I agree with much of what Sam Harris writes. When I don’t agree, it’s usually a question of degree. For instance, Harris recently ignited debate at his TED talk, in which he advocated science as an arbiter of moral decisions. While I support this effort in principle, I fear Harris is a bit too optimistic on the prospects of science to develop from a historically descriptive practice to a normative one, or, to put it another way, to rise above Hume’s (in)famous “is-ought” problem. In fact, one could review history and make a plausible case that science is often at its worse when it is used prescriptively. (The expected counterargument is that those examples are not examples of science, but pseudoscience used to further decidedly non-scientific agendas.)
I am not writing this to debate science’s role in morality, though. I believe a thoughtful debate can be had there. Rather, I am reacting to Harris’ recent article, Ground Zero Mosque from The Daily Beast. His first two sentences perhaps best sum up his position:
Should a 15-story mosque and Islamic cultural center be built two blocks from the site of the worst jihadist atrocity in living memory? Put this way, the question nearly answers itself.
Harris’ answer, in case the obviousness escaped you, is no.
I was reading the above article by Andrew Sullivan, and I got to thinking: the Vatican is welcoming all the misogynists and homophobes in the Anglican community to rejoin the Catholic church… how about the remaining Anglicans invite all the priests who’d like to get married or come out of the closet over to their side*. The Vatican gets the congregations, the Anglicans get the clergy. Sounds like an even trade to me.
Over at DiscoverMagazine.com, Chris Mooney takes issue with this blog post by Jerry Coyne on what Coyne calls “accomodationism” of religion in stances by the National Academy of Science and the National Center for Science Education, two leading scientific organizations in the US.
