A Review of Sam Harris' The End of Faith Part V
May 25, 2007, Wausau, Wi— The previous parts (I, II, III, IV ) of my review of Sam Harris’ The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, focused on how distorted Harris’s view of religion was, and pointed out that his critique does not really apply to Christianity. In part IV we looked at how Harris tried to support his erroneous views with an erroneous understanding of scripture. But Harris not only has problems with his views of religion and the Bible, he also has problems when it come to the alternative he is supporting.
Towards the end of his book Harris says that “it is possible to have one’s experience of the world radically transformed.” He then charges that “The problem with religion is that it blends this truth so thoroughly with the venom of unreason.” As an example of unreason, he cites that Jesus was “the Son of God, born of a virgin, and destined to return to earth trailing clouds of glory.” (pg. 204) But why are these beliefs unreasonable? We saw in part IV of this review, that it was Harris’ use of the Bible in an attempt to discredit the belief in the virgin birth that was itself grounded in error and irrationality. Earlier in his book he simply dismisses the virgin birth as “an untestable proposition.” What he means by untestable is not clear.
It is certainly is untestable in the sense that we cannot duplicate the virgin birth in a laboratory, as by definition are all miracles untestable in this sense. They are unique acts of God, not repeatable events governed by natural law. In a similar fashion all of history is made up of a series of unique acts of men. We cannot put the holocaust into a laboratory and run experiments on it to see if we can duplicate it, nor would we want to if we could. But to deny the holocaust is correctly seen as itself irrational. Some believe in the Holocaust because the suffered through it. Most believe in the holocaust because of the historical evidence, i.e. the records and sources which because of examination are deem to be reliable and trustworthy. When the last holocaust survivor dies this will be the only way.
This is normally how we get all of our history. It is the same for the virgin birth, Christians deem the writers of the Bible to be not only reliable and trustworthy, but inspired by God. Not only is this proposition testable, as I show in my book, Evidence for the Bible, it is the rational conclusion to reach. And despite Harris, testing is not a concept foreign to the Bible. After all Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 “Test everything, hold on to the good.” In 1 Corinthians 15, writing about some who rejected the resurrection, he pointed out that Jesus “appeared to over five hundred of the brother at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” Paul clearly saw the resurrection, not as some abstract theological belief, but as a testable historical event, and there was a implicit challenge in his reference to “most of whom are still alive” that if you do not believe it, you should go and talk to the hundreds who saw it. Of course with the passing of the first century, and the death of the last eyewitness, all that we have left are the sources, but the fact is that there are more sources for Jesus than we have for most events in antiquity and with the discoveries made during the twentieth century, once again it has been the critics that have had to revise their view of the Bible, and believers who were supported.
In fact, when you look at the arguments for and against the reliability of the Bible critically, as I point out in my books, the critics have a huge problem for at best their arguments are based on an a priori rejection of the supernatural and at worst are circular. When you get past all the blustering, and boil it down, they start with the belief that there is no supernatural. Since there is no supernatural, there can be no real miracles. Since the Bible contains descriptions of miracles, either the writers did not know what really happened or they lied. Either way they are unreliable, and thus we cannot trust anything they say unless it shown to be true by other means. This is a nice and neat little package and everything flows from the initial premise, but notice that no actual evidence is required. Sure evidence is often thrown in, often haphazardly as we saw in part IV with Harris’ attempt to refute the virgin birth from scripture, but it is really just window dressing and not really needed to reach their conclusion.
What Harris neglects is that all worldviews have fundamental propositions that must to some extent be based on faith. Within the confines of his worldview, the automatic rejection of things like Jesus really being “the Son of God, born of a virgin, and destined to return to earth trailing clouds of glory.” (pg. 204) may seem unreasonable leaps of faith. But that does not change that fact that Harris also must have faith in his fundamental premises. As such, in many respects, is argument is self-refuting.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part VI
Memorial Day
Tom’s father had died a couple of years earlier in an accident, leaving a wife and four children. It was the middle of the depression and times were tough. Tom, being the oldest, worked while finishing High School, to help make ends meet. After he graduated, he joined the military, and after training he was sent to Nicholas Army Air Field in the Philippines. There he did what most military people do, perform their normal jobs while periodically being interrupted by various drills.
Tom could see the approaching storm that would become WWII and mentioned this in his letters home. He wrote of how they had received a shipment of fighters, but that they were in crates and needed to be assembled. They were still assembling them when the war started on December 7,1941. The Japanese invaded the Philippines the next day. Tom and the rest of the troops, along with their Filipino allies, fought valiantly. With their base destroyed they, retreated to Bataan.
Though Roosevelt had promised reinforcements, they never came, and in March Roosevelt ordered MacArthur to leave and go to Australia. Tom and the rest of those left behind continued to fight on. But in the end, there was no way to win. The promised reinforcements were never sent; food and ammunition ran out; and the Japanese force was too strong. Yet still they fought. Then their positions were overrun, and on April 10, 1942 they surrendered.
But as horrible as their ordeal had been, the worst was yet to come. The Japanese commander had ordered provisions be set aside for the expected 25,000 prisoners. But he was unaware that the real number of captured Americans and Filipinos was more than 75,000. Nor was he aware of just how bad their condition was. They had held out as long as possible and so when they did surrender, they were starving and many were sick with malaria and dysentery. In short the provisions he ordered to be set aside were nowhere near what was needed, and the Japanese army structure did not allow for questioning orders, even to correct mistakes in information.
To make matters worse the Japanese viewed surrender, whatever the circumstances, as a dishonor. Thus it did not matter how valiantly they fought, how long they had held out, or how low they had been on food and ammunition, they had surrendered and did not deserve to be treated honorably. Nor were there enough trucks to transport all the them. So what came to be called the Bataan Death March began.
Tom was not one of the lucky few whose guards, realizing the situation, just let their captives go. Even though he was sick, he was forced to march the 30 miles in the blazing hot sun to the rail center. Most had no food or water for the march. There was no stopping, and many were beaten. Many just died on the road, others were shot if they did not keep up. If Tom was fortunate, he would have still have had shoes. Many didn’t and had their feet burned as they walked on the hot asphalt as it baked under the sun. At San Fernando Tom was pushed into a rail car with other prisoners.
Because of the large numbers of prisoners, they were packed in as tightly as possible and in the hot sun, the metal walls of the cars burned unprotected skin. Many lost consciousness from the sweltering heat of the boxcars. Others suffocated in the cramped space. Yet they were packed in so tightly the unconscious and the dead remained standing until the cars were unloaded at Capas.
Tom survived the trip to Capas. From there Tom was once again forced to marched the last eight miles to Camp O’Donnell. Suffering from sickness, starvation, and exhaustion, Tom only lasted five days in Camp O’Donnell, dying on May 18th, 1942. He was 22 years old. Later Private Thomas A. Hushbeck would be posthumously awarded a the Purple Heart.
When people ask me what Memorial Day means to me, I think of my Uncle Tom, even though he died thirteen years before I was born. For me it is his holiday, but not his alone. There were the eight who died on Lexington Green in that first engagement of the Revolutionary war, and all the others who came after them to secure our independence, along with those who gave their lives in the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, The Vietnam War, Gulf War I and now the war on Terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, just to name the major conflicts.
Whenever there was a need, Americans like my uncle Tom have step forward, knowing what may happen. Like my Uncle Tom, many have paid the ultimate price, so that we can live in freedom. Many may consider “Freedom is not Free” a cliché, just another slogan for a bumper sticker, but the cost of our freedom was paid by my Uncle Tom, and all the others who have in the past, or will in the future give their lives in defense of this country. It is for them that we fly the flag on this day. It is because of them we can enjoy the time off and relax on this day. They have given all that they had, and suffered in ways we can never imagine so that we might live in freedom. So while I enjoy the day, I will remember them. For they deserved to be honored and remembered.
The Iraq War – Should we have gone? Part I
As I argued in the first post of this series, if someone views terrorism as primarily criminal acts instead of acts of war, it is unlikely they will see any justification for the war in Iraq, and that is at the root of much of the current debate. Yet even if it is agreed that we are engaged in a war on terrorism, it does not automatically follow that we should have gone to war in Iraq. In the current debate it is almost taken as a given that the Iraq war was a mistake, and even many former supporters no longer defend it. This lack of defense stems from a number of factors ranging from an actual change of opinion, to the fact that in the current debate over the war, whether or not we should have gone in the first place is seen as largely irrelevant to the question of what we should do now. Yet I believe that the question of should we have gone to war in the first place is key, for I believe we should have gone in, and the reasons we should are important to understanding why it is so vital that not only should we stay but that we must win.
The reason that most people know is Weapons of Mass Destruction or WMDs. While some were found, the large stock piles that were expected never were. As a result, for the far left this quickly became the only reason, and their absence, proof that Bush lied. The issue of missing WMD’s is so complex, and so politicized, and with still so many unanswered questions that it’s ultimate unraveling, barring any new revelation, will probably be many years in the future. Of course for the Bush-lied crowd, no further answers are needed.
But for those who seek a rational explanation, serious questions remain, such as why were so many intelligent agencies around the world mistaken? (If the Bush-lied crowed is correct, Bush would have to be the smartest person in the world for he was able to discern what no one else could see!) If Saddam didn’t have them, why did he continually block the inspectors from full access? Why did his top Generals believe he had them? Why didn’t Saddam comply with UN Resolution 1441, which gave him a “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations?” The 2nd in command of the Iraqi Air Force has said the weapons were flown to Syria in the months leading up to the war; was he telling the truth? Others claimed that the Russians moved the weapons and destroyed evidence of their existence. Duelfer said they could not “definitively say whether or not WMD materials were transferred out of Iraq before the war” and Kay said “There is ample evidence of movement to Syria before the war — satellite photographs, reports on the ground of a constant stream of trucks, cars, rail traffic across the border. We simply don’t know what was moved.” The only thing that can be said for certain, is that he did have them at one point (after all he used them); he did violate 17 UN resolutions asking him to account for them; and yet no large stockpiles have been found.
Despite the fact that no large stockpiles of WMDs were found, there are two reasons why this does not affect the decision to invade. The first is the simple fact that all decisions must, by definition, be limited to the evidence available at the time. It would be nice to be able to wave a wand and have all the information we would like, but then if such fantasies were possible, it would also be nice to just wave a wand and have all those who oppress and threaten others become nice friendly people. Magic wand do not exist, so unfortunately, decisions must be made in the real world, and given the evidence available at the time even most critics of the war believed Saddam had WMDs.
The second consideration is that given the fact that Saddam was in violation of UN resolution, as Donald Rumsfeld pointed out before the war, “the burden of proof is not on the United Nations or on the inspectors to prove that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The burden of proof is on the Iraqi regime to prove that it is disarming, as required by the successive U.N. resolutions.” It was Saddam responsibility to show that it did not have weapons, and yet they continually blocked and impeded the U.N. inspectors. If someone is holding a gun to a child’s head, and refuses numerous demands to put the gun down, and so is shot and killed by police, would it make the police’s decision to shoot wrong if it were later found out that the gun was not loaded? Of course not.
On the other hand, if we are going to focus on information learned after the invasion, along with fact that no large stockpiles of WMDs were found, we must also include the fact that Saddam Saddam intended to produce them after sanctions were dropped and worked hard to undermined them. One thing the war did uncover was that the Oil for Food program had been thoroughly corrupted by Saddam and was being used to funnel billions to undermine the sanctions. In fact, given what has been learned, it is very likely that some of the countries which opposed the war were being influence by Oil for Food money from Saddam. Thus without the war, it is very likely that by now the sanctions would have already collapsed and that Saddam would be producing WMDs.
So if one looks at all the evidence, in context, this still is a valid reason for the Iraq war. Though admittedly one that does not lend itself to the sound-bite debates that drive current politics. Still it was not the only reason, and in the next post I will look at some of the others reasons, some of which are just as much a factor for staying as for going in the first place.
A Review of Sam Harris' The End of Faith Part IV
May 18, 2007, Wausau, Wi— So far, in our review (I, II, III) Sam Harris’ The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, we have seen how Harris’s irrational view of religion has lead him to many false conclusions and beliefs. Harris attempts to back up some of his claims by pointing to scripture. Not too surprisingly his use of scriptures is just as uncritical as the claims he is trying to support.
For example, Harris writes, “Anyone who imagines that no justification for the Inquisition can be found in scripture need only consult the Bible to have his view of the matter clarified.” (p 82)He then goes on to cite Deuteronomy 13:12-16 which calls for the total destruction of any town that turns to worship other Gods. For Harris, this is evidence enough that the Church was following the “Good Book.” For Harris, there are no questions of historical setting or context. That these were instructions to the Jewish nation, given before they entered Israel, and thus, might not be applicable Christians in the Middle Ages seem to be irrelevant. The Bible said it, and that is good enough for Harris to use for his attack.
Not too surprisingly Harris not only ignores questions about context, he also ignores all the passages that conflict with his views. Passages such as 1 Peter 3:15-16 which says we should treat unbelievers with “Gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience” because “Christ died once for all.” Romans 12:14 which says we are to “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse” or 1 Corinthians 6:12 where Paul asks “What business is it of mine to judge those outside… God will judge those outside” and of judging those inside the church Paul said “Expel the wicked man from among you.” Based on this it is far more likely that it was Pope Leo the IX who was following the teaching of the Bible, when he said the maximum penalty for heresy should be excommunication, while later Popes took the inquisition, not from the Bible, but from a revival of Roman law, as mentioned in Part I.
While this scriptural error completely undermines one of Harris’ key claims, it is hardly the only one he makes. In his attempt to discredit the virgin birth, Harris incorrectly claims that the Greek word parthenos (virgin) was an “erroneous translation” of the Hebrews word alma which simply means “‘young woman’, without any implications of virginity.” (pg 95) While it may be in today’s culture that there is no connection to being a young woman and a virgin, that is hardly the case of the time of Isaiah, and in fact every use of alma in the Old Testament refers to a woman who was a virgin. Nor was it Matthew and Luke who were first to translate this as parthenos, as this is how the Septuagint, a Greek translation made several hundred years before Christ, translates Isaiah 7:14.
Harris’ further compounds his error by claiming that Mark and John “seem to know nothing about [the virgin birth]” because they do not mention it. Yet just because they do not mentioned it hardly means they don’t know about it. To claim that it does, commits the logic fallacy called argumentum ad silentio or an argument from silence. Then Harris finishes with yet two more errors. First he cites Romans 1:3 “born of the seed of David” and tries to claim that Paul meant by this that Joseph was Jesus’ father. The problem with this is that Joseph is not even mentioned in the passage, David is. Thus the two options would be that Paul was attempting to say that David was the father, or that Jesus was a descendant of David. Given the context, and the fact that David had been dead for about 1000 years, it is pretty easy to conclude that the latter was Paul’s point.
Harris concludes this comedy of errors with the truly bizarre claim that Paul’s statement in Galatians 4:4 and its reference to “born of a woman” also shows that Paul knows nothing of the virgin birth because he does not mention Mary’s virginity, which is again the irrational argument from silence.
Much the same could be said for his discussion of the verses that are supposed to teach anti-Semitism, though sadly here he can cite many examples of Christians throughout European history to support him. It is significant however, the many Popes taught against anti-Semitism, and the papal states were one of the safest places for Jews during this period. Nor is it insignificant that American Christianity looks to the Bible to justify their support of the Jews, in particular the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:2-3 to “bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”
Harris is correct, that Christians have during their history done great evil. But I would argue that it was not caused by following the Bible but was more from disobedience to God and his word. If Harris wants us to use reason over religion, perhaps he should start by taking a more rational approach to understanding what the Bible actually teaches.
This is Elgin Hushbeck, asking you to Consider Christianity: a Faith Based on Fact.
Part I Part II Part III Part V Part VI
Gas Insanity
Einstein famously defined Insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Based on this definition, we are clearly into insanity when it comes to gas prices. I have been observing this since the 1980s, and I am sure that it goes back before this. Every summer prices go up and people start grumbling about “Big Oil.” If they go up a lot, the politicians get involved, demanding investigations of the oil companies. The summer turns to fall, demand lessens and prices decline, people’s interests turns to other things. Then the results of the investigation come out and the oil companies are cleared. Net result? Nothing happens. Then the next summer comes and the whole thing repeats again, except that most years the problem slowly get worse. Insanity.
In reality there are two main problem here. The first is refineries. In 1982, there were 301 operable refineries in the United States. Currently the number of refineries is only 149, less than half the number. While from 1983 to 2006 average US Total Gasoline Sales by Prime Supplies went from 287 million to 378 million gallons per day. Not to surprisingly this has been accompanied by an increase in utilization rates for the refineries which are now over 90%.
This is why the prices jump whenever there is problem at a refinery. There is simply no slack in the system. So given that while we increased our consumption by 32%, we cut the number of refineries by over 50%, doesn’t it make more sense to at least consider building some new refineries as perhaps a better solution to higher gas prices?
The other major factor is the role of Government. Not only has its policies and regulations contributed the drop in refineries, its taxes also have a major effect not only at the federal level, but at the state level as well. The effect of states and county government can be seen in a nice map from GasBuddy.com. While some of the differences can be accounted for by transportation costs, looking over the differences in prices it is pretty clear that government is the major difference between having to pay $2.75 or $4.08 per gallon.
Perhaps if more people become aware of what is really driving the cost increases, then perhaps we can actually stop the current gas insanity.
