WHAT MAKES US MORAL?
Science, religion, and the shaping of the moral landscape: a Christian response to Sam Harris
By Craig Hovey. SPCK. 112 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 281 068 982
The book’s intentions are clear enough from the subtitle: this is a challenge to Sam Harris, one of the so-called ‘New Atheists’.
With Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and the late Christopher Hitchens, he completes what might be called the ‘atheist-Gang-of-Four’! With such a goal the book commends itself to EN readers immediately. The New Atheists are vociferous in their denunciations of the historic Christian faith (and all religious belief) but their arguments rest on sand. The book’s exposure of the two main pillars of Sam Harris’s approach is helpful — first, that all religions are bad because they are based on ‘superstition’ (i.e. not the facts of science) and, second, that a universally satisfying and successful morality can be assured only through a scientific approach (i.e. not a religious one). So, if your interest is ‘Sam Harris’, this is a book you should read. The author is Assistant Professor of Religion at Ashland University in Ohio and his speciality is Christian ethics. He is well qualified for the task in hand.
Generally speaking, though, the book isn’t an easy read and the arguments somewhat complicated for the non-academic. More seriously, the theology behind the author’s ‘Christian’ response is, from an evangelical point of view, confusing. ‘My strategy’, he says on page 83, ‘is to present a Christian moral vision rooted in the story of Jesus’. Later again: ‘I have serious reservations about the kind of Christian apologetics that tries to prove that it’s right’ (pp.99 & xix).
To the first we want to ask: ‘But if the story of Jesus is really true, then doesn’t it follow that the worldview ideas based on it are reliable?’ Why then the repeated evasions of the concept of ‘true-truth’ in favour of the language of ‘narrative’ and ‘tradition’? And to the second: ‘If the message of Scripture is that people need to turn and believe because the Bible’s message is true and its rejection “folly”, why not say so?’ (cf. Romans 1.20, 22). Why hesitate about objective truth in favour of language about ‘the community of faith connected to the story of Jesus’? Something more robust is needed if we are to be consistently biblical rather than vaguely Christian.
In conclusion — a useful book but with significant limitations.
Ranald Macaulay,
Christian Heritage, Cambridge
