Chapter Six (Amanda Brawner)

A Science of Good and Evil
"Sam Harris hits on some topics that I've thought much about myself in Chapter Six: A Science of Good and Evil. Having read Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, among other philosophical works that touch upon the notion of good and evil and write versus wrong, and being an anthropology major myself, I've never really been able to find a logical conclusion myself. Harris makes a good point when he says, "truth seems to be one of the principal shortcomings of secularism". He goes on to mention that the idea that murder is wrong, for example, is pretty uncontroversial between atheists, monotheists, and polytheists alike, though there is no "reason" behind our mutual conclusions. He goes on to site an example of what we might call "ethics" in another primate. On page 172, Harris says, "Even monkeys will undergo extraordinary privations to avoid causing harm to another member of their species". This is interesting to me, as we've studied behaviors of non-human primates in relation to culture and found that certain species seem surprisingly human-like in their interactions with one another. This is just another example of how culture (and, as in this case, morals and ethics) may be just as much a part of our biology as our brown hair or long legs. I agree with Harris that we feel more ethical obligations towards things/people who seem most "conscious" like us (page 174). His example of page 176 about the Nazi who murders Jews and then returns home that evening to be a loving father and husband makes sense to me as well; the Nazi in the story held beliefs that "inured him to the natural human sympathies that might have otherwise prevented such behavior". In later pages, Harris hits upon the subject of love as it pertains to honor and the context of "tribal" practices (honor killings). He then surprises me with his claim that violence is sometimes an ethical necessity (page 199). He does, however, site Ghandi as the most influential pacifist and praises his work against Britain. However, he calls Ghandi's solution to the Holocaust (mass suicide) immoral. I do agree with him on these points, but Ghandi believed that the Jews would be reincarnated and that this current life was expendable. A mass suicide would have drawn attention to the Nazis. From Ghandi's point of view, I can see why this might have worked. I guess maybe this is exactly what Sam Harris is trying to point out; that our beliefs can destroy even those with the "best" of intentions and that "best" (or even right and wrong) may be relative.