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I have earlier linked to a recent article by Sam Harris entitled God’s dupes which is subtitled, “Moderate believers give cover to religious fanatics — and are every bit as delusional.” Some atheists seem to be distancing themselves from Harris, and this article is probably a good example of why this is so. While Harris has plenty of attitude, he doesn’t seem to have a good grasp on logic.

Harris states, “The truth is, there is not a person on Earth who has a good reason to believe that Jesus rose from the dead…” Now, on its face this is a ridiculous statement, which has to be based solely on Harris’ presuppositional belief that there is no god, and therefore no one can possibly have good enough reason to believe in one. If he would just say this, then we could all just accept this as his opinion. I can disagree with him based on my own presupposition that God exists, and therefore everyone has a reason or reasons to believe. However, it appears as though his appeal here is to reason and logic, so it needs to be evaluated on that level.

The mystery person known as Mike Gene over at Telic Thoughts has a bit of fun with this, pointing out the obvious problems with making such an outrageous claim. Follow the last link and read it for yourself.

The big issue here is, as MG points out, is that Harris has apparently established his own subjective standard for what is a “good reason.” He is no doubt aware of the plethora of books and articles written on the reasons for faith – some more subjective (such as Francis Collins’ The Language of God), and others more objective from people like Josh McDowall and Lee Stobel. You or I might not buy all of their arguments, however many of them would qualify as “good reasons.”

For example, in spite of the many liberal theologians and others (I almost said “crackpots” but I’m trying not us resort to using pejorative language to show how fair and balanced I can be) who try to pass off the Gospels as little more than myth, there are a number of very good reasons to believe they are accurate, contemporary accounts of the ministry of Jesus. Richard Bauckham has written a recently published book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, that provides “good reasons” to believe that these were actually eyewitness accounts. For an interesting review and summary of the book, you can read A. E. Harvey’s review at Times Online. (So much to read, so little time…) As I said in my Easter post, the historical basis for the resurrection is quite strong.

So, back to Harris. The thesis for this article is that religious moderates are just as bad as religious extremists, because they support the basic theme that extremists distort and abuse. A quote:

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. And in this way centuries have come and gone without an honest word being spoken about God in our society.

What’s wrong with this picture? Or, what’s right with this picture? Can anybody not see the flaws in this thinking? Why, then, can’t Harris? He might just as blame everyone who flies the major airlines for the 9-11 attacks.

Harris drifts a bit in his article, moving onto another illogical argument, that because atheists can change their lives for the better, too, the changed life of a Christian is not evidence of God’s existence. Now, a changed life may not be objective proof – given that there can be other factors – does not mean it is not evidence of God. Just because deer tracks can be faked does not mean that most deer tracks are evidence of a deer.

Harris also states, “there are better reasons to help the poor, feed the hungry and defend the weak than the belief that an Imaginary Friend wants you to do it. Compassion is deeper than religion. … It is time that we acknowledge that human beings can be profoundly ethical — and even spiritual — without pretending to know things they do not know.” Here again, Harris relies on his presuppositions about what everyone else (in his opinion) cannot know. Just because he doesn’t know my middle name doesn’t mean that other people don’t know it. There is no way to prove what all other people do not know – it is at best a presumption based upon a presupposition as to what cannot be known.

Unless of course Sam Harris is omniscient and therefore a god … but then, he couldn’t be an atheist.

As is typical, the secular media has one again turned to issues of religion during Passover & Easter season. CNN’s Anderson Cooper report did a couple of segments on “What is a Christian?” and various cable channels have done some kind of nod to religion. It’s only fitting, as a recent Newsweek poll found that 91% of people surveyed said they believe in a god. So, there’s definitely a market for stories on religion.

Newsweek, which has regular articles concerning issues of faith, has done an interview-style debate (it’s not a debate so much as a discussion) between the Purpose-Driven author Rick Warren, and atheist author Sam Harris. It’s actually very good, and is well worth reading.

Now, I’m not a big Rick Warren fan; I once considered writing a series of posts pointing out the theological problems in The Purpose Driven Life, but decided that I didn’t have the energy. I’m definitely not a fan of Sam Harris, whose writing often goes way off the deep end, combining bad logic with outlandish, unreasoned statements. However, this little conversation was interesting: Warren represented Christianity rather well and succeeded in not succumbing to what has been the typical irrational, fundamentalist rants that so often make the headlines.

Harris, on the other hand, was controlled and soft-spoken; even the moderator mentioned the difference between Harris’ written and in-person personas. When Warren commented that he thought Harris’ books were angry, Harris responded, “I would put it at impatient rather than angry.” Later, he commented, “To some degree the stridence of my writing is an effort to get people’s attention.” It seems to me that Harris may be one of those people – and I’ve known several over the years – who come off as tigers behind a keyboard, but shrink to pussycats when they are forced to communicate face to face. This is obviously conjecture on my part, but when comparing the 2 personas it certainly seems the case. Sam Harris the writer often seems downright obnoxious. However, I happened to like the Sam Harris in the interview.

I still think that Harris has problems with his logic, and the fact that he seems more anti-god than pro-anything is part of the problem; his responses are largely based on his perceptions of what others believe, which based on his anti-faith worldview he cannot understand. So, even well-intentioned, he will wind up arguing against “straw-gods.”

But, read it for yourself.

I also noted that Rabbi Gellman has some rather zen-like thoughts about the debate, which if nothing else, are entertaining. He seems to ignore or just dismiss the exclusivist positions of both Harris and Warren. I think he is partially right, however, in that often the God Debate centers on facts rather than truth. Only in recent years has truth been relegated to mere facts, and the result is that no one sees the forest for the trees.

God – and therefore, truth – is perhaps not just the Great Debate, but is rather The Debate. I have faith, however, that God Himself is not debating anything at all.