follow-up on collins

Many thanks to those of you who took the time and trouble to read and respond to my recent post on Francis Collins’ The Language of God. In one response, my friend Greg Crowther (sorry about tacking an “s” to the end of your name earlier) called my attention to Sam Harris and his review of Collins’ book. In light of Harris’ growing popularity and influence, and my own bewilderment as to why he has become such a force in popular thinking, I thought I’d offer a few additional thoughts.

First, I readily concur with Greg that in his recent Newsweek debate Harris comes out much better than his foil, Rick Warren. I’ve developed an appreciation for the social issues Warren has chosen to tackle over the last year, but he is a doer and not a thinker. As a result, instead of challenging Harris’ depiction of religion, and of Evangelical Christianity in particular, he fed right into his stereotypes. Harris got to shoot at mice in a bucket and come off looking adroit. He would not have had as easy a time against a more prepared theologian.

I also think that much of Harris’ critique of Collins is on target (Harris, “The Language of Ignorance,” www.truthdig.com). I agree that Collins embraces C.S. Lewis’ approach to philosophy and theology way too uncritically, and I don’t get his choice of moral law as the phenomenon that begs us to move beyond science into faith. (Recent evidence that the earliest humans flourished and survived not by their ability to kill predators but by their capacity to form communities offers a non-religious scientific basis for attributing moral codes to evolution.) However, throughout most of the article, Harris so grossly misrepresents Collins and builds his case on so many logical fallacies that I have to call him on it. “The Language of Ignorance” relies heavily on the kinds of synecdoches, equivocations and straw men that I’ve frequently come across in his other writings. I generally appreciate someone who can put a solid challenge up against faith, or specifically faith in Christ, but I find Harris’ work disappointing on this front for several reasons.

First, in his review of Collins, Harris neglects to differentiate between scientific conclusions and descriptions of a personal faith journey. Yes, Collins allows his theological imagination to turn to the Trinity when he sees a waterfall divided into three streams, but by no means does he put this forward as a reasoned defense of the faith, as per Harris’ accusation. I’ll grant that Collins goes too far when he contends that belief is more rational than unbelief—there is simply no standpoint sufficiently neutral to allow one to make a claim one way or the other—but the intent of The Language of God seems not to be to prove the faith scientifically, but to invite dialogue between believers and non-believers.

Second, ignoring the manifold interpretations of and responses to the gospel, Harris lumps all expressions of Christian faith into a single easily debunked caricature. He defines it as strict adherence to a flat, literal reading of Scripture, young-earth creationism, intolerance toward other faiths, a dispensational view of the end times, and adherence to apologetic arguments that most theologians have long relinquished. Then he decries those who deviate from this description for inconsistency. Returning to “The Language of Ignorance,” Harris implies that Collins rejects evolution, opposes stem cell research, and appeals to Einstein and Hawking as defenders of the Christian faith. In fact, on all three points, Collins specifically states otherwise. The faith that Harris rejects probably should be rejected; but it is not what I and myriad others embrace as the Christian gospel.

Finally, his appeal to religion’s failures and the evils it has spawned could just as easily (and just as wrongly) be turned against the history of Western science. Yes, we are the people who brought you the Crusades, the Inquisition, and Focus on the Family; and no one can ignore the role that religion has played in justifying genocide, ethnic hatreds, colonialism and terrorism. But before we reject the entire category of religion, we need to acknowledge the role that science has played in many of these same developments. The Tuskegee experiments and the biological tests conducted on Jewish captives during the Holocaust were purportedly carried out in the interests of science; scientific advances have put as at the brink of nuclear annihilation and global environmental devastation; and numerous scientific discoveries have been arrived at in ways that exacerbate the economic disparities between the rich and poor (the tremendous wealth and power centralized in the hands of a few pharmaceutical companies and the use of that influence to protect profits rather than to make their products available the world’s neediest citizens are just one example). Of course, such an argument against science would not hold up. In the first place, like good religion & theology, science is committed to the kind of dialogue and self-criticism that allows it to learn from its failures, to examine the ill effects to which it has been used, and to envision models that contribute more adequately to humankind’s wellbeing. And second, again like religion & theology, the human benefits yielded by science, while they in no way justify its failings, still give us reason to believe that it is a worthwhile endeavor.

As I’ve already said, I appreciate a well thought out argument against the faith. Furthermore, I think that the Christian church has benefited from the criticisms of such thinkers as Hume, Marx, Stanton, Nietzsche, and more recently Gould and Sagan, who have been able to point out its hypocrisy, intellectual dishonesty, and ignorance of the natural world. I just have trouble placing Sam Harris anywhere near this august company. He hasn’t given me anything to chew on.