Holy Terror
Religion isn't the solution -- it's the problem
Commentary: By Sam Harris Los Angeles Times August 15, 2004
Sam Harris -- www.samharris.org -- is the author of The
End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.
President Bush and the Republicans in the Senate have failed — for the moment
— to bring the Constitution into conformity with Judeo-Christian teachings.
But even if they had passed a bill calling for a constitutional ban on gay marriage,
that would have been only a beginning. Leviticus 20:13 and the New Testament book
of Romans reveal that the God of the Bible doesn't merely disapprove of homosexuality;
he specifically says homosexuals should be killed: "If a man lies with a
male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be
put to death."
God also instructs us to murder people who work on the Sabbath, along with adulterers
and children who curse their parents. While they're at it, members of Congress
might want to reconsider the 13th Amendment, because it turns out that God approves
of slavery — unless a master beats his slave so severely that he loses an
eye or teeth, in which case Exodus 21 tells us he must be freed.
What should we conclude from all this? That whatever their import to people of
faith, ancient religious texts shouldn't form the basis of social policy in the
21st century. The Bible was written at a time when people thought the Earth was
flat, when the wheelbarrow was high tech. Are its teachings applicable to the
challenges we now face as a global civilization?
Consider the subject of stem-cell research. Many religious people, drawing from
what they've heard from the pulpit, believe that 3-day-old embryos — which
are microscopic collections of 150 cells the size of a pinhead — are fully
endowed with human souls and, therefore, must be protected as people. But if we
know anything at all about the neurology of sensory perception, we know that there
is no reason to believe that embryos at this stage of development have the capacity
to sense pain, to suffer or to experience death in any way at all. (There are,
for comparison's sake, 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly.)
These facts notwithstanding, our president and our leaders in Congress, many of
them citing religious teachings, have decided to put the rights of undifferentiated
cells before those of men and women suffering from spinal cord injuries, full-body
burns, diabetes and Parkinson's disease.
Of course, the Bible is not the only ancient text that casts a shadow over the
present. A social policy based on the Koran poses even greater dangers. Koran
9:123 tells us it is the duty of every Muslim man to "make war on the infidels
who dwell around you." Osama bin Laden may be despicable, but it is hard
to argue that he isn't acting in accord with at least some of the teachings of
the Koran. It is true that most Muslims seem inclined to ignore the Koran's solicitations
to martyrdom and jihad, but we cannot overlook the fact that some are not so inclined
and that some of them murder innocent people for religious reasons.
The phrase "the war on terrorism" is a dangerous euphemism that obscures
the true cause of our troubles, because we are currently at war with precisely
a vision of life presented to Muslims in the Koran. Anyone who reads this text
will find non-Muslims vilified on nearly every page. How can we possibly expect
devout Muslims to happily share power with "the friends of Satan"? Why
did 19 well-educated, middle-class men trade their lives for the privilege of
killing thousands of our neighbors? Because they believed, on the authority of
the Koran, that they would go straight to paradise for doing so. It is rare to
find the behavior of human beings so easily explained. And yet, many of us are
reluctant to accept this explanation.
Religious faith is always, and everywhere, exonerated. It is now taboo in every
corner of our culture to criticize a person's religious beliefs. Consequently,
we are unable to even name, much less oppose, one of the most pervasive causes
of human conflict. And the fact that there are very real and consequential differences
between the major religious traditions is simply never discussed.
Anyone who thinks that terrestrial concerns are the principal source of Muslim
violence must explain why there are no Palestinian Christian suicide bombers.
They too suffer the daily indignity of the Israeli occupation. Where, for that
matter, are the Tibetan Buddhist suicide bombers? The Tibetans have suffered an
occupation far more brutal. Where are the throngs of Tibetans ready to perpetrate
suicidal atrocities against the Chinese? They do not exist. What is the difference
that makes the difference? The difference lies in the specific tenets of Islam
versus those of Buddhism and Christianity.
There are now more people in our country who believe that the universe was created
in six solar days than there were in Europe in the 14th century. In the eyes of
most of the civilized world, the United States is now a rogue power — imperialist,
inarticulate and retrograde in its religiosity. Our erstwhile allies are right
not to trust our judgment. We elect leaders who squander time and money on issues
like gay marriage, Janet Jackson's anatomy, Howard Stern's obscenities, marijuana
use and a dozen other trifles lying at the heart of the Christian social agenda,
while potentially catastrophic problems like nuclear proliferation and climate
change go unresolved.
We elected a president who believes the jury is still out on evolution and who
rejects sound, scientific judgments on the environment, on medical research, on
family planning and on HIV/AIDS prevention in the developing world. The consequence,
as we saw in recent elections in Spain, is that people who feel misled and entrapped
by our dogmatic and peremptory approach to foreign policy will be unable to recognize
a common enemy, even when that enemy massacres hundreds of people in their nation's
capital.
It is time we recognize that religious beliefs have consequences. As a man believes,
so he will act. Believe that you are a 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 only
a matter of being asked to do it. Believe that "life starts at the moment
of conception" and you will happily stand in the way of medical research
that could alleviate the suffering of millions of your fellow human beings. Believe
that there is a God who sees and knows all things, and yet remains so provincial
a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual acts between consenting adults,
and you will think it ethical to punish people for engaging in private behavior
that harms no one.
Now that our elected leaders have grown entranced by pseudo-problems like gay
marriage, even while the genuine enemies of civilization hurl themselves at our
gates, perhaps it is time we subjected our religious beliefs to the same standards
of evidence we require in every other sphere of our lives. Perhaps it is time
for us to realize, at the dawn of this perilous century, that we are paying too
high a price to maintain the iconography of our ignorance.
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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times
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RESPONSES
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: The Beliefs That Drive Us (August 21, 2004) Re
"Holy Terror":
I've been waiting and hoping for someone to put it right out there: The world's
greatest enemy today (or ever, for that matter) is religion. Our greatest enemy
is the person or the people or the nation whose actions are driven solely by beliefs
instead of facts, by blind faith instead of informed knowledge.
Our seeming willingness to base our entire existence upon divine revelations that
may or may not have been passed on to one, single, handpicked human — Abraham,
Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Jim Jones, David Koresh, doesn't matter
— is a lunatic abrogation not only of our (some would say God-given) ability
to think for ourselves, but of our duty to do so.
As long as we allow 4,000 years of wildly disparate and forever unprovable beliefs
to decide who is good and who is bad, who is friend and who is foe, there will
never be peace on Earth.
David Butler
Los Angeles
*****
In a concluding section of his article, Sam Harris writes, "As a man believes,
so he will act." This is as true for atheists as it is for those who are
religious. Capitalism is composed of a set of beliefs that influence actions as
much as any religion; nationalism too is an overarching structure that influences
beliefs and actions.
Sometimes these sets of ideas are used to lay off thousands of people in order
to guarantee profits for shareholders and corporate executives, or to create reasons
for national defense that may not leave a nation safer.
The point of this is to say that any belief system can be interpreted to do good
or bad things, that religion is not a problem; it is individual believers and
those who teach these faiths. The lack of awareness of this basic fact by Harris
leaves his claim to be one who speaks of "reason" a bit suspect.
Bob Untiedt
Los Angeles
*****
Laced among the lofty admonitions to love in the sacred scriptures of world religions
lie passages that recommend intolerance and violence toward outsiders. It's a
credit to the decency of most people that they do not act on these "sacred"
passages. In this sense, you could say that most people are better than their
religion.
Unfortunately a few people, rare and deviant (but arguably faithful to their scriptures),
allow such passages to fuel religious ferocity. To restrain this indecent minority,
the decent majority of religious people should make explicit what they accept
tacitly, i.e., that parts of their sacred scriptures are not sacred, are not revelatory
and are indeed sub-ethical and immoral by present-day standards. If religious
people admit this and religious leaders preach it, then perhaps religious violence
will cease.
Joe McKenna
Irvine
*****
Harris states the obvious when he says religious beliefs have consequences. Does
he believe nonreligious beliefs do not? Is he ignorant of the persecution of homosexuals
in atheist (Marxist) societies? Has he compared the number of killings by governments
avowedly anti-religious (Soviet Russia, Communist China, Khmer Rouge Cambodia)
with those done by governments professing belief in religion? I fail to understand
the point of Harris' piece.
Samuel F. Rindge
South Pasadena
*****
Congratulations to Harris for saying what not only needed to be written but needs
to be discussed nationally.
Religious texts should be given no heed when directing social policy and lawmaking
in this country. If you've any doubt, try convincing the majority in this nation
to use the Koran, Tenfold Path to Divinity or the writings of Robert Ingersoll
as a legislative guide and watch the melee ensue.
In America all beliefs (and nonbelief) are to be respected equally in the eyes
of the law. That's what's made us great.
Believers in this nation should be grateful that they are free to do whatever
their faith teaches, and that their neighbor has been given that same right. Let
them work within their own faith communities to teach what they hold as true,
and respect others' right to do the same.
Are some so uncertain of their beliefs that they must see them passed into law
for them to feel good about themselves? What ever happened to the Golden Rule?
Ellen Brown
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
San Diego
*****
Harris rightly points out the dangerous dimensions of much religion but ignores
the profoundly humane side of many religious traditions, both ancient and modern.
Harris acknowledges that "there are very real and consequential differences
between the major religious traditions," but his article makes it appear
that all religions — except perhaps Tibetan Buddhism and Palestinian Christianity
— are equally problematic.
To the extent that Harris offers a picture of religion that is uncritical and
undifferentiated, his attack on religion is as much a part of the problem as the
irresponsible side of religion he wants to expose.
Richard T. Hughes
Malibu
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Copyright 2004 Los Angeles Times