While Harris clearly believes that religion ought to replaced by science, ignored by Harris is how this belief in science would necessarily lead to a better world, or for that matter, how it is possible for science to simply replace religion.

I think this is a common misreading of Sam Harris and atheism in general. Harris is asking people to abide by the following general rule: only believe something if there's evidence that supports it. He defines faith as belief in something despite there being no evidence that it's true.

This doesn't mean that we should only believe scientific truths, because it is possible to have evidence for believing in the truth of certain non-scientific claims. For example, say I did Buddhist mediation (or whatever) and gained insight into the nature of consciousness. This claim about the nature of consciousness is certainly non-scientific--it is not testable or physically observable--and yet, at the same time, it is a claim that I believe based on the evidence of my subjective experience. I am not trusting a clergyman or "sacred" text to tell me the truth about consciousness--I am seeing it for myself. Harris thinks this is ok (source: last chapter of The End of Faith).

So Harris is not ruling out all non-scientific claims--he just requires there to be some kind of evidence for them before he can believe them.

I think to say that Harris wants to "replace" religion with science is to wrongly attribute to him the view that the only true claims there can be are scientific ones.

Posted at March 26, 2008 6:09 AM in response to Sam Harris, Atheist Messiah