Sam Harris addresses the recent conversions to Christianity by figures including Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Charles Murray. He distinguishes the cultural-defence rationale ('we need this to resist Islam or wokeness') from any actual claim that the doctrines are true, and argues the secular framework has not been refuted in the territory it has already taken.
Transcript
What are your thoughts about the likes of uh Ian Hersy Ali, Charles Murray and other people right of center suddenly finding Jesus after considering themselves atheists or secular and moving into Christianity while claiming it as the bedrock of Western values. >> Well, I've avoided commenting on this specifically uh in in many contexts. >> And I think your Substack fans know this, which is why they've asked this again and again. Well, I mean, so first I I never want to say anything uh about uh Ayon that is derogatory. I mean, I I I just Ayon is just a straightup hero to me and and she should be to to women everywhere. I mean, that's just I think that's just the the ground truth of of where I uh where I think she should sit in people's u uh minds. But um she's not perfect, right? Right. And I don't I don't think her defense of her conversion to Christianity makes much sense. Um certainly she didn't give any reasons why she should she now believes that Christian doctrine is true. Right? What you have in the case of many people um is the argument that we as a society need an attachment to Christianity or some other faith to resist uh the slide into Islamic theocracy on the one hand or just you know a secular wasteland of meaninglessness and um porn addiction and and distraction and you know social media media poisoning on the other. Right? So, it's it's how do you how do you have a good life in the modern world and resist the barbarians at the gate? The barbarians here being the the um Islamist hordes that are um invading uh Western Europe and uh uh Ion is especially in touch with that problem. Many people think you need, you know, good Christian soldiers to do this on some level. Uh I reject that. uh idea. I think it's it's almost certainly not true, but even if it were true, it wouldn't give you any reason to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin or rose from the dead or will be coming back to to judge the the living and the dead, etc. So, um it it just simply does not provide a reason to believe anything the Christians must believe in order to be Christians. So that's the problem that that Ayon and Douglas Murray and anyone else who would tend to make these kinds of noises that that there's a social and civilizational importance for for um doubling down on Christianity as a kind of bull work against this civil civilizational unraveling on the one hand and or civilizational clash with Islam on the other. Um it just doesn't make any sense. It's it's illogical. It's not accurate. um psychologically or spiritually or any any other way. Um Charles Murray, I haven't read Charles Murray's book, but I think he's just taking a different angle here. I think he's, you know, he's 80 years old or thereabouts and coming to view his life, uh the broad sweep of his life. And I think he's um I've heard him talk about his book a little bit. But I think he's just acknowledging that there's a a if not a god-shaped hole, a a um some kind of hole in the middle of um of his life as he perceives it that that could be could and should be filled by faith. And I think he's taken instruction from his wife who's who's religious and and he notices he's always envied her that capacity. Um, again, and I I'm going to talk to Ross Douet uh uh eventually here too. I'm sure we're going to cover this ground because he's he's written a book uh on on the necessity of belief uh which I haven't read yet, but but it's on the stack. Um, anyone who's making these particular claims just strikes me as someone who doesn't know how to meditate on some level. I mean, I mean, that's really it really is the problem. If you think that you need to believe something about the divine origin of a book in order to get the the juice out of life, there's certain experiences you obviously haven't had, right? You're just not you you you don't know how to pay attention sufficiently to recognize that your own mind is the the circumstance of of uh real collision with reality uh that doesn't it doesn't lack for profoundity, right? You don't have to go to the old book to to find out what's profound. You don't have to read the story of you know fictional or or or otherwise of someone else's spiritual adventures and then and then merely place faith in those so as to redeem an otherwise you know fragmented and dissatisfying unsatisfying you know life circumstance. No, there's actually you can confront the the the absolute mystery of being directly with your attention if you can only break the spell of your thoughts and and and pay attention. Uh and that's what meditation is for. I mean one could say in a theistic context on some level that's what prayer is for. That's what the you know contemplative Christian life is for or the or the or the Jewish one or the Muslim one. Um, you know, there are disciplines of attention that that any contemplative engages that take them out of the the the superficiality of of the rest of their lives. But the problem with the Christian and Jewish and and Muslim variants is that all of those disciplines are engaged within a context of belief uh that is dualistic and propitiatory and just drenched in in uh myth and uh what I would view as conceptual confusion, right? and and and the the the need of believing the preposterous there is so front and center and and never really leaves. It's not to say that that that um Christian and Jewish and Muslim contemplatives have don't have extraordinary experiences, but in so far as they do, they begin to sound like Buddhists, right? And that's the problem. Like you if you become Meister Ehart in the the Catholic Church starts to wonder whether or not they should burn you alive as they were getting ready to do before he died. Um and so it is with in the Muslim uh tradition, right? I mean, you know, someone like Roomie can only speak so sainely before life becomes dangerous and the Sufis generally are looked at as heretics anyway under Islam. Uh so it's just there's a the contemplative wisdom has not been spread equally over the surface of the earth uh and given to every culture equally in the same way that you know scientific wisdom wasn't 100 years ago or 200 years ago. Um and uh yeah, so all these guys just don't, you know, all these guys need a couple of psychedelic experiences and then real instruction in how to pay attention to the nature of their minds. And they wouldn't be thinking that, you know, the best thing ever written on these matters was in the Bible. I just there's no way to think that if you know how to pay attention. >> So you don't think we'll ever outgrow religion? So if you know AI delivers utopia? >> I think we will. Well, I mean, I think we, you know, I certainly think we it it has eroded and will continue to erode. There are hundreds of questions upon which religion used to be an authority, but that authority has now been seated to science or, you know, a secular understanding of what's real. uh I would say there are no questions that used to be in the province of science and secular rationality that have been seated back to religion as the authority right so it's like I mean just to take you know an obvious example it's like you know the notion of demonic possession to to account for epilepsy right it's like we we didn't understand neurology at all we say see someone flopping around on the ground. We assume that's demonic possession because that's, you know, we're in a pre-scientific, religiously bamboozled context. And that's how we describe it. But once you get a science of neurology, then you now understand what's happening here. You there are some stragglers. There's some people still left thinking, well, maybe that is demonic possession, you know, even if though we now call it epilepsy. No, actually we know enough about epilepsy now that that that that's never getting seated back to religion, right? I mean, we just there's going to be a thousand more things like that where it's just a unidirectional conquest of of real estate that you know where where a a scientific or secular understanding of what's going on is going to claim the territory and never give it back. [Music]