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“The End of Faith?”
By Rev. Ann Schranz, Interim Minister
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Santa Cruz County
April 2, 2006
Those who know me well do not want to be invited over to my place for
a home-cooked meal. “How about if we go out to eat?” they say. Or
“How about if I bring the main dish?” Or “Thank you for the invitation,
but I’ll be washing my hair at that time. How about if you come over to
my place for dinner instead on another day?” What could turn otherwise
open-minded people into such cowards? It has to do with my
philosophy of cooking, which is this: Anything that tastes good
separately, tastes better together.
This has resulted in some unusual food combinations that turn even the
most adventurous into the very timid. “How bad could it be?” you may
be thinking. One of my recent concoctions will illustrate the scope of
the scandal. Here is the recipe: Mix together canned tuna, mustard,
string cheese (cut into small pieces, across the grain), Raisin Bran cereal,
and a splash of vinegar. Microwave for one minute, and serve. Next
time, I will add diced dill pickles into the mix.
The literary equivalent of my philosophy of cooking is a book by Sam
Harris entitled The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of
Reason. He combines ideas that are tasty and nutritious separately, but
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the ideas are not better when mixed together. One difference between
Sam Harris and me is that he has a lot of people coming over for dinner.
The End of Faith was published in hard cover in 2004, it won a major
literary award for nonfiction, and now it is out in paperback. A member
of the congregation loaned me the book and suggested that I might
preach on it and give the congregation a chance to respond to its ideas.
Later in the service, there will be a time for Congregational Response.
Before I highlight a few of Sam Harris’ main points, I will say this about
him. He is a graduate in philosophy from Stanford University. He has
studied both Eastern and Western religious traditions, along with a
variety of spiritual disciplines, for 20 years. He is now completing a
doctorate in neuroscience, studying the neural basis of belief, disbelief,
and uncertainty. On the back of the title page of each book published
these days is a listing of the categories into which they fit. The librarian
who categorized The End of Faith may never again categorize a single
book quite this way: 1) Religion – Controversial literature, 2) Terrorism
– Religious aspects, 3) Psychology, Religious, and 4) Secular humanism.
The only change I would make is to also list this as a book about
mysticism, for in it, Sam Harris elevates mysticism and puts down belief,
faith, organized religion in general, and Islam, in particular.
Here are some direct quotes by Sam Harris from The End of Faith:
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“Ideas which divide one group of human beings from another, only to
unite them in slaughter, generally have their roots in religion.”1
“Criticizing a person’s ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be
impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics and history is
not.”2
“Moderates of every faith are obliged to loosely interpret (or simply
ignore) much of their canons in the interests of living in the modern
world. No doubt an obscure truth of economics is at work here:
societies appear to become considerably less productive whenever large
numbers of people stop making widgets and begin killing their
customers and creditors for heresy.”3
“By failing to live by the letter of the texts, while tolerating the
irrationality of those who do, religious moderates betray faith and reason
equally.”4
“Because most religions offer no true mechanism by which their core
beliefs can be tested and revised, each new generation of believers is
condemned to inherit their superstitions.”5
1
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris, W.W. Norton & Company, New York,
p. 12.
2
Ibid., p. 13.
3
Ibid., p. 17.
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“Without death, the influence of faith-based religion would be
unthinkable. Clearly, the fact of death is intolerable to us, and faith is
little more than the shadow cast by our hope for a better life beyond the
grave.”6
“As a man believes, so will he act. Believe that you are the member of a
chosen people, awash in the salacious exports of an evil culture that is
turning your children away from God, believe that you will be rewarded
with an eternity of unimaginable delights by dealing death to these
infidels – and flying a plane into a building is scarcely more than a
matter of being asked to do it. It follows, then, that certain beliefs are
intrinsically dangerous.”7
“Should Muslims really be free to believe that the Creator of the
universe is concerned about hemlines?”8
“Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all
the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death.”9
4
Ibid., p. 21.
Ibid., p. 31.
6
Ibid., p. 39.
7
Ibid., p. 44.
8
Ibid., p. 46.
9
Ibid., p. 123.
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“Our collusion with Muslim tyrants – in Iraq, Syria, Algeria, Iran,
Egypt, and elsewhere – has been despicable . . . But our culpability on
this front must be bracketed by the understanding that were democracy
to suddenly come to these countries it would be little more than a
gangplank to theocracy. There does not seem to be anything within the
principles of Islam by which to resist the slide into sharia (Islamic law),
while there is everything to encourage it. This is a terrible truth that we
have to face: the only thing that currently stands between us and the
roiling ocean of Muslim unreason is a wall of tyranny and human rights
abuses that we have helped to erect. This situation must be remedied,
but we cannot merely force Muslim dictators from power and open the
polls. It would be like opening the polls to the Christians of the
fourteenth century.”10
“Our enemy is nothing other than faith itself.”11
“Respect for diversity in our ethical world views is, at best, an
intellectual holding pattern until more of the facts are in.”12
Here ends the excerpts from The End of Faith by Sam Harris. I
encourage you to read the book because many of the ideas are tasty and
nutritious. Many of the ideas are good separately but are not so good
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11
Ibid., p. 132.
Ibid., p. 131.
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when linked together in quite the way he links them together. Both Sam
Harris and I need remedial cooking lessons. Seriously, I would respond
to Sam Harris one way if he and I were talking to each other. But the
context here is different. This is a sermon delivered to a Unitarian
Universalist congregation, not a radio or television talk show, not the
Op-Ed section of a newspaper, and not a blog in cyberspace, which
brings us to a religious question: What is the context? In the case of
this book, a sensitivity to context is lacking. Many things are true at
once. Wisdom is a matter of focus.
Even in liberal Western democracies, there are limits on free speech. It
is immoral, if not illegal, to yell “fire” in a crowded theater. The world
we live in is a crowded theater. As Sam Harris points out, one
difference between religious conflicts today and the religious conflicts of
medieval Europe 500 years ago is the weapons. We live in a crowded
theater. Let us choose our words carefully. As one who was educated
as a journalist, the phrase “no prior restraint” has deep meaning. I am
not proposing censorship. I am proposing that we be as blunt and direct
as necessary, in the same spirit of bluntness and directness that Sam
Harris demonstrates so well. So, here goes . . .
12
Ibid., p. 182.
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Yes, there are levels of development in every sphere of life, including
religious or spiritual development. As Ken Wilber says, “There are four
major stages of spiritual unfolding: belief, faith, direct experience, and
permanent adaptation: you can believe in Spirit, you can have faith in
Spirit, you can directly experience Spirit, you can become Spirit . . . “13
(This quick overview leaves out the importance of unbelief and lack of
faith in preparing one for direct experience.) Back to the matter at hand
-- Yes, direct experience is a more comprehensive level of development
than belief or faith. In other words, I grant Sam Harris his main point.
And do you know what? That is the least important and most
misleading of all points that could be made about wise and
compassionate living.
It is misleading because it overemphasizes “transcendence” – the sense
of identity with dynamics larger than the small self. It is misleading
because it neglects the equivalent importance of “immanence” – the
humble and often doubt-filled experiments in right thought, right speech,
and right action in this very messy and complicated world. In other
words, what goes up, must come down. I once put it this way, “The ego
provides traction for transcendence and an infrastructure for immanence.
The ego is not chopped liver.” Across cultures and across the ages,
religion has focused too often on traction for transcendence and has
13
The Essential Ken Wilber: An Introductory Reader, p. 176.
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failed to focus often enough on infrastructure for immanence. In this
way, Sam Harris, among others, gives mysticism a bad name.
Here is what is more important than the place of direct experience in the
hierarchy of spiritual comprehensiveness: Every level of development
has its own potential for relative health or relative pathology. Rather
than encouraging people to develop further, we should encourage people
to be relatively healthy instead of relatively pathological at whatever
level of development they are at. Health at any level trumps movement
to a more comprehensive level. Since Sam Harris singles Islam out for
special treatment, I will use Islam as an example. Rather than imagining
that Muslims would be better off by moving from belief through faith to
direct experience of dynamics beyond the small self, we should
encourage healthy belief, not pathological belief and healthy faith, not
pathological faith. Health at any level should trump movement to a
more comprehensive level. This should guide us regarding all religious
and secular traditions, not just Islam. If we cannot think of ways to
encourage healthy belief and healthy faith, our lack of imagination is the
log in our own eye to which we should attend before worrying about the
speck of dust in the eye of our neighbor.
I conclude with one final point about The End of Faith. Adversaries
often become like each other, which is why we should choose our
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adversaries carefully. Sam Harris criticizes Islam for its ideas of jihad
and martyrdom. He rightly notes that religions promising a better world
after death set their followers up to downplay the value of this life. This
is true of Christianity, Islam, and other traditions. One’s attitude toward
death influences one’s attitude toward life. See what you gather about
his attitude toward death from this comment that Sam Harris made to a
book reviewer: “I am not as optimistic as I'd like to be. It is an
interesting state to be in, psychologically speaking, because I feel very
motivated to make the case against religion, but I don't see any real basis
for hope that anything will change for the better. It seems very likely
that we have spent too long in the company of bad ideas to now arrest
our slide toward the brink. I hope I'm wrong about this, but I would not
be surprised if the human experiment runs radically off the rails in our
lifetime.”14
[end quote]
Perhaps I am being too harsh, but this reminds me of Christian
Apocalypticism – meaning a belief or hope that the Apocalypse, the End
Times, are near. This also reminds me of Islamist jihad (in the
unhealthy sense of jihad). Now, everyone must make his or her peace –
or not – with the reality of death. And not everyone is blessed with a
sunny disposition. I truly wish the best for Sam Harris and for those
who resonate with his world view. As for me, I do not cast my lot with
14
See this website: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/542154/103-4407550-4985433
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the Christian Apocalypse, with Islamist jihad, or with those who think
that we have spent too spent too long in the company of bad ideas to
now arrest our slide toward the brink.
Instead, I am with Adrienne Rich, who writes:
“My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those who, age after age,
Perversely, with no extraordinary power,
Reconstitute the world.”
May it be so.