So I was trying to see the NYT editorial Sam Harris wrote lamenting the appointment of Francis Collins to be the director of the National Institutes of Health, but it was behind a NYT registration wall. Bored for the moment, I recalled reading an article by Harris at some point in the past that had led me to conclude that he was a whacko, particularly on the subject of Islam. I decided for the moment to forgo Bug Me Not, and see if I could find what had bothered me previously.

Man did that open a can of worms. Sam Harris is, in fact, a total whacko (hence the title). He is, in fact (in my humble opinion), a borderline sociopathic lunatic, an extremist, and, bizarrely enough, considering his large following in the secular-humanist/atheist communities, he is also a hokey, carnival-sideshow grade spiritualist.

Wow.

Ok, so let’s hit a couple of high points. First, Harris claims to hate all religion, and want to rid the world of it.

All religion, except for the ones he likes, and, arguably, believes in. Seriously.

Harris, however, argues that not just Western gods but philosophers are “dwarfs” next to the Buddhas. And a Harris passage on psychics recommends that curious readers spend time with the study “20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation.”

Asked which cases are most suggestive of reincarnation, Harris admits to being won over by accounts of “xenoglossy,” in which people abruptly begin speaking languages they don’t know. Remember the girl in “The Exorcist”? “When a kid starts speaking Bengali, we have no idea scientifically what’s going on,” Harris tells me. It’s hard to believe what I’m hearing from the man the New York Times hails as atheism’s “standard-bearer.”

Source: Alternet

Seriously. Harris believes that xenoglossy, aka SPEAKING IN TONGUES, is scientifically plausible.

Better still, he thinks the jury is still out.. on psychic powers:

Harris writes: “There seems to be a body of data attesting to the reality of psychic phenomena, much of which have been ignored by mainstream science.” On the phone he backpedals away from the claim.

“I’ve received a little bit of grief for that,” he says. “I certainly don’t say that I’m confident that psychic phenomena exist. I’m open-minded. I would just like to see the data.”

By that logic, Mr. Harris, I could make the following statement:

“I certainly don’t say that I’m confident that religious miracles exist. I’m open-minded. I would just like to see the data.”

For the record, I’m not terribly open minded on that subject. Human civilization has existed now for something on the order of four thousand years. In all that time there has been not one, single, solitary piece of credible scientific evidence for the supernatural. Not one. No one has ever captured an angel, or raised the dead, or smote their enemies with divine power. Nor has anyone, in that same length of time, demonstrated actual psychic powers with any scientific reliability. Again, not one time.

Show me proof of a single miracle, Sam Harris would say. To Mr. Harris, I would respond: show me a single telekinetic. Anywhere, anytime, in human history. Or an actual psychic. Go on, I’ll wait, I’m quite patient.

Now, you might want to be sitting down for this one. Harris defends the plausibility… of reincarnation.

To see the “data” yourself, “The End of Faith” points readers to a slew of paranormal studies.

One is Dr. Ian Stevenson’s “Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy.” The same author’s reincarnation book presents for your consideration the past life of Ravi Shankar, the sitar player who introduced the Beatles to the Maharishi. He was born with a birthmark, it says, right where his past self was knifed to death, aged two.

Making the case for the “20 Cases” researcher, Harris sounds almost like “Chronicles of Narnia” author C.S. Lewis, who said Jesus could only be a liar or the Son of God.

“Either he is a victim of truly elaborate fraud, or something interesting is going on,” Harris says. “Most scientists would say this doesn’t happen. Most would say that if it does happen, it’s a case of fraud. … It’s hard to see why anyone would be perpetrating a fraud — everyone was made miserable by this [xenoglossy] phenomenon.” Pressed, he admits that some of the details might after all be “fishy.”

Some of the details of a reincarnation ‘story’ might be fishy?

MIGHT?

He believes it because people claiming to be reincarnated wouldn’t lie… because… it would make themselves miserable.

But he throws out all of the Abrahamic religions because he thinks that it’s obvious the various holy books were written by men. Again, to Harris, I would ask: Why would they lie? Those lies make them miserable! Why would anyone write a book that says they can’t eat pork? Pigs are DELICIOUS. Why would anyone found a church stating that they need to die rather than get a simple blood transfusion? Blood is DELICIOUS.

Ok, wait. It’s useful, not delicious. Really, blood is coppery tasting and sort of foul.

Here, let me put up part of Harris’ response to this controversy, from his site:

(Here, I am making a point about gradations of certainty: can I say for certain that a century of experimentation proves that telepathy doesn’t exist? No. It seems to me that reasonable people can disagree about the data. Can I say for certain that the Bible and the Koran show every sign of having been written by ignorant mortals? Yes. And this is the only certainty one needs to dismiss the God of Abraham as a creature of fiction.)

Source: Sam Harris.org

Again, I would respond: Can I say for certain that psychic phenomena, whether card-reading, fortune-telling, telepathy or telekinesis, all show every sign of having been devised by (often quite clever) frauds? Yes. Yes I can.

According to Harris, that should be enough to dismiss the whole field. He dismisses both Christianity and Islam on the basis of their foundational texts; I think I’m on rather more solid ground by dismissing the supernatural he thinks plausible, or at least far more plausible, on evidentiary grounds (though I can, and do, apply those same grounds to religion).

Not to worry, though; Harris has found the evidence!

Another book he lists is “The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena.” “These are people who have spent a fair amount of time looking at the data,” Harris explains. The author, professor Dean Radin of North California’s Institute of Noetic Sciences, which is not accredited for scientific peer review, proclaims: “Psi [mind power] has been shown to exist in thousands of experiments.”

So Harris, esteemed religious skeptic, takes as evidence of magic mental powers the ravings of the, ahem, Professor of a fake, unaccredited pseudo-university.

The Amazing Randi would have a field day with Mr. Harris.

The Skeptic’s Dictionary had issues as well with citing the work of Radin.

So Harris finds Christianity and Islam to be obvious frauds, but he believes reincarnation and psychic powers to be plausible. He finds speaking in tongues compelling. (I wonder how he feels about Christians who speak in tongues?)

Another sign of the double standard Harris applies? He places great faith in eastern religious practices.

We all need our illusions. But doesn’t his, a mishmash of Buddhism and “Time-Life Mysteries of The Unknown,” weaken his case against Christians? His answer is that Buddhism is a superior product for including the doctrine of “non-dualism,” or unity. “The teachings about self-transcending love in Buddhism go on for miles,” he says. “There’s just a few lines in the Bible.” And hundreds in Dostoyevsky and the Confessions of St. Augustine, but never mind: Harris’s argument that “belief is action” rests on treating works like the Old Testament not as complex cultural fables but something akin to your TiVo instruction manual.

Again, from Alternet

The stench of hypocrisy here is overwhelming, and painfully obvious. Harris ascribes to a watered-down form of hippy-dippy, fast-food Eastern religiosity. He finds some kinds of magic personally appealing (psychic powers) and so ignores their screamingly obvious implausibility; he finds others less appealing (monotheism), and so he tears into them like a junkyard dog. He sums up all of Christianity by the core text; he backs up his chosen religion with psuedo-scientific pablum.

Nothing can illustrate that hypocrisy better than the man’s own words.

My views on “mystical” or “spiritual” experience are extensively described in The End of Faith (and in several articles available on this website) and do not entail the acceptance of anything on faith. There is simply no question that people have transformative experiences as a result of engaging contemplative disciplines like meditation, and there is no question that these experiences shed some light on the nature of the human mind (any experience does, for that matter). What is highly questionable are the metaphysical claims that people tend to make on the basis of such experiences. I do not make any such claims. Nor do I support the metaphysical claims of others.

Let’s play the word substitution game again: “There is simply no question that people have transformative experiences as a result of <prayer/a tasty meal*/gargling Drano>, and there is no question that these experiences shed some light on the nature of the human mind.”Your transformative mental activity? Superstition you’d be better off without. His transformative mental activity? SCIENCE.

Give me a break. If the basis for determining a human activity’s validity is whether it ‘transforms’ a person, then religion categorically has value. As does… everything else.

What a wanker.

To Be Continued In Part Ia
Update:

Ooh, ooh, I forgot this one:

And like a Scientologist cleric promising you the state of Clear, evicting alien ghosts ruining your life, Harris expresses a faith that his own style of pleasurable mental exploration ushers in good deeds. Meditation, he says, will drive out whatever it is “that leads you to lie to people or be intrinsically selfish.”

Alternet again. I rest my case.

Update Two: I lied. Another gem, from an article in New Humanist:

But this bilious attack on faith – the aspect of the book which has received all the attention – only sets the stage for what seems to be his real goal: a defense, nay, a celebration of Harris’ own Dzogchen Buddhist and Advaita Vedantic Hindu spirituality. Spirituality is the answer to Islam’s and Christianity’s superstitions and wars, he tells us. Spiritualism is not just good for your soul, it is good for your mind as well: it can make you “happy, peaceful and even wise”. Results of spiritual practices are “genuinely desirable [for they are] not just emotional but cognitive and conceptual”.

Once again: your spiritualism, entirely subjective, only exists in your head, and superstition. Harris’? Good, desirable, scientific.

This man is a tool.

Final Update:
Something came up in conversation with the roomie: Sam Harris claims he rejects metaphysical claims and doesn’t support the metaphysical claims of others. What possible non-metaphysical explanation could there be for psychic powers? Or reincarnation? Is there one? Has anyone ever proposed a workable, testable scientific hypothesis for any of that stuff?

It seems like, much as Harris segregates parts of Buddhism from other religious practice, he segregates stuff he likes from the rest of metaphysics. At last, some consistency.
*I’m actually being serious with this one. From the Wikipedia page on Julia Child:

Child repeatedly recalled her first meal in Rouen of oysters, sole meunière and fine wine as a culinary revelation. She described the experience once in The New York Times as “an opening up of the soul and spirit for me”