Oh For a Place to Stand

Archimedes is credited with stating the following.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

I thought of this quote, today, when I read the following words which were uttered by Sam Harris.

I happen to think that the scientific study of morality is the lever that, if pulled hard enough, will completely dislodge religion from the firmament of our concerns. The world religions will land somewhere near astrology, witchcraft and Greek mythology on the scrapheap. In their place we will have a thoroughgoing understanding of human flourishing, which will include even the most rarified and traditionally “spiritual” states of human consciousness.

These words of Harris’ were gleaned from a New Scientist piece titled Special report: Morality put to the test.  Specifically, the words were gleaned from the portion of the report titled Morality: ‘We can send religion to the scrap heap’, which is an short question and answer session with Harris.

Harris evidently desires to utilize science as the fulcrum for his lever to “dislodge religion” and send it to the scrap heap, but just as evidently Harris misunderstands the operating principles of a lever and a fulcrum, because proper utilization of a lever and fulcrum, and the mechanical advantage gained via proper utilization, decreases the amount of input force required to dislodge the offending object.  Any attempts to “pull hard enough,” in attempts to dislodge offending objects with a lever and fulcrum, will be futile if the fulcrum is not properly placed in relation to the lever and the offending object.

The issue here, regardless of Harris and his end of faith crusade, or the force he hopes to apply to his lever, is not religion, per se, but fundamental, dogmatic religions and their “it’s my way or the highway” mentalities, which, I believe, are not not godlike, but rather militant in nature, and I have no issues with dislodging fundamental, dogmatic religions or their militant drum beaters.

I, at this point in time and knowledge, do not see science dislodging religion, unless, as RicketyClick notes, the State hijacks Harris’ hypothesis, it’s science after all, for their own nefarious purposes.

I do not think that religion will ever be dislodge from man or society, but if it is dislodged, the following words, written by Malone Vandam back in June of this year, may be considered as prescient.

It’s pretty clear to me that America without its Scriptural underpinnings as the absolute referent for its values and mode of being looks increasingly like a postmodern Carthage, an atavistic society of degeneration that embraces a culture of death. The West and America have always seen degenerate behaviors but always had recourse to a transcendent vision that rejected them. Now we’re moving into what appears to be a phase of puritanical relativism, where degenerate behavior is normalized and the transcendent vision is rejected.

The individual as an embodied soul created in the image and likeness of God, whose duties and fidelities are infinitely more important than his appetites and urges, is reduced by puritanical relativism to a self-activating fetish who is further reduced to a bag of flesh no better than other animals and condemned to an empty and meaningless life and death.

That right there is the end of everything that we ever truly loved or was ever truly lovable about the high status of the individual in the West and America.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/21 at 05:38 PM

  1. “Scientific study of morality”...oh yeah, that worked so well for me. You can’t lift something with a lever if the fulcrum sits on the thing you’re trying to raise, no more than you can lift yourself by your own bootstraps. And you can’t have a “scientific study of morality” without presuming being moral enough to do the science without any shred of prejudice or self-interest. We haven’t seen that disinterest in climate study; how much less so in moral study. It’s been tried before, and failed.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  10/27  at  07:19 PM

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