Harris, Religion, Rape

The Harris religion and rape issue is inflaming opinion, still. This particular storm is about the comment he made in an interview with Bethany Saltman in 2006, and this particular sentence:

"I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."

The Beginning

But let's go back to where it started, with his book, Letter To A Christian Nation, 2006, which prompted the Saltman interview.

Naturally, for religious people that haven't read the book but who like to pick up on the nasty things atheists say on their journey to eternal damnation in the next life, then the whole concept of comparing their precious religion with rape is pretty shocking. And it looks like Harris has handed them a stick with which they can give him a damned good thrashing.

Trouble is, in their rush to read only the bad, they miss the point. Here's the section from the book where rape is first raised.

"As a biological phenomenon, religion is the product of cognitive processes that have deep roots in our evolutionary past. Some researchers have speculated that religion itself may have played an important role in getting large groups of prehistoric humans to socially cohere. If this is true, we can say religion has served an important purpose. This does not suggest, however, that it serves an important purpose now. There is, after all nothing more natural than rape. But no one would argue that rape is good, or compatible with a civil society, because it may have had evolutionary advantages for our ancestors. That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization."

Here he is clearly using it to point out that because something has natural origins we don't have to think it acceptable behaviour now. It's used as an analogy.

But it's an analogy that many religious people don't get. And because they don't get it they've come over all of a froth, because of the dreaded word 'rape' - such a taboo word.

Analogies

My pop-psychology point of the day is that religious people are so used to selective reading when it comes to the holy books, so used to interpreting anything they read in order to give an affirmative bias towards their religion and a negative bias against anything that challenges it, that they are simply confused by analogies, not knowing when to read something literally and when to interpret it as an analogy, or even how to figure out what work the analogy is doing.

Here's a case in point. Suem wonders why there is so much outrage over Xola Skosana's sermon that included 'Jesus with HIV analogy'.

Suem asks, "Don’t people understand that analogies and metaphors are not meant to be definitive statements" - No they don't.

They don't get The Flying Spaghetti Monster, or fairy analogies. Here the point of the analogy is not to liken God to the obviously ridiculous FSM or fairies.

The FSM analogy is about the reasoning that gets you from some hypothesis, such as there is a God, or there is an FSM, to a full explanation, a theology, and even descriptions of characteristics of this hypothetical entity, without any evidence whatsoever.

The whole point of picking obvious nonsensical entities as the object of belief is to show that the same reasoning or faith that gives you God can give you these others; and so the reasoning and the faith is a flawed way of acquiring truth about the entity.

So, similarly, the point of Harris using 'rape' in this specific case in his book is to show that the analogous aspects of religion and rape is that because they had evolutionary advantage at some point doesn't make them beneficial now. Here rape is not meant to be analogous to religion directly.

Symbolically it's like this:

A has some aspect X
B has some aspect X

A is religion.
Where B is rape, X is the past evolutionary benefit of religion and rape.
Where B is the FSM, X is the poor reasoning about theology of religion and the FSM.

So, here's the argument.
A has aspect X, and is therefore good.
But B has aspect X, and B is clearly not good.
So, having aspect X is no indication of B or A being good.

The religious could save a lot of unnecessary argument if they took the trouble to figure out what the analogy is about.

The Harris - Saltman Interview

As if the religious hadn't got hold of the wrong end of the stick already, Harris gives them another excuse to fume. And fume they do.

Here's the 2006 article in which the next scene in the melodrama takes place. (Here's a pdf).

Let's have a look at what else he says before we get to the crutial point. Though many religious people might disagree with many of his points, there are some who do see his issues with religion when it comes to the more fundamental flavour. Here's how it goes towards the end of page 1 of The Sun web site version:

Saltman: "Isn't religion a natural outgrowth of human nature?"

Harris: "It almost certainly is. But everything we do is a natural outgrowth of human nature. Genocide is. Rape is. No one would ever think of arguing that this makes genocide or rape a necessary feature of a civilized society. Even if you had a detailed story about the essential purpose religion has served for the past fifty thousand years, even if you could prove that humanity would not have survived without believing in a creator God, that would not mean that it’s a good idea to believe in a creator God now, in a twenty-first-century world that has been shattered into separate moral communities on the basis of religious ideas.

Traditionally, religion has been the receptacle of some good and ennobling features of our psychology. It’s the arena in which people talk about contemplative experience and ethics. And I do think contemplative experience and ethics are absolutely essential to human happiness. I just think we now have to speak about them without endorsing any divisive mythology."

Note that both genocide and rape are given as examples. Clearly Harris is referring to the analogy, as I described it above. Being a natural human behaviour does not mean that it has any benefit now.

But Harris isn't saying benefit can't be derived from religion. To go back to the book, Letter To A Christian Nation, Harris knows full well that some people do derive benefit from religion:

"I have no doubt that your acceptance of Christ coincided with some very positive changes in your life. Perhaps you now love other people in a way you never imagined possible. You may even experience feelings of bliss while praying. I do not wish to denigrate any of these experiences. I would point out however, that billions of human beings, in every time and place, have had similar experiences - but they had them while thinking about Krishna, or Allah, or the Buddha, while making art or music, or while contemplating the beauty of nature"

So clearly, despite what some critics claim, he doesn't see all religious experience in the same light. But his main point is that overall it is detrimental to society.

I'll skip ahead slightly in the interview, past the offending words, just to make it clear Harris isn't a baby eater.

Harris: "Even Christian fundamentalists have learned, by and large, to ignore the most barbaric passages in the Bible. ...[some details about specific problems]...Now, these people are not evil. They're just concerned about the wrong things, because they have imbibed these unjustifiable religious taboos. There is no question, however, that these false concerns add to the world's misery."

Saltman: "If we were to eliminate religious identity, wouldn't something else take its place?"

Harris: "Not necessarily. Look at what's going on in Western Europe: some societies there are successfully undoing their commitment to religious identity, and I don't think it is being replaced by anything. Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Australia, and Japan are all developed societies with a high level of atheism, and the religion they do have is not the populist, fundamentalist, shrill version we have in the U.S. So secularism is achievable... [my emphasis]

See, he recognises some religions aren't so bad.

"...I think the human urge to identify with a subset of the population is something that we should be skeptical of in all its forms. Nationalism and tribal affiliations are divisive, too, and therefore dangerous. Even being a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan has its liabilities, if pushed too far."

[page 3]

Saltman: "So you see Buddhist meditation not as a religious practice, but as something that can yield results."

Harris: "Clearly, there are results to any religious practice. A Christian might say, "If you pray to Jesus, you'll notice a change in your life." And I don't dispute that. The crucial distinction between the teachings of Buddhism and the teachings of Western religions is that with Buddhism, you don't have to believe anything on faith to get the process started."

Harris Hates All Religions?

Again I need to emphasise the fact that Harris does distinguish between degrees of religious fundamentalism and the associated harms. Remember that when we get to the crunch statement.

Saltman: "Do you think that there is such a thing as a peaceful religion?"

Harris: "Oh, sure. Jainism is the best example that I know of. It emerged in India at more or less the same time as Buddhism. Nonviolence is its core doctrine. Jain "extremists" wear masks in order to avoid breathing in any living thing. To be a practicing Jain, you have to be a vegetarian and a pacifist. So the more "deranged" and dogmatic a Jain becomes, the less likely he or she is to harm living beings.
Jains probably believe certain things on insufficient evidence, and that's not a good idea, in my opinion. I can even imagine a scenario in which Jain dogma could get people killed: I don't actually know what Jains say on this subject, but let's say they became unwilling to kill even bacteria and forbade the use of antibiotics."

...

Harris: "...They [evangelicals] have a great fear that unless we believe the Bible was written by the creator of the universe, we have no real reason to treat one another well, and I think there's no evidence for that whatsoever. It's just fundamentally untrue that people who do not believe in God are more prone to violent crime, for instance. The evidence, if anything, runs the other way. If you look at where we have the most violent crime and the most theft in the United States, it's not in the secular-leaning blue states. It's in the red states, with all their religiosity. In fact, three of the five most dangerous cities in the United States are in Texas.

Now, I'm not saying that we can look at this data and say, "Religion causes violence." But you can look at this data and say that high levels of religious affiliation don't guarantee that people are going to behave well. Likewise if you look at UN rankings of societies in terms of development — which includes levels of violent crime, infant mortality, and literacy — the most atheistic societies on the planet rank the highest: Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark. So there is no evidence that a strong commitment to the literal truth of one's religious doctrine is a good indicator of societal health or morality."

So, just to emphasise the point again. Harris does not see all religions as being as bad as each other. Harris does see people gaining some benefits from religion, though he thinks there are better ways. Harris does not think religion is the cause of all evil. Harris does not think all religion is evil. Nowhere does Harris actually call for the forced curtailment of religious belief. In all of this he is making very straight forward arguments about what he finds wrong with religion.

The Evil Atheists

Of course no discussion about religion is complete without a comment on the evil that atheists do. And nearly every religious person gets this point wrong. Saltman is playing devil's advocate here of course.

Saltman: "Atheism doesn't always go hand in hand with reason and compassion. Look at the destruction and violence caused by atheist ideology in China and the old Soviet Union."

Harris: "What I'm really arguing against is dogma, and those communist systems of belief were every bit as dogmatic as religious systems. In fact, I'd call them 'political religions'. But no culture in human history ever suffered because its people became too reasonable or too desirous of having evidence in defense of their core beliefs. Whenever people start committing genocide or hurling women and children into mass graves, I think it's worth asking what they believe about the universe. My reading of history suggests that they always believe something that's obviously indefensible and dogmatic."

And just to re-state the point made countless times, none of this was done in the name of atheism. Atheism isn't a dogmatic belief system that anyone does anything in the name of. And atheists are not claiming religion is the cause of all ills, or that all atheists are whitere than white. So, can we drop this red herring.

The Magic Wand of Harris

OK. Let's get to the main point. The offending place is top of page 2.

Saltman: "Your analogy between organized religion and rape is pretty inflammatory. Is that intentional?"

Harris: "I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion. I think more people are dying as a result of our religious myths than as a result of any other ideology. I would not say that all human conflict is born of religion or religious differences, but for the human community to be fractured on the basis of religious doctrines that are fundamentally incompatible, in an age when nuclear weapons are proliferating, is a terrifying scenario. I think we do the world a disservice when we suggest that religions are generally benign and not fundamentally divisive."

Now, given the context in which the original analogy was used, this is just an extension of that. Here's the analogy:

A causes an amount of suffering.
B causes an amount of suffering.

Here A is rape, and B is religion. And on his assessment religion causes more harm than rape.

So, if he could wish away one of them he thinks the best option would be religion, as removing it would reduce harm the most.

Note that this is a simple thought experiment, wishful thinking, and as such has no specific bad consequences. For example, if it clearly was a magic wish that did the trick he'd no doubt want all the currently religious people to be simply non-religious - so it's not as if he would be causing more suffering by removing religion, the newly non-religious wouldn't feel they were deprived of religion. And we could still carry on trying to stop rape, so it's not as if Harris is condoning rape. It just happens to be an unwanted human behaviour that he uses in an analogy.

There really isn't that much to this statement after all, given the context. It's ridiculous how many religious people have tried to get mileage out of it since he maed it.

A More Literal Comparison

But what if he was to have meant it to be taken seriously. Is religion worse than rape? You'll have to ask Harris yourself, if you still think he's the son of Satan for uttering the words 'rape' and 'religion' in the same breath. But here's my understanding of what he said and how to interpret it, should you want to take it as a literal intention by Harris.

1) Individual rape can 'harm' one victim at a time. I'm not aware of any person being able to rape more than one person at once. This is basically a one-on-one act. Annually (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics) it might be 500,000 a year, accounting for unreported rape.

2) Nuclear weapons or biological weapons can 'kill and harm' hundreds of thousands or millions at a time. It might take more than one person to achieve this, but the ratios are still pretty high: one-to-hundreds-of-thousands, or one-to-millions.

3) Extreme religion probably has the highest potential for (2) currently.

4) All religions, by setting faith above reason, are self affirming systems that can, under some circumstances, provide the right framework for (3), and hence (2). That framework of extreme religions exists now, and this has been a self-evident fact since 9/11. Some small number of people with religious motivations killed thousands of people, directly and in the aftermath. And 9/11 was the catalyst for a war that kill even more. 9/11 is still invoking religious hatred now at ground zero. That's before we get to the many conflicts around the world that are going on now that have a religious element, if not done in the name of religion. Harris covers plenty in his book.

Note to liberals: the extensive use of reason on top of faith is not a get out of jail card. Faith plus speculation is a poor move. It just happens to be a really bad move in the hands of terrorist fanatics.

5) The same applies to all dogmas that affirm their beliefs and aren't subjected to sufficient scepticism. So, it's not just religion Harris is objecting to. But currently religion is the most dangerous in his view.

Again, a note to easily offended moderates and liberals: just because you're pretty harmless doesn't change the fact that religion in the wrong hands is dangerous.

6) Bonus point: without religion there's no RC church, which reduces the number of rapes and abuses a little. And since many of the genocidal wars around the world also include rape, then if removing religion could reduce the number of such wars then there'd be less rape anyway.

7) Harris isn't calling for or expecting the abolition of religion - some people have mistaken his statements here for that. Harris believes in freedom of religious belief. His statement was hypothetical wishful thinking. His point being that if it were possible for religion to suddenly vanish, that would be a better outcome than if all men suddenly stopped raping.

Now I know some people don't like it when we try to evaluate relative harms, when we try to be objective about them. They find something distasteful and taboo about even considering it.

Here's a response to Harris, "I would like to ask Sam Harris what personal experience he has of rape." Why is this relevant? What is my experience of rape or being the victim of a suicide bomber? None.

Another question to Harris, "And I wonder how it would feel to have been subjected to rape and then to hear a statement such as Harris's?" - Or how it would feel to have your family taken by a suicide bomber or abducted and beheaded by terrorists, of kill leaving his place of work, or blown up in an Irish pub.

These are very one sided questions. Do we have to experience every suffering to have any regard for the sufferer? What do you think human empathy is all about? what do you think it is that has been driving your own morals all this time? God?


Conclusion

Having read Letter To A Christian Nation, and the interview with Saltman, I don't think Harris has said anything particularly controversial. Dispite that being my opinion, of course Harris may well have made the statements specifically to be controversial. Maybe his remark about being inflammatory was calculated. You'll have to ask Harris. But on first reading it I hadn't noticed anything particularly bad about it - just a rhetorical flourish. I'm often surprised how the religious, who survive on emotive language, don't particularly like it when their religion is the target.

We can take any version of his rape statements: analogy of natural evolved benefit no longer being beneficial; a thought experiment, a wish, that religion wasn't present; or a more literal calculation of least harm. Each interpretation of Harris's words are really not that controversial - except to the extent that the religious like to find fault with Harris.

Harris, throughout his book and interview is quite gracious about the people of religion. He sees their particular problem as being that they have been misguided by religion. He simply dislikes the principle of religion and faith that can provide a framework for fundamental atrocities.

So, here are the words again:

"I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."

Out of context I guess they could be misconstrued. And the problem is they usually are taken out of context - as seen in a blog from a blog from the original source. And comments are made on the basis of the sentences here, or the fuller paragraph given earlier. But I see them as quite harmless in context, particularly the wider context of the book and the interview.