In November 2006, Gary Wolf published an article in Wired magazine in which he used the term ‘new atheists’ to describe the recent insurgence of atheism popularized by men such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens.

Of course, atheism itself is nothing new. Throughout the ages there have always been those who were foolish enough to say there is no God. However, what is new, and perhaps unexpected in our postmodern era, is the virulent energy with which these men and their votaries have asserted their atheistic dogmatism.

Dawkins set the tone for ‘the new atheism’ in 2006 with his bestselling book The God Delusion (which I reviewed here). In it Dawkins argued that religious belief is not just false, but evil. It is so evil, in fact, that Christianity is like a virus threatening the very health of the human race. Government must respond to the challenge of religion, he argued, by measures such as criminalizing Christian education and removing the tax exemptions enjoyed by religious organizations.

Moral Absolutes Without God

Next to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris is probably the best respected of the new atheists. He distinguished himself in 2005 by writing The End of Faith, and a year later by writing Letters to a Christian Nation. These books attempted not only to undermine the central tenants of Christian belief, but also to show the harm that religion allegedly brings to society.

Harris’s 2010 publication, The Moral Landscape, takes up where Letters to a Christian Nation left off. If, as the New Atheists argue, religion is bad for the well-being of the human race, then what is the alternative? More specifically, if God does not exist, then how can human beings derive a sense of moral absolutes?

When Dawkins took up this problem in The God Delusion, he came about as close to conceding a point as Dawkins is capable of coming. The fact is, if God does not exist, then it is hard to maintain that our concepts of right and wrong have any ultimate legitimacy. Philosopher of science Michael Ruse articulated this position like this:

“The position of the modern evolutionist… is that humans have an awareness of morality… because such awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . Nevertheless . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction. . . and any deeper meaning is illusory…”

Harris disagrees. Moral absolutes can and do exist, he asserts, but they are not rooted in either God or biological evolution. Rather, they are grounded in neuroscience. This is the thesis of Harris’ entire book. It is to Harris’ credit that he managed to convince Richard Dawkins to change his mind, since Dawkins had previously argued that science was indifferent to questions of morality and value. As Dawkins confessed in an endorsement for Harris’ book:

“I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me.”

Not God But Neuroscience

Although The Moral Landscape constantly takes shots at religious belief, the main purpose of the book is not to try to disprove God. Rather, Harris goal is to establish that God is not required for living a fulfilled life and also that God is unnecessary as a foundation for objective ethical standards. According to Harris, it is the bourgeoning field of neuroscience that holds the key to everything we need to know about ethics and morality. As he summarized his project in the opening chapter:

The underlying claim [which this book aims to refute] is that while science is the best authority on the workings of the physical universe, religion is the best authority on meaning, values, morality, and the good life. I hope to persuade you that this is not only untrue, it could not possibly be true. Meaning, values, morality, and the good life must relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures – and, in our case, must lawfully depend upon e vents in the world and upon states of the human brain.

Harris then proceeds to take his reader on a fascinating tour de force of the latest discoveries in brain science and cognitive psychology. The information he shares gives insight into the human brain, and (though Harris would contest the point) indirectly supports an intelligent design framework.

A Reductionist Account of Morality

Where Harris goes wrong is when he takes his observations about the human brain and then tries to use them as the basis for a comprehensive theory of moral values. He can only achieve this by first subtly redefining goodness to mean human well-being and then reducing well-being to pleasure and finally reducing pleasure to brain-states that can be scientifically analyzed.

Harris’ entire project thus hinges on the assumption that being good and feeling good are equivalent conditions. He then conflates this subjective view of well-being with objective moral behaviour without bothering to fill in the gap. The gap, of course, is precisely what Peter Hitchens identified in The Rage Against God (which I reviewed here). Hitchens argued persuasively that without a transcendent standard external to ourselves, moral values inevitably collapse into subjectivity.

To his credit, Harris does seem to recognize this as a potential objection to his argument. However, he is cavalier in dismissing the relevance of this line of thought, saying:
“So how much time should we spend worrying about such a transcendent source of value? I think the time I will spend typing this sentence is already too much.”

Where then do values come from without a transcendent source? Harris’s answer is that they arise from correct reflection on the facts of human experience, especially the facts that either contribute to or diminish from human well-being. Because these facts can be scientifically measured and understood through attention to the human brain, it is possible to construct a theory of ethics based entirely upon science. Harris is very clear about this, as the following quotations indicate:

“Values, therefore, translate into facts that can be scientifically understood…” (p. 1)
“The more we understand ourselves at the level of the brain, the more we will see that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human values.” (p. 2)
“…moral truth can be understood in the context of science.” (p. 2)
“There are facts to be understood about how thoughts and intentions arise in the human brain… We will see that facts of this sort exhaust what we can reasonably mean by terms like ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ (p. 4)
“…we define ‘good’ as that which supports well-being… It seems clear that what we are really asking when we wonder whether a certain state of pleasure is ‘good,’ is whether it is conducive to, or obstructive of, some deeper form of well-being…” (p. 12)
“…I am arguing that science can, in principle, help us understand what we should do and should want – and, therefore, what other people should do and should want in order to live the best lives possible.” (p. 28)
“…science can resolve specific questions about morality and human values, even while our conception of ‘well-being’ evolves.” (p. 37)
“I believe that we will increasingly understand good and evil, right and wrong, in scientific terms, because moral concerns translate into facts about how our thoughts and behaviors affect the well-being of conscious creatures like ourselves.” (p. 62)

It is important to understand what Harris is not saying. He is not claiming that science can presently explain all the questions that arise about right and wrong. However, even where Harris acknowledges that answers may not be possible in practice, he does think it is possible in principle for all questions about moral values to eventually be answered by science. Indeed, because Harris reduces good and evil to chemical reactions in the brain, he even thinks it is theoretically possible that scientists may one day be able to find a ‘cure’ for evil. For example, Harris imagines a pill that people can take with their meals that would make it impossible for them to do anything evil for the rest of the day.

Atheist Dogmatism

Like other bestselling authors, such as David Brookes whose book The Social Animal I reviewed here, Harris is incredibly skilled at being able to popularise recent discoveries in brain science and cognitive psychology. However, he is incredibly week as a philosopher, leaving the reader unsure exactly how Harris has made the leap from his scientific observations to his reductionistic conclusions.

Much of the time, instead of actually arguing for his position, Harris appeals to the common sense of his reader. The book is peppered with statements such as, “I think there is little doubt” or “it seems uncontroversial.” Most of the time Harris can get away with this since he appeals to obvious examples that few of his readers would dispute, such as the wrongness of torturing children or the inappropriateness of Islamic terrorism. Having then secured the agreement of the reader with these seemingly black-and-white cases, Harris goes on to draw philosophical inferences which hinge on hidden assumptions that he never bothers to make explicit.

One of Harris’s hidden assumptions is a radically consequentialist theory of ethics. Another assumption which Harris never bothers to actually substantiate is that the mind and brain are the same. Since these and many other philosophical assumptions are integral to Harris’ entire project, it is unsatisfying that he does not bother to defend them.

One of the reasons that Harris can be so dogmatic is that he has arranged the categories of his argument so that his conclusions become tautologically true. Since he redefines the word ‘good’ to mean ‘the well-being of conscious creatures’, when he asserts that it is good to maximize a creature’s well-being good’ he is essentially saying that maximizing a creature’s well-being helps to the well-being of conscious creatures. While this is tautologically obvious if we accept Harris’s re-definition of the good, it is viciously circular and therefore communicates nothing meaningful to the reader.

The Problem With Well-Being

We would do well to question Harris’s assumption that human well-being is ultimately good. Indeed, if the atheist account of the universe is the correct one, it is hard to see what objective grounds we could have for knowing that human well-being is objectively valuable. If we are all the random products of time plus chance, why would we be obligated to privilege human well-being over the well-being of an insect or a cabbage?

Certainly as Christians we should be able to agree with the premium Harris puts on human well-being., even if Harris’ own worldview doesn’t allow for it.  After all, the Lord has designed reality in such a way that there is a link between objective morality and human well-being, especially if the latter concept can be broadened to include our well-being throughout eternity. Interestingly, Harris himself argues that the existence or non-existence of an afterlife must be factored into the well-being calculus. (“The rewards and punishments of an afterlife would simply alter the temporal characteristics of the moral landscape.” p. 18) However, since the existence or non-existence of an afterlife is outside the scope of Harris’ dogmatic empiricism, it is hard to see how this can be a consideration.

Conclusion

In the wake of Darwin, when people were just beginning to understand the fascinating world of biology, they believed it held the key to questions about human happiness, morality and survival. We know enough about biology now to realize that this naïve optimism was doomed from the start. Harris agrees, saying that “Most of what constitutes human well-being at this moment escapes any narrow Darwinian calculus….As with mathematics, science, art, and almost everything else that interests us, our modern concerns about meaning and morality have flown the perch built by evolution.” The new perch, Harris believes, is neuroscience, and he is just as optimistic as Europeans used to be about biology. Indeed, his optimism has no limits. Brain science, he argues, can bring us world peace, as well as solve the social, political economic and environmental problems that beset the human race going into the 21st century. One wonders how long it will take before Harris and others like him realize that neuroscience is just as inadequate as biology when it comes to answering questions of ultimate meaning.

The claim that neuroscience is capable of explaining good and evil is certainly intriguing, but it is significant that Harris can only postulate this after first carefully redefining good and evil in non-moral terms. And I freely admit that once goodness has been made equivalent to well-being, and once well-being has been made equivalent to pleasure, there is much that brain-science can tell us, just as there is much that brain science can tell us about how elephants and cats experience pleasure. What I dispute is that such observations bring us any closer to understanding questions of ultimate meaning and value.

The Moral Landscape book is not entirely bad. Not only does it contain much fascinating information about human behaviour, but Harris launches one of the most penetrating critiques against relativism that I have ever read. Because of his commitment to ethical absolutes, Harris’ reflections include many observations with which Christians can unapologetically affirm (for example, see the quotation I have posted here) He is also skilful at showing the flaws inherent in evolutionary accounts of human values. In the end, however, the alternative that Harris proposes dies the death of a thousand qualifications. For example, when I got to the following sentences, I found myself wondering what the point of his book even was:

…each of us is like a phenomenological glockenspiel played by an unseen hand. From the perspective of your conscious mind, you are no more responsible for the next thing you think (and therefore do) that you are for the fact that you were born into this world.” (p. 104)

“Gazzaniga is surely correct to say that ‘in neurosceintific terms, no person is more or less responsible than any other for actions.’ Conscious actions arise on the basis of neural events of which we are not conscious. Whether they are predictable or not, we do not cause our causes.” (p. 217)

Just think about that: if you and I have no control over what we do, and if we are not responsible for any of our actions, then it is hard to see how moral values can be said to exist. Indeed, within the framework of the scientific determinism that Harris espouses, objective ethical values cannot have any ultimate legitimacy. And that is precisely the point that Christian apologists have been making for centuries. As Christopher Hitchens articulated it in The Rage Against God: “for a moral code to be effective, the code must be attributed to, and vested in, a non-human source. It must be beyond the power of humanity to change it to suit itself.”

A shorter version of this article will be appearing in the January newsletter of the UK ministry Christian Voice. It is being publisher here with permission.