Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson: New ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion’

(I)

Not content with reintroducing the public lecture and the Biblical commentary
as items of everyday cultural consumption, Jordan Peterson – along with Sam
Harris, Bret Weinstein and Douglas Murray – has revived the Dialogue on
Natural Religion.
It’s as if we were in Tusculum, outside Rome, in the summer of 45 BC, sitting in
the shade with Marcus Tullius Cicero and his friends as they discuss the nature
of the gods, and the ethical basis of right behaviour. Or as if we were in
Edinburgh in the mid-eighteenth century CE, as David Hume (heavily
influenced by Cicero) composes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
But no, we are in Vancouver, in 2018. Who could have guessed that a Dialogue
about religion – that ancient chestnut - would draw crowds of thousands to
the venues, plus online audiences of millions around the world, listening to the
podcast as they wash their dishes or walk their dogs?
The phenomenon indicates that there is a great hunger for intelligent debate
about metaphysical, religious, and ethical concerns, which has not been
recognised, let alone addressed, in the mainstream media for probably forty
years. It also suggests that despite the stream of books, TED talks and Guardian
articles declaring that with the rise of artificial intelligence everything has
changed, some things – such as that intellectual curiosity – have not changed
one iota since Roman times.
The Vancouver dialogues resemble those of Cicero in another way: it seems to
me that Sam Harris is a kind of Epicurean in some (though not all) of his beliefs.
This philosophy was the only one of the ancient Greco-Roman schools of
thought which explicitly rejected the role of the gods, as traditionally
understood; and Harris is best known as a persistent opponent of religion.
One of the most important Epicurean texts is a long poem called On the Nature
of Things by the Roman writer Lucretius (1st century BC). Lucretius dwelt
effectively on the way in which traditional religion frightens people with
threats of punishment in the next life. In a similar way, Harris in Vancouver
several times expressed his rejection of the way in which religious dogma can
threaten divine punishment. He did not expressly raise the problem of evil
(that I recall), but it seems likely that he might.
I have since begun to read Harris’s book The Moral Landscape (2010), to which
Peterson several times referred. Peterson recalled that in the book, Harris ‘laid
out’ (a favourite Peterson phrase) a comparison between a Bad Life and a
Good Life, urging people to move from the worse to the better. So far, so
agreeable to Peterson. But what, Peterson persistently asked, was Harris’ basis
for determining a better and a worse life?
Harris’ answer was to point to the relative states of ‘well-being’ between the
two, as his benchmark for better and worse. Peterson, it appeared, suspected
that this simply fudged the point.
In a similar way, Cicero and other ancient critics took issue with the
Epicureans’ equivocation around their central value. The Epicureans claimed
that their key value was ‘pleasure,’ but they were careful to insist that this
didn’t just mean nice meals and sex. In other words, Cicero riposted, their use
of the term ‘pleasure’ was not the same as most people’s ordinary usage. The
Epicureans’ usage smuggled in some undeclared other value/s which were
additional or alternative to pleasure.
Harris’ use of ‘well-being’ (or ‘well-bein’’as he invariably says it) is analogous to
the Epicureans’ emphasis on ‘pleasure.’ In his book Harris is at great pains to
insist that everybody surely will understand and agree with him that well-being
is some kind of ultimate good (Kindle version, pp. 16, 19). ‘What,’ he asks
rhetorically, ‘could be more important than genuine well-being?’ (p. 84).
Harris doth protest too much: he seems to be aware that people will be
sceptical, but he does not come out and confront obvious objections. We are
left to suspect that his ‘well-being’ may cover a multitude of undeclared
values.
To illustrate this with a common enough real-life case: a person, let’s call him
Mr W, might appear to be living a Good Life in the Harris sense – enjoy good
health, a successful marriage and a lot of money – but in fact be a bully and a
predator in the workplace. Is Mr W living a Harris Good Life, or a Harris Bad
Life, or some intermediate state? If Harris were to concede that it was a Bad
Life, he would have to acknowledge some other values apart from the well-
being of the person most concerned.
Harris might be able to argue that Mr W’s poor treatment of other people
reduced his own overall well-being, but this would be unconvincing. Yet if
Harris’ own ultimate value is the well-being of the greatest number of people
(which he appeared to suggest at times during the Vancouver meetings), it is
not clear why he seems to be so focused on individually Good or Bad lives.
Harris is certainly clear that whatever undeclared values he might have owe
little to evolutionary theory. Harris has cited extreme cases of bizarre
traditions which should, according to strict Darwinian principles, have died out,
but which have persisted in many cultures for centuries. Human and/or child
sacrifice was one which received some coverage in Vancouver.
Peterson, in response, attempted to rationalise even child sacrifice as an
extreme case of sacrifice in general, which he regards as, psychologically, the
practice of self-deprivation for a greater or long-term good. Peterson is
perhaps at his least convincing here, in attempting to rationalise a practice
which seems to challenge all rational, emotional, or evolutionary principles.
Harris insists that his value system is intimately inspired by science, but fails to
make clear exactly how. Here, too, he is echoing ancient Epicureanism. More
information about this may emerge as I proceed through The Moral Landscape.
It is to Harris’ credit that a large part of his animus against religion appears to
be against radical Islam in particular. There is this much, at the very least, to be
granted to Harris: that he is correct that one of the greatest obstacles to
debate in the world is dishonesty about fanatical and murderous Islamism, and
that – further – that militant Islamism is itself a terrible obstacle to good lives,
however understood. Neither Cicero, nor David Hume, could have imagined a
West where you could walk the streets of Rome or Edinburgh and be at risk of
being slaughtered like an animal, by fellow-citizens of a different religion. That
is a feature of our times, and adds a piquancy to this modern form of the
traditional Dialogue.
Yet nobody should forget, and Harris amply reminded us in Vancouver, that
fundamentalist Christianity, too, can present weighty obstacles to human
flourishing. If anyone is inclined to downplay this – to believe that such might
have been the case in former times, but not today – they should read the 2018
autobiography by Tara Westover, Educated.
This harrowing book describes the author’s childhood and adolescence in
Idaho during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, in a family of fundamentalist
Mormons. Fortunately, Westover and several of her siblings ultimately, and
after terrible tribulations, escaped this violent, ignorant, and oppressive
regime. Let us not, however, excuse or ignore such cruelty to children and
teenagers simply because its perpetrators were Christian rather than Muslim.
(To be continued)