of the label "Christian", therefore good, and would never question whether they were extremists.

And I am finding that there are many more with the same attitude around me.  By virtue of their loyalty to other Christians, they do not even think to go beyond that.

Could that be the kind of thing Harris is talking about?

by Concerned on Sat Mar 24, 2007 at 11:45:44 PM EST

Several inconsistencies and inaccuracies immediately leap out in Harris's op-ed, starting with this statement:

Christian liberals -- who aren't sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally -- deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality. And in this way centuries have come and gone without an honest word being spoken about God in our society.

Besides his simplistic means of pigeon-holing all liberal Christians as people who "just love the experience of going to church occasionally," he displays some of the very same divisive certitude of which he accuses the "true believers" of having.

Perhaps the issue is not whether individuals choose to believe in a Creator or not, but whether they have the tolerance to respect that choice? If so, then it appears that Mr. Harris has his own demons to deal with.


by Frank Cocozzelli on Sun Mar 25, 2007 at 01:59:06 PM EST

Mr Clarkson, you say;  

"I pointed out that he claims that jihadists and dominionists are at the center of Islam and Christianity, respectively, and that there exist concentric circles of moderates and liberals beyond these who are providing cover for the extremists at the center of their faith. I objected first to the bogus premise that jihadists and dominionists are at the center of anything..."

Mr Harris did not make the claim that jihadists and dominionists are at the centre of their respective faiths, he claimed that they were at the centre of concentric circles of diminishing reasonableness. (i.e they are the most unreasonable)

Rather than being an example of "crackpot geometry" I would suggest that you would agree with his assertion.

The jihadists and dominionists have no doubts about their faith, their religion tells them what they want to hear and they interpret it without nuance or compromise.  

Further out in these concentric circles, we have the people (the vast majority) who take a more liberal view of religion, theirs is a religion with room for doubt, with no absolutes.  But coming with these doubts and nuances are delusional beliefs that shield the most unreasonable among them.  Faith is seen as a virtue, the teachings of their religion, the inspired world of a supreme being.

When it comes to a time of questioning the values of faith, or belief in a higher power, it is the moderates who give unwitting shelter to the extreme elements amongst them. After all the moderates are still sure that their supreme being is the supreme being and all other faiths are wrong.

by gollo on Sun Mar 25, 2007 at 03:29:26 PM EST

I read Harris's first book, and also watched him on CSPAN. First, Harris is not opposed to spirituality, especially when based around meditative practices. And if someone had a sense of the existence of a higher power, a feeling of cosmic gratitude, etc., I don't think Harris would have a problem with that either. What he objects to in religion is specific belief in things for which there is little or no evidence, or which are even contradicted by the evidence. The problem is not that only scientific beliefs are valid, but that once you lose contact with evidence, you literally can end up believing anything, simply because it is in a holy book or because saintly and esteemed people have believed it. But I think what really galls Harris is not just belief cut loose from evidence, but that fact that such belief is then held is high esteem. As he mentions, when a belief is presented as part of someone's "faith," a kind of hush falls across the room, and the belief commands a kind of instant respect. Furthermore, Harris points out that some religious beliefs, in any other context, would get you sent to a psychiatrist, but in the context of religion, they are considered completely legitimate. If I claim that babies really do come from storks, I would be thought nuts. If I claim that a large wooden boat held two of every animal species during a worldwide flood, I would be seen as having "great faith." If I claim that my morning glass of orange juice contained the spirit of Alexander the Great, I would end up on anti-psychotic meds. If I claim that a wafer and portion of wine actually are the literal body and blood of Christ, no one would bat an eye. To a large extent, religious belief is the default position. You can have religious beliefs, no matter how unusual, and you don't have to explain or justify anything, while the person who fails to have such beliefs is instantly suspect. I think Harris would say that it should be the other way around, and I would agree with him.

by siguiriya on Mon Mar 26, 2007 at 07:57:19 AM EST