Believing without evidence (Harris)
March 18th, 2008 | Published in Fundamentalism, Quotes, Religion, Truth | 6 Comments
Is a person really free to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence? No. Evidence (whether sensory of logical) is the only thing that suggests that a given belief is really about the world in the first place. We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them “religious”; otherwise, they are likely to be called “mad,” “psychotic,” or “delusional.”
—Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 71-72.
March 18th, 2008 at 8:53 am (#)
Does Harris offer any evidence for what he says in that quote?
March 20th, 2008 at 9:40 am (#)
I’ll take that as a “No.”
March 20th, 2008 at 10:09 am (#)
I don’t see how you can disagree with what he’s saying. So if I say that God visited my wife last night and told her she was going to give birth to his son, but have absolutely no evidence, then people won’t say I’m delusional? Of course they would. And if millions of people came to believe what I said was true, wouldn’t we then call it a religion?
It seemed to me you were just playing a word game, and thus weren’t worth responding to.
March 20th, 2008 at 9:21 pm (#)
Folks like Al Plantinga and Nick Wolterstorff showed years ago why Harris is wrong on this. I actually thought I was making a rather mundane objection that is generally covered in Epistemology 101.
I’m sorry you didn’t feel I was worth responding to. But I am serious – what evidence did Harris present to support his claim that we shouldn’t believe propositions without evidence? It seems like a very legitimate question. Harris is stating a proposition (the one that says we shouldn’t believe a proposition unless there is evidence) is true and I was only asking if he met his own requirement. I don’t even know how one might go about providing sensory evidence (or any logical conclusions we can draw from that sensory evidence) for it.
You come to his defense essentially saying that it is self-evidently true, so we might amend his proposition to be that we shouldn’t believe propositions unless we have evidence or unless they are self-evident. This is better but it still doesn’t work. I see nothing wrong, for example, with believing things based on the authority of people I trust. I’ve never been to Europe. I’ve never seen it from an airplane, nor have I ever stepped foot on European soil. I have no sensory evidence that it even exists. My girlfriend has been there and so have many other people that I know, including many teachers I’ve had. They all say it exists. And I believe them. The same goes for almost every scientific result that I believe. I don’t even know how I would go about providing evidence that E=mc^2, but I believe it. There’s no evidence that the sun will rise tomorrow, but I believe it will. I could go on and on.
Note that what I’m saying is not the same thing as “you can believe anything you want” or anything like that. Saying not all propositions require evidence (which I am saying) is not the same as saying no propositions require evidence (which I am not saying).
I hope you can see how somebody might disagree with what he is saying and that I wasn’t just playing word games.
March 21st, 2008 at 7:44 am (#)
I think we simply have different definitions of evidence. My definition of evidence includes reliable testimony. For instance, we have evidence that St. Augustine lived based on reliable testimony. And the reason you believe the sun will rise is based on evidence of history, mathematics, physics, and astronomy.
Also, if I said that unless you drink poison today you’ll turn into an elephant, I daresay you’d want some evidence before believing and acting upon my proposition.
March 21st, 2008 at 11:26 am (#)
Harris’ definition of evidence included the sensory and the logical. I was going by that. And I would hope you would want evidence before drinking poison (but I’m not exactly sure what that has to do with anything I said – I clearly said in my fourth paragraph that I wasn’t saying that no propositions require evidence, only that not ALL do).
I will gladly point you to some books or articles that discuss this, if you want, but I don’t really feel like arguing with you about this anymore.