timeimmortal

From Sam Harris’ own pen, by way of Jonah Goldberg at The Corner:

Harris tells us, for example, that “we must find our way to a time when faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it. Given the present state of the world, there appears to be no other future worth wanting.” I am glad that I am old enough that I shall not see the future of reason as laid down by Harris; but I am puzzled by the status of the compulsion in the first sentence that I have quoted. Is Harris writing of a historical inevitability? Of a categorical imperative? Or is he merely making a legislative proposal? This is who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-priest language, ambiguous no doubt, but not open to a generous interpretation.

It becomes even more sinister when considered in conjunction with the following sentences, quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist: “The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably. Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them. This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live.”

Every regime in history which has made atheism an explicit policy of the state has shown an unusual, almost casual, willingness to engage in widespread bouts of murder and torture of those who do not conform to the enlightened vision of the ruling classes. Which makes sense — power is, after all, the logical outcome of atheism applied on a wide scale, and power must necessarily be maintained with demonstrations thereof.

Harris spells it out rather plainly, first by longing for a time when “faith, without evidence, disgraces anyone who would claim it” (did you note the latent positivism, O Reader?) and then suggesting a short while later that some propositions (including, perhaps, faith claims not grounded in evidence?) are sufficiently threatening to the enterprises of an atheistic state that it may even be moral to kill those engaging in such propositions.

Such thinking — very obviously a logical outcome of atheistic thought — leads us once again to the gulag, just as it has in the past.

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Mark Shea)

~ by Kenneth on January 2, 2008.