Sam Harris' lecture and the debate on religion

The debate about religion and its role in society is a contentious one these days with theories about clashing civilizations flying thick and fast. How much of society's ills are because of religion? Do we need religion at all? My own views on the topic have varied a lot and have been influenced recently by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s books. In his novels and through his passionate characters, Dostoevsky – a devout man himself – engages deeply with Christianity and what it means to be Christian, and more broadly with the essence of religious feeling. I touched upon the theme a little in my post about The Idiot. I'll reproduce here again a quote that I particularly like; it is from Prince Myshkin, the protagonist of the novel:

“ …the essence of religious feeling doesn’t depend on reasoning, and it has nothing to do with crime or atheism. There is something else there and there always will be, and atheists will always pass over it and will never be talking about that.” [Dostoevsky’s italics].

A few weeks ago, after listening to this engrossing 53-minute lecture by Sam Harris, author of The end of faith, I wondered how a debate between Harris and Dostoevsky, if it were ever held, would go. Would their positions, I wondered, be as far apart as they seem when viewed cursorily? What points would they concur on, if at all?

Harris is unrelentingly critical of religion, and wonders whether we need to be lugging today this burdensome and sapping baggage of the past. He states at the outset that “religion is the most divisive and dangerous ideology we’ve ever produced”. But his lecture is not a tirade; it is a reasoned and methodical dismantling of the tenets of some major faiths – Harris targets especially the Abrahamic ones in the lecture. His broadside is backed by his mastery of the key texts of these religions.

I won’t discuss the lecture or its main points at length, but instead will give a gist of how Harris sets about his task. He divides arguments in defense of religion into three broad categories. The first such argument is that a particular religion should be followed because it is right. The second is that “religion is useful and indeed so useful as to be necessary.” And the third is that the alternative to faith, atheism, “is essentially another religion, dogmatic, intolerant and worthy of contempt.”

To each of these three proffered defenses, Harris provides some good rejoinders. Personally, since the first assertion of the “rightness”of a specific faith is rather naive and arrogant, I was interested only in his responses to the last two claims, both of which I’ve held to some extent but am now beginning to rethink. In countering the usefulness and necessity of religion, Harris argues that morality does not require the framework of religion as is sometimes supposed. I think this is an important point – though obvious, it is often overlooked. And he clarifies that atheism should not be misunderstood as a dogma (this too is routinely done: the ideas and actions of such leaders as Stalin and Mao are attributed to their atheism) but as a tradition of healthy scepticism and of submitting everything to close scrutiny.

It is difficult, however, to accept Harris' lack of support even for moderates who are tolerant of religions. As an atheist, his recommendation, naturally, is that since the lofty claims on which most religions are based are false, we should do away with faith altogether. But how is such a thing to be done, and what of the unimaginable vacuum that this will surely leave behind? (There must be something about this in Harris' The end of faith, and in Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion as well, but I haven't read them to be able to comment yet.)

What lends a degree of moderation to Harris’ views is his sincere acknowledgement that certain experiences at the personal or individual level can be powerful. As he says, his arguments should not be “construed as a denial of the possibilities of spiritual experience, and indeed of the importance of spiritual experience.” And though nothing escapes the rigor of Harris' gaze, this is perhaps where he comes closest to admitting that some special and inexplicable feeling or state or connection – that same something that Prince Myshkin talks about above – can exist.

Travel potpourri

I am currently in Bangalore for two weeks with my parents, and am lazing around and enjoying the food, the cricket, the excellent weather in Bangalore, and, less happily, pondering my US consulate appointment that's coming up in a couple days – with all these things, I haven't been able to write anything substantial. So I thought I'd put up a potpourri post, based on some of my recent travels.

Here are a few of my pictures and notes from trips this summer:

1. I took this picture from the window of my hotel room in St.Etienne, France, immediately after checking in. I'd arrived at the St.Etienne train station at about 8 in the evening, tired after a twenty-hour journey. The streets of the town were such a maze – crooked, some of them narrow and intersecting at all possible angles – and my hotel’s location so obscure, that I was disoriented and clueless. I found the hotel after nearly an hour of roaming around parts of the town and went to my 8th floor room, ready to collapse. But when I opened the large window in the room to let the air in, I was soothed and gladdened by the view. I stayed up, sat by the window and took pictures from different angles while it was still light.

2. The first picture below shows shoots of either yuccas or agaves (I am always unable to tell the difference between the two plants). Their thin protrusions and flowers dramatize the arid landscape of the southwestern United States and parts of Mexico. This particular set was just outside the archaeological site of Casas Grandes, in the northern Mexican state of Chihuaua, which I visited in May. The next picture is of a flower of a prickly pear cactus - I chanced upon it when our group stopped by the roadside on a highway in Mexico.

3. Finally, two pictures from my trip to South Dakota. This was a long road trip on Interstate 90 which runs east-west through the state. En-route, at the Badlands National Park, I spotted these sprightly, long-eared jackrabbits.

And at the western end of South Dakota, the monotonous, gently undulating prairie does a jig and transforms itself into the pine-forested and mountainous Black Hills. The rocky top of one of these hills, Mount Rushmore, has been meticulously and brilliantly sculpted to mimic the grim, thoughtful countenances of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln.

But let me ask with a mischievous wink: Will Dubya's face ever find its way to Mount Rushmore?

Mark, the janitor

This piece is about Mark, who used to be the janitor of the fifth floor of the engineering building at Arizona State University. I worked at a lab there for six years, and Mark was the janitor for more than four of those years.

Mark was a constant presence in the hallways and restrooms every weekday from four in the afternoon. Most times you just heard his presence: the clink of his thick bunch of keys; the rumble of the large trash-can-on-wheels; a pause; a knock on an office or lab door; the emptying of trash; and then clink and rumble again before the next pause. And at times you heard an insistent squeak in the hallway – that was Mark using his sneakers to erase a smear off the linoleum floor.

Mark was probably in his early sixties. He was balding, but had a thin ponytail. Most days, he wore a light gray shirt, blue jeans, and glasses. He had a gray-white beard, and an intense, withering gaze. His movements were short and abrupt.

He took his work very seriously and did it well. He worked with such verve that the offices, labs, and hallways of our level might well have been a cherished, sacred space to be meticulously guarded and maintained. He would stand and stare at a blemish on the floor as if it were a personal affront. With a look of annoyance and a few mumbled words, he would angrily set about effacing it. I remember how my friends and I had once played a makeshift version of cricket in the lab (with a squishy ball, and a notebook serving as a bat) and left scattered imprints of our soles with our frantic running. Mark noticed these imprints later that afternoon; he was puzzled and looked long and hard and intensely at them. I did not feel like playing anymore.

I wasn’t the only one mindful of Mark and his moods. Others – students, staff and professors – were keen as well on ensuring they cooperated with him. Mark chatted with with only a few of the faculty and students. He was closest to Dan Riviera, a professor who worked late, and with whom he developed a lasting friendship. I heard them talking often when I stepped into the hallway: Dan, leaning against his office door, and Mark with his mop or trash can; or just-arrived Mark still with his cap on and with his dinner in a blue and white box.

___

I too wanted to talk to him and be friends. But I never managed to. There were a lot of hellos but I never went beyond the preliminaries. I was nervous, and there was a reason for it.

Mark once put up a notice on our lab door requesting everyone to leave by 5 pm. He was going to wax the floor and clean the room; it would take him all of that evening. He came in at the appointed time and announced to those of us still working that we had to leave. So we packed our bags and left but I went back in a minute later.

“I need to get a textbook for the evening,” I told him.

“Get out of here!” he said.

I thought he was just joking, so I smiled sheepishly and continued to stand in the middle of the room, though hesitantly.

“Don’t screw with me,” he said, his rage now plain. “Get the f*** out of here!”

He was carrying a long wooden pole with a brush at one end for cleaning the ceiling. It looked like a weapon to me then. I left in a hurry, shaken, my knees weak and wobbly. I wondered if he would always remember me from that incident. I tried to avoid him for the next few weeks, looking down so as to conceal my face whenever I passed him, and scurrying away from him. But I don’t think he recognized me or really cared. Mark was just sincere about his work; he abhorred interruptions and I had interrupted his work – it was the interruption he had yelled at, not me. It was a feature of Mark’s work: anyone who upset his work was at the receiving end of his ire.

On another occasion, I came across a section of the floor that he had just mopped with great effort. I had to walk through that portion; there was no other way I could have gone. I walked on my toes, and after I crossed I looked at him apologetically.

He sighed and held his mop in disappointment – it was his obsession with perfection again. I shrugged uncertainly and left. There was nothing I could have done.

___

I did not know anything about his personal life. There were only glimpses. He didn't come to work one day. I wouldn’t have noticed, but he came to our lab the next day (presumably, he went to other labs and offices too) and said with great earnestness, “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come yesterday. My little dog wasn’t feeling well.”

And on November 02 2004, Election Day, I thought I could talk to him about politics and elections, and start a conversation that way.

“Have you already voted, Mark?” I asked.

“No, I am not a registered voter,” he said, smiling.

I hadn’t expected this response – for some reason, it threw me off and I and couldn’t go further. Besides he was busy.

But I did know that his health wasn’t good. He looked exhausted most of the time. I saw him once next to the sink in the hallway, holding on to the ledge of the sink for support, his head bowed. At other times, he seemed to just will himself on despite his fatigue. I learned later that he was epileptic and had diabetes. He had suffered a collapse once in the hallway. And it was his health that eventually put an end to his work. When he stopped coming for his janitorial duties, I asked Dan Riviera what had happened. He told me Mark had had an amputation because of health complications, and had claimed for disability.

___

I last saw Mark in the loading area behind the building a few months later. He was using crutches and walking weakly. I stopped and said hello. His face lit up when he saw me and said: “Hey, how are you?” I was surprised because I’d never felt that he knew me or could recognize me. I told him I was doing well. But as before, our conversation did not go further – this time I was afraid the topic of his health would come up. I wish now I’d talked more. For apart from his fierce, uncompromising work ethic, which I'd seen and experienced firsthand, there isn’t much I know about Mark.

About the plains

The landscape of the Great Plains, the swathe of prairie that runs through the middle of the United States, is quite special. While traveling to Fargo, North Dakota last year, I had my first glimpse of it as my flight approached the airport. The incredibly flat, largely treeless expanse around Fargo was apportioned neatly into farms. And later, on the ground, I felt odd because my sense of perspective was altered by the flatness: because there were so few trees, the view was uninterrupted in all directions, and the sky seemed large and imposing. A character of Willa Cather’s describes aptly in her novel My Antonia the feeling of insignificance one feels on the vast prairie: “Between the earth and the sky, I felt erased, blotted out.”

When I drove through South Dakota and Nebraska last month (and quite a bit of Minnesota too), I got to see the prairie again and was able to better appreciate its variations. I learned, for instance, that it isn't always flat, and that it undulates gently - an ocean of farms and grassland with swells and lows. And pretty much throughout my trip, I found large bales of hay arrayed upon the farms that flanked the road, sometimes in an orderly fashion, as in the picture below.

I’ll stop here for now, but there will be more in coming months about the plains – not only about its landscape, but also of its history, and if I have the time, a review of Willa Cather’s novel O Pioneer, set in the newly settled plains of late nineteenth century Nebraska.

I took these pictures somewhere near the very small settlement of Carter (hamlet is perhaps the right word) in southern South Dakota.

The Ishango bone

The Ishango bone was found in the 1950s, in a fishing village on the Congo-Uganda border and dates to around 20,000-30,000 BC. It is an exhibit today at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences at Brussels. The bone is the fibula of a baboon, and what makes it interesting is the set of notches that were deliberately marked on its surface, presumably by the people who lived in the region then.

The number of these notches and their grouping seem to imply a knowledge of mathematics and calculation - of prime numbers, multiplication and division - quite advanced for its time and unheard of elsewhere. If indeed the markings were inscribed with these concepts in mind, the Ishango bone would be the earliest evidence of "mathematical thinking". But is it just a coincidence that the notches are uniquely grouped and have certain mathematical properties? Or do they represent a calendar, as has been proposed by some? The problem with these interpretations, of course, is that they use modern day notions to explain something from a very, very long time ago. Nevertheless, here’s a interesting link that talks more about the markings, and also points to other such examples, including what might be an ancient calendar in the form of dots (just a little younger than Ishango), in the famous caves of Lascaux in France.