Where Does Morality Come From With Sam Harris

in the religious view obviously there are certain things that believe are capable of understanding by any sentient human being so don't believe that all human beings in the absence of religion are immoral people who go around murdering their neighbors and and raping their sisters think that and in fact this is pretty well embedded in even judaic philosophy the idea that there is sort of natural law theology where you as just normal person know not to kill people and know not to steal and notice out of courts of law there's what they call the seven the seven commandments to noah but the idea is that anyone can basically discover these things and there are universals across culture about you're not supposed to murder your brother but the the biblical reading is that to reach more sophisticated level of morality that leads to sort of right-based society we see here you at least need the the catalyzing enzyme of of judeo-christian religion in order in order to get here that would think be the most rationalistic argument on behalf of judeo-christian values but where is here again here would be civilization that values individual rights above the values of the collective that says that that people are to be treated to use the biblical phrase as made in the image of god that we should treat individuals as made in the image of god that that does not happen in the absence of judeo-christian value system that's that's the religious argument so the and and although that is more of historical argument right that's what i'm saying it's rationalistic argument because the the deeply religious argument god said so so do it right but that's not the argument that think is the most compelling because that only works if you believe in god and if you believe in revelation so that's not the argument that tend to make because don't find it intellectually convincing it's an argument for authority which of course is not particularly convincing so tend to make the historical argument which is that history brought us to the the reason we are at this point in history is because without that particular catalyzing enzyme you don't get what you have here which is why the west and western civilization crop up in judeo-christian system but don't crop up in for example islamic countries and islam has been around for thousand years so what do you number one what do you make of that argument and then want to get into so where do you think morality comes from right well few points one i'm not convinced by that historical argument think you can you can cherry-pick the data either way and come up with with different conclusion and the even if agreed with it it wouldn't make the case think you want to make because it would be an instance of what's called the genetic fallacy which is if we even if we granted that that our respect for individual rights say came from judeo-christian tradition it doesn't mean that it can only come from from there or that it even is best gotten from there and would say that it actually hasn't come principally from there and there are many ways so for instance you could say that that christianity in particular was responsible for in part responsible for the fall of the roman empire right so so christianity undermined the notion that the the the roman emperor was god you know it made it harder to recruit true soldiers and they had to farm it out to mercenaries and you know it eroded you know what you might call traditional roman values and then you know the western empire fell and you know we ushered in the dark ages and in so far as there was reboot to civilization at that point it was largely the result of classical the learning and the philosophical insight of antiquity being preserved by of all people right so think it's you can you can have it any way you want looking at history but it just doesn't get you there in terms of the the moral content and the and in this case the political or social content coming from the bible or or any other religious text so then why then why here meaning like why in judeo-christian civilization civilization but not islamic civilization because you mentioned rediscovery of aristotle and reuse of aristotle in 10th and 11th centuries was really beginning you know in in the islamic world long before aquinas really repopularized it in the in the 13th and 14th centuries yeah well one think it's you know from my point of view it's impossible to ignore the influence of islam mean islam is its own ideology and set of dogmatisms that are inflexible and at odds with the spirit of science and fundamentally and despite the fact that there was brief period where there seemed to be some you know happy convergence between scientific and mathematical insight and islam for the most part islam has been hostile to you know real intellectual life and in in way that christianity was hostile even when the scientific worldview was was struggling to be born in in you know the 16th century in the 15th century the what we have historically is real war of ideas and mean mean just just you can be crystallized in the moment where you know galileo was shown the instruments of torture and put under house arrest by people who refused to look through his telescope right mean so that was the genius of religion paired with the with the emerging genius of science in that room don't be fair mean galileo was originally sponsored by the church and so is copernicus but the but the but there's no question there's backlash from the church to this stuff yes and the backlash makes sense because there is intellectual progress on questions of you know just you know how the cosmos is organized or where it came from or how life began you know all of these questions are the the scientific answers to which are are in zero-sum contest with the doctrines found in the books now they're it's true that they're religious people and now even the pope who have relaxed their adherence to tradition enough to make room for something like evolution right but it's still it is still problem not super new idea mean right aquinas was talking about this in the 13th century and 14th century the idea that that if it was in science and it was contradicted by the book then you're misreading the book right mean that's that's pretty old idea yeah but that but that is to subvert science rather than the book in aquinas's case and aquinas thought heretics should be put to death right his argument for that for for capital punishment for heresy and augustine made the same argument he thought obviously the thought they should be tortured right so that those two great lights of the catholic church gave us the inquisition and gave us you know more than century think it's also fair to say that they were rather instrumental in the development of modern science so the the the dark ages first of all think the dark ages are bit of an exaggeration in terms of the dark ages themselves have saw massive massive growth in technology and architecture for example mean gothic cathedrals are built during the dark ages but sure but the the scientific world is well virtually every major university in the western world was sponsored by the catholic church and i'm not i'm not great catholic defender right mean but but virtually all major universities were sponsored by the catholic church which saw consonants between science and religion as reason to actually investigate the natural world well no mean think again think that's backwards think the reality is there was no mean everything that was good that was done anywhere at any time prior to you know pick your year was done by some religious person mean there was just nobody else to do the job right so you could you could make the argument that you know catholics built every bridge in europe until the protestants came around and they they built their half of the bridges and so there was just no one else to do the job and we're human beings who want to pursue various ends many of which require breakthroughs in learning so you know is engineering got born in the religious context physics was you know the first physicists were people who were who were christians who were you know you know as often pointed out newton spent half his time worrying about biblical prophecy now think that was waste of an objective waste of his time he also spent lot of his time worrying about astrology right so you're trying to alchemy yeah yeah yes and alchemy and an alchemy in so far as there was anything to it apart from sort of kind of the internal myth-making that may be of use to some people be edged into chemistry right so like so there's there was often real science at the back of lot of merely mortal confusion where people were trying to work things out you know would argue very much under the the shadow of religious commitments that they need not have had and we're not actually serving their their ultimate ends and so and this this for me is true in the moral sphere as well because so to take this is why the bible in my view can't be the real repository of our moral wisdom in any sense because when you go to read it you are forced to ignore certain passages or reinterpret them rather aggressively to conform to what you now in the 21st century have every reason to believe is good or direction worth going socially so you know it is just an inconvenient fact that slavery is endorsed in the bible it's explicitly endorsed in the old testament and it's it's certainly not repudiated in the new right and you know jesus told slaves to serve their masters and serve their christian masters especially well so there's no place in the bible where you can get truly compelling case against slavery because the creator of the universe clearly expected slavery to be human institution except for abolitionists finding enough inspiration in the bible but they just they did that despite what's in the bible well think think that that is mean don't want to this this shouldn't sound insulting because it's not medicine insult think that from religious point of view that's an ins that's that's simplistic reading of the bible's role in in human affairs meaning that when any written document is given to any group of people it has to be given to people in way that they can understand it's not that slavery was endorsed by the bible it's that slavery is universal among human civilization until modern times but it was no no that there were certainly there are religions that have different points of view on all these questions right so it was possible in the 5th century bc to have take on ethics with respect to something like slavery or the killing of you know combatants or non-combatants that was quite bit more modern and ethical and and and civilized than was found that is found in the bible so it means you take take mean you might not like some of their other commitments but take something like jainism right jainism gandhi got his non-violence from jainism mean jainism is just in truth religion of peace unlike islam which is is you know the word peace is euphemism for the word surrender there or submission so it's it was possible for people 2 500 years ago to to wake up one day and even write book which suggests don't harm anyone or anything even even cricket right well that's mean that's fine but the question is how many converts does jainism have meaning that the the point of if you're going to give book over if let's say that let's pretend that you thought that god existed and that you and that you were he and it was and it was your job to convey to group of human beings what you think morality should be understanding that they're going to take that and develop that because we do have this gift of human reason that we use to develop things and so there's root text and then it is developed over time this is why think judaism is particularly kind of unique in this respect because that's been an ongoing dialectic for literally thousands of years mean there's legitimately you know thousands of pages of tractates of just people arguing about these particular issues you would say that the argument should have started from the point of there was no text for them to argue about and they should have just argued from sort of april reason maybe no mean respect text but think the principle of revelation is problem but just to back up for second think it's it's certainly problematic for you as jew to argue that the legitimacy or or success of religion is best measured by the number of adherents in the year 2018. no but the point but the point of judaism also is that the mean it says in the bible itself that god is going to make you know great peoples of all of abraham's sons for example and as maimonides put it in in the jewish belief the even the the growth of islam and christianity which are obviously based on certain jude judaic root think islam less so because there's an actual rewriting of the old testament in the new testament not as much maimonides suggested that christianity had basically been brought about as an extension of judaism which is the greatest christianity is the greatest converting religion in the history of the world right but it seems so strange to to count at the the success of the success in terms of numbers well christianity and islam given that you know the the basic principle the bottom line is the basic principles of judaism those have been embraced in way that the basic principles of jainism have not across time and they've shaped civilizations in way that is significantly better than the principles of jainism have have shifted any number of of small people or small group of people