Yesterday I got a flurry of comments from people criticizing my earlier piece on the debate between Harris and Sullivan. It came apparently from a reference to that piece on Sullivan's Daily Dish in which Sullivan seems to think my piece about this debate is pro-Harris. I'm the "post modern Catholic" he refers to. Oh well. Anyway, since this post is almost a week old, I thought that I'd post my response to the commenters here. If you are interested to read the original post and their comments to it, go here.
To Thom and Vid who object to the singing analogy: The point of it was not to prove the existence of God but to say that you have to evaluate the religious behavior and thought on a qualitative rather than a quantitative basis. To say that religion is bad because most relgionists are not good at religion is the same as to to say that singing is bad because most people are bad at singing. And Thom, is there really an objective, scientific way to evaluate the quality of someone's singing or doesn't it always come down to subjective judgment? Lots of people find Bach boring. By what objective scientific standard can they be proven wrong? You can't. All you can say is that they haven't awakened to the beauty and depth of almost everything he composed.
So when you encounter the religious testimony of people like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and so many others down through the ages, why should anyone doubt them? Their experience may not be yours, but maybe they know something you don't. And it does take a certain kind of arrogance to think that these people are deluded because there is no rational basis for their beliefs. Believe me, they feel no need to prove the existence of God--it is you who have the need for it.
Vid--toward the end of your comment, you seem to be drawing a distinction between transcendent spiritual experience and organized religion. I am sympathetic to that argument, because too often, the "bad singers" rise to the top in ecclesial organizations. That's a whole other subject. I would say though that because the bad singers work their way into management positions doesn't mean that for all the mistakes and crimes they have committed, the real singers don't get their time on the stage.
To Wild Bill, Lance, and Joshua who take exception with my characterization of atheism, I think you're playing word games. I use the word in its common-sense usage, which according to my dictionary is "the theory or belief that God does not exist."
So Lance, yes it is a belief system. To say that atheism just means being without God or not caring whether God exists collapses the distinction between atheism and agnosticism, because agnostics could just as easily be described as not having a god. And Lance, if atheists like you go about your life not worrying about whether gods exist, why are you spending so much time reading and commenting on posts like this one? And the same is true for Harris. Why does he feel compelled to spend so much of his energy on the subject?
Wild Bill--What should atheists believe instead? Well believe whatever you want, but if you think that the only kind of knowing is based on the evidence of the senses, then you're living in a cave. Nothing much more to say about that. I can't prove that there's a reality outside your cave, I can only state what I know and that what I know is corroborated by some of the greatest people in the history of mankind.
Joshua--In fact I suspect that there is something quite real about the Hindu and Greek gods, but as a Trinitarian Theist I would make the distinction between the uncreated Godhead and the many created spiritual beings who exist in a supersensible or transcendent dimension that intersects with our own. I take the testimony of all the world's religions seriously, including shamanic and animistic religions. I believe that they, too, know things that we soul-shriveled, heady moderns don't. But as with all matters of this sort, there is a quality scale on which such testimony must be evaluated. Superstition, to use my singing analogy, is the crudest kind of croaking.
I guess what interests me about these comments is their insistence that there be proof. But in how many things in life that are important to us is there proof? We live 90% of our life making decisions about relationships, careers, business, sports without knowing with scientific certainty that our knowledge is true. Why is it that these people insist on scientific certainty with regard to the existence of God? Certainty is overrated; it's a fetish and as such an idol of the mind. You need it in engineering, but in most other things you don't.
Late Postscript: Did anybody see this week's episode of "House?" I was very impressed with its intensity and intelligence in confronting these issues. It was also was a very eloquent illustration of the kind of "relational" knowing that I talk about in the comments section of the first Sam Harris post. The kind of truth that matters most deeply to any of us is usually an I-and-Thou event. That's something that the rationalist House wants to resist with all his will, but the young rape victim who challenged him in this episode almost broke through.