He never ...

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All too often you revert to discussing “religion” as opposed to Christianity. The title of your section The Clash of Science and Religion provides just one example. In contrast, I will make clear the distinction between Christianity and other faiths you so freely subsume under the rubric “religion.” Christian orthodox belief, as construed for centuries in the tradition of the Protestant Reformation, makes some distinct claims about the nature and attributes of God that should be subject to scientific scrutiny. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project believes that, “If God exists, then He must be outside the natural world and therefore the tools of science are not the right ones to learn about him.” In contradistinction to Dr. Collins, I would suggest that while the essence of God Himself exists outside the physical universe, Christian claims about God can be addressed scientifically. Yet these claims will never be addressed scientifically given the current adversarial climate that exists between scientists and theologians. Your solution is to put an end to all religions. Since so many religions have proven themselves detrimental to society, you assume that none of them has any merit. Yet I would challenge you to put that assumption to the test. We agree that not all religions are true, but this doesn’t prove the falsity of every religion. It is possible that one religion is actually true. May I suggest that the reason Christianity represents the dominant faith in America today is because so many Americans have already put other religions (and atheism) to the test and found them wanting? Orthodox, evangelical Christianity has found support from soft sciences like archaeology, history, and philosophy. Christianity should be put to the test in the hard sciences as well.

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........left me wanting to read more

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You have the tendency to scoff at the suggestion that God might actually answer the prayers of His people. You write:

What was God doing while Katrina laid waste to their city? Surely He heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Do you have the courage to admit the obvious? These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.

Richard Dawkins also takes delight in emphasizing the impotency of prayer. He states that Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, made the first attempt to scientifically analyze whether or not prayer had any real effect. “He noted that every Sunday, in churches throughout Britain, entire congregations prayed publicly for the health of the royal family. Shouldn’t they, therefore, be unusually fit, compared with the rest of us. . .” Galton discovered that, statistically, no difference existed between the health of the royal family and the health of the rest of Britain.

We should also note that Francis Galton coined the term eugenics, which featured prominently in the rhetoric of Nazi Germany. Galton wrote:

We greatly want a brief word to express the science of improving stock, which is by no means confined to questions of judicious mating, but which, especially in the case of man, takes cognisance of all influences that tend in however remote a degree to give to the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable than they otherwise would have had. The word eugenics would sufficiently express the idea.

While Galton’s pioneering of the failed field of eugenics had no impact on the validity of his study of prayer, the reader may find the above sidebar interesting considering its huge impact on the events of World War II.

Richard Dawkins describes a study funded by the Templeton Foundation designed to experimentally test the effect of prayer on cardiac patients. They performed a double blind study using over 1800 patients, “all of whom received coronary bypass surgery.”

The patients were divided into three groups. Group 1 received prayers and didn’t know it. Group 2 (the control group) received no prayers and didn’t know it. Group 3 received prayers and did know it. The comparison between Groups 1 and 2 tests for the efficacy of intercessory prayer. Group 3 tests for possible psychosomatic effects of knowing that one is being prayed for.

Congregants in three different churches all located hundreds of miles away from the subjects of their prayers, each received the first name and last initial of each of the patients for whom they were to pray, and were told to include the phrase ‘for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.’ The study resulted in no significant difference between the groups who received prayer and the group that didn’t receive prayers.

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gripes my nerves to just read about people like that

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it's already *to be* done ... that's where I draw my comfort

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Could such an experiment have any real flaws? What constitute prerequisites of acceptable prayer from God’s perspective? The eminent Princeton theologian of the late nineteenth century, Charles Hodge, offered seven criteria.

Sincerity – “God is a Spirit. He searches the heart ... He cannot be deceived and will not be mocked ... Everyone must acknowledge ... with regard to the multitudes who, in places of public worship, repeat the solemn forms of devotion or profess to unite with those who utter them, without any corresponding emotions, the service is little more than mockery.”

Reverence – “Nothing is more characteristic of the prayers recorded in the Bible, than the spirit of reverence by which they are pervaded.”

Humility – “This includes, first, a due sense of our ... uncleanness in the sight of God as sinners.”

Importunity – “God deals with us as a wise benefactor. He requires that we should appreciate the value of the blessings for which we ask, and that we should manifest a proper earnestness of desire. If a man begs for his own life or for the life of one dear to him, there is no repressing his importunity.”

Submission – “Every man who duly appreciates his relation to God, will, no matter what his request, be disposed to say, ‘Lord, not my will but thine be done.’”

Faith – “We must believe. (a.) That God is. (b.) That He is able to hear and answer our prayers. (c.) That He is disposed to answer them. (d.) That He certainly will answer them, if consistent with his own wise purposes and with our best good.”

Asking in the name of Christ – “Our Lord said to His disciples ‘Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive.’ To act in the name of anyone is often to act by his authority, and in the exercise of his power ... When one asks a favour in the name of another, the simple meaning is, for his sake. Regard for the person in whose name the favour is requested, is relied on as the ground on which it is to be granted.”

How much sincerity is involved in repeating the same line over and over for many people? How importune were the prayers of the congregants when they were unaware of even the surnames of those for whom they were praying? Prayer, by its nature, is a very personal experience. The attempt to statistically analyze the effectiveness of prayer is doomed from the outset. Too many factors lie beyond the control of scientific experimentation.

You seem to find it unconscionable that God “could concern Himself with something as trivial as gay marriage or the name by which He is addressed in prayer ...” Yet, suppose you took a class in which a significant portion of the grade depended upon class participation. Let’s say fifty people take the class and the professor asks questions of specific individuals that lead into short class discussions. The professor has a system of asking ten questions per class of various people at random and grading their responses. Short discussions follow each question, and you avidly participate. However, you are unaware that the grades are based upon the initial answers. Worse yet, you do not realize that the professor has your name wrong in his grade book. Rather than Sam Harris, he has Saul Morris! Every time he directs a question to Saul Morris he gets no response. You assume this guy should have dropped the course weeks ago. Unfortunately, when the grades come out, you will hardly think it trivial that the professor got your name wrong.

Prayer is not meaningless babble to an “imaginary friend,” as you suppose. The active participation of God in the life of a Christian becomes more apparent throughout the life of that Christian. “God’s ultimate will is unchanging, but the way in which He chooses to realize this will is dependent on the prayers of his children” Prayers do actually seem to change the apparent course of events in the lives of believers. Does this mean that God constantly changes His mind? No. Rather, He is aware of the changes that take place, and their effects, before they happen. They only appear to us as changes because we do not have His omniscient perspective.

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You ask, “How difficult would it have been for the Gospel writers to tell the story of Jesus’ life so as to make it conform to Old Testament prophecy?” While this may appear simple to you, neither the writers, nor any individuals prior to them who may have known Jesus’ family personally, had the ability to direct the events of, say, Jesus’ birth, in such a way as to convince both Joseph and Mary that this was a normal birth. You claim, with respect to the virgin birth, that Luke and Matthew “relied upon the Greek rendering of Isaiah 7:14. The Hebrew text of Isaiah uses the word ‘almâ, however, which simply means ‘young woman,’ without any implication of virginity.”

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. - Isaiah 7:14

The Hellenistic ruler of the Egyptian Ptolemaic Empire, Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Alexandria commissioned the Greek rendering of the Hebrew Scriptures in the 260s BC, quite some time before the birth of Christ. The translators were a group of seventy-two Jewish Rabbis, six elders from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, all highly respected for their work. The non-Christian historian Josephus and the ancient philosopher Philo both ascribed divine inspiration to the translators of the Septuagint.

The Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran in 1947 included many fragments that agreed closely with the Septuagint, attesting to its place of honor among ancient translations. One of the scrolls found in Qumran also contained “a complete manuscript of the Hebrew text of Isaiah. It is dated by paleographers around 125 BC.”

The Hebrew word in the text that is translated virgin is "almah." It has a definite article in Hebrew as can be seen in the last word in the first line in the Hebrew text above. It is "ha'almah" or literally "the virgin." Only after the beginning of the Christian dispensation did Jewish scholars insist that the word means a young woman who is not necessarily a virgin and therefore they say a virgin birth was not predicted. Irenaeus is the first one to answer that argument and his points have not been improved upon. One of the most telling arguments he uses is that the Septuagint translators not only translated the verse here but they told what it meant, to them, before the advent of Jesus.

The Septuagint authors translated the Hebrew word ‘almâ into the Greek work parthenos, strictly translated “virgin.” Note also that the verse indicates that a sign would be given. Most would not consider such a common event as a “young woman giving birth” a sign. However, the uniqueness of a virgin giving birth would deem the event worthy of such a designation.

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The most interesting aspect of your moral philosophy of happiness sans suffering is its familiarity. I detect an implied hedonism in many of your comments. I don’t sense that you would agree with the Cyrenaics, who sought personal pleasure above all, especially sensual pleasures. They believed no benefit could be gained from logic or mental cogitation. The only knowable reality in Cyrenaicism was empirically recognized via the five senses. The Roman emperors Tiberius and Caligula sought this reality to an extreme. Epicureans still sought pleasure, but they recognized that the uncontrolled pursuit of pleasure often led to a decrease in pleasure later in life. They made it their goal to pursue pleasure in moderation. They also recognized that pleasure could be attained by gaining knowledge, a form of pleasure that the Cyrenaics rejected.

As a teenager Epicurus read frequently the works of Democritus, a pre-Socratic philosopher and scientist who, along with Leucippus, constructed a theory of nature strikingly similar to that of early twentieth-century science. In the 3rd and 4th centuries BC, Democritus and Leucippus described nature as composed of atoms, the smallest indivisible unit of matter. They considered all of nature to be composed of either atoms or vacuous space. Since these fundamental components of nature existed eternally, no need existed to include a concept of God. Democritus was a strict materialist, whose philosophy, developed from his scientific theories, parallels the philosophical views of most scientists today.

Democritus developed a very lofty set of rules for human behavior, urging moderation in all things along with the cultivation of culture as the surest way of achieving the most desirable goal of life, namely, cheerfulness.

“Epicurus thought that he had liberated man from the fear of God and from the fear of death.” Since death merely represented the cessation of natural existence, and the atoms that comprised humans no longer functioned, no pain or suffering could exist after death. What you’re trying to accomplish today by putting an end to faith, Epicurus already attempted over 2300 years ago!

Of course, if Epicurus had wholly eradicated faith in his time, we would be living in a completely secular culture today. Obviously, faith lived on. Within Epicurus’ sphere of influence an atheistic moral philosophy freely developed. His moral emphasis “focused upon the individual and his immediate desires for bodily and mental pleasures instead of upon abstract principles of right conduct or consideration of God’s commands.” Individual happiness became the guiding principle of human morality. Epicurus recognized that we all have a clear sense of the difference between pain and pleasure, and that we view pleasure as by far the more desirable. Hence, Epicurus’ philosophy focused on the avoidance of pain and the accrual of pleasure. Unlike the Cyrenaics, Epicurus recognized that a lifetime of pleasure would not come from drunken revelry and the unconstrained satisfaction of lust. He opted for a more moderate stance that avoided overindulgence. Yet, ultimately, like the Cyreniacs, the Epicureans lived as hedonists with a moral philosophy of self-absorption. They avoided concern for the needs of the poor and societal troubles unless they happened to impinge upon their individual happiness in some way. “The only function of civil society that Epicurus would recognize was to deter those who might inflict pain upon individuals.” The comparison between your morality and Epicureanism may fail if you truly do have a concern for the welfare of others, even those unknown to you. However, it succeeds in that neither you nor Epicurus has any warrant or rational impetus for such concern.

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Perhaps you prefer the utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill or Peter Singer. On Singer’s philosophy, you can never attain personal happiness unless you have something to be happy about, and one such focus should include your desire to increase the personal happiness of others. Unfortunately, this leads to the adoption of the concept of the greater good. Such utilitarianism may have argued that the institution of slavery in colonial America benefited more people in society than it harmed, hence it was good. This would have proven especially true for the slave owner. Since there was no way to quantify or measure the degree of pleasure derived by the general population or the degree of displeasure inflicted upon the slaves, the determination of the greater good came down to individual personal happiness. If you asked a utilitarian slave to judge the situation, his response would have differed greatly from the response of the slave owner.

In the last chapter of The End of Faith you point out your reluctance to criticize Buddhism, professing your proclivity toward Eastern thought. I might suggest that you are drawn to Buddhism, not by its rationality, but because it seems to highlight things you already personally desire, such as peace, love, freedom from suffering and, most of all, no God. Fundamental to Buddhist philosophy, however, we find the concept that we are all anātman, devoid of the self or the soul. This may appeal to you in light of your propensity toward reductive physicalism. However, how do you reconcile the Buddhist view of the 4 Noble Truths with rational western thought? Let me summarize the 4 Noble Truths:

Suffering exists.
The cause of suffering is desire.
The end of suffering requires the extinguishing of desire.
The way to extinguish desire is by following the Eightfold Path

I won’t delve into the Eightfold Path in this treatise, however, implicit within, one finds the necessity to desire freedom from desire. Not only is this intrinsically incoherent, but also utterly discordant with your desire to see The End of Faith.

In the end, I haven’t found a succinct statement of your philosophical beliefs. In The End of Faith you stated that, “The notion of a moral community resolves many paradoxes of human behavior.” Yet you go on to say that, “The problem of specifying the criteria for inclusion in our moral community is one for which I do not have a detailed answer.” Then you get to the crux of your problem and our difference. You state that we cannot simply categorize all humans as part of our moral community and all animals as not. You elaborate further by claiming, “Most of us suspect rabbits are not capable of experiencing happiness or suffering on a human scale. Admittedly we could be wrong about this. And if it ever seems that we have underestimated the subjectivity of rabbits, our ethical stance toward them would no doubt change.” Scientifically, almost all animals have pain receptors that cause them to avoid painful circumstances. An electric fence would hardly contain horses or cattle if not viewed as a deterrent. Since we have no way of assessing the happiness of animals, even though they feel pain, on your criteria we could not include them in the community.

How does the notion of a moral community, presumably that group deserving of especially humane treatment, resolve so many paradoxes when you cannot clearly define criteria for inclusion in it? Humanity, by virtue of the imago dei, is the only moral community you should seek, and the recognition of the sanctity of human life, regardless of subjectivity, Christians hold in the highest regard. Humanity includes humans at the earliest stages of development as well as humans, like Terri Schiavo or Christopher Reeve, who have suffered tragically.

Can you understand now why I mentioned the Cyrenaics earlier? You reserve your concern regarding inclusion in your moral community for any creature capable of experiencing happiness, pain or suffering now. In spite of the lifetime of potential human-scale happiness denied an aborted fetus, since they have no ability to suffer now, you exclude them from your moral community. Ultimately, if natural selection devoid of God brought us to where we are today, then we would have no one to turn to but ourselves for inclusion criteria. The acceptance of the God hypothesis signifies that the Christian’s moral community has already been determined.