“Must we really entrust the future of biomedical research in the United States to a man who sincerely believes that a scientific understanding of human nature is impossible?”
So Sam Harris asks in the New York Times . Harris’ column has received various replies, including a note from Will Wilson (who points out that Harris’ definition of science means belief in the immaterial renders one unable to study the material), and Alan Jacobs (who notes that the result of Harris’ view would be a religious test for government jobs: Believers would be, by the very fact of their belief, banned from holding office).
Another interesting portion of this attack on Harris, however, is the thinness of the result. I mean, I know Harris hates religion, but his description of why means that there is no intellectual activity outside science. Can theology reach a description of being? No. Philosophy? No. Art? No. If it ain’t science, it ain’t real.
This elevation of science to the sole explanation of everything is a hell of a faith. In every sense.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Deliver Us from Evil
In a recent New York Times article entitled “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery…
Natural Law Needs Revelation
Natural law theory teaches that God embedded a teleological moral order in the world, such that things…
Letters
Glenn C. Loury makes several points with which I can’t possibly disagree (“Tucker and the Right,” January…
