Sam Harris and Brian Greene debate religion vs. science, and how to deal with believers

Here we have two notables on opposite sides of the religion-versus-faith issue, or at least clashing about how to deal with the oft-claimed incompatibility between science and religion. In one corner is Sam Harris, who, as you know, is a hard-core critic of faith, and not shy about saying that. His book The End of Faith could be counted as the beginning of New Atheism. In the other corner is Brian Greene, who doesn’t like to criticize religion because, he says, confrontation turns people off (he refused to autograph my Faith vs. Fact book that I was auctioning off for charity).  And Greene doesn’t mind taking Templeton money to fund his World Science Festival.

This 9-minute discussion, from 2018, is part of a 2+-hour discussion you can find here.

Greene argues there’s a big reason to avoid being as hard-core as Harris. He claims that being vociferous (apparently like Harris or Dawkins) undercuts the stated goal of atheists to spread rationality. For Greene sees New Atheists as elitists who tell people that they are “stupid”—a contention that we often hear but I don’t think carries much truth. (Try finding such a statement in Faith vs. Fact!) Rather, Greene believes that people’s deconversion is best accomplished indirectly: by getting people to appreciate the natural wonders of the universe and showing your passion for them. This, he thinks, “will drive things in a good direction.” (I believe he means letting go of religion, though Greene isn’t explicit.) I can’t quite see how that would work.

Sam responds that people’s minds can change; believers can become nonbelievers. That is true, and I’ve seen it and, indeed, have even been instrumental in changing some minds that way. (No, I don’t call people “stupid.”)  Greene responds that he’s changed minds, too, but yet he fails to show that the “soft” approach is more efficacious. How many I-got-people-to-give-up-religion anecdotes does he have? As Sam says, “You’re talking about the carrot and I’m talking about the stick. And the stick works.”  This exchange, by the way, is hilarious.

Sam responds that there are some religious views that in fact facilitate the ruination of nature (global warming, for example, can be justified as a necessary precursor of The End Times).  Greene responds that he’s rarely confronted with such people.

My methods are clearly the same as Sam’s, though I wouldn’t for a minute tell Greene that he has to go after religion big-time. That’s just not his way. However—and I don’t have evidence for this—I do think that the direct approach to criticizing faith, one that avoids ad hominem attacks—is more efficacious. I don’t think telling people that science and faith are perfectly compatible, for instance, can account for the rise of the “nones” in recent years. It appears that many people have become “nones” because they realized that religion is irrational and in conflict with science. As a paper published in 2023 noted:

. . . . the authors queried self-identified religious nones about their reasons for leaving their religion. In response, each participant wrote a short personal essay, which was coded by the research team. Four primary themes emerged. About half of the sample (51.8%) reported leaving for intellectual reasons or because they outgrew their faith. Roughly a fifth of the sample (21.9%) reported religious trauma, such as the hypocrisy of the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. Others (14.9%) reported leaving religion because of personal adversity, such as an inability to make sense of the tragic death of a child, or social reasons (11.4%), including a religious community’s being unwelcoming.

In other words, by far the most common reason for leaving faith is because people perceive that it has no intellectual underpinnings. They don’t leave it because appreciating a passion for the university changes them “in a good way”. (Note that New Atheists also emphasize at least two of the other three reasons people give up their faith.)