New Atheist Fanatic Sam Harris Fears Jesus Smuggling
by Asa Boxer
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Good day, fellow barstool swivellers, this week I continue to pants the new atheists. It’s Sam Harris’s turn, and this one’s going to take several instalments, since he has an especially well-developed posterior that’s been exceedingly active proselytising on behalf of the new faith. For those interested in learning why I’m being critical of character (pursuing the ad hominem, please see last week’s article on the subject.)
With credentials in neuroscience and philosophy, Sam Harris is a prominent and visible new atheist—indeed he’s credited with coining the term and launching new atheism, which is essentially an aggressive, intolerant, and severely orthodox atheism that hopes to convert by insulting those who beg to differ. In a 2018 debate-style conversation with Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray (at 3Arena in Dublin)—Harris advocated a purge of the teaching of myths and religious legends as truth. Harris’s grasp of things subtle and philosophical consequently came across as under-developed, since to his mind, truth is the same as fact. He essentially mounted an all-out attack on theology, but also on all forms of spirituality, and even many elements of anthropology, psychology, and literature. His goal, it would seem, is to make everything he disagrees with go away because it’s not naturalist materialism. In other words, he doesn’t like it (and doesn’t understand it), so it should simply be disappeared. What he proposed was clearly impossible to achieve by political intervention without inflicting tremendous societal harm of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) kind. Religions and myths include ethnicity and heritage after all.
Troubling to consider the sensationalism of Harris’s position. Presumably he’s intelligent enough to understand that what he suggests is impossible. In that case his persona itself is a facade developed for publicity. The alternative is that Harris is a sincere tyrant of the North Korean sort. His heroes do seem to be Kim Jong Il and Chairman Mao, as his disdain for spiritual, religious, and political pluralism indicate. Harris is okay with TheScience™ acting like bad religion and becoming intolerant, suppressive and oppressive. . . supposedly because TheScience™ is right and knows best, and Harris is a representative of TheScience™. Any of this sound familiar? Fauci…? anybody?
In that July of 2018 conversation, Harris proposed that we (all humanity) dump religion itself along with all forms of “superstitious” belief. While Harris recognised the potential psychological benefits of stories, he contended (by a clumsy tarot analogy) that one need not believe in their veracity for archetypal tales to have their psychologically transformative impact.
At stake in the Dublin debate was the ethical question of using facts to formulate values. According to Harris’s thinking, we should cut loose from mythological thinking, dissolve religion altogether, and ground our ethics in rational materialism and hard data—I’m guessing here that he meant some form of statistics. Peterson countered by proposing that the myths are truths albeit psychological, qualitative truths and that religion provides a framework for the inner world to find expression and also equilibrium.
Though Harris understood the argument intellectually, he complained that we are lying to ourselves, to our children, and to our communities in order to achieve psychological equanimity—and one cannot base a good life on a foundation of lies. We can arrive at a better psychological harmony he suggested if we would just stick to the facts. And quit lying! Anyone who’s been following analogy magazine will catch the irony here. (Those who need to catch up, please take a look at the many articles I’ve written on the storytelling, myth-making, and hero-worship science engages in, perhaps starting here and here.)
Some questions arise. Harris didn’t introduce any data in this instance. Has he offered it elsewhere? Peterson confirmed Harris’s position on suffering, that it ought to be a societal goal to minimise it. However, I have pointed out elsewhere how in a mechanical accidentalist universe, suffering has no place, and therefore is never seen as a means to inner development. Although I agree that there are forms of suffering we ought to minimise and even eliminate, the accidentalist creed takes this thinking to a fanatical level, and the means taken to eliminate suffering in one place inevitably wind up displacing suffering to another. As the Buddha famously observed, “Life is suffering.” How does Harris account for that? Are atheists happier than religious folk? Do they suffer less? Is it the business of science to concern itself with matters spiritual? And there’s the rub. Harris it seems would have us jettison our spiritual lives, and replace them with mundane gestures toward some inconvenient inner fiction.
Of especial interest in this Dublin conversation, Douglas Murray laughed about the new atheist anxiety of “Jesus smuggling”1:
I discovered a terrific phrase the other day that our mutual friend Eric Weinstein came up with. We were talking about the manner in which you can discuss within the sciences certain scientific problems. And he said, “Look, if you’ve got a scientist who you know is basically a very literalist Christian, you will listen to their argument a whole long part of the way, and there somewhere at the end of it you know you’re going to be worried about it”… And he came up with this phrase. . . I love this phrase, he says “Jesus smuggling.” Jesus smuggling is you’re going to follow all the way, “Yes. . . Yes. . .” and then the worry is that when they get to the bit that you’re not so good on, that’s when they’re going to smuggle in Jesus. My suspicion is that you have a reservation about some of what Jordan is saying on substructures, on stories, ‘cause you’re worried that at some point, when you’re not looking, he’s going to Jesus smuggle you. . . Is that fair?
Harris: That is an all too apt analogy.
And this my fellow barstool friends is the nut at the centre of the new atheist noggin. Their extremist positions and refusals to admit a good point when it’s made are based in this fear of being tricked into allowing there might be more to religion and spirituality than their paradigm can afford. In other words, they are orthodox fanatics who operate by dogma and doctrine. And their method is to advance their world models using bias confirmation to rescue them when they fail to account for the phenomena. In them the scientific spirit is entirely lost; and perhaps worse, since there is no higher power, they see themselves as the messianic leaders, the Jesus & Apostles of their own cult. In other words, they’re afraid of Jesus smuggling because to their minds, they are the new Jesus & Apostles. In Jungian terms, their egos have usurped the God-image. Where Sam Harris is concerned, this psychological trouble is especially pronounced. And it’ll take me a few more Barstool Bits to expose the full degree of his megalomania.
Asa Boxer’s poetry has garnered several prizes and is included in various anthologies around the world. His books are The Mechanical Bird (Signal, 2007), Skullduggery (Signal, 2011), Friar Biard’s Primer to the New World (Frog Hollow Press, 2013), Etymologies(Anstruther Press, 2016), Field Notes from the Undead (Interludes Press, 2018), and The Narrow Cabinet: A Zombie Chronicle (Guernica, 2022). Boxer is also a founder of and editor at analogy magazine.
See youtu.be/PqpYxD71hJU. 11:07 - 12:18. Accessed January 24, 2024.
I can see the argument against certain forms of religion, such as radical Islam, often termed Islamism, for the violence it imposes on the world in the form of terrorism, jihad, honor killings, etc. But to argue against religion as a whole is like trying to catch the wind or tilting at windmills. It's an insane quest because religion is built in the DNA of humanity. We are religious beings by nature. Homo religiosus. This can take benign or malign forms, as history proves - even in secular societies where various -isms become secular religions (e.g, Communism, fascism, feminism, consumerism, transgenderism, environmentalism, socialism, anti-colonialism, etc).
The invasion of Europe by Islam now taking place is not a good thing but it could have been prevented, as it was in the past, by Christianity. When Europe and the West became secular its citizens lost faith in themselves and became vulnerable to a religion that's more aggressive. Sort of like a good bacteria keeping a bad bacteria at bay in the body. Religion also softens the hard heart and can make society better. Christianity gave the West countless good ideas and institutions. In truth it is a double-edged sword that can be used for good or evil, for peace and for violence. Sam Harris and the new atheists can try to fight it all he wants but it's not going away. The truths that faith refer to are eternal, even if veiled in symbolic languages as through glass darkly.
Peter Berger and others in the 1960s said the West would be entirely secular in the future. That did not come to pass. First, the threats posed by modernity and the weakening of traditional beliefs often gives rise to fundamentalism. Thus the growth of Pentecostalism and charismatic faith. Secondly, secular religions arise in the absence of traditional religions. New Ageism as well. Leftism is a religion that's overtaken the West, and not for the better. The collectivism of DEI, BLM, and woke ideology are not an improvement on Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment values.