Sullivan’s Meaninglessness about Meaningfulness
Andrew Sullivan publishes an intelligent letter from a reader on how Sullivan and Sam Harris are talking past each other — Harris talking about truth, Sullivan talking about meaning — and suggesting that they refocus and take this issues head on.
I, personally, as an atheist, find meaning in my own possibility and will to act in this world. I have the opportunity to interact with others and to create things. I have the chance to leave this world a bit better than when I came into it… for my children and for the rest of humanity. I don’t do this because a particular flying spaghetti monster ordained that I do it and will punish me with his noodly appendage if I don’t. I do it because I have the power and I believe that it is better for me if I help those around me. What else would give my life more meaning than that?
Sullivan replies:
But why is that more meaningful than flying a plane into the World Trade Center?
The obvious retort is: how is Catholicism more meaningful than flying a plane into the World Trade Center? Does Sullivan really mean to lob a meatball for Harris to hit out of the park?
The 9/11 terrorists were religiously motivated, and no doubt did what they did not out of a sense of secular nihilism, but out of deep and no doubt meaningful religious conviction. I think part of Harris’ point is: what’s so meaningful about a system of beliefs for which there is no evidence? Well, there’s no doubt that people find meaning in all sorts of false things, and those false things don’t have to be true to find meaning in them. If Sullivan is a Catholic, then he believes that all other religions are false. Does he deny that they are meaningful? Is his point just that you have to believe that the false thing you believe is true in order to find meaning it? But Muslim suicide bombers, and suicide pilots, believe, too. More importantly, if you believe that something is true, and it is, then why can’t you find meaning in that? It almost seems like Sullivan thinks that you have to believe something that is false is true, and also sort of believe it is false, but beautiful or good, at the same time, in order to draw meaning from it, which makes no sense.
It’s totally mysterious why something that is true and beautiful and good can’t be equally meaningful. Indeed, it’s mysterious why the commitment to something beautiful and good, like truth, can’t be exceedingly meaningful in its own right. Obviously, the problem with running a plane into the WTC doesn’t turn on whether or not it was meaningful. It turns on whether it was morally monstrous, which it was–and you don’t need Jesus to see that. And, the fact is, many of the most morally monstrous things people have ever done were meaningful to them–and often for religious reasons.
Anyway, what a totally stupid and disgusting thing for Sullivan to say.
February 1st, 2007 15:21
I gave up on Sullivan for good several months ago, and this post gives me no reason to regret that decision.
February 1st, 2007 16:29
I don’t actually read Sullivan, and I can’t stand Sam Harris, so I haven’t really paid any attention to this debate. Clearly, Sullivan’s retort to the letter was, well, stupid. But I did want to say one thing about your response. The role of religion in suicide bombings (including, presumably, the suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon) is a bit more complex than Harris would have us believe, than Sullivan’s reply implies, and than your reply to Sullivan takes for granted. Specifically, according to the work of Scott Atran and others (see, e.g., this paper), religion plays a much less causal role in determining who becomes a suicide bomber than most of us would (understandably) believe.
February 22nd, 2007 17:14
As Chris said above, it’s difficult to neatly divide acts - both individual and collective - into ‘religious’ and ’secular’ in motivation, rationale, and (why not?) meaning. The Crusades had plenty of religious content, mixed with a tremendous amount of secular interest. Did Christian Europe go to war with the muslims because they wanted to make God happy? By contrast, did America enter into World War II because we wanted to make the world safe for freedom and liberty? There’s an idiotic, incorrect reply to both of these questions, and it happens to be a simple ‘Yes’.
I find Harris not worth listening to - too much righteous rage, which fellow atheist Billy Joel commented on nicely in ‘The Angry Young Man’ - and Andrew Sullivan hopeless for reasons beyond this incident. But the content of his reply hints at something that hits closer to home with Harris than we’d take at first notice: If life was a cosmological accident, the universe ‘just is’ and holds no real purpose for us or actual moral truth, then Harris’ “I’m an atheist who, gosh darn it, likes to be nice, and I don’t need noodles for that” isn’t praiseworthy, as nothing truly can be. By extension, there’s nothing wrong with Peter Singer’s utilitarianism, Marx’s communism, or even Joseph Smith’s mormonism. They’re all essentially equal, because there’s no objective standard of measurement to speak of.
Unless you clench your fists, close your eyes, and really, really mentally ‘feel’ that - despite the ’sad cosmological accident’ nature of our existence, the pointlessness of the universe, and the oblivion that waits every man, woman, and child - some things are morally wrong and that’s obvious and there’s nothing more to say on the subject. In which case it just proves that, somewhere in the closet, atheists keep a shrine with a pasta statue on it.
March 10th, 2007 07:57
[...] Watch Will Wilkinson trying to mediate between Sam Harris, Andrew Sullivan, and one of Sullivan’s more literate readers. Someday there will probably be a version of Godwin’s Law for arguments ad 9/11. Meanwhile we can still puzzle over its meaning. Here’s Wilkinson’s contribution: The 9/11 terrorists were religiously motivated, and no doubt did what they did not out of a sense of secular nihilism, but out of deep and no doubt meaningful religious conviction. I think part of Harris’ point is: what’s so meaningful about a system of beliefs for which there is no evidence? Well, there’s no doubt that people find meaning in all sorts of false things, and those false things don’t have to be true to find meaning in them. If Sullivan is a Catholic, then he believes that all other religions are false. Does he deny that they are meaningful? Is his point just that you have to believe that the false thing you believe is true in order to find meaning it? But Muslim suicide bombers, and suicide pilots, believe, too. More importantly, if you believe that something is true, and it is, then why can’t you find meaning in that? It almost seems like Sullivan thinks that you have to believe something that is false is true, and also sort of believe it is false, but beautiful or good, at the same time, in order to draw meaning from it, which makes no sense. [...]
April 18th, 2007 17:52
test
June 14th, 2007 04:17
This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything - and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”
September 15th, 2007 01:54
coco floor mats car…
news…
March 6th, 2008 16:20
Vioxx side effects….
Vioxx lawyers houston. Vioxx. Vioxx settlements. Vioxx side effects….