Paul's Reviews > The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Another yawner from the "New" atheists. This is another book by a pretentious atheist who just can't believe that there are still theists. "Arrrgh! Don't you know we've beaten you theists fair and square. It is just obvious that theism is false. If you won't give up your theistic beliefs by our obviously superior rational arguments, then I'll shame you in to giving them up."

Ho hum.

Harris trots out the usual dusty canards of the New Atheists: religion is evil, it's the cause of all the wars, it's gonna destroy mankind, etc.

Of course none of this is ever based on any serious scientific research, odd for the priests of Science. Go read the detailed anthropological, sociological, political, environmental, etc., work by some of the actual scientists who study wars &c. Go read your Pape, Pearse, Waller, Rummel, Livingstone Smith, &c, and then get back to me.

Harris serves up the re-heated evidentialist objection to faith throughout the book. He repeatedly claims that "If you don't have evidence in favor of your beliefs, then your belief is unjustified or irrational." Of course, all we need to do is inquire about this belief itself. Is it justified and rational? Then it must have evidence in its favor. So, what is it? Assume Harris can give us something, call it E. Call his evidentialist constraint his anti-theistic security blanket ASB. So, he gives us E for ASB. Now, what about E? Does he believe it? If so, is his belief justified and rational? If so, then he needs evidence for E, call it E1. So, E1 backs up E which backs up ASB. Does he believe E1? Is his belief rational and justified? Then he needs E2, and obviously this can go on ad infinitum. So, his anti-theistic security blanket just writes one bad check to cover another, and another, and another....

Harris also sets up a false dichotomy. He claims that there are two kinds of theists, and only two: extremists and moderates. Extremists want to kill everyone if it would solve the problem of heresy and unbelief. Moderates aren't any better. They think that all beliefs, no matter what they are, should be allowed. He then says the moderates are complicit in the world's destruction since they allow the extremists to operate. But here we hit upon some major ambiguity. One can allow people to have whatever belief they want, so long as they don't act on those beliefs in a way that is harmful to others in an unjustified way. See the problem in Harris's reasoning? A further problem is that he claims that we cannot choose our beliefs. This is called doxastic voluntarism. This is fine as far as it goes. It's philosophically viable, and a strong position. The problem, then, is that he claims we shouldn't allow people to have unjustified beliefs. So can people control what they believe voluntarily or not? A third problem is that I am a theist and I don't fit in either category. Though I fit in the moderate camp in an uninteresting way (the belief/act distinction), I don't think people should have unjustified beliefs or false beliefs. But, I don't think the extremist solution is correct. Indeed, it is one of those beliefs others shouldn't have. Harris tries to get as much traction as he can out of making false dichotomies like this.

Another problem is that he still holds to justification is necessary or sufficient for knowledge. This has fallen out of favor with contemporary epistemologists. In fact, almost all agree that theistic and atheistic beliefs can be justified (cf. Plantinga's Warrant trilogy). But this doesn't mean much. Edmund Gettier rather put a damper on all this. So, Harris pulls from some outdated concepts in epistemology. This is rather odd considering he's at Stanford. I'm sure his philosophy profs cringed at his book.

Here's another example of how Harris makes ridiculous and self-defeating comments:

"As long as a person maintains that his beliefs represent an actual state of the world (visible or invisible, spiritual or mundane), he must believe that his beliefs are a consequence of the way the world is. This, by definition, leaves him vulnerable to new evidence. Indeed, if there were no conceivable change in the world that could get a person to question his ... beliefs, this would prove that his beliefs were not predicated upon his taking any state of the world into account" - p.63

i) What about a person's belief in the law of non-contradiction? Is he "vulnerable" to new evidence? Could there be a "conceivable" change in the world that could get this person to question his belief? Isn't the LNC part of what allows something to even be conceivable in the first place?

ii) What about a person's belief in her existence? Is there a conceivable change that could get a person to question her existence? Who would be questioning it?

iii) What about Harris's belief on this matter? Is there a way the world could be that would make it false? Then it would still be true since this new belief a "consequence of the way the world is." A conceivable way the world could be that would make Harris question this belief would affirm his strictures and thus not make him "vulnerable." But a consequence of this view is that your beliefs must be "vulnerable" in this way.

This is all to symptomatic, I'm afraid, of the new atheism. Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens &c. are rather embarrassing emissaries for a group that prides themselves on how "rational" and "smart" and "erudite" they is [sic], as opposed to us irrational, stupid, and toothless fundies.

Yawn, the "New" atheism.

Go Sammy, it's your birthday!