all i want for christmas is a bat mitzvah

i just recently read the first 30 pages of sam harris’s book the moral landscape after picking out a little snippet of an article in (go figure) wired. there was a specific quote that really caught my eye, and since it was more than 140 characters, it got bumped to facebook status…status.

religion is precisely the wrong software for analyzing human well-being. it’s the one area of our lives where people win points for saying, ‘i’m not going to change my mind no matter what happens.’

my uncle, who had just come to visit me in new york, immediately wrote to me that he had picked out the exact same quote. (my uncle, if you’ll remember, is the one who gifted me my first subscription to wired 5 years ago.) when i went back to michigan for thanksgiving, i noticed a shiny gold book on the mantle of my uncle’s fireplace: it was sam harris’s book. just as i had immediately ordered it on amazon (along with eyeless in gaza and notes from a small island) he had immediately gone out and bought the book after reading the small half-page article.

due to the copious amounts of food and alcohol consumed, and the many games of poker and left-right-center, i clearly didn’t finish the whole book (and lost a whole lot of money). i had to wait until i received my own copy in the mail, which took a hell of a lot longer than it should have, but only because i neglected to bring my keys with me when i left michigan, and thusly couldn’t open my mailbox in new york. i only managed to get my keys out of the mailbox without my mail key because the mailman was feeling generous that day i suppose. all in all, it was an intensely rewarding day as far as the post goes; those are rare nowadays.

i felt like my little-kid self tearing through the impossible-to-open packaging. it might as well have been christmas when i was 5; i wasn’t quite up to reading aldous huxley then, more like c. s. lewis, but still. books, for all intents and purposes, are books. i tucked the gold hardcover in my purse, donned my coat, and made my way to 71 irving place: the best coffee shop in new york (are you listening, timeout?). the main struggle with irving place is that you have to fight tooth and nail for a seat, but the upside is that they know whether or not i take milk in my coffee and that i like my toasted really dark. i nestled myself into a candlelit corner with my coffee in one of their mismatched ceramic mugs.

about four hours and several cups of coffee later, i’d finished the book. i sipped the last lukewarm dregs of my coffee and sat there for a few minutes, pondering. all in all, the book was good. to say the least, it flexed a few intellectual muscles. a friend of mine told me that sam harris had no regard for others’ opinions whatsoever and, i have to admit, he was right.

but that was the whole point of the book. essentially he says that just because we don’t know the answers to all moral questions doesn’t mean we have to accept all the answers to these moral questions. the problem is that while he exposed all the short-comings of science and religion in determining the correct moral courses of action (even though he maintains that religion has absolutely no business in morality), he provides no solution. the closest he comes is to telling scientists–and humanity as a whole–to stop walking on cultural egg shells.

in principle, his ideas are very solid. in practice, and he acknowledges this, they’re a little shaky. he claims, however, that upon careful consideration, the correct answers to moral questions can be determined. while these answers do not follow simple rules such as arithmetic, each element in a moral decision must be given a positive or negative value, and the net value of these elements will determine the proper course of action, with the goal of maximizing human well-being.

this is all well and good, but who is qualified to assign these values? this is where his idea of the moral landscape comes into play. naturally, certain elements will have higher values for some individuals and lower values for others, therefore accounting for multiple peaks on the moral landscape. but this brings us right back to square one: if we account for multiple peaks on the moral landscapes of individuals other than ourselves, how can we also make the claim that not all peaks on the landscape (ie. the peaks on the islamic extremist landscape) are viable?

in retrospect, the book went in one big circle, reaffirming the fact that sam harris doesn’t believe he should be responsible for the answers. on the contrary, he only holds himself responsible for pointing out that no one else has the answers either, but it’s their job to find them, not his, and shame on them if they don’t.

i’m not really one for atheist intellectuals…