by MAREK SULLIVAN
A basic premise of philosophical logic is that two contradictory propositions cannot both be true. If I put a cat in a box and close the lid, and ask you whether the cat is alive or not, there’s only one ‘true’ answer: it’s either dead or alive. It can’t be somewhere in between.
Schrödinger tells us that, with a few adjustments to the experiment involving a vial of poison and a radioactive trigger, the cat may in fact be both dead and alive at the same time. This is called ‘quantum superposition’ and I have zero idea how it works. But I understand enough to know the reality it describes is bonkers. I am concerned that famous neuroscientist and atheist Sam Harris has entered this reality. This is a plea for him to reach out and explain how things look from the other side in a way we can actually understand.
In a recent podcast titled ‘On the maintenance of civilisation’, Harris repeated his long-term commitment to exposing the effete manoeuvrings of the ‘liberal left’ around the elephant of Islam. According to Harris, leftists like Barack Obama are guilty of a pernicious delusion: that the recent events in Paris had nothing to do with Islam and that Syrian refugees are no more likely to harbour potential terrorists than others. Harris thinks this is a delusion because it is simply ‘untrue’ that ‘no refugees have ever become terrorists’. Indeed, ‘There are Somali refugees living in Minnesota who have gone to fight and wage jihad for al-Shabab.’ Obama’s failure to recognise these facts is a testament to his ‘moral blindness’ and ‘political stupidity’. It’s also a source of great frustration:
every time the president opens his mouth on this topic without describing the problem accurately, avoiding at all costs the noun ‘Islam’, never uttering the words ‘Islamic terrorists’, or ‘political Islam’, or ‘Islamism’, or even ‘jihadism’, the feeling of being lied to just becomes more and more galling.
Like Donald Trump, Harris is galled. And he’s not going to take it anymore. It’s time for some straight-up telling-it-like-it-is.
But wait. Lest Harris be misinterpreted as a right-wing sympathiser, his political neutrality must be made clear from the outset:
there have been many strange and silly declarations both on the right and left relating to this crisis. And what’s especially depressing is that the demagoguery has been coming from both sides. So we’ve had Donald Trump and Ben Carson and Ted Cruz say things like… I think Trump said there should be a registry for all Muslims and we should start closing Mosques, we shouldn’t let any of the Syrian refugees in; Cruz said we should let in only Christians.
The ‘strange’ and ‘silly’ declarations, the ‘demagoguery’ of Trump, Carson and Cruz—all these are further nails in the coffin of reason. Apparently the Republican candidates are ‘completely crazy’. Hey, Cruz even said we should only admit Christians—the gall.
And yet, 1 min 31s later Harris seems to have changed his mind. Perhaps Cruz isn’t so bad after all…
Is it crazy to express, as Ted Cruz did, a preference for Christians over Muslims in this process? Of course not. What percentage of Christians will be jihadists, or want to live under sharia law? Zero.
Hang on a minute. I thought Cruz was ‘completely crazy’, and that the idea we should only let Christians in was evidence of political strangeness, silliness and demagoguery. Sam Harris, explain yourself!
If we know that some percentage of Muslims will be jihadists […]; if we know we cannot be perfect in our filtering; if we know that a larger percentage will […] be committed to resisting assimilation into our society; then to know that a given refugee or family of refugees is Christian is a wealth of information, and quite positive information in this context. So, is it mere bigotry or mere xenophobia to express that preference?
So Cruz’s idea = not so crazy. But does that mean Harris supports Cruz? Of course not.
I hope you understand, I’m expressing no sympathy at all with Ted Cruz’s politics, or with Ted Cruz.
And yet,
it is totally unhelpful to treat him, though he actually is religious maniac, like a bigot on this point. This is a quite reasonable concern to voice, and the fact that we have a president who will not even name the problem is giving the right enormous energy that we really don’t want them to have here.
Sam, if your claim that Cruz’s immigration policy represents ‘a quite reasonable concern to voice’ does not indicate ‘sympathy for Ted Cruz’s politics’ then I don’t know what would. I’m lost and confused: you seem to live in a reality where two states of affair are possible at once. Quantum superposition!
This is not the first time Harris has baffled and puzzled with his rhetorical Janus-facedness. According to his extended ‘Response to controversy’, he has ‘never written or spoken in support of the war in Iraq’. But here he is in 2004, writing for the Washington Times: ‘However mixed or misguided our intentions were in launching this war, we are attempting, at considerable cost to ourselves, to improve life for the Iraqi people’. Sound like support for the war? That’s because it is.
In his blog article ‘Why don’t I criticize Israel?’ Harris begins with an immunising statement seemingly laying out his most fundamental position on Israel:
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