Sam Harris, the atheist philosopher and neuroscientist that it’s claiming that science should tell us what’s wrong and what’s good, relies it all on the well-being condition of humans and animals.
But then, we should ask, what do you do when life asks from you to make incredible sacrifices? Is giving birth to a child in any way ‘well-being’? Is raising a child well-being? In any society, not only in Afganistan, Sam’s favorite example of women oppression.
If maximizing the well-being is the purpose of this life, than nature is very unjust. Because some are very smart and good looking, write books, give talks on the radio, earning lots of money, and others live in the most cruel poverty.
If your husband gets a terrible disease and you need to take care of him just as if he were a little baby, what would maximizing the well-being mean in that case? Euthanasia? Moving him in a specialized facility and a divorce, so you can carry on with your life?
Is love all about maximizing well-being? I think not. Not real love. Not altruist love. Well-being follows the rule of capitalism: the less you give, the more you ask, the more you have. That’s it. Communism is not the answer either, because in communism you are forced to give, so you steal out of the frustration. We know that here in Eastern Europe.
The answer is love. And love can only be truly based on God, an absolute, eternal God. A God that created the world not out of a necessity, but out of love. A God that knew love before He created the world. Thus God must be personal, God must be a communion of persons, but single being. Those persons must have the same being, the same nature, otherwise we would have competing Gods, Gods that do not have or know it all, hence not Gods.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I think you fail to understand (deliberately?) what ‘well-being’ might include? Might it increase your well-being to look after a loved one? Of course. At times it increases your well-being to sacrifice your love, time, energy and sometimes even your own life, for others. This is simple, isn’t it? You are a typical theist who dismisses atheism as selfishness without thinking deeply enough about the issues.
How can sacrificing my life for others increase my well-being? If you try to find a common denominator under ‘well-being’ for having a deluxe yacht cruise on see with a 30yo beautiful woman and taking care of a very sick spouse, I think we have a difficulty. You can say that the first two love each other, but of course the nature of the love is very different.
And in the end, from a atheist point of view, it’s all a bio-chemical process. What you call love, is actually just a bunch of substances flowing through our bodies. You should start using other words, because for millennia, feelings have been associated with the concept of soul.
You have yet to find a proof for how is a chunk of matter self-conscient and capable of feelings, love and sacrifice. Until then, you have a black box in front, trying to guess how wires are connected inside.
I’d never dismiss anyone as being selfish. I just don’t find the concept ‘well-being’ as a solid ground for love and sacrifice. There’s a difference between the two, I wish you’d think about it before throwing judgements.
Ouch, this article made me cringe. It’s not about just YOUR well-being that Sam is talking about; it’s the well-being of humanity as a whole. If we lived in a world where people didn’t care for their sick, then that world wouldn’t be one that is “optimizing human well-being.”
It’s not about one man in ecstasy – morality is about taking everyone into account.
As usual, you seem to hide behind a vague concept of “God” rather than the one you actually believe in. I don’t think anyone would mind if you really believe that there is a God, and it is Love.
But that’s not what you believe. You’re a Christian, and as such you believe that the miracle stories about Jesus, as written in the New Testament, are true. All one has to do in order to respond to you is first point that out, and then lay waste to how terrible the evidence for Christianity is.
If you’ve gotten this far, the seed of doubt has already been planted. You can water it by actually picking up the Bible and reading it; and also learning as much about modern science as possible.
If you want to continue this conversation, you can Email me at redchango at outgun dot com.
Interesting perspectives, but it seems the conversation has veered off from the original discussion point: does Sam Harris have a way of reconciling individual human good and the collective good that has been mentioned?
First impressions are that his discussion of collective good is at least as vague and ill-defined as Andrew seemed to believe Christian’s God is. After all, Harris’ broadly utilitarian view embraces individual experience (in conversation with scientific discovery) as the basic yardstick of good. How this translates to common good has been a question of debate since John Stuart Mill, and I think Harris’ contribution to this point is negligible.
So then, two topics of discussion merit attention here. Firstly, what is ‘well-being’ and who gets to define it? Secondly, is religiosity a significant factor (negatively as Harris Suggests, or positively as many Christians suggest) towards forming a social model of what the common good is?
I want to leave these open for discussion with the following guiding questions:
1) How might well-being be anything other than individual perception of particular good if there is no external origin for human purpose?
2) If well-being is not anything external, but simply perception, what grounds does Harris have to assume his perception of the common good is better than a Christian one?
nb – remember, appeal to science is not a good argument. Scientific discoveries tell us the state of things, they provide next to nothing towards formulating a perception of common good. The only exception to this would be if scientific method falsified a claim on which a perception of the common good was based. This, in fact, is much more in the realm of historical study.
Sam, thanks for your comment. If this is your point, than I agree, well-being is highly subjective if not determined by something outside humanity.