Sometimes, when I disclose to people that I’m an atheist, I feel like I might as well be telling people that I was abducted by aliens or that I’m the long-lost descendant of the Russian czar. Those statements would probably garner the same amount of mistrustful incredulity. “You’re an atheist? Really? So you, like, don’t believe in anything?”
Sam Harris, the author of The End of Faith, probably can relate. His book sets forth a carefully reasoned yet stirring critique of belief in God. Faith is a volatile and frequently lethal mix of people’s most irrational hopes and deepest fears–particularly the fear of death. The unprovable assertions of religious dogma provide the foundations of an irrational and exclusionary certitude of belief that can motivate people to commit unspeakable acts like the Inquisition or suicide bombings. Harris has especially harsh words for religious “moderates”, whom he accuses of cherry-picking the tenets of faith they choose to follow while ignoring the the harsher sectarian pronouncements of their chosen tradition. To Harris, the willingness of moderates to devise some sort of compromise between ancient tradition and their rational natures (while simultaneously tolerating the more fundamentalist beliefs of others) is to surrender humanity to a bleak future of ignorance and strife.
As you might guess, I find myself in almost complete agreement with Harris. I do find his efforts to propose a science of consciousness as a way of rationally experiencing the mystical aspects of the universe a little strained. Consciousness seems like such a subjective experience as to elude objective study and explanation. But that’s preferable to sitting by and watching the world consume itself in paroxysms of religious-inspired violence. Like Harris, I firmly believe that people can lead good and ethical lives without reliance on fairy tales that were scribbled down by profoundly ignorant men thousands of years ago. Towards the end of the book, Harris writes:
Clearly, it must be possible to live ethically–with a genuine concern for the happiness of other sentient beings–without presuming to know things about which we are patently ignorant. Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today, is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?
That passage resonates with me. We need not look to the supernatural to marvel at our existence and to feel compelled to do right by one another. It gives me hope to see that the number of nonreligious Americans is slowly rising, even though the media still seems to be inclined to treat nonbelievers with contempt.
Next up is most likely Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, which has been sitting on my shelf for too long.
