Thread: The Problem with Moderate Religion

Originally Posted by (Excerpt from Sam Harris' book "Letter to a Christian Nation")

'Whenever nonbelievers like myself criticize Christians for believing in the imminent return of Christ, or Muslims believing in martyrdom, religious moderated declare that we have caricatured Christianity and Islam, taken “extremists” to be representative of these “great” religions, or otherwise overlooked a shimmering ocean of nuance. We are invariably told that a mature understanding of scripture renders faith perfectly compatible with reason, and that our attacks upon religion are, therefore, “simplistic,” “dogmatic,” or even “fundamentalist.”

But there are several problems with such a defense of religion. First, many moderates (and even some secularists) assume that religious “extremism” is rare and therefore not all that consequential. But religious extremism is not rare, and it is hugely consequential. The United States is now a nation of 300 million souls, wielding more influence than any people in human history, and yet 240 millions of these souls apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers. This hankering for a denominational, spiritual oblivion is extreme in almost every sense – it is extremely silly, extremely dangerous, extremely worthy of denigration – but it is not extreme in the sense of being rare. Of course, moderates may wonder whether as many people believe such things as say they do. In fact, many atheists are confident that our opinion polls are out of register with what people actually think in the privacy of their own minds. But there is no question that most Americans reliably claim to believe the preposterous, and these claims themselves have done genuine harm to our political discourse, to our public policy, and to our reputation in the world.

Religious moderates also tend to imagine that there is some bright line of separation between extremists and moderate religion. But there isn’t. Scripture itself remains a perpetual engine of extremism: because, while He may be many things, the God of the Bible and the Qur’an is not a moderate. Reading scripture more closely, one does not find reasons to be a religious moderate; one finds reasons to be a proper religious lunatic – to fear the fires of hell, to despise nonbelievers, to persecute homosexuals, etc. Of course, anyone can cherry-pick scripture and find reasons to live his neighbor and turn the other cheek. But the more fully a person grants credence to these books, the more he will be convinced that infidels, heretics, and apostates deserve to be smashed to atoms in God’s loving machinery of justice. Religious moderates invariably claim to be more “sophisticated” than religious fundamentalists (and atheists). But how does one become a sophisticated believer? By acknowledging just how dubious many of the claims of scripture are, and thereafter reading it selectively, bowdlerizing if need be, and allowing its assertions about reality to be continually trumped by fresh insights – scientific (“You mean the world isn’t 6,000 years old? Okay.”), medical (“I should take my daughter to a neurologist and not to an exorcist? Seems reasonable…”), and moral (“I can’t beat my slaves? I can’t even keep slaves? Hmm…”). There is a pattern here, and it is undeniable. Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take is less seriously still? Why not admit that the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings?

Another problem with religious moderation is that it represents precisely the sort of thinking that will prevent a rational and nondenominational spirituality from ever emerging in our world. Whatever is true about us, spiritually and ethically, must be discoverable now. Consequently, it makes no sense at all to have one’s spiritual life pegged to rumors of ancient miracles. What we need is a discourse about ethics and spiritual experience that is as unconstrained by ancient ignorance as the discourse of science already is. Science really does transcend the vagaries of culture: there is no such thing as “Japanese” as opposed to “French” science; we don’t speak of “Hindu biology” and “Jewish chemistry.” Imagine a world in which we could have a truly honest and open-ended conversation about our place in the universe and about the possibilities of deepening our self-understanding, ethical wisdom, and compassion. By living as if some measure of sectarian superstition were essential for human happiness, religious moderates prevent such a conversation from ever taking shape.'

Sam Harris

September 2007

New York

In a nutshell.

He had me until the last paragraph, where he started talking about "spirituality."

Originally Posted by hawgballs

In a nutshell.

Originally Posted by WickedTribe

He had me until the last paragraph, where he started talking about "spirituality."

Why?

Originally Posted by Non Sequitur Persona

It completely ignores the fact that irrational belief and ritual seems to just be embedded in us, and in the absence of religion something else ALWAYS takes its place.

Speak for yourself......

Originally Posted by Toker

Why?

I don't find non-organized belief in the supernatural any less silly than organized belief in the supernatural.