You Know Nothing, Sam Harris

The famous atheist argues against Christian dogma thinking that disproves the existence of God

Sam Harris is a well-known atheist. Recently, he appeared on the Jordan Peterson Podcast in which the host attempted to find things upon which they can agree. As you may know, these two have famously sparred on multiple occasions about the nature of truth, God and the Bible. This particular discussion was quite frustrating to listen to, as Jordan Peterson spent the entire discussion attempting to steel man Sam Harris’ position so that they could find some intellectual real estate on which to agree. But like a spoiled academic a bit too proud of his verbosity, Sam Harris spent the entire conversation quibbling over superfluous details to provide the appearance of disagreement with little distinction. Ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

I was particularly struck by one of Mr. Harris’ statements regarding the Bible. He doubted whether the good book proves there is a God. His argument went something like this (a paraphrase based upon my memory): if there were a God and he wished to make it known in a book, it would literally take him less than one page to write something so profound and amazing that it would prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was real and created the world. And yet, according to Mr. Harris, we find nothing in the Bible that accomplishes this simple goal.

The interesting thing about this argument, which is on one level well-made and hard to dispute, is that it is aimed precisely at some interpretations of the Bible and the nature of God and not at God himself. By this I mean that Mr. Harris’ critique may well be correct if one assumes God is at once omniscient, unrestrained and interested in having a direct relationship with humankind. But if one simply removes these assumptions, his argument holds no water - it stands much more as a critique of some interpretations of Christianity and the Christian Bible than God himself.

I know that many Christians and close readers of the Bible would say that these three things are true, and certainly the New Testament has many passages that extol the omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence of the godhead - Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But certainly Jesus in the New Testament displayed aspects of unknowing, including asking many questions, and stating in Martthew 24: 34-36 that he does not know when the end of the world is coming. Perhaps God is omniscient on the eternal plane, but here is the physical realm he is constrained.

For example, imagine you were to attempt to impart all of the modern knowledge of Physics to a lesser being on earth, perhaps our closest cousin the Chimpanzee. How far would you get in describing gravity, magnetic attraction or black holes? Do you think that you would be able to explain everything known by humans to a chimp? Perhaps God, in the physical world, is similarly constrained. If true, it would not be God’s shortcoming that makes this so, but our own. Just as it would not be your fault if your chimp could not understand relativity, it is entirely due to the chimp’s inability to comprehend such things. God would be similarly constrained in attempting to deliver the wisdom of the ages to a being completely incapable of understanding. Indeed, even if God is omniscient and all powerful, he is nonetheless self-evidently constrained by not experiencing what it means to live in time and to have limits upon himself. God has an ocean of knowledge, but perhaps our ability to understand is constrained to one water drop at a time.

And if we look outside the realm of the Bible, there are many interpretations of the nature of God that do not require his omniscience. Eastern philosophies, according to some, have recently intersected with modern physics to describe a new model in which God is the presence, the energy and intelligence of all things in the Universe. Think on it this way - how does matter make a mind? In this interpretation, all matter, all substances have a spark at the quantum level - the level of information - that connects us all. In that view, God is the sum total of all of those connections in our city, our state and country, our world, our solar system and our universe. From “Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism,” by Fritjof Capra at UC - Berkeley:

A detailed analysis of the parallels between the principal theories of modern physics and the mystical traditions of the Far East can be found in The Tao of Physics(Capra, 1975)…I want to concentrate on two ideas which are emphasized throughout Eastern mysticism and which are recurring themes in the world view of modern physics: the unity and mutual interrelation of all things and events, and the intrinsically dynamic nature of the universe.

In this interpretation, God is quite indeed everything, and also you and me. As Rumi famously wrote:

“I searched for God and found only myself; I searched for myself and found only God”

So it is quite possible that if God is the sum total of the Universe rather than some entity outside of it, he could be just as lost as we are. To our knowledge, we are the only beings with self-awareness in the Universe, meaning we represent the first attempt by God to understand himself. And with that goes all of the trappings, limits and follies of man - God is imperfect because we are. And after fourteen billion years, he is just now waking up to consciousness, self-awareness and the vagaries of free will, just like us.

For isn’t God, on one level - the only level we are truly aware of - a reflection of those who worship him and their unique perspectives in the world? Isn’t the Old Testament God severe and vengeful because life was so difficult in prehistoric times? Wasn’t the message of Christ needed for an oppressed people who hungered for a better life and the promise of a new day? Didn’t the Buddha help many through amazing levels of suffering by letting it all go? Didn’t the ancients need to describe their often unrestrained emotional actions and reactions by personifying those feelings to be possessed by Mars or Venus? To say nothing of God’s actual nature, for man he is always what we need him to be.

So, while Sam Harris makes an intellectual point against dogmatic interpretations of the Bible, he misses the forest for the tree - the nature of God is unknown to us, and our small ability to understand only limits us, not him. Dogma is almost invariably incorrect; this fact has nothing to do with the profound nature of the Universe’s Creator.