*On Belief; the discussion between Harris and Atran

I've commented on these two briefly before (here) in which I raise the question about the anthropological attitude when conducting an ethnography on a group (e.g. KKK, Neo-Nazi, etc.) that perpetuates a certain kind of stigma, bigotry, stereotype, which many anthropologists today seek to clarify, negate, and further understanding. Towards the end of that post I invoke a past debate between Sam Harris and Scott Atran.   

I wanted to walk through this discussion between Sam Harris and Scott Atran that happened at the 'Beyond Belief' conference where a lot of big names came together to talk about religion, science, belief and so on. Sam Harris tries to use a comparative approach to specifically target Islam as particularly violent than other religions. More specifically, Harris wants to point to "beliefs" and dogma as the primary cause of the violence we have seen so willingly displayed, relatively recently, in media.

I think Harris is mistaken and carries a few misguided assumptions about the history of violence and religion, which is also to say that I think he is incorrect to point to "beliefs" and dogma in and of themselves as opposed to their appropriation in certain contexts to mobilize people for certain agendas. So here, I will briefly summarize each exchange in the videos followed by my own supplement to this dialogue at the end and why I think Harris' concept of 'belief' is misleading and misconstrues the relationship between 'belief' and behaviour. I also add a little point that Tibetan Buddhism has also had its violent moments in history.




Sam Harris doesn't want to discount kinship and other elements that go into social cohesion, but is concerned about forms of dogmatism. In particular, he raises the example of Islam being the "most pungent". Harris wants to blame "Muslim beliefs" (paradise, infidels, etc.) as the cause and reason for seemingly irrational behaviour like suicide bombing. Given that "beliefs" are one variable within an array of things that may cause people to do acts of violence, Harris asks Scott Atran where the Palestinian Christian "suicide bombers" who suffer similar, if not the same, forms of scrutiny and oppression. His second example is Tibetan Buddhism, who have also suffered torture, but lack suicide bombers. Harris wants to attribute the lack of a "death cult" in Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism to the beliefs, values, and metaphysical system of meaning. Harris goes on to state that Islam allows Muslims to do take an aggressive stance.

Scott Atran presents a graph of scapegoating, violence and dogmatism. In which he presents a broad array of religions. The tendency to scapegoat is highest for Catholics, Orthodox, and Atheists. I'm not sure how he defines 'scapegoating' (he states that it is correlated with dogmatism, flexibility of beliefs and commitment to violence) but if we go by a typical understanding, then he is discussing the tendency to single out a particular group for blame and negative treatment. This is lowest for Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims. Atran states that the trends are similar for violence and flexibility of belief. He states that the study involved over 10,000 people from 10 countries around the world. Atran then go into the example of Japanese Buddhists who participated in Kamikaze actions and the Sri Lankan Army (Buddhists) threatening the Tamil Tigers (Hindus). Atran states that there are Christian suicide bombers from the region PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) who are primarily a Christian and Marxist organization. Atran makes parallels for the mobilization of people between Hitler's rise to power and bin Laden's rise to power. He goes on to state that Al Qaeda is really a constructed group by the U.S. to track certain people. 



Harris agrees with Atran about the red herring with the "affiliation of Al Qaeda". Harris returns to his initial concern about belief. He acknowledges Christian suicide bombers in Palestine and states that Christians and Buddhists would have to work harder to get to the point of being suicide bombers. With the Japanese Kamikaze, Harris states that one can easily see the ideology behind the Kamikaze movement with the mixture of Shinto, Buddhism, and Japanese "military chauvenism". According to Harris, Zen Buddhism doesn't include the values of compassion, which also gives justification for the Samurai (this is actually false - Zen and Pure Land Buddhism does discuss the value of compassion). So he returns to the issue of belief and ideology and the consequences of those ideas for action. Harris then goes on to emphasize the violent text of the Quran and the emphasis of infidels.

Atran states that the Kamikazes were not really military chauvenists but rather German romantics.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson also jumps in really quick to emphasize that the Japanese Kamikaze movement didn't happen until there was a shift in mood of the war when the Japanese were getting desperate and used the strategy as a last resort. Similarly he asks whether there would be Muslim suicide bombers if they had their own air force or tanks. Tyson doesn't think so and Atran states that that is what they have told him - during his fieldwork (culminating in the book 'Talking to the Enemy').  

Harris returns to the propositional emphasis that you either believe in martyrdom or you don't.



In this last part, Krauss steps in and points out Harris' empathy with the Tibetan Buddhists without calling out their metaphysics. Krauss returns to the issue of evidence and beliefs which cannot be proven or disproven by science, which many have placed (incorrectly in my view) into the boxes of rationality vs. irrationality. This is a common attack that atheists will make against those who are religious and declare them as irrational. Krauss goes on to say how offensive this stance is to those who are religious, which is often interpreted as a position of atheism rather than transferring a more accurate understanding of biology and evolution. Arguing against the propositional content of the text and calling them irrational because contradictory statements are held as true creates further division and polarization in politics, which I think is what Krauss is pointing to. Arguing for evolution or using a basis in science does not deter people in their religious beliefs and name-calling doesn't progress the debate in any way. 

The discussion digresses a bit into a broader discussion of science and religion (which is a separate post that involves a certain discussion about epistemic insulation and cognitive dissonance).


***


What I want to address is the problem with discussing this kind of concept of belief. That is, belief in terms of a set propositions that people adhere to and act congruently. This view has been criticized immensely in various fields, namely anthropology and psychology.

If Harris is correct, then the actions of Christians can be explained by referencing the Bible and the "beliefs" contained within them. Slavery, colonialism, and racism all happened because of Christian beliefs. And if that was the case, then these things would still be rampant. Christians would still have slaves. They wouldn't be eating pork or have clothes of two different kinds of fabric, Christians would be following the sermon on the mount more, etc. etc. There are many do's and dont's in the Bible just as there are in other religious texts. If beliefs were particularly laid out and you either believe in them or you don't then there should be further behavioural consequences for lay persons believing in the Bible. And as many will recognize, not all behaviours of Christians can be explained by pointing to a passage in the Bible.

Furthermore, this kind of reasoning is limiting "religion" to what Harvey Whitehouse has called "doctrinal modes" of religiosity. This is contrasted with "imagistic modes", which do not have a particular religious text. This creates problems for Harris. What then is the source by which Harris refers to for beliefs in this kind of religion? In the past, scholars have explained rituals in terms of a particular mythology and labeling them as beliefs. This excludes other forms of behaviour when beliefs are particularly associated with a myth and a ritual.  Harris' notion of belief and dogma fail in these settings and cultures. Not only is there a problem of language and context but there are further issues with isolating rituals or myths to discuss "their beliefs". There is no one single mental state that directly corresponds and maps onto behaviour, let alone conceiving another person's belief solely in terms of an explicit proposition stated in a religious text.

Harris wants to state that Muslims are violent because of their religious text. This would also entail that Christians were violent because of their text. Buddhists were violent because of their text. Or Native Americans were violent because of their oral traditions. This is simply not true and grossly misleading. I'm not arguing that there is no relationship between beliefs and behaviours, but that considering belief in terms of propositional content derived from a particular text, myth, or oral tradition and using that to explain behaviour is misguided.  

On another note, Harris appears to be inclined to have a favourable view of Tibetan Buddhists. Relatively recently, Tibetan Buddhists have been very willing to participate in neurological studies that investigate religious experiences and how meditation affects neuroplasticity. The Dalai Lama has taken an active interest in how religion and science can exchange in mutual dialogue on the topic of consciousness and other things. I know there have been plenty of work done at Emory University. What Harris misses is Tibetan Buddhism's own history of violence.Would this entail that Tibetan Buddhism explicitly teaches violence and dismisses compassion? No, there were external pressures from China and Mongolia and an array of additional factors that led to violence. In contemporary society, we see acts of self-immolation. These acts are not because Tibetan Buddhism teaches this kind of protest or that self-immolation is congruent with teachings of reincarnation. There are other reasons and beliefs for this type of protest. Such actions are not specifically born out of the religious texts and ideologies they espouse.

So I think Harris needs to think his argument out further and supplement it with more homework. There is a lot he is missing. And I don't expect him to be an expert in religious studies given that his background is in neuroscience. But if he is going to launch this kind of attack then he should at least do his part of due diligence on what he is actually attacking. In sum, Harris misconstrues the relationship between 'belief' and behaviour. And secondly he is missing a lot of nuanced history and social contexts of many religions.