A Narrow Moral Horizon

I have just read Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values (Free Press, 2010).  If you are hoping to find in it an alternative to the doctrinaire portrayal of "religion bad -- science good" formula that has flourished in recent years, don't bother.  As is common with commentators who compare religion and science (Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking, et. al.) religion is portrayed here as dogmatic and obscure.  This makes the science part looks great by comparison.  In fact, Harris prefers to look at morality as "an undeveloped branch of science," (4) and not as a central problem in the broader philosophical, theological, social and cultural contexts that would have formed for Harris' book a broader horizon.  The morality Harris trumpets is based on a combination of Western, upper-middle class materialism and friendly Dr. Phil psychology.  "Well-being," the goal at which morality strives, is reported here to be simply something "like the concept of physical health," (11) as "perpetually open to revision" and "good." (12)  OK, this is close, but exactly what is it?  Aristotle's remarkably durable definition that happiness is virtue seems if not more accurate, at least more daring.  In a revealing footnote, Harris admits that he did not analyze Aristotle's definitions because he did not want to be "beholden to the quirks of the great man's philosophy." (195n9)  Nor does he allow that religion is worth wasting much time on.  For him, religious belief is merely self-deception and no self-respecting scientist should ever utter religious nonsense, even in private life. (162-176)  One must choose either religion or science.  One cannot have both.  What seems especially unscientific about this is the abandonment of skepticism, leaving us potentially with scientists who no longer view religion as worthy of being doubted.  Instead, such claptrap should be permanently off-limits to scientific skepticism, Harris would probably argue, because some ideas do not deserve to be kept alive in this way.  But scientists are supposed to be skeptical about everything, including such "settled science" as the definition of gravity, which we still don't really fully understand, or theories about the limits of the velocity of matter, which may now be in jeopardy.  With all that said, science seems much less firm a foundation for morality than Harris would admit.  At the same time, religion is not quite as dogmatic as he claims.  Broad swaths of Christian and Jewish scholarship are founded on the notions that the Garden of Eden was symbolic, that Job never really had it out with God, and that Luke did not videotape the Sermon on the Mount.  Furthermore, the Ten Moral Principles of the Torah trace the contours of a very satisfying and stable moral landscape, even if one does not consider them commandments.  Such propositions as these make religious faith as intellectually stimulating as it is emotionally satisfying, and yet the enduring moral principles of religion are not diminished by considering them.   It is too bad Harris did not take a more enlightened view of religion or a more skeptical view of science, because both attitudes are important for enduring and practical moral reasoning.  Such reasoning is needed now as much as ever.